Quick Draw

Attorney says school district moved too fast in armed officer plan

Barriers to armed officers on campus

An attorney for the Santa Fe school board says the district has to meet guidelines laid out by insurers before it can send armed school resource officers ($) into the halls. The district had floated the idea to put three city police officers in its schools. However, it's not clear the city can spare the officers, and the district would have to clarify a number of policies before putting armed officers in schools, said the attorney.

We’ll do it anyway

After eight legislative sessions in which state lawmakers refused to pass Gov. Susana Martinez' plan to hold back third-graders who can't meet reading standards, the outgoing governor has ordered her education chief to do it anyway. Chris Ruszkowski has floated a proposal, which he had a staffer present to the Legislative Education Study Committee, to administratively create a rule to retain some underachieving third-graders. As is the department's custom, it ignored all newspapers except for the Albuquerque Journal.

Different kind of testing

Ambrosio Castellano has an idea for combating Las Vegas, New Mexico's opioid crisis. The West Las Vegas School Board member wants to drug test everyone from the superintendent to student athletes. The board member says it's just an idea now, but he hopes to start a conversation about leveraging the school district's position.

Passing the test

The state Board of Finance might be loathe to approve a new hospital at the University of New Mexico, but it gave the OK to an on-campus taproom on Monday. And what else is there to say about that?

I want a job

Some 600 people applied for the various exempt positions across the city of Santa Fe. Positions of office manager drew the most interest ($), garnering dozens of applications for the handful of jobs. The city contends no applicants specifically applied for city manager or city attorney. Mayor Alan Webber ordered all upper-level managers who weren't union members to reapply for their jobs shortly after he took office.

Haaland’s campaign staff unionizes

A union for political campaign workers, the Campaign Workers Guild, has arrived in New Mexico. Staff for Deb Haaland, Democratic candidate for the state's 1st Congressional District, announced yesterday that they'd unionized. The contract guarantees a $15 an hour wage for part-time workers and a $3,000 floor for full-timers on a monthly salary. There are also prescribed rules for reporting sexual misconduct.

City union proposes pay raises

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees is proposing a merit pay increase for some 1,400 covered city workers in Santa Fe. The raises would come from a pool of $400,000. The union's local chapter presented the idea at yesterday's budget hearing. That amount is roughly the same as the incentive pay raises given to 37 city employees who were assisting with a massive technology rollout. The mayor declared those raises invalid late last week.

Santa Fe’s budget 

Let's end with the city budget, because sometimes it's a painful place to start. It's painful for the city of Santa Fe, because it's without a city manager or a finance director ($). The $335 million budget proposal includes new money for police, fire and public utilities departments. It also proposes a 2 percent raise for city workers.
 
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