Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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CLOVIS — Curry County will reopen its administrative complex to the public on Monday, according to a release from County Manager Lance Pyle. The release notes a significant decrease in employee positive tests and COVID-19 exposures for other employees. The county, as of Wednesday, had no COVID-positive employees, one employee on leave due to an exposure and two on leave pending test results. Offices will follow COVID-safe practices, including face coverings and a minimum of 6 feet of social distancing. The county closed i... Full story
New Mexico's statewide minimum wage will increase by $1.50 on Friday, to $10.50 per hour. The tipped minimum wage will go up 20 cents to $2.55 per hour under legislation passed in 2019. The timing, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic that has crippled the state's economy, won't be welcome news for many small business owners, said Ernie Kos, executive director of the Clovis/Curry County Chamber of Commerce. "I have concerns for some of our small businesses," Kos said. "I t...
CLOVIS - Face masks and social distancing weren't the only changes Clovis residents saw in 2020. They also experienced city government without longtime Mayor David Lansford who stepped down after eight years and a total of 20 years between two stints in the position. In his first time seeking elected office, insurance agency owner Mike Morris claimed the five-way mayoral race on March 3, full of optimism with no way to anticipate what his first year in office could hold. By...
PORTALES — The end of 2020 is right around the corner and Roosevelt County has had a year full of newsworthy events. While the pandemic may have taken center stage for most of it, plenty was happening behind the scenes as well. January began with Roosevelt reporting the state’s first pediatric influenza death of the 2019-20 flu season. The Roosevelt County Commission appointed its new chairman Matthew Hunton, and vice-chair Tina Dixon. The United Way of Eastern New Mexico announced it would help bring The Imagination Lib...
At first, the quotation I’m about to share may sound a bit cynical. But when you have a little time to think about it, I think you’ll agree with me that it is not only realistic and true, it is filled with hope. You see, when God came into this world “in the flesh,” he was laid in a manger, a feed trough, in a stable surrounded by everything anyone in first century Palestine would expect to find in such a place — including the very thing you can find in ample supply in almost...
PORTALES — Only a handful of Lone Star Conference football teams will take part in the upcoming spring season, set to begin in February. Eastern New Mexico University is not one of them, but fourth-year Greyhounds coach Kelley Lee said his squad is making the best of it. “Obviously, they’re getting games reps and practices, which is going to be an advantage for them in recruiting,” he said of Angelo State, West Texas A&M, Texas A&M-Kingsville, Texas-Permian Basin and Midwestern State, who are slated play an abbrevi...
Booked The following were booked into local jails (Friday-Tuesday): Clovis • Ashton Child-Williams, 26, failure to pay fines, failure to appear on misdemeanor charge • Juan Hernandez, 31, failure to have operating tail lamps, driving while license suspended or revoked • Tonya Lucero, 38, probation violation, failure to appear on misdemeanor charge, possession of drug paraphernalia • Lawrence Johnson, 37, negligent use of a deadly weapon, driving while under the influence of intoxicating liquor or any drug, drivers license...
Much of New Mexico will close out 2020 with two storms and a week of cold wind gusts, snow and rain. The Clovis-Portales area is not expected to see significant moisture, but today’s high temperature is forecast at 39 degrees with sustained winds at 20 to 30 mph. Today’s low temperature will be near 18. The region likely won’t see 60 degrees the rest of this week. Chuck Jones, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Albuquerque, said the week’s first winter storm was slated to begin impacting much of the state T...
On this date … 1960: Membership had almost doubled at the second meeting of the newly formed Curry County Sugar Beet Association. About 85 farmers, including 63 members of the association, had met at Farmer's Electric Co-op to hear officers and directors of the group explain just what a sugar beet industry would mean to the area. Officials said at least 20,000 acres were available in Curry, Roosevelt, Lea, Eddy and De Baca counties for sugar beets. With at least that much m...
When I was a little kid, and before I had enough sense to avoid carnivals, I eagerly boarded a ride one year at the Roosevelt County Fair. I don’t remember the name of the ride, but I do remember that four or five of us were seated in a pod. Those pods hung precariously on ends of long arms that hurtled us in circles as the ride spun. They also twisted independently, flinging us from side to side. It took only seconds to realize that stepping foot into that pod had been a t...
For New Mexicans, COVID-19 hit in March. It may be named after the previous year, when it first turned up, but the first confirmed case in the U.S. hit the West Coast in January, and in New Mexico it hit less than two months later. From there, COVID spread like a fog over the entire year, distorting our lives and livelihoods in innumerable ways. In hindsight, it’s easy to see how 2020 was destined to be a year of great disruptions. We were barely into the new year when President Trump was impeached by the House. Before his a...
Was the year 2020 not to your liking? Do you want 2021 to be better? Then make it better. It’s mostly up to you. There will be things beyond your control, but you can choose how you feel about them and how you react to them. You can be stampeded over a cliff by those who gain power from your fear and compliance, or you can be responsible for yourself. You can act on the science promoted by political hysterics, or on the science that shows there’s no need to panic and zero rea...
SANTA FE — A proposal to hold legislative committee hearings at the Santa Fe Community Convention Center would create a “medium high” risk for an outbreak of COVID-19 infections, according to statistical modeling by Los Alamos National Laboratory. But the Legislature could reduce the risk substantially by opting instead to hold virtual committee hearings, reducing the number of floors sessions, testing legislators and staff regularly, and achieving broad compliance with a face mask requirement. The findings are outli...
More than 5,000 years ago, the warriors of Babylonia painted their fingernails with kohl to go to battle. More recently, A-list actor Brad Pitt wore nail polish, apparently just for the heck of it. Yet for some reason, it’s a showstopper when a 17-year-old male in Texas wears nail polish to school? Granted, women have been practically the only ones decorating their nails for the last few centuries. But custom and convention are no reason for nail polish to be an exclusively female style — witness how earrings have become com...
CLOVIS — The Curry County Sheriff’s Office is asking for help locating a suspect in a Christmas Eve armed robbery. According to a Monday afternoon release from the office: • Deputies responded about 6 p.m. Thursday to the 1400 block of North Wheath. A husband and wife reported a man knocked on the door and asked to use their restroom. • When the couple denied the man entry, he pulled a handgun from his pocket and forced his way inside the residence, where he assaulted the couple and stole cash and a piggy bank. • The man a...
SANTA FE — The New Mexico Human Services Department will provide $5.3 million in CARES Act funding for direct payments to utility vendors on behalf of qualifying households behind at least a month on payments, according to an HSD release. The one-time $300 payements will be provided on behalf of families in the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which helps approximately 70,000 households across the state. Eligible households will automatically be identified through a partnership between the department and existing L...
SANTA FE — Residents and employees of nursing homes throughout the state are rolling up their sleeves this week as New Mexico expands its COVID-19 vaccine program to some of its most vulnerable adults. Local pharmacies working with the state began administering vaccines at long-term care facilities Sunday, tapping an initial supply of about 15,000 vaccine doses from Moderna Inc. The state expects to receive about 31,000 vaccines from Moderna overall in coming months. It marks a significant expansion of the state’s vac...
The state had a few days of comparably light reports of new COVID-19 cases, while new local infections were across the spectrum. Between Saturday and Monday, the state reported a total of 2,056 cases — 609 Saturday, 747 Sunday and 700 Monday — with Curry and Roosevelt counties accounting for 97, or about 4.5% of those cases. Sunday was by far the highest day for local infections, with 45 in Curry and 15 in Roosevelt. Saturday saw 23 cases, with 15 in Roosevelt County and eight in Curry County. Curry again had eight new cas...
