Morning Word: Hot Wheels

Three wheels and a badge
The long arm of the law is coming—at 15 mph. Police in Santa Fe will soon be cruising the Plaza and greater Plaza area on Segways. These are no ordinary cruisers, as the $17,000 price tag suggests. The cop versions have three wheels instead of two and come complete with factory-tuned language to convince city governments they're worth the money. The city's tourism arm is picking up the tab for the two units.

Powerful narcotic on Santa Fe streets

Police say that fentanyl, a massively potent painkiller, is now a firm part of the street-drug scene in Santa Fe. Detectives say drug dealers mix it with heroin, but even a small dose of fentanyl can be fatal—and it's

through an overdose.

@Really?

Santa Fe has created a Twitter handle to help drivers let it know about potholes around town. The effort promises a fix to most problems

. The account—found on Twitter by searching @PostaPotholeSF—is monitored by the city's public works department.

Reconsider ranked-choice

Advocates for ranked-choice voting, an instant-runoff style of balloting, are asking the mayor and City Council to

at implementing the system for city elections next March. Santa Fe is supposed to be using ranked-choice voting. Voters approved an amendment to the city charter calling for it. That was back in 2008, but the city has consistently

.

Back in March, SFR told you about New Mexico's effort to win the Outdoor Retailers

. The convention announced a move from Utah. But there were real questions about whether the state even had a convention facility large enough to accommodate the show. It appears not, as

the lucrative trade fair. 

A woman in the Santa Fe neighborhood chased off a Fourth of July flasher,

after she looked out her living room window to see the man fondling himself in her yard. Police aren't certain if there's any connection to similar incidents last summer.

New Mexico's attorney general has joined with other Democratic counterparts across the country to sue the feds for delaying

at for-profit colleges. DeVos says the rules are unclear and need reworking. In part, they prohibit colleges from making students sign waivers of their right to sue to settle grievances.

The city of Bloomfield has asked the US Supreme Court to reverse a lower court's ruling that a monument of the Ten Commandments outside City Hall

. It's not a novel controversy, but the city's attorneys argue that lower courts are using different standards to figure out if such monuments should stay or go.

Santa Fe Reporter