Balloon Fiesta: A view from above - By Ryan Lowery, Source New Mexico
Spectators arrive by the thousands every fall — by car, bus, and even bicycle. The sun still tucked behind the Sandia Mountains, they gather on a 78-acre grass field where the hum of massive gas-powered fans push air into nylon canopies, morphing them into a kaleidoscope of brilliant colors.
Bundled in blankets and jackets, spectators watch in awe as those canopies take the shape of balloons and lift into the desert sky.
The dazzling show continues in waves until hundreds of hot air balloons fill the sky above Albuquerque. Those balloons float to areas across the city — and into Rio Rancho and the villages of Corrales and Los Ranchos — delighting those on the ground. Mother Nature and her morning winds decide the direction of travel until pilots decide to land.
Each year, for nine days in early October, these scenes repeat, making the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta one of the most unique (and most photographed) events in the entire world.
But a show this spectacular requires dedication from event organizers, city officials and thousands of volunteers.
It also requires money, both from public and private entities.
This year’s Balloon Fiesta — the 51st annual, themed “A View From Above” — is set to welcome 546 pilots from 12 countries who will fly some 530 balloons. Many of those balloons will be a traditional tear-drop shape, but 107 are classified as a special shape, with 12 special shapes making their first appearance at Balloon Fiesta this year.
Laying out, inflating, and launching a balloon requires the help of several people, and when it’s time to land, those crew members navigate the crowded Albuquerque-metro roadways as they “chase” the balloon. Once the pilot finds a safe place to land, those crews help deflate the balloon and stow it until its next flight.
This year, around 2,000 volunteers will work as members of chase crews. This is on top of some 1,000 volunteers at Balloon Fiesta Park, including the famed “Zebras,” a crew of launch directors who wear black and white striped shirts.
FUNDING FIESTA
Putting on an event of this magnitude requires not only help from thousands of people, but funding from both government and nonprofit sources.
The Balloon Fiesta is managed and produced through Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta Inc., a designated 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that relies largely on sponsorships and donations in order to conduct its business.
The nonprofit also partners with the City of Albuquerque, for instance, by leasing exclusive use of the city-owned Balloon Fiesta Park throughout September and October.
Currently, the organization has a 25-year lease for the park, and the terms of that lease require Balloon Fiesta to provide $150,000 worth of improvements each year to the park.
Andie Mercer, a spokesperson for Balloon Fiesta, said the organization coordinates with the city to decide where that money should be spent, but the city ultimately approves projects.
“Even though Balloon Fiesta has over $1 million in improvement credit toward the lease, the organization continues to make improvements to the park,” Mercer said. “Over the many years, it has included milling parking lots, launch site improvements (and) retaining walls.”
Upgrades made for this year’s Fiesta include new bleachers on the west side of the field to offer spectators a place to sit while they watch balloons inflate and launch, as well as a new drainage system.
The area known as “vendor row” also received upgrades to the electrical outlets that power concession and merchandise booths, Albuquerque Parks and Recreation Director Dave Simon said during a Tuesday news conference.
“This is very important. This means that the coffee at this year’s Fiesta will be hot, and the burritos will be hotter,” Simon joked.
Last year, Balloon Fiesta drew an estimated 828,800 visitors over the course of the nine-day event.
While officials wouldn’t speculate on the potential number of attendees this year, the final Saturday of the event, Oct. 14, coincides with an annular solar eclipse.
With Albuquerque situated in the direct path of the eclipse, Fiesta officials are planning a special morning balloon glow. It is scheduled to take place during the eclipse, and the confluence of two rare events is likely to draw large crowds.
CURTAILING CHALLENGES
When thousands of people gather at Balloon Fiesta Park each morning, and often for evening events as well, several challenges arise, such as providing bathrooms and places for all those visitors to park their cars.
Event organizers address the former by bringing in 375 port-a-potties.
The portable toilets are paid for and maintained by the nonprofit behind Balloon Fiesta, with the exception of some portable toilets near the Sid Cutter Pilots’ Pavilion, which are provided by the city, in addition to existing restrooms inside the facility.
Though paid for with city funds, those toilets are still maintained by Balloon Fiesta, and the organization pays the city $50,000 per year to use the pavilion during Fiesta.
Balloon Fiesta Park, which encompasses 356 acres and includes a 78-acre grassed area, currently has parking for about 7,800 vehicles.
