Happy Birthday, New Mexico Central!

by John Weckerle

It hardly seems possible that, just a year ago today, NM-Central.com sprang into being.  A lot has happened over the past year, and we thought it might be entertaining to take a stroll down memory lane, look over our early stories, and see what, if anything, has changed.

Our debut article – Will the Grinches steal Edgewood’s music festival? – discussed the Town of Edgewood’s decision to abruptly cut all its funding for the annual music festival at Wildlife West Nature Park.  The pretext for this decision had to do with the Town’s position that funding the event represented a violation of the State anti-donation clause, an assertion that we disputed then and still dispute today.  Because the funding was terminated after the Park had signed contracts with the performers, the Park had no choice but to produce the event under its own steam.  The community came together and, with donations and other funds raised, the festival almost – but not quite – broke even.  The financial strain from this situation, coupled with the subsequent economic downturn, have put the Park in a state of difficulty, and we again ask that people consider making donations at the Park’s web site.  This year’s music festival, featuring nationally acclaimed folk performer John McCutcheon, promises to be a top-notch event, and tickets can be purchased in advance on the Park web site.

In our article A Town Is More Than Pavement and Pipes, we challenged positions published by local citizens Janelle Turner and Kathryn Cleaver that the Town should defer support for community events until certain other goals had been accomplished.  The Town has, in fact, supported a number of community events since that time, and is reportedly cooperating with the Edgewood Chamber of Commerce on this year’s Town celebration, Run, Rally & Rock.

Our May 19, 2008 article, A Mill Is Not A Million, sought to correct misinformation regarding Soil and Water Conservation Districts – in this case, the East Torrance SWCD – and encourage stakeholders to vote for the mill levy to support the organization.  We remain steadfast supporters of the SWCDs, and strongly recommend that residents vote FOR these mill levys when they come to ballot in the various districts.  To learn more about the area’s districts, see the web sites for the Ciudad, Claunch-Pinto and East Torrance SWCDs.

Our Grow Your Own series of articles on gardening debuted on May 20, 2008 and quickly became one of our most popular features.  We’ll be continuing the series this growing season, conducting our experiments and reporting our successes, failures (indoor string beans…), and lessons learned.

Former Edgewood Town Councilor Chuck Ring joined the blog on May 21 and became a prolific writer throughout the subsequent months.  Chuck has gone on to write his own blog (see link at right).

We broke the story on plans to close the area’s Workforce Connection office on May 21, followed by a guest article by Flo Maze and other articles.  Thanks to local resistance to the idea, the Workforce Connection remains open to this day.

In July of last year, we reported (as did pretty much everyone else) the conviction of Moriarty Chamber of Commerce official Lee Obarr, aka Donald Condra.  Mr. Obarr aka Condra was also publisher of the now-defunct New Mexico Crier. The fledgeling newspaper apparently ceased publication after just a few articles, and its web site has since “gone dark,” – as has that of the Moriarty Chamber of Commerce, for all intents and purposes.

In July and August, we broke the story of Edgewood’s mass sign confiscations (Town of Edgewood Violates Its Own Sign Ordinance, Sign Vigilante Strikes Edgewood)and the apparent violation of the Town’s sign ordinance that they appeared to represent.  Earlier this year, Edgewood finally completed revision of its sign ordinance.

Also last August, we published the first in our Chambergate series of articles focusing on issues surrounding the local Chambers of Commerce – specifically, Moriarty and Edgewood.  Since then, at least from where we sit, the Moriarty Chamber seems to have more or less dropped off the map.   Following the departure of former Executive Director Myra Oden, with whom we had a brief exchange in December here,  in February 2009 the Edgewood Chamber announced initiatives that appeared to be directed at a sort of reinvention and fence-mending effort.  Some of those seem to be working; events planning seems to be moving along, and the Chamber is working cooperatively with the Town – a positive change.  Some other projected changes, such as posting the Board’s meeting minutes on the web site, have not been accomplished, and the we haven’t seen a Chamber  newsletter since February. With luck, the arrival of new Executive Director Julie Terrell will help bring some of these initiatives along.

As the months have flowed along, we’ve continued to provide news, commentary, and announcements associated with life in the Estancia Valley and New Mexico’s East West Mountains.  We’re still awaiting several articles from folks who said they’d be sending them (ahem…hint, nudge) and hope to be receiving more from our readers and other interested parties over the coming year.  Coincidentally, your editor also celebrates the beginning of another year on earth tomorrow with the great present of seeing NM-Central.com make it through its first year!

One Response “Happy Birthday, New Mexico Central!”

  1. Happy Birthday and many more to come

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