Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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De Baca County residents could vote on whether to recall their sheriff if a group of county residents convinces a court to let it circulate a recall petition. Sheriff Gary Graves said he believes he will not only serve out his term — which expires in 2006 — but be re-elected in that year. The state constitution allows for the recall of elected county officials, but first a local district judge must rule that probable cause exists to show the official committed “malfeasance or misfeasance in office or violation of the oath...
Twila Rutter-Wooley, the Curry County grant writer and grant administrator, talks with Curry County Manager Geneva Cooper during a meeting Wednesday at the Curry County courthouse. (Staff photo: Eric Kluth) Twila Rutter-Wooley is a Clovis native who once left the community to become a stockbroker. She spent three years in Denver and three more in Japan, where she also taught English to Japanese stockbrokers. For the last 10 years, she’s been a Curry County employee and plans to make a career of what she calls the best job i...
For members of the youth group at Kingswood United Methodist Church, running a vacation Bible school program this summer on a Navajo reservation was like nothing they’d seen. In July, nine members of the church’s youth group traveled to Pinedale, a spread-out Navajo community in northwest New Mexico, about 30 miles from Gallup. The community has a United Methodist mission church and a small congregation that welcomes visitors from other churches to help with the congregation’s outreach efforts. “We wanted to take them as...
Curry County could cut its jail overcrowding problem by housing nonviolent offenders in military surplus tents with air conditioning and portable toilets, according to County Commissioner Tim Ashley. That’s assuming the state fire marshal approves. Ashley told commissioners about his experience visiting the jail in Farmington, where he said county officials have built a “tent city” for minimum security inmates using heavy-duty military surplus tents that were originally used by the military as field hangars for helic...
The Ute Water project wasn’t the only local water issue to come before last week’s meeting of a legislative interim committee. On Thursday morning, two state representatives spoke to the Water and Natural Resources Committee at Clovis Community College to explain the concerns of local residents over the consequences of unregulated water usage by local farmers. They also addressed farmers’ concerns about the consequences if the state starts to regulate their water use. The committee voted to ask the state engineer to atten...
James Williams, right, of the Texico-Farwell Rotary Club, slices one of the 25 briskets the club cooked for its annual barbecue Saturday during Border Town Days in Farwell. CNJ photo by Eric Kluth FARWELL — From 30-pound hunks of beef brisket to dainty sugar cookies, food ranked first among attractions mentioned by those attending Saturday’s annual Border Town Days festival in Farwell and Texico. But the opportunity to mingle with neighbors ranked a close second. “This is the epitome of small-town USA; this is where the s...
Clovis firefighters battled a blaze Saturday at 120 Connelly for about two hours after semi trailers and packing crates caught fire in the yard next to Moberly Moving and Storage. CNJ photo by Eric Kluth. A fire fueled by wooden packing crates swept through a storage area of a downtown moving company Saturday, keeping 15 firefighters and four engines busy for more than two hours. Capt. Karen Burns of the Clovis Fire Department said the damage to trailers and the storage yard at Moberly Moving and Storage on Connelly Street wi...
The Ute Water project wasn’t the only local water issue to come before last week’s meeting of a legislative interim committee. On Thursday morning, two state representatives spoke to the Water and Natural Resources Committee at Clovis Community College to explain the concerns of local residents over the consequences of unregulated water usage by local farmers. They also addressed farmers’ concerns about the consequences if the state starts to regulate their water use. The committee voted to ask the state engineer to atten...
The Rev. Wayne Salguero of Trinity United Methodist Church hopes that his church will be a place of healing, love and hope. . CNJ photo by Eric Kluth. When the Rev. Wayne Salguero came to Clovis in mid-June, Trinity United Methodist Church wasn’t the first congregation he’s served. The former accountant has spent years in unordained lay leadership roles, first as a Presbyterian and since 1991 as a United Methodist. Salguero, a graduate of Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C., spent nearly two decades as an acc...
Sandia Baptist Church’s new pastor Jason Schwope wants to reach out to Clovis residents who may not have a church home. CNJ photo by Eric Kluth. Some Southern Baptists expect their ministers to be lifelong Baptists whose fathers and grandfathers were deacons or even pastors. That doesn’t describe Sandia Baptist Church’s new pastor, who openly describes his background being raised by alcoholics and drug addicts who exposed him to sexual abuse. “There is nobody in any of my history I know of, grandparents and beyond, who eve...
Trinity Lutheran Church Pastor Bonita Knox hopes to help church members reach out in service to the community. CNJ photo by Eric Kluth. Although she’s a lifelong Lutheran, Pastor Bonita Knox never planned to enter the ministry as a young girl. In fact, before going to seminary she worked in mortgage banking dealing with defaults. “I was a political science major and I loved it because it encompassed so many things I enjoy, sociology, economics, politics, and so forth,” Knox said. “I found that yes, it was an absolut...
Local officials told an interim committee of the State Legislature on Wednesday morning that any further delays in building the Ute Water pipeline will hike costs by about $3 million per year. Total capital and enhancement costs for the proposed Ute Water system are now estimated at $310.2 million, according to estimates presented to the state’s Water and Natural Resources Committee during the last of two water meetings at Clovis Community College. The Ute Water project would pipe water from Ute lake in Logan to nine c...
Responding to drought conditions that have reached emergency levels in some parts of New Mexico, an interim committee of the State Legislature is holding two days of meetings in Clovis to discuss water supply concerns. Tuesday’s first session of the Water and Natural Resources Committee met at Clovis Community College and focused on proposed rules by the state engineer’s office to curb water usage, a report by the New Mexico Drought Task Force, and a report on removal of salt cedar trees from state waterways. Today’s meeti...
