New Mexico trying to build and train new workforce for broadband expansion - By Megan Gleason, Source New Mexico
Tamara Rosenberg successfully wrote a grant to get Luna County $75,000 to help set up high-speed internet for rural New Mexicans.
The problem? There isn’t much of a workforce to pay to get broadband going.
“We don’t have enough people with skill sets to make the materials, to install the materials, to know how to use the materials,” she said on a panel during the New Mexico Broadband Summit. “That’s where we really struggle.”
While much of the discussion at the summit was about the upcoming opportunities the state will have to increase internet access and the millions in federal dollars soon to be headed toward these projects, there is a looming concern that the workforce issues Rosenberg faces will soon be a statewide problem.
There is already a worker shortage affecting people’s ability to make the internet accessible in New Mexico, said Rosenberg, who is a business advisor at Western New Mexico University.
The U.S. Department of Commerce is supposed to announce how much money New Mexico will get for broadband at the end of June. State officials expect it’ll be hundreds of millions of dollars.
Even with that money to come in for projects, a lack of workers causes headaches for local communities trying to set up brand new infrastructure.
Rosenberg said the people who are setting up the broadband in Luna County are “completely overwhelmed” with their overly large workload already.
“They’ve got more work than they have hours to complete,” she said.
Other communities with federal broadband grants like Santa Clara and San Ildefonso Pueblos are also struggling to find people to set up internet, in addition to dealing with obstacles of supply chain issues.
Kris Swedin is a dean at Santa Fe Community College. She told Source NM she doesn’t think the broadband worker shortage is a big issue now, but it will be in the future if more people don’t start getting trained soon.
Even students can get certified to do the work.
Swedin told summit attendees during a panel that Santa Fe Community College recently held a one-week fiber optic technician training course where students got certifications recognized by the U.S. Department of Labor that are good for three years and can be renewed.
That was just the first training and more will come in the future around New Mexico, she said. The college will have another free week-long training in June.
New Mexico State University also offers fiber optic courses, with future trainings happening in June and October.
And even people younger than college students are getting trained to work in technical positions to help ramp up internet infrastructure.
Shara Montoya is the career technical education director at Tularosa Municipal Schools and said the schools offer a program where students can get paid to work in computer-related jobs.
“My focus is to talk about the role of schools and how schools can promote opportunities for students to create digital equity in New Mexico,” she said.
Swedin said people should be getting trained in a broad variety of tech-related skill sets. She asked the broadband companies that filled the room at the summit to communicate with educators what other skills internet experts need to have, such as digital literacy or safety certifications.
“Fiber optic alone is not a skill unless it’s supported by other skills,” she said.
All of these skills should be paid for, too, said Lenelle Sernam. She’s a 19-year-old working for Teeniors, a technology support service where teenagers and young adults help seniors understand how to navigate the internet.
“If you know something, you shouldn’t just be expected to teach it for free,” Sernam said.
State leadership agrees. Sarita Nair is the New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions secretary and moderated the panel at the broadband summit. She said it’s important to pay people for the work that they’re doing.
Nair said her department has apprenticeship funds from the Legislature that can help businesses pay interns for internet-related work.
Although lawmakers put aside millions of dollars in 2022 for youth apprenticeships, the Legislative Finance Committee noted in April that the Workforce Solutions Department hadn’t used any of the funds nearly a year later.
Sernam said jobs like those at Teeniors, which don’t necessarily require a certification, will really help New Mexicans in this transition to setting up good internet around the state.
A similar business, Mama Cibernéticas, helps teach parents how to use the internet. Founder Maria Chaparro said local businesses like these are key to solving an issue that speakers repeatedly brought up at the conference — the sustainability of broadband after the infrastructure grants are gone.
Chaparro said grassroots organizations are a reliable source of work that broadband companies should invest in. She said these local New Mexicans will help sustain broadband by explaining the benefits of the internet to people who don’t regularly use it and educating people on how to use it.
“This problem has a solution if you just invest in us,” she said.
New Mexico man charged in cold case: 'I needed to confess' - By Susan Montoya Bryan Associated Press
Officers found Tony Peralta sitting on a curb not far from a convenience store where he borrowed a cell phone to call 911 and confess to the 2008 killing of his former landlord.
Sweating and taking puffs from his cigarette, he told them he's tired of covering it up, tired of living with the lie and tired of being overwhelmed by guilt. He agreed to take the officers to where he buried the body before standing up and volunteering to be cuffed.
Police in the southeastern New Mexico community of Roswell released the 911 recording and nearly an hour of officer body camera video in response to a records request filed by The Associated Press. The May 1 footage shows Peralta repeatedly thanking the officers for picking him up.
"I confess, man. I confess. I don't want to live life anymore without confessing," he said while sitting in an interview room at police headquarters.
The uniformed officers and detectives who talked with Peralta peppered him with questions about when the killing happened, how he did it and why. Peralta kept answering that he didn't know or didn't remember, acknowledging that he had been drinking "a lot" the day he called 911.
