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Thursday, January 4, 2007
2006 Year In Review — Big Ending Capped A Bigger Year
Telegraph Staff Reports
Like most years, 2006 was an eventful one in the East Mountains and Estancia Valley. One of the bigger stories— and one that has not reached a final resolution even now— was the controversy surrounding the potential closure of Edgewood Elementary School by the Moriarty Municipal Schools district. School officials hosted a series of public meetings to inform the community about the serious budget shortfall facing the district, stemming from a decade-long decline in student enrollment.
Even as the Moriarty school district battled its wrenching budget woes, prep sports teams from throughout the area fought— and often won— on the athletic fields. Several state championship trophies found new homes in the area, and gold medals adorned area high schoolers.
The weather was also at the forefront of the news throughout the year. A dry spring that prompted fire fears and the closure of national forest lands was followed by nearly unprecedented monsoon rains that caused flooding and devastated many local roads. After a relatively uneventful autumn, winter arrived with a vengeance in December as back-to-back snowstorms closed Interstate 40 for long stretches and stranded hundreds of travelers.
Bears and mountain lions made their usual appearances, and local communities and businesses continued their growth and expansion.
It was a year filled with triumphs and tragedies, gains and losses. What follows is a sampling of some of the events that shaped the region in 2006:
January
Jay Boydston of Moriarty wins the $1 million top prize in a slot machine contest held throughout 2005 at Sandia Resort and Casino.
February
The Tijeras Pueblo Archaeological Site in Tijeras is named to the National Register of Historic Places. Officials say a designation as a national landmark could follow.
A new classroom wing is opened at Moriarty High School, giving the school a stylish new entryway as well as more space.
March
A Mountainair man pleads guilty to sexual exploitation of a minor and criminal sexual penetration after being accused of supplying alcohol to two underage girls and then photographing himself performing sexual acts on them. The plea deal avoids a trial on 19 felony charges and the possibility of a 150-year prison sentence for 41-year-old John Heard.
The Manzano High boys basketball team rides a 24-game winning streak all the way to the Class 5A state crown.
Six microbreweries announce plans to relocate their operations to a building in the Moriarty Industrial Park. The brewers of beer, root beer and cider from Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Carrizozo and other parts of the state say consolidating their operations into one brewing and bottling center will save on rent, equipment and shipping costs.
April
A Moriarty home is destroyed by a natural gas explosion and the ensuing fire. An EMW Gas employee and a Moriarty firefighter are inside the house trying to stop the gas leak when a spark ignites the gas and literally blows the house apart. Both men are injured and treated for burns at an Albuquerque hospital.
A grass fire near Route 66 Elementary School forces the evacuation of the school and the closure of Barton Road for several hours. No buildings are burned and no one is injured in the fire, which officials say was deliberately set.
An 11-year-old Edgewood boy is hospitalized in serious condition after being attacked by a pit bull near his home. It is later determined that two dogs, both owned by a neighbor, participated in the attack on the boy.
May
The Moriarty school board votes 3-2 to close Edgewood Elementary School if total enrollment in the school district drops by 1 percent or more in the first 80 days of the 2006-'07 school year. The decision comes after five weeks of public meetings that featured impassioned pleas from parents, teachers and community members to find some way to balance the budget without closing a school or cutting student programs.
The Estancia High baseball team wins its first state title with a 7-5 win over Eunice in the Class 2A state championship game.
The Moriarty High girls 1,600-meter relay team shatters the Class 4A state record in the preliminaries of the state meet. The foursome wins the gold medal in the finals, clinching a second-place team finish for the Lady Pintos.
Ashlee Jones of Tijeras, competing for the Manzano High golf team, wins the state Class 5A title.
The Estancia High boys track and field team is crowned the Class 2A state champion. It is the Bears' fifth state track and field title and the second in six years.
Most of the backcountry areas of the Cibola National Forest are closed due to high fire danger.
June
After a black Nissan flips onto its roof on Old Route 66 in Moriarty and the driver flees, police report finding $15,000 in cash, a handgun, a laptop computer, cell phones and narcotics paraphernalia in the car. The driver, 25-year-old Jeffrey John Webb of Hobbs, is found in the nearby May Pharmacy "acting nervous" and gives officers a false name. He is arrested and charged with trafficking a controlled substance and tampering with evidence.
