Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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FORT SUMNER — Time can bury many things, but healing truly begins when more people remember a tragedy. So say officials organizing an event commemorating the 150th anniversary of the Treaty of Bosque Redondo. From 1863 to 1868, the U.S. military removed 9,500 Navajo and 500 Mescalero Apache from their homelands and imprisoned them on a 1,600 square mile reservation near Fort Sumner. The Bosque Redondo Memorial sits on this site as a reminder of the tribes’ hardships and resilience through it all, said Bosque Redondo Mem...
What would spring be without some cleaning? April will be a month of both beautifying and recycling on the High Plains, with the first event taking place in Portales. The 2018 Great American Cleanup is scheduled to start at 9 a.m. April 7 at the Memorial Building and run until 1 p.m. in Portales. In that time, volunteers will disperse across the city — individually and in teams — to see how many bags of trash they can collect. Prizes will be given at the end of the day for the most bags of trash collected, the largest gro...
PORTALES — Tuesday’s Roosevelt General Hospital Board of Trustees meeting featured a mixed bag of financial information. Chief Financial Officer Bill Boyer told the board of three findings on the hospital’s 2016 audit: Some funds were placed in the wrong accounts, certain purchases over $500 were not approved by the board, and the hospital was late on its audit. Boyer added that RGH should have its 2017 audit completed by the end of the year, meaning the hospital will no longer be behind on its audits. He also reported that...
A garden is blooming in Las Cruces, and one of the “gardeners” is an eastern New Mexico native. Clovis resident Mary Mattimore’s quilt, entitled “Pitcher Plant,” will be featured alongside the work of 34 other quilters from across the state at the New Mexico Farm and Ranch Heritage Museum. “How Does Your Garden Grow?,” an art show being held from April 6 through Aug. 5, will display quilts that feature plants both real and imagined, according to a museum press release. Other pieces in the show have such mouth-waterin...
Retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in an op-ed for the New York Times on Tuesday that demonstrators against gun violence “should demand a repeal of the Second Amendment.” It’s not a particularly popular idea in eastern New Mexico. Stevens wrote that the idea of a “a well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state ...” is “a relic of the 18th century.” He also wrote that repealing the Second Amendment would do more to weaken the National Rifle Association’s “ability to stymie legislat...
PORTALES — Swords, sorcery and S.M. Stirling will infiltrate Eastern New Mexico University on April 6 as part of the 42nd annual Jack Williamson Lectureship. Don't know S.M. Stirling? Allow Barbara Senn, lectureship committee member and long-time attendee, to introduce the event's guest of honor. "One of his big series that he's written is called 'The Emberverse.' What happens in the series is a change — he calls it 'the change,' which is where the title for (this year's) lec...
With spring upon us, Portales and Clovis are readying for thousands of Easter eggs, hundreds of children, and a popular bunny. That’s right, Easter egg hunt season has arrived, and both communities have prepared events for Saturday. The fun begins at 9 a.m. at the Guy Leeder Softball Complex in Clovis, where 9,000 Easter eggs are ripe for the picking, according to Clovis Assistant City Clerk Vicki Reyes. She said the city decided on 9,000 instead of the usual 4,000 due to demand. “We just have really, really large crowds of...
PORTALES — Ever heard of Moliere? No? Well, get ready, because a guest artist at the Eastern New Mexico University Theatre Department is giving a crash course tonight. Playwright Timothy Mooney is bringing his one-man show “Moliere than Thou” to the ENMU Theatre Center at 7 p.m., and will educate attendees in the work of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, better known as Moliere. In the play, Mooney plays Moliere, whose cast has fallen ill, leaving him to perform an assortment of his “greatest hits” from plays like “Tartuffe,” “Don Juan...
PORTALES — Area high school students with college interests have plenty of options. Eastern New Mexico University hopes its Junior Preview Day on Saturday will help answer any questions. The event begins at 8:30 a.m. and ends at 3 p.m., offering building tours, information on classes and degree programs and information for parents, according to Cody Spitz, director of enrollment at ENMU. “They get an academic fair, they get to visit some of our major rooms. We go through the science building and they get to see our sci...
FLOYD — With two performances this year instead of the three that attendees are familiar with, the organizers of the 68th annual Floyd Lions Club Country Jamboree are hoping to give audiences the most "bang for their buck." "What our goal is, is to bring as many people as we have been, and have as many people in the two nights as we have had in the three," master of ceremonies Dave Nash said of the country music event that will take place at 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday at t...
Xcel Energy has crossed a major hurdle in its path to making its 1,230-megawatt wind energy project a reality. The New Mexico Public Regulation Commission voted unanimously on Wednesday to approve the Sagamore Wind Project, located 20 miles southeast of Portales, as well as the Hale Wind Project in Texas. This result followed close to a month of debate about a mechanism Xcel had proposed in order to recover the cost of the $1.6 billion project. The mechanism involved an undisclosed rate increase to Xcel customers before the...
An $80,000 reduction in the City of Portales’ total fund balance for the 2017-2018 fiscal year isn’t cause for alarm, according to Finance Director Marilyn Rapp. In her report of budget adjustments at the council’s Tuesday meeting, Rapp credited the reduction with a $1.3 million loan payment the council had money set aside for but hadn’t budgeted. The transfer, according to Rapp, was for the first loan payment on the city’s wastewater treatment plant, which is due in April. She added that the reduction in the balance doesn’t...