Peralta, 37, was arraigned Tuesday on a charge of first-degree murder but did not attend the hearing. He pleaded not guilty to the charge through his public defender, Ray Conley, who declined to comment after the hearing. Conley has said he will ensure Peralta's due process is respected as the case moves through court.
A judge on Tuesday also set Peralta's trial for October but said that date could change.
At times, the authorities had asked if Peralta was making up the story and leading them on a goose chase since he wasn't providing many details, other than saying he had killed someone a long time ago.
"There's a dead body in there, dude!" he told one officer while in the back of a patrol car parked in front of the home where he once was a tenant of 69-year-old William Blodgett. Peralta said he'd feel better once the body was found.
Investigators said they obtained a search warrant and found a boot, bones and dentures after removing plywood floorboards from a detached room on the side of the house.
The dentures were compared with Blodgett's dental records — obtained in early 2009 after he was reported missing — and that led to a positive identification, according to police.
A tearful Peralta told police he didn't know why he had killed Blodgett. At one point, police video shows him putting his head down onto a table during an interview and sobbing.
Peralta told police he decided to come forward because "his heart hurts" and that he thought about it every day. He told an officer that Blodgett was a good man and that he took his life for no reason while high on methamphetamine.
"I don't have an excuse," he told police. "A lot of people have an excuse. I don't have one."
Blodgett's girlfriend and family had not seen him since late December 2008. She told police that Peralta, who was considered a suspect by police early on, allegedly had some sort or argument or fight with Blodgett, who had tried to evict him.
Authorities at the time had talked to Blodgett's family, friends and neighbors and visited the home the two men shared, which appeared to have been abandoned with personal belongings still in place. Police found no immediate signs of foul play and Blodgett's vehicle was still there, according to the original missing person report.
Detectives would periodically drive by the house but never spotted anyone. They also brought a dog trained to sniff for bodies to the property but found nothing.
Police said the case went cold after investigators exhausted all leads until Peralta's 911 call.
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Associated Press writer Rio Yamat in Las Vegas, Nev., contributed to this report.
Western lands fight erupts over Bureau of Land Management’s conservation proposal — By Jacob Fischler, Source New Mexico
One thing opponents and proponents of a recently proposed U.S. Bureau of Land Management rule agree on: It would be a major shift in how the agency manages nearly 250 million acres of federal lands.
The rule would allow for conservation leases, similar to how the agency auctions off parcels of land for mining, livestock grazing or oil and gas development. Supporters say the proposal would lift conservation to the level of extractive uses, a responsible move to protect lands affected by climate change.
Outraged opponents — including many congressional Republicans — view the rule as a drastic overreach that violates existing law. Fears that conservation leases would evict grazing permittees and others have only been stoked by Republican rhetoric on the issue.
“The BLM has time and again shown their aim is to drastically reduce, or even eliminate, grazing on public lands, and this proposed rule is the latest iteration of this effort,” Washington Republican U.S. Rep. Dan Newhouse said in a May 22 statement announcing a bill to block the proposed rule.
But the rule would have little to no impact on existing users of federal lands, the proposal’s supporters say.
They say opponents have been led astray by an inherent distrust of President Joe Biden’s administration, apprehension about a big change in the agency that manages their livelihoods, or fed misinformation by oil and gas allies.
“There has been a lot of confusion around the proposed rule,” Danielle Murray, senior legal and policy director with the advocacy group Conservation Lands Foundation, said on a press call. “There’s false claims that this rule would kick ranchers off their land, it would mean the end of oil and gas development, it would lock the public out.
“The facts are that the proposed rule explicitly states it does not undermine or impact any valid existing rights.”
John Gale, the vice president of policy and government relations with the nonpartisan conservation group Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, said he was surprised at the immediacy of the opposition.
“It feels a little knee-jerk,” he said in an interview. “It’s premature to lob judgments like that or leap to dramatic conclusions that are drowning in hyperbole. That seems to be what’s going on right now, and it’s, of course, political in nature.”
‘EVERYTHING IN MY POWER TO STOP THIS PROPOSAL’
Republicans in Congress responded quickly and indignantly to the proposed rule, calling it a violation of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act that governs how the BLM is supposed to manage public lands.
“The Biden Administration’s extreme unilateral action will kill multiple use,” Wyoming Republican John Barrasso, the ranking member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, said in a statement the day BLM published the proposed rule. “This is a clear violation of the law. I will do everything in my power to stop this proposal.”
Republican Montana U.S. Rep. Matt Rosendale accused Interior Secretary Deb Haaland of violating federal public lands law by proposing the rule during an April 19 U.S. House Natural Resources hearing.
“Public lands are multi-use,” Haaland said at the hearing. “It’s putting all of those uses on equal footing.”
“They’re not supposed to be on equal footing,” Rosendale responded. “And we need to abide by the law, not the rule.”
Rosendale raised more objections to the rule at a May 24 hearing.
Opponents say the law requires the agency to manage land for multiple uses, including extractive industries like oil and gas, mining and grazing. Conservation is not a “use,” as defined in the law, they say.
But the law also explicitly tasks the agency with managing the land for conservation purposes, advocates and legal experts say — though the BLM has rarely put conservation on the same level as extractive uses.