A Stanley-area man is shot and killed by a neighbor driving by the victim's property in a pickup. Lyle Strong, 52, is charged with an open count of murder in the death of Daniel Martinez, 51. The two had a long-running feud, according to police.
An Estancia woman reports more than two dozen dead and starving horses on a property about 12 miles west of the town. State Livestock Board inspectors begin an investigation.
A stubborn fire at the Moriarty landfill keeps crews busy for several days. Officials say the fire was caused by the spontaneous combustion of a substance dumped at the landfill. Crews use heavy equipment to smother the flames with dirt.
The Moriarty school board approves $500,000 in budget cuts to close a budget shortfall. The 25 positions cut include 17 teachers.
July
A 2-year-old mountain lion weighing about 100 pounds is tracked and tranquilized in Estancia after being spotted on a resident's porch. Local police and state Game and Fish officers search for the animal for about two hours before it is captured.
Four-year-old Jakob Schneller of Tijeras gets a heart transplant less than a week after traveling to Denver to be placed on a transplant list. Patients commonly wait one to three months for a donor heart, doctors say.
Area public schools show mixed results in state School Accountability Reports released by the state Public Education Department. Four of the eight schools in the Moriarty school district fail to make "adequate yearly progress" as required under the federal No Child Left Behind law. Estancia's Elementary and middle schools make AYP, while the high school does not. Mountainair's elementary and high school make AYP but the middle school does not. For East Mountains schools in the Albuquerque Public Schools district, A. Montoya Elementary, Roosevelt Middle and Manzano High School do not meet AYP, while San Antonito Elementary and East Mountain High do.
Edgewood officials consider using snowmaking machines, which spray large amounts of water and are commonly used at ski areas, to disperse treated wastewater from the town's planned sewage treatment plant.
A Torrance County woman dies of bubonic plague, the second plague fatality in New Mexico for the year.
The Moriarty Vipers qualify for the American Amateur Baseball Congress 8-and-under World Series in Georgia. After a 271/2-hour, 1,450-mile bus ride, the Vipers win their first game but drop the next two and are eliminated. Fifty people ranging in age from 8 months to more than 80 years reboard the chartered bus for the long journey home.
Bernalillo County sheriff's deputies find roughly 95 marijuana plants growing inside and outside a home on Raven Road south of Tijeras. Officers say the suspect in the case, Michael Fernandez, was not living in the home and was renting it for the sole purpose of the pot-growing operation.
Black bears are again roaming residential areas of the East Mountains and Estancia Valley. State Game and Fish officials say they've trapped five bears in the East Mountains, Edgewood and Moriarty since April.
Moriarty opens a teen center in the Moriarty Community Center, with funding from the city and a grant from the state Children Youth and Families Department.
August
Three people are injured when an out-of-control SUV runs off Old Route 66 and crashes through the front window of the NAPA Auto Parts store in Edgewood. The 43-year-old woman driving the Ford Expedition had a history of seizures and was likely suffering one at the time of the accident, officials say.
The Moriarty City Council puts off a decision on a proposed annexation of 453 acres that would move the city boundaries into Santa Fe County for the first time.
The Edgewood Planning and Zoning Commission, saying the project is "too intense" for Edgewood, denies an application for a 553-home subdivision near the planned Wal-Mart site.
Three area men face charges of committing a hate crime after allegedly beating a gay man at a drug- and alcohol-fueled party in an Edgewood home. The suspects, from Edgewood and Moriarty, are charged with kidnapping, aggravated battery causing great bodily injury, false imprisonment and conspiracy.
September
The Moriarty City Council approves a new nuisance ordinance in an effort to clean up run-down properties and abandoned vehicles.
A Texas company proposes to build a desalination plant and a regional water system to produce fresh water and deliver it by pipeline to Moriarty, Estancia, Edgewood and other areas.
October
Longtime Mountainair rancher and well-known artist Joe J. Brazil dies at age 82.
The estimated cost of Edgewood's long awaited municipal sewer system rises to more than $7 million. The original projected cost in January 2005 was about $3 million.
