Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
On this date …
1971: New Mexico tax collectors were on the lookout for more than 50,000 galloping ghosts.
The state had recorded about 24,000 horses in compiling its annual property tax on livestock. But the State Livestock Board was reporting it had issued 70,000 free vaccinations for Venezuelan Equine Encephalomyelitis. And the state expected to issue at least 10,000 to 20,000 more free vaccines before the federal program was over.
Where were the missing horses? Some of them were in Santa Fe County, according to The Associated Press.
AP reported only 16 horses were on the tax rolls in Santa Fe County, but the Santa Fe Equine Clinic had administered about 1,400 of the VEE vaccines over the past two weeks.
Not every horse vaccinated in Santa Fe, of course, also lived in Santa Fe, but the state’s chief tax assessment officer was planning to compare shot records with the tax rolls in hopes of finding the ghost horses.
Officials said the average horse had a $30 tax valuation. They estimated New Mexico was home to about 100,000 horses. NM Attorney General David Norvell said counties would be able to collect back taxes on the unrecorded horses, if they could locate them.
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