The law directs the agency to manage for several uses, including oil and gas, grazing, but also to protect lands’ historic, ecological, environmental and other values, Bailey Brennan, a public lands attorney with the advocacy group National Wildlife Federation, said in an interview.
“BLM has historically over the last 40 years managed public lands with an emphasis on the more extractive uses: grazing, mining, oil and gas development,” she said. “This is bringing conservation to the forefront on par with those other extractive uses, consistent with FLPMA … Congress was very deliberate about including language to the effect of conservation.”
Other opponents have said the rule does not add value to the BLM’s existing work. The agency already does conservation work, partnering with states to conduct “meaningful conservation projects,” Nevada Director of Agriculture Dr. J.J. Goicoechea said at the May 24 hearing.
“Do we need them on public land? Absolutely,” he said. “I don’t think we need to reinvent the wheel. I think we have the tools we have now. The agency is overburdened. They can’t do the work they’re challenged with now and (if) we’re going to put another level on top of that, we’re going to see other things slide.”
DIFFICULT RELATIONSHIP
The Biden administration does lack credibility with extractive industries — especially oil and gas producers — that use public lands and their mostly Republican political allies following the president’s day one executive order to pause oil and gas leasing on public lands, Gale said
The pause was good policy, Gale said, but it tanked Biden’s relationship with the industry.
“That set them off right out of the gate, and they’ve never come back from that moment,” he said. “Now, there’s the assumption that they’re trying other ways to accomplish what they wanted in the beginning. And so they’re looking for nefarious intent behind every blade of grass and every piece of sagebrush on BLM land.”
The rhetoric over the new proposal was reminiscent of an earlier Biden administration initiative of protecting 30% of U.S. lands and waters by 2030.
“We’re seeing some of those similar arguments to 30×30,” Murray said.
Conservatives, especially in Western states, used that initiative as a symbol of government overreach, inspiring conspiracy theories about seizures of private property.
Such fears can happen when people don’t have enough information about a policy that could drastically affect their livelihoods. The agency has not been as explicit as it could be in the proposal that other uses will remain, Gale said. That has left a vacuum for those users to imagine worst-case scenarios, he said.
“In the absence of information and knowledge, sometimes people make dramatic conclusions on their own,” he said. “That’s kind of what’s happening here. And I’m hoping they’ll engage in the actual public meetings to clarify some of these things.”
Brennan, who has lived in Wyoming her whole life, said she understood why ranchers and others whose livelihoods depend on access to public lands would worry about a major change to how that access is managed.
She encouraged people with concerns to become involved in the conversation to shape the proposal.
The BLM is in the middle of a series of five public meetings to hear from those who would be impacted by the proposal. The most recent was May 25 in Denver and the next will be Tuesday in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Another live meeting will be held in Reno and the last meeting is scheduled for June 5 online.
Community group plans gun buyback for south valley — KUNM News, Albuquerque Journal
A nonprofit group in Albuquerque aims to help get guns out of the south valley with a buyback event.
The Albuquerque Journal reports the nonprofit New Mexicans to End Gun Violence will hold the event June 3rd at the South Valley Social Enterprise Center, which will be the organization’s 18th such event.
The nonprofit says so for it’s taken more than 1,700 guns back, which were all disarmed, dismantled, and turned into gardening tools that were given to high-schoolers.
In a news release, Bernalillo County Sheriff John Allen said buyback programs are effective at getting guns out of communities and increasing safety, and that they have a positive track record across the country.
In exchange for the gun, the nonprofit will provide gift cards to a selection of common stores, gas stations and online outlets, and they will vary in value depending on the weapon.
CORRECTION 5/30/23: This story has been corrected to reflect that this will be the 18th gun buyback event the organization has put on.
Unser Racing Museum officially closes its doors — KUNM News, KRQE News
A familiar Albuquerque tourist stop welcomed it’s last visitor’s yesterday.
But even though the Unser Racing Museum in Los Ranchos in Albuquerque closed its doors on memorial Day, they will be sending the contents of the museum elsewhere for further preservation.
KRQE news reports the exhibits, including Indy cars, race trophies, and memorabilia, will all be sent to Nebraska, to the Speedway Motors Museum of American Speed.
Museum volunteer Jim Tuma said the museum was getting far more traffic than normal on the lead up to the closure, with almost a thousand people coming on Sunday alone, and that they received visitors from all around the world.
The museum was founded in 2003 as a nonprofit organization, and the collection will be donated to its new home, where it will be on display by 2024.
New Mexico students to hear from astronauts aboard space station — KUNM News
Some southern New Mexican school kids will get a special call today that’s out of this world.
According to a news release, astronauts from the international space station will be making a space to earth call today at 10:30 mountain time to answer questions sent to them from students around southern New Mexico.
Astronauts Steve Bowen and frank Rubio of the expedition 69 crew will be featured in the event through a collaboration with the New Mexico Museum of Space History.
The museum sent representatives to each school district to present information to the kids about the station it’s history and it’s crew. The children then filmed responses and sent them in.
The event can be seen on the agency's website or app.