Opinion

Letter To The Editor: How Does Los Alamos Compare In Supporting Higher Education? We’re The Cheapest!

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By MORRIE PONGRATZ
Former County Councilor and former School Board member

How does Los Alamos compare to other New Mexico communities in their support for local higher education? We’re the cheapest.

You can go to the website: https:////nmdfa.state.nm.us/Certificate_of_Property_Tax.aspx and double check my research. I examined the percentage of a resident’s property tax bill that went to support the college in their city.

Here’s the list of the cities and the percentage of their property taxes that goes to support their local college:

  • Gallup (16.9 percent for UNM-G);
  • Farmington (16.9
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Letter To The Editor: Thank You Los Alamos County Animal Shelter / Special Kudos To Chief Sgambellone!

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By KELLI GUIDER
Los Alamos Friends of the Shelter

Los Alamos Friends of the Shelter wants to thank the Los Alamos County Animal Shelter for its quick and decisive response to containing the spread of parvovirus that recently sickened two shelter puppies. These puppies came to our shelter from another facility with an extremely high euthanasia rate due to space constraints. 

Transfers of this type give the animals that remain in that shelter a better chance of adoption in that community. In return, our community shelter gains a more diverse pool of adoptable animals. Active Read More

Los Alamos Daily Post Endorses Mil Levy, LAPS Bond

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By CAROL A. CLARK, Publisher
Los Alamos Daily Post

After much review and careful consideration, the Los Alamos Daily Post is endorsing the UNM-LA Mil Levy and LAPS School Bond and we strongly encourage the community to vote for both.

Education is vitally important to this community, now and in the future, in terms of opportunities for our young people as well as economic development benefits for the entire community.

UNM-LA has provided important educational opportunities to local students, first responders, healthcare workers and lifelong learners. However, with the never ending cuts Read More

Letter To The Editor: A Community Full Of Wonderful!

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By VICKIE GRIFFIS
Los Alamos

In today’s world when there is so much focus on disturbing news, we want to focus on the positive and send a huge thank you to this wonderful community, for supporting our fundraising efforts for our young friend and co-worker Valerie Martinez who is battling Acute Myeloid Leukemia.

To the Los Alamos Daily Post and Los Alamos Monitor for providing such supportive vehicles for the community to get our stories out, Thank You!

To the Posse Lodge and its volunteers who work many hours to offer a perfect venue for groups and organizations to do their thing, Thank you!

And finally Read More

LAPS: A New Paradigm In Facilities Management

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By MATT WILLIAMS
LAPS School Board

I am writing to explain how the priorities for facilities maintenance investments has changed from the early 2000s.

I’ll give an overview of expenditures from early 2000s, and give an example of how our new vision is successful.

Facilities Maintenance in early 2000s

I have attached a slide from a School Board meeting in 2008 (before I was on the Board). I need to state a few caveats and insights with this slide:

1) since the slide is dated 2008, some numbers are projections;
2) we evidently had some type of GO bonds passed by taxpayers prior to 2009;
3) this is not my
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Letter To The Editor: Voting Yes On School Bond Just Makes Good Sense!

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By ANDREA CUNNINGHAM
LAPS School Board

Have you ever had a chance encounter where a random conversation stays with you? I recently had that experience while traveling when I happened to sit near a chemistry professor from UNM’s Albuquerque Campus. After exchanging pleasantries, I happened to mention that I was from Los Alamos. His first reaction was, “They have great schools in Los Alamos! I pay $21,000 a year to send my child to (Albuquerque) Academy to get the same caliber of education that you guys get for free!”

That statement really sticks with me as I check “yes” on my ballot and proudly support Read More

Letter to the Editor: Regarding Unleashed Dog Debate

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By GARETH GRIFFITH
Los Alamos
 
I wanted to bring another perspective to this debate. I would like to preface this with the fact that a previous dog we owned had been so regularly subjected to unleashed “out of control” dogs attacking him that around age 5, he began to attack any dog who approached him out of fear. That never changed until he passed away. This then meant that in any populated area, we had to keep him on a leash. You would think that other dog owners would notice the leash and call their dogs back, but we regularly experienced incidents described by Nylea Butler-Moore
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Letter To The Editor: UNM-LA Is A Great Community Asset

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By TROY HUGHES
Los Alamos

Please join me in voting yes and supporting our local college, UNM-LA. Los Alamos residents are intelligent, caring, and sharing people. As citizens we enjoy great community assets including our schools, roads, parks, trails, libraries, and other public amenities. At times directly, but most often indirectly through our elected officials, we as a community decide which of these amenities we desire and are willing to pay for through our local taxes.

As citizens we are tasked with directly deciding the fate of UNM-LA. We really have three choices: do nothing (not voting), Read More

Letter To The Editor: UNM-LA Mil Levy – No Lies, Just Facts and Definitely Scary

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By BRADY BURKE
Los Alamos

It is being suggested that my editorial piece (link), regarding the understatement of the UNM-LA Mil Levy, i.e. Property Tax Increase, is a misrepresentation and a scare tactic.

There are no lies.  he words are carefully chosen and exact. The statements correct. I have no control how someone interprets them. If they translate doubling ‘A’ property tax to doubling ‘YOUR’ property tax then the issue is not in my words.

The information about the Mil Levy comes straight from UNM-LA. There is an existing $1 Mil Levy for the UNM-LA campus. There is a request to implement

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