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Morning Word
CYFD Secretary Vigil steps down
Former New Mexico Supreme Court Justice Barbara Vigil is stepping down as cabinet secretary for the beleaguered Children, Youth and Families Department, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced yesterday. Vigil, whom the governor appointed to the position in August 2021 following Vigil’s retirement from the court, will transition on May 1 and begin serving on the newly created Policy Advisory Council for CYFD. The governor announced the new council in February as one component of an executive order overhauling the agency, which has been chronically plagued with reports of repeat abuse of children in its care, and one of the worst rates in the US for such repeat child abuse cases. The governor’s office says the state will launch a national search for a candidate with “experience in successfully pioneering major systemic reforms” to replace Vigil. Office of the Governor Chief Operation Officer Teresa Casados will serve as interim leadership. “My time at CYFD has been the culmination of a career working in both the judicial and the executive branches of government, always with a particular focus on the well-being of New Mexico’s children and families,” Vigil said in a statement. “Collaborating with child welfare professionals, we built a foundation for lasting change and positive outcomes for our children and families. It’s been my honor to serve these families. I am grateful to the thousands of dedicated professionals—foster families, service providers, and CYFD staff and believe deeply in their capacity to achieve transformational change.” In a statement, the governor expressed gratitude to Vigil and noted that Casados “has hit the ground running and is already making significant strides to meaningfully transform CYFD.”
Mag Court makeover
If you’ve ever had to appear in Santa Fe County Magistrate Court for, say, pausing versus halting at a stop sign on a deserted road late at night with zero cars on the road except for a lurking sheriff’s deputy (a totally hypothetical example), you know it’s not the easiest-to-find, most comfortable judicial environment in which to pass the time. That could change down the line thanks to the recently passed Senate Joint Resolution 12, sponsored by Sen. Nancy Rodriguez, D-Santa Fe. The bill, as SFR writer Andy Lyman reports this week, authorizes a land transfer from the General Services Department to the Administrative Office of the Courts, the first step in relocating the court from its current spot near the intersection of St. Francis Drive and St. Michael’s Drive to state-owned land behind a Department of Public Safety complex on the Southside. The move is key, not just to offer scofflaws more elbow room, but to provide increased security for lawyers and judges, as well. Presiding Santa Fe County Magistrate Judge John Rysanek tells SFR the current building offers “nowhere near” security best practices; moreover, the increasingly crowded hallways and courtrooms further indicate the need for an extra judge. “The dockets don’t ever get smaller, they only sort of grow,” he says. Before that can happen—and another judge would require legislative approval—the court needs a fifth courtroom, Rysanek says, so the judge would have somewhere from which to preside.
Santa Fe River settlement reached
Environmental organization WildEarth Guardians reached a settlement this week with the City of Santa Fe, resolving a water rights protest the nonprofit had filed related to the city’s proposed San Juan-Chama Return Flow Project. Specifically, the city in 2022 filed an application with the New Mexico Office of the State Engineer for a return flow credit needed for the project, prompting concerns from WildEarth Guardians that sending the city’s recycled wastewater to the Rio Grande instead of the lower Santa Fe River could significantly reduce flows in the latter and negatively impact the river’s ecosystem and downstream water users (the river, by the way, is flowing this week and it’s a beautiful sight). The agreement, WildEarth Guardians says in a news release, “provides significant protections to preserve a flowing lower Santa Fe River and improve riparian habitat conditions, while allowing the city to continue its efforts to increase the long-term security and climate resilience of its municipal water supply.” After months of negotiations, the two entities agreed on parameters to support downstream flow, with the city also agreeing to take actions to improve riparian habitat conditions. “The City of Santa Fe deserves credit for working collaboratively with WildEarth Guardians to identify a path forward to help secure the city’s water supply for the future, while also protecting the important ecological, cultural, and economic values of a flowing Santa Fe River,” WildEarth Guardians Wild Rivers Program Director Daniel Timmons said in a statement.
Jemez Valley braced against flooding
Residents along the Jemez River are monitoring rising water levels as snowpack from the Jemez Mountains continues to melt. The Albuquerque Journal reports residents are preparing for the worst (that’s the print headline, anyway; the online headline takes a softer tone), using sandbags and other reinforcements to bolster structures against anticipated surges of water in the coming days. The Associated Press reports similar flooding across the Southwest due to the wet winter and unusually warm early spring temperatures. The Jemez Valley flooding has created a host of concerns, including potential contamination due to flooding at the wastewater plant, with Sandoval County Manager Wayne Johnson telling the Journal testing is pending to determine if such contamination of the river has occurred (the drinking water has not been impacted, he says). Pueblo of Jemez Gov. Dominic Gachupin expressed concern for a new bridge, and for various crops the pueblo grows on the river banks. He also expressed gratitude and humility in the face of the turbulent river, which officials expect to rise to 9 feet in the coming days (it was under 5 feet a week ago): “It’s our ancestral homeland,” Gachupin told the newspaper. “We have to take care of it—and one another.”