A proposal to lease seven acres of the land to the New Mexico United soccer club for a new stadium would take up 280 of those parking spots, but the stadium project would also add 1,100 new spaces for a net gain of 820 parking spots, city officials said during the Tuesday news conference.
Through partnerships with Albuquerque Public Schools and Rio Rancho Public Schools, Balloon Fiesta operates a park and ride service that allows visitors to park at places like a shopping mall, then ride a bus into the often congested Balloon Fiesta Park area.
In order to have enough buses for each event session, Fiesta organizers work with the school districts to coordinate the use of buses, but the organization contracts with the bus companies separately to pay the cost of fuel and drivers.
“This process includes seeking permission from the Albuquerque Public Schools and Rio Rancho Public Schools to approach their transportation vendors,” Mercer said. “Balloon Fiesta then negotiates a separate contract with the respective school bus companies.”
One often overlooked way to get to Fiesta is on bicycle. Fiesta operates a bike valet service. Accessible from the bike trail along the AMAFCA North Diversion Channel, the valet is located north of the Balloon Museum.
ENSURING SAFETY
Public safety is another concern whenever thousands of people gather in one spot, so Balloon Fiesta hires, and pays, 175 security personnel to work during the event, Mercer said.
The city also provides officers from the Albuquerque Police Department who patrol the area and manage traffic for the event. Supported by taxpayer dollars, multiple other law enforcement agencies assist as well, including the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office and New Mexico State Police.
Albuquerque police said during Tuesday’s news conference that it will have an extensive presence around Balloon Fiesta Park this year, and that officers will be on the field in both uniform and plain clothes.
During last year’s Fiesta, a Friday evening Special Shapes Glowdeo event was disrupted by a lightning storm and heavy rain that prompted a shelter-in-place order, after officials first sent out a confusing, and ultimately erroneous, message that indicated the park was being evacuated.
Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller announced Tuesday the launch of a new cellphone alert system that is designed to send important messages only to people near Balloon Fiesta Park.
“This is a way to alert people within a radius of Balloon Fiesta of any issues that may be occurring, as opposed to alerting the entire county, or the entire state,” Keller said. “Even if it’s traffic-related, we can do it within a mile of the Balloon Fiesta.”
THE ‘CHERRY ON TOP’
This year’s Balloon Fiesta will feature the first ever University of New Mexico balloon, another example of mixing private and taxpayer money to achieve a common goal.
The university unveiled its cherry red, turquoise and black balloon during a Monday event on campus. Named Cherry on Top, the balloon is part of a nascent partnership with the hot air balloon ride company Rainbow Ryders Inc.
As part of a four-year agreement, UNM paid $20,000 in production costs to create the balloon, which is owned and piloted by Rainbow Ryders, Director Of University Marketing Ethan Rule said.
Under the terms of the agreement, the university will pay $72,000 over four years to cover the operational costs of the balloon. The funds come from the University Communication & Marketing department as part of an overall advertising budget.
“This investment will increase brand exposure while also bringing a unique experience to future and current Lobos,” Rule said. “Video and images of the balloon will also be used in marketing materials and on social media to highlight the University with a nod to New Mexico’s distinct hot air balloon culture.”
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham extends and adds to controversial public health order on guns - By Nash Jones, KUNM News
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham Friday renewed her controversial executive order to combat gun violence.
The original order banned carrying guns in public in and around Albuquerque. Gun advocates filed a slew of lawsuits and a federal judge temporarily blocked the order’s implementation within days.
The Governor then narrowed the order to apply only to public parks and playgrounds where children are likely to be. The amended order has been challenged as well, and a hearing is expected next week. In the meantime, the order remains under a temporary restraining order.
Friday’s renewed order adds a provision for the state Department of Public Safety to organize gun buy-back events in Albuquerque, Española and Las Cruces over the next month.
New Mexico signs final order to renew permit at US nuclear waste repository - Associated Press
New Mexico environmental regulators on Thursday finalized a 10-year permit extension at the nation's only underground nuclear waste repository that they say will increase oversight and safeguards while prioritizing the cleanup of Cold War-era waste at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
The state Environment Department said the permit goes into effect on Nov. 3, following a nine-month public comment period.
The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in southeastern New Mexico plays a key role in the nation's multibillion-dollar effort to clean up radioactive waste left behind by decades of nuclear research and bomb-making. It has been licensed previously to take what is known as transuranic waste, or waste generated by the nation's nuclear weapons program that is contaminated with radioactive elements heavier than uranium.