PORTALES - Roosevelt County commissioners on Tuesday received a bit of good news when County Manager Amber Hamilton informed them that the sheriff's office was no longer the target of a lawsuit. Hamilton said the lawsuit was appealed to the New Mexico Supreme Court after being denied by District Judge Fred Van Soelen in July 2017. The lawsuit, filed by attorney Eric Dixon on behalf of criminal defendants Cody Banister and Armando Pena, as well as a mother of a woman killed in...
Big dreams of a colorful flower garden, but intimidated by spring winds and summer heat waves? Never fear, area nursery owners say, for there is a solution. First, know that there is plenty of time to prepare. Traci Franklin, owner of Traci's Greenhouse in Clovis, said planting should typically happen after April 15 to avoid any plant-killing freezes. Until then, you can prune back your existing garden or clear space for a new one. "From now until it's time to plant, you just...
PORTALES - In a world saturated with technology and communication, what stories are being lost in the shuffle? A national non-profit organization hopes to bring that number down significantly. StoryCorps kicked off a month of storytelling Thursday at its Airstream trailer, which will be parked in front of the Eastern New Mexico University Administration Building daily until April 13. At Thursday's press event, Morgan Feigal-Stickles, site manager for the StoryCorps mobile...
PORTALES — The Portales Ag Expo, at least as we’ve known it for the past quarter century, will never come back. At least that’s the view from Roosevelt County Extension Agent Patrick Kircher. The expo, which was typically held in late March, ran for 25 years, providing information on farm and ranch equipment as well as educational seminars for area producers. Officials said in February that the event was suspended indefinitely, citing a changing agriculture business. Kircher said that for the expo to ever return, it would...
PORTALES — Roosevelt County’s 2018 primary election will have three contested races, with only Republicans signing up to run for countywide positions. As of the 5 p.m. filing day deadline, the magistrate judge race had the most interest with four candidates: Christopher Mitchell, James Southard, Jimmy Parrish, and Michelle Bargas. Mitchell, who was waiting for the ballot draw just after 5 p.m., said he was inspired to run so he could “expand my service to a finite group of people to a much larger group of people in the area....
PORTALES — A long-abandoned hotel is set to begin serving its original purpose once again this fall, and officials are hoping the effect will be more businesses in Portales. At a Portales City Council meeting in March of 2017, Albuquerque-based Ambience Hospitality was given the Portales Inn building on the corner of Avenue A and Third Street as well as the building’s parking lot and a $500,000 incentive. The $4 million project is for the construction of a Best Western Plus hotel, slotted for completion between October and...
PORTALES — Tower Theater owners Alvie and Frances Smith were house shopping outside Portales when Alvie first noticed the smoke bellowing from the downtown area. "He said he had a real funny feeling," Daughter Kay Manis remembers. "He said, 'Maybe I better go downtown and make sure the theater's OK.'" The theater was not OK. Downtown Portales was not OK. Forty years ago this week, on March 10, 1978, Portales burned. The fire started just after 1 p.m. in a sweet potato w...
PORTALES — A fire was devouring a Portales city block on March 10, 1978. The Tower Theater, The Print Shop and several other businesses were aflame. Panicked thoughts likely streamed through the minds of everyone present, but Brenda Fenton didn’t have time to think. Fenton was a dispatcher working in Portales’ City Hall, but as the fire worsened, her team was evacuated to the Mountain Bell Phone Company office near the Portales Public Library. The dispatchers were “stuck in a room that was total chaos, but it worked,...
PORTALES — A Lubbock man walked out of the Roosevelt County Detention Center on Monday as a convicted felon after pleading guilty to vehicular homicide and fleeing from a law enforcement officer. Assistant District Attorney Jake Boazman said Jerry Nale, 20, pleaded guilty to the charges Monday after serving more than 500 days in jail. He was also placed on five years of probation. Nale was arrested in May 2016 on felony charges of vehicular homicide, aggravated fleeing, two counts of contributing to the delinquency of a m...
PORTALES — The city of Portales bid an emotional farewell to two outgoing officials at Tuesday’s city council meeting, including late Mayor Sharon King. Plaques were presented to councilor Antonio Salguero and King, whose plaque was hung on the wall in the council chambers. “When staff ordered the plaques, we really had no idea that we’d never get the opportunity to present hers to her. For most of us, we never even imagined that our last conversation with her would truly be our last,” City Manager Sammy Standefer said of K...
PORTALES — A large dip on Fir Street and deterioration on a section of New Mexico 88 are among items Roosevelt County commissioners have added to a New Mexico Department of Transportation improvement list. NMDOT's State Transportation Improvement Program encourages the public to suggest federal and state highway improvements, according to County Manager Amber Hamilton, who fielded requests from commissioners at their Tuesday meeting. Commissioner Matthew Hunton pointed out t...
While genre films like “Get Out” and “The Shape of Water” went home with Oscars at the 90th Academy Awards on Sunday, horror and science fiction greats that died in 2017 were missing from the award show’s “in memoriam” segment. Deadline reported that of 51 names memorialized, notable omissions included “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” director Tobe Hooper, “Batman” actor Adam West, and “Robocop” co-star Miguel Ferrer. While stars like Jerry Lewis, Don Rickles, and Harry Dean Stanton got mentions, country music and film star Glen...
PORTALES — A Portales resident on Monday suggested the Portales Municipal Schools undergo a “hardening” to prevent incidents of violence in the future. Sam Rigsby brought concerns to the school board about mass shooting incidents in other parts of the country, encouraging board members to consider “hardening our schools in the method of a voluntary armed employee situation.” Rigsby clarified that while he wouldn’t want to make any decisions if a plan were made, he was willing to “do legwork, information gathering, wh...