COVID-19 by the numbers
Reported April 13: New cases: 235; 677,465 total cases. Deaths: nine. Santa Fe County has had 403 total deaths; 9,164 total fatalities statewide. Statewide 74: patients on ventilators: nine
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s most recent April 13 “community levels” map shows improvement for New Mexico, with the entire state turning green, which indicates low levels (last week Union County was yellow, for medium). Corresponding recommendations for each level can be found here.
Resources: Receive four free at-home COVID-19 tests per household via COVIDTests.gov; Check availability for additional free COVID-19 tests through Project ACT; CDC interactive booster eligibility tool; NM DOH vaccine & booster registration; CDC isolation and exposure interactive tool; COVID-19 treatment info; NMDOH immunocompromised tool kit. People seeking treatment who do not have a medical provider can call NMDOH’s COVID-19 hotline at 1-855-600-3453. DOH encourages residents to download the NM Notify app and to report positive COVID-19 home tests on the app.
You can read all of SFR’s COVID-19 coverage here.
Listen up
On the most recent episode of the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian’s monthly Nativescape podcast, host Andrea Hanley (Navajo), the Wheelwright’s chief curator, interviews Navajo filmmaker and new Santa Fe resident Black Horse Lowe about how he brings a Native lens to this projects. Among his other credits, Lowe wrote two episodes for the second season of Reservation Dogs and directed four episodes for the series. His feature film Chasing the Light won the Best Cinematography prize at the Terres en Vues/Land InSights Montreal First Peoples Festival 2016, and he is an alumnus of the Sundance Institute’s Native Lab, Producers Lab and Screenwriters Writers Lab.
Somewhere over the Rainbow Rainbow
Meow Wolf Santa Fe yesterday announced it will open on May 1 a “reimagined” 1,200-square-foot community room called Rainbow Rainbow that will be used for art-making classes and other events; the organization’s former community room paused operations in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic began. The new space features a mural by Albuquerque artist Caroline Liu, along with 3-D elements, such as a 200-foot foam tongue along the ceiling. “The most important thing for us is that the space feels inspirational,” Meow Wolf Creative Director Chadney Everett said in a statement. “I’m so excited to once again have a space dedicated to open creativity and learning, to see children making art and learning new ways to express themselves.” Rainbow Rainbow, a news release says, is dedicated to Meow Wolf founder Matt King, who died last July and was “a passionate camp counselor and an inspiring mentor to kids who believed in the importance of making space for creative expression.” Rainbow Rainbow also will be available as a low-cost and free space to local nonprofits and groups for meetings, workshops and events, with partnerships already in place with Santa Fe Human Rights Alliance, Reunity Resources and the Life Link, among others. “We believe in the power of creativity to better people’s lives,” Meow Wolf Foundation Chief of Staff and Executive Director Julie Heinrich, said in a statement. “Our community engagement work here in our home state of New Mexico and at all of our locations is focused on increasing access to art and culture, and exploring how creativity encourages innovative thinking, which is essential for job growth and development—including STEAM jobs. We are beyond excited to offer this space to our community and hope that visitors are inspired to create.”
All that jazz
If you haven’t caught jazz musician/composer Delbert Anderson (Diné) yet during his Santa Fe sojourn for an artist’s residency at the Institute of American Indian Arts, the clock is ticking. Regular Word readers may recall the New York Times featured Anderson and his jazz trio in February in an in-depth story about the trumpet player’s quest to integrate Native American music and jazz. Since that story ran, Anderson tells SFR in a recent interview, invitations and gigs have multiplied and they are booked at venues and festivals well into 2025. This weekend, Anderson will perform at 6 pm, Saturday, April 15 at the Jean Cocteau Cinema with other local jazz musicians and special guests. His IAIA residency runs through April 20 and he has performances through April 21 (find the complete schedule here). Anderson, one of 12 national 2023 Cultural Capital Fellows, also is researching the musical ensembles that grew out of Indigenous boarding schools. “I feel like if more students [and youth] heard about this history…it would lift their spirits,” he says, “because it’s definitely motivating for me to know there was a high level of success for Indigenous musicians, not only playing Native American music, but classical, folk songs, marching band. When you put it all together, it’s very amazing.”
April showers (maybe)
The National Weather Service forecasts a drop in temperature and a slight chance for rain today: Specifically, a 20% chance for showers and thunderstorms after 3 pm (rising to 30% overnight). Otherwise, look for mostly sunny skies with a high temperature near 61 degrees and west wind 10 to 15 mph increasing to 15 to 20 mph in the afternoon. Tomorrow, the high temp will only reach about 59 degrees, and we may see wind gusts as high as 30 mph. Back into the 60s and a little calmer on Sunday.
Thanks for reading! The Word laughed—albeit in a weary, semi-hysterical manner—at these Paul Noth tax cartoons.