"The new permit will benefit New Mexico and legacy waste clean-up from around the U.S. for years to come," New Mexico Environment Department Secretary James Kenney said in a statement.
The new permit incorporates terms of a June settlement with the U.S. Department of Energy.
The state first outlined its terms in December, seeking to ensure that high-level waste such as diluted plutonium wouldn't find its way to the state.
ABQ Ride staffing shortage leads to less stops, hours - Albuquerque Journal, KUNM News
Citing a staff shortage of about 100 drivers, the City of Albuquerque is reducing the service and hours of some ABQ Ride bus lines to shore up relief.
As the Albuquerque Journal reports, several bus routes will stop less frequently, and others will see cuts to their overall hours starting Oct. 14.
A spokesperson for the city of Albuquerque’s Transit Department told the Journal that they weren’t able to keep up with demand. Currently, 41% or 106 total bus driver positions are vacant.
The city is actively trying to plug the bus driver gap by hosting hiring fairs and making attempts to improve work-life balance by leveling out hours for bus drivers who have been working overtime.
View the full list of impacted routes.
States that send a mail ballot to every voter really do increase turnout, scholars find - Zachary Roth, States Newsroom via Source New Mexico
Lately, a rough consensus has emerged among people who study the impact of voting policies: Though they often spark fierce partisan fighting, most changes to voting laws do little to affect overall turnout, much less election results.
But one fast-growing reform appears to stand out as an exception.
When every registered voter gets sent a ballot in the mail — a system known as universal vote-by-mail — voting rates tend to rise, numerous studies have found.
Advocates for mail voting say these findings haven’t gotten the attention they deserve, and that they should lead more states that want to boost turnout to adopt UVM, as it’s called.
“[T]o a remarkable degree, most of the nation’s leading journalists, democracy reform organizations, and elected officials continue to largely ignore, downplay — or even dismiss outright – the potentially profound implications of these noticeably high turnout rates,” said a research paper released last month by the National Vote at Home Institute, which advocates for increased use of mail voting.
Currently, eight states — California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, and Washington — use UVM.
VOTE BY MAIL ATTACKED BY TRUMP
Efforts in recent years by many states to make it easier to vote by mail prompted a furious backlash from former President Donald Trump and his backers, who have repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that mail voting is dangerously vulnerable to fraud.
Perhaps no state incurred Trump’s wrath more than Nevada, which, along with California, introduced UVM in 2020 in response to the pandemic.
“The governor of Nevada should not be in charge of ballots. The ballots are going to be a disaster for our country,” Trump said ahead of the 2020 election, referring to the state’s then-governor, Democrat Steve Sisolak (In fact, Sisolak was not “in charge of ballots.” Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, a Republican, was). “You’re going to have problems with the ballots like nobody has ever seen before.”
Since replacing Sisolak this year, Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo, a Republican, has pushed for eliminating UVM. (“Sending ballots to more than 1.9 million registered voters is inefficient and unnecessary,” Lombardo said in January.) But Democrats, who control the state legislature, have shown no interest in scrapping the system.
So great was the GOP’s suspicion of the practice in 2022 that some voters were told by party activists to hold onto mail ballots and hand them in on Election Day at their polling place, rather than mailing them.
But Trump and Republicans have lately backtracked, telling supporters to take advantage of mail voting rather than handing an advantage to Democrats. In June, the Republican National Committee announced a new get-out-the-vote drive encouraging early and mail voting.
STATES TINKER WITH MAIL VOTING
Still, over 20 states have sought to restrict mail voting since 2020. Ohio has shortened the timeframe to apply for mail ballots and imposed new signature requirements, while Arizona now removes people from its list to receive a mail ballot if they go for more than two years without voting.
Among states looking to expand mail voting, not all have gone as far as UVM. Both New York and Pennsylvania, among other states, have loosened their rules to allow anyone to cast an absentee ballot by mail, rather than requiring an excuse — a system known as no-excuse absentee. But the voter still must take the trouble to apply to receive their absentee ballot, rather than being mailed one automatically.
Experts say there isn’t strong evidence that these more modest approaches to mail voting do much to boost turnout
Other reforms that likewise have become core to the Democratic platform on voting policy, like adding early voting opportunities, also haven’t consistently been shown to increase voting rates. Allowing people to register at the polls — often called same-day registration — has in some studies been associated with small turnout increases.
