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Thursday, January 11, 2007

Torrance OKs Bid for Rodeo

By Beth Hahn
Mountain View Telegraph
    It took a few weeks, but she spent $92,000.
    Rodeo committee representative and Torrance County 4-H representative Sudie Teaney had joked during a Dec. 27 meeting that most women would not have a problem spending $92,000. It's taken her nearly a year.
    Almost one year after gaining a grant to improve the Mountainair rodeo grounds, the Torrance County Commission approved a construction bid on a crow's nest at Wednesday's meeting.
    The crow's nest bid award completes a lengthy process of bids and rebidding the project that began when members of a local clinic board donated money to Torrance County for "the general health and well-being" of county residents.
    Torrance County was given $44,000 in December 2005 after the Hope Medical Clinic board dissolved. The board had been created about 40 years ago to bring a health care clinic to Estancia.
    Over the years, area residents gave money to the clinic board to support the clinic and its day-to-day operations. When Torrance County, with the help of state funds, built the new Esperanza Medical Center, the clinic board decided to donate its leftover funds back to the county and another $44,000 to the town of Estancia.
    Before the money had settled into county coffers, rodeo participants from Mountainair, many of them still in grade school, suggested that Torrance use the funds to obtain a matching state grant and upgrade the town's rodeo arena.
    County commissioners opted to use the funds to gain a matching grant from the state for rodeo arena improvements in Mountainair. Some private citizens also donated.
    The improvements have been delayed several times, because contractors did not bid on the project, bid estimates exceeded the $92,000 budget and the state refused to allow the county to use volunteers to work on the projects.
    In other business Wednesday, the commission:
   

Elected a new chairman, LeRoy Candelaria, who has about one year remaining in his current commission term.
   

Heard an update from the Central New Mexico Cooperative Weed Management Association. Tom Perkins updated commissioners on efforts to eradicate invasive and noxious weed species in Torrance County.
    Perkins said the co-op is building a map of weed-infested areas and is working with area landowners to eradicate the weeds.