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Morning Word
City names two finalists for next police chief
Santa Fe City Manager John Blair yesterday announced two finalists for the city’s next police chief: Santa Fe Police Department Deputy Chief of Police Operations Paul Joye and Rio Rancho Police Department Deputy Chief Andrew Rodriguez. Joye also currently serves as SFPD’s interim chief. “Interim Chief Joye and Deputy Chief Rodriguez have both shown themselves to be highly qualified law enforcement professionals who I believe could successfully serve as Santa Fe’s next Police Chief,” Blair said in a statement. The finalists’ names come following two dialogue sessions with a cross-section of various interest groups along with a community survey in which 366 Santa Feans participated. Read a summary of the dialogue panel’s feedback here, the survey responses here and SFR’s recent story on the search for a new police chief here. “This search process is working just as we hoped it would,” Director of Community Health and Safety Kyra Ochoa said in a statement. “The quality of engagement and input from our public safety and community dialogue sessions is a testament to the importance of the Police Chief’s role in our city and the quality of civic engagement in Santa Fe.” Another dialogue session will take place this week; next week, the two finalists will meet with Blair, Ochoa, Santa Fe Mayor Alan Webber, city councilors and City Attorney Erin McSherry. The city will also host a public question and answer forum next week with the two finalists about which more information will be released later this week. Blair is expected to name the next police chief by the end of this month.
Enviro groups say PNM plan could cost customers
Environmental groups Western Resource Advocates, the Coalition for Clean Affordable Energy and Prosperity Works filed a motion with the state Public Regulation Commission yesterday requesting regulators require PNM to lower customer costs after the company abandons its San Juan Generating Station this summer. The groups contend PNM’s plan to recover its investment in the plant could result in $125 million in additional costs for customers. Both the plant’s closure and PNM’s financing plan come as a result of the state’s Energy Transition Act, which requires PNM to replace fossil fuels with 100% non-carbon generation by 2045 and lets the company sell bonds to recoup its investment, which customers then pay off through their bills for 25 years. PNM, however, plans to delay issuing the bonds. According to a news release from the environmental groups, PNM’s delay, which they describe as intentional, withholds a roughly 10% rate decrease that its customers are entitled to receive when the San Juan Generating Station closes later this year. PNM officials dispute the groups’ characterization of their plan, with PNM Vice President for Generation Tom Fallgren telling the Albuquerque Journal the company intends to “reconcile the difference in what customers already paid and what’s still owed,” once it issues the bonds and “if the difference means what’s still owed is lower than the value originally anticipated for the bonds, then we’ll give that back to customers through a rate case.”
State Supreme Court revises COVID-19 protocols
Starting March 21, people will be able to enter New Mexico courthouses or judicial buildings without a face covering, the state Supreme Court announced yesterday. Masks will continue to be required for anyone inside either a courtroom or jury assemble area, including the public, jurors, lawyers, defendants, litigants, law enforcement, court staff and judges. “While we hope that the worst of the pandemic is behind us, it remains crucial that New Mexico courts continue to take prudent steps to protect the health and well-being of jurors, litigants, attorneys, judicial employees, judges and all others entering a courthouse,” Chief Justice Michael Vigil said in a statement. Health screening questions will continue to be required for anyone to gain entrance to a judicial building or courthouse, and physical distancing of 3 feet versus the previously required 6 feet will be enforced inside courthouses and while people enter or exit a judicial building. “The reduced physical distancing should help courts conduct additional trials by allowing them to more efficiently use available space in courtrooms and jury assembly areas,” Justice C. Shannon Bacon, who leads the Supreme Court’s Emergency Response Team that developed the revised protocols, said in a statement. The judiciary will maintain a requirement for weekly COVID-19 testing of unvaccinated judicial employees, judges and contractors.
COVID-19 by the numbers
Feb. 26-28:
New cases: 680 (a nearly 57% decrease from the last three-day total on Feb. 21). 511,434 total cases
Top three counties: Bernalillo County with 261; San Juan County with 69; Santa Fe County with 62—22 from the 87505 ZIP code, which ranked seventh among ZIP codes in the state for the most new cases.CDC metrics: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention introduced new metrics last week that measure at the county level COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 population in the past seven days; the percent of staffed inpatient beds occupied by COVID-19 patients; and total new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 population in the past seven days. Accordingly, the CDC then ranks counties as low, medium or high for risk of transmission, and recommends people in counties with high levels of transmission wear masks indoors. In New Mexico, 10 counties currently have high levels of transmission according to the CDC, including Santa Fe County. The state’s current public health order does not require masks in any indoor setting.