A Tijeras man and his adult son are rescued from their burning mobile home by two Bernalillo County sheriff's deputies. The homeowner suspects the fire was started when his son flicked a cigarette out of his bedroom window.
Although construction is far from complete, the DWI Memorial of Perpetual Tears, a monument to the victims of drunken-driving crashes, is dedicated in Moriarty.
The town of Mountainair purchases a seven-acre church camp with 17 buildings totaling 50,000 square feet, including a sanctuary seating 700 people, a baseball field, a gymnasium and an indoor pool. The town plans to use the $500,000 property to host conferences, reunions and other large gatherings.
November
Howard Calkins, former mayor of Edgewood who contested his 2004 re-election defeat by Robert Stearley in court, wins a game of chance and regains his seat. The courts determined the election was a tie and should be resolved by a game of chance. Calkins pulls a 10 from a deck of cards, topping Stearley's seven.
Willis Williams, whose family homesteaded in the Estancia area in the early 20th century, pledges $1 million to the town for a new multipurpose community facility. Williams and his late sister had earlier donated roughly $1.5 million to build a new library in Estancia.
The Moriarty High football team, which had gone undefeated in the regular season, falls 49-14 to Roswell Goddard in the Class 4A state quarterfinals.
Andrea Taul, 23, of McIntosh is sentenced to two years in prison for child abuse or negligence stemming from events in the summer of 2005, when her infant twin sons were found to have dozens of broken bones and other injuries. One boy died, and Taul's then-fiance and the father of the twins, Keith Locke, was sentenced earlier to 18 years for first-degree felony child abuse.
Mountainair brothers Richard Torres Jr. and Joe Lionel Torres are bound over for trial in District Court on manslaughter and other charges related to the August shooting of a Belen teenager in Abó after a car chase.
The Estancia Board of Trustees decides to ask voters in March 2007 for a gross receipts tax increase. The tax, a penny on every $8 spent, would be used for economic and building improvements on the town's main street.
The Moriarty High volleyball team, ranked No. 1 in Class 4A, falls to No. 9 Española Valley in the state quarterfinals.
The Estancia High volleyball team, also highly ranked all season, makes it to the Class 2A state championship match, where the Lady Bears are defeated by Texico.
The Mountainair Mustangs fall to Roswell's Gateway Christian in the first-ever eight-man football state title game.
Incumbents carry the day in the general election in Torrance County, with Magistrate Judge Steve Jones and County Commissioners Jim Frost and Tito Chavez winning new terms. In the only significant race with no incumbent, former deputy Clarence Gibson defeats chief deputy Susan Encinias in the sheriff's race.
December
Kevin Jensen, convicted of child abuse and contributing to the delinquency of a minor in connection with his relationship with slain Moriarty teenager Robbie Stroup in 2002, may spend his two-year parole in prison, the district attorney says. Jensen is scheduled to be released in January but will not be freed unless he has a plan for where he will go, where he will stay and how he will support himself.
Torrance County will get about $1.3 million in emergency funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to repair roads damaged by heavy summer rains, the federal government announces.
Former Estancia Police Chief Jimmy Chavez returns to his old job. The post was vacated when acting chief Clarence Gibson was elected Torrance County sheriff in November.
Ramona Gomez, 24, faces charges ranging from forgery to conspiracy in connection with the issuance of illegal driver's licenses from the Tijeras MVD office, law enforcement officials say. Gomez, a former employee of the village MVD site, appealed her termination by Mayor Gloria Chavez.
The Manzano High basketball team's 31-game winning streak, which started more than a year ago and included a Class 5A state championship, ends with a 63-60 home loss to Rio Rancho.
The first big snowstorm of the season closes Interstate 40 through the East Mountains area. Another storm about a week later closes the freeway again and strands hundreds of travelers.
The Estancia Valley Economic Development Association marks it fifth anniversary. At its annual banquet, EVEDA officials say the organization has brought more than 1,000 jobs and nearly $300 million in economic benefit to the area.
Mike Anaya, owner of Mike's Friendly Store on Old Route 66 in Moriarty for more than a half-century, is inducted into the New Mexico Business Hall of Fame.
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