Responding to drought conditions that have reached emergency levels in some parts of New Mexico, an interim committee of the State Legislature is holding two days of meetings in Clovis to discuss water supply concerns. Tuesday’s first session of the Water and Natural Resources Committee met at Clovis Community College and focused on proposed rules by the state engineer’s office to curb water usage, a report by the New Mexico Drought Task Force, and a report on removal of salt cedar trees from state waterways. Today’s meeti...
Clovis city commissioners voted Tuesday night to approve a $53.9 million budget for the 2004-05 fiscal year. Tuesday’s meeting took less than 10 minutes since most of the discussion took place in a July 20 daytime budget hearing, commissioners said. The revised budget adopted Tuesday by the commission projects revenue of $48.1 million with a $5.8 million deficit. The city had an unaudited cash balance of $23.3 million on July 1, according to the revised budget, and will drop to $17.4 million by June 30 of next year. Last year...
A 19-year-old Clovis man was stabbed to death at 201 Pinon Street about 12:45 p.m. Monday, Clovis police said. Victor Estrada, father of a 5-week-old daughter, died after being transported by private vehicle to Plains Regional Medical Center, his relatives said. “All that I know at this point is we had officers up there (at the hospital) on a separate call; the victim was brought to the hospital and the officers took it from there,” Police Chief Bill Carey said. “These people knew each other, as in most homicides.” Police...
Despite heavy rains, Badlands Motorcycle Rally organizers figured out a way Saturday morning to keep a motorcycle rally tradition alive — a “Poker Run” in which motorcyclists pick up poker cards at various stopovers on a prescribed route. Poker Run winner Amy Campbell of Clovis took a shorter route offered by organizers due to flash flood warnings on Friday night. Campbell said she’s been riding with her husband for about 15 years, usually as a passenger on the back of his motorcycle. “I love getting on the back and enjoy...
Organizers of the Badlands Motorcycle Rally say their rally, in its fourth year this weekend, draws bikers from all over New Mexico and West Texas. However, few visitors came from as far away as Deonne Wright, who rode her vintage 1979 Harley-Davidson Shovelhead on a solo trip from Melbourne, Fla., through Clovis on her way to visit the Grand Canyon and later the nationally known Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in Sturgis, S.D. She learned about the Clovis rally this week from a trucker in Amarillo, she said. “My husband just r...
One of the smaller Southern Baptist churches in Clovis hosted a state Baptist convention this week. It wasn’t the main New Mexico Baptist Convention, which counts hundreds of churches and tens of thousands of members, but rather the Hispanic Baptist Convention of New Mexico. While small — the convention has about 40 churches and mission works — the Hispanic Baptist convention has been in existence for 82 years due to the efforts of Southern Baptist missionaries in the state. The Rev. Pedro Escobar, convention president and pa...
Investigators ruled Wednesday morning that a fire at the China Star restaurant was accidental, Assistant Fire Chief Ray Westerman said. Westerman said the fire began Sunday morning near a deep fryer where a cook, Zhang Tingfa, had been changing the oil and left the room to make a phone call. “The investigators have found where he left something, possibly a pair of gloves or something like that, on the front of the fryer or around the fryer,” Westerman said. “When he went outside, in his absence something created a fire outsi...
Two De Baca County residents are seeking to recall Sheriff Gary Graves. “Since Gary Graves took office, the community has been split wide open by the actions of this man,” wrote Dennis Cleaver in a press release issued by a group identifying itself as “De Baca County Concerned Citizens.” “He has brought statewide embarrassment and failed to uphold any of the terms of his oath of office,” Cleaver wrote. “Law enforcement is at an all-time low in De Baca County.” According to the New Mexico state constitution, elected county...
Curry County commissioners on Tuesday adopted a $20.5 million budget that will cut the county’s cash on hand from $10.1 million to $3.2 million by June 2005. County Manager Geneva Cooper said the fund drain has been caused mostly by increasing jail costs spread over a number of categories, including the cost to house inmates in other county jails, build a new jail annex in Clovis and pay for inmate medical expenses. The projected jail expenses are only estimates, Cooper said, and county officials have no assurance their p...
Dr. Ali Ghaffari, owner of Buena Vista, testifies Saturday during a hearing at the Curry County Courthouse. (Staff photo: Eric Kluth) Decisions by state regulators to take over and then shut down Buena Vista Nursing Home had nothing to do with the actions of a state-appointed volunteer who propositioned Buena Vista employees for sex, an attorney for the state said Saturday. District Judge Stephen Quinn didn’t make a final ruling Saturday but ordered attorneys for both sides to produce a summary of their findings of fact w...
A Clovis native who now serves on a California city council is embroiled in a lawsuit that has already cost her city more than $538,000 in lawyer’s fees. According to Julie Ruiz Raber, the case revolves around her decision to hand out cinnamon snickerdoodle cookies to poll workers in 24 of 30 voting precincts during a March 2003 election in the city of Carson, Calif. After Raber won by 181 votes, another candidate, Vera Robles DeWitt, sued in Los Angeles Superior Court seeking her removal from office. Raber, a Carson r...
A Clovis native who now serves on a California city council is embroiled in a lawsuit that has already cost her city more than $538,000 in lawyer’s fees. According to Julie Ruiz Raber, the case revolves around her decision to hand out cinnamon snickerdoodle cookies to poll workers in 24 of 30 voting precincts during a March 2003 election in the city of Carson, Calif. After Raber won by 181 votes, another candidate, Vera Robles DeWitt, sued in Los Angeles Superior Court seeking her removal from office. Raber, a Carson r...