Breakthrough cases: According to the most recent weekly vaccine report, between Jan. 24-Feb. 21, 48.9% of COVID-19 cases were among people who had not completed a primary vaccination series; 29.5% were among those who had completed the series but had not received a booster; and 21.6% were among those who were fully vaccinated and boosted. For hospitalizations, those figures change to 64.2%, 20.1% and 15.6%. The percentages shift to 61.7%, 22.5% and 15.8% for fatalities.
Deaths: 17, 11 of them recent; there have been 6,919 total fatalities statewide. Hospitalizations: As of yesterday, 228 were hospitalized with COVID-19, a 25% decrease since Friday.
Vaccinations: 91.8% percent of adults 18 years and older have had at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and 78% have completed their primary series; 44% of adults 18 years and older have had a booster shot; 12-17-year-old age group: 70.9% of people have had at least one dose and 60.8% have completed their primary series; Children ages 5-11: 38% have had at least one dose of the Pfizer vaccine and 28.8% have completed their primary; Santa Fe County: 99% of people 18 and older have had at least one dose and 86.9% have completed their primary series.
Resources: Vaccine registration; Booster registration Free at-home rapid antigen tests; Self-report a positive COVID-19 test result to the health department; COVID-19 treatment info: oral treatments Paxlovid (age 12+) and Molnupiravir (age 18+); and monoclonal antibody treatments. Toolkit for immunocompromised individuals. People seeking treatment who do not have a medical provider can call NMDOH’s COVID-19 hotline at 1-855-600-3453.
You can read all of SFR’s COVID-19 coverage here.
Listen up
Did you miss the return of SFR’s 3-Minute Film Festival at the Center for Contemporary Arts in December and January? Worry not. All 18 films can now be viewed online. The movies, created by local filmmakers, span genres and themes and you can view them all in less than an hour. First Place: Minecraft Santa Fe by Ehren Kee Natay and Dylan Tenorio; Second Place: Flowering by Daniel Kathalynas; Third Place: A Deep and Gorgeous Thirst by Hosho McCreesh.
George RR Martin-influenced game a hit
Video game Elden Ring is out and receiving rave reviews. We know this not because we either play or understand video games, but because George RR Martin helped create the game and recently blogged about its success. Esquire magazine, for instance, calls it a “masterpiece,” writing: “It’s full to the brim with lore, secrets, and so much more. I spent over 18 hours in the starting area. (Seriously.) Still, when returning to the location later in the game, I found caves, mini bosses, treasure, and even entire underground cities. Words can’t put into perspective how full and elusive this land is. It’s truly unlike anything I’ve ever experienced in gaming.” Elden Ring Director Hidetaka Miyazaki talks to the New Yorker about working with Martin on the project, saying he placed a few restrictions on the fantasy author, asking him for a backstory rather than a script: “If [Martin] had written the game’s story, I would have worried that we might have to drift from that,” Miyazaki says. “I wanted him to be able to write freely and not to feel restrained by some obscure mechanic that might have to change in development.” For his part, Martin says in his blog Miyazaki deserves all the credit for the game’s success: “I am honored to have met them and worked with them,” he writes, “and to have have played a part, however small, in creating this fantastic world and making ELDEN RING the landmark megahit that it is.”
Embracing uncertainty
We somehow missed a story in early February from The Guardian spotlighting 78-year-old Santa Fean Richard Epstein, who took up ice skating last year at the Genoveva Chavez Community Center and ended 2021 performing in his first exhibition with his coach Teri Moellenberg. Epstein’s oldest daughter posted a video of her father’s skating on Twitter, along with a note that Epstein has stage four prostate cancer (Epstein wrote about his cancer diagnosis for Newsweek last year). Nearly 3 million people viewed the video of Epstein skating but he, the Guardian writes, “is somewhat baffled by the response, describing himself as ‘just an old guy going around in circles.’” Nonetheless, Epstein says ice skating helps him “embrace” uncertainty. A research physicist who had “stints” at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics, Epstein now works as an unpaid research professor at the University of New Mexico. He tells the paper he enjoys how skating “takes me out of my ordinary ways…It is a joy to glide and turn, to get on the inside edge of the skate—that feeling of a centrifugal force.”
In like a lamb
Spring won’t start officially until March 20 (and, of course, spring in Santa Fe means wind and sometimes snow), but we’ll get a taste of mild weather for most of this week. The National Weather Service forecasts sunny skies today with a high near 59 degrees and north wind 5 to 10 mph becoming southwest in the afternoon.
Thanks for reading! The Word found this column by Ukrainian columnist Victor Tregubov about how to help Ukrainians helpful.