By contrast, the research on UVM finds a consistent and significant impact.
Advocates say that’s hardly surprising. Under UVM, election officials simply mail ballots to directly everyone on the voter rolls, almost literally putting a ballot in voters’ hands. Voters can return their ballot either through the mail or by leaving it in a secure ballot dropbox.
RESEARCH STUDIES
A 2022 paper by Eric McGhee and Jennifer Paluch of the Public Policy Institute of California and Mindy Romero of the University of Southern California found that UVM increased turnout among registered voters by 5.6 percentage points in the 2020 election — what the authors called “a substantial and robust positive effect.”
A 2018 paper by the data firm Pantheon Analytics, which works for Democrats and progressive groups, compared Utah counties that used UVM with those that didn’t, and found that the system boosted turnout by 5-7 percentage points among registered voters.
And a forthcoming paper by Michael Ritter of Washington State University, to be published in the November 2023 edition of the Election Law Journal, looks at various mail voting systems over the last decade and finds that UVM led to an 8-point increase in registered voter turnout.
By and large, states that use UVM appear to see higher voting rates than those that don’t. The National Vote at Home Institute research paper found that eight of the 11 states that used UVM in 2020 were in the top 15 states for turnout of active registered voters. And none of those eight were battleground states, which tend to see higher turnout.
Two other states using UVM for the first time in 2020 ranked first and second on improved turnout compared to 2016 — Hawaii, which saw a 14% jump, and Utah, which saw an 11% jump.
The paper also found that UVM has a particularly large impact on turnout rates for young voters, Black and Latino voters, who tend to vote at lower rates than average.
NO ADVANTAGE FOR ONE PARTY
Advocates say there’s another reason why policymakers should have no reluctance to embrace UVM: Despite its impact on turnout, it doesn’t help one party more than the other, according to numerous studies.
“Universal VBM does not appear to tilt turnout toward the Democratic party, nor does it appear to affect election outcomes meaningfully,” a representative 2020 paper by a group of Stanford University political scientists concluded.
McGhee said that finding could have the effect of turning down the political heat on the issue.
“Hopefully as the evidence gets out that it boosts turnout without impacting partisan outcomes, that part of it will fade a little bit,” he said. “And it’ll just be seen as a good-government reform.”
N.M. delegation writes bills to pay Cerro Pelado Fire victims, expand deadline for $4B wildfire fund - By Patrick Lohmann,Source New Mexico
New Mexico members of Congress announced Thursday they had introduced legislation to expand compensation to victims of three wildfires accidentally set in the state by the federal Forest Service last spring.
In late April of last year, three wildfires roared to life after being ignited as prescribed burns by the Forest Service. Two of them – the Cerro Pelado Fire and the Calf Canyon Fire – started as pile burns that were left to smolder unattended and then broke out into wildfires. A third, the Hermits Peak Fire, was a broadcast burn that escaped from an understaffed crew near Hermits Peak on a dry, windy day in early April.
Since then, Congress has tasked the Federal Emergency Management Agency with compensating victims of two of those fires, which later merged into the Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon Fire and became the biggest in state history. Recently, after more than a year of silence, the Forest Service acknowledged it had also ignited the Cerro Pelado Fire near Los Alamos.
Three members New Mexico’s Congressional delegation, including Sens. Martin Heinrich and Ben Ray Luján and Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández, have sought compensation for those who suffered losses in those fires, including leading an effort late last year to secure nearly $4 billion in funding for thousands of people who lost their homes and livelihoods in the Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon Fire.
On Thursday, they announced a pair of bills to expand on those efforts. Both bills were introduced Tuesday.
One bill would establish a claims office for the Cerro Pelado Fire, with separate FEMA employees and its own pot of money, to compensate people for the 49,000-acre blaze that destroyed at least 10 structures. The bill does not say how much money might be required to pay them, though Luján noted that no money would come from the fund established for the Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon Fire survivors.
The other bill would give those in the Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon Fire burn scar additional time to file claims for compensation. The bill signed a year ago by President Joe Biden gave victims until November 2024 to file a claim for damages. The bill, if it’s approved in Congress, would move that deadline until the end of 2027.
Moving the deadline acknowledges the ongoing damage occurring in the 534-square-mile burn scar of the Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon Fire. More than a year after the fire, flooding and debris flows remain common in the area, particularly in the rural, mountainous communities that draw water from acequias.
Such flooding is expected for at least several more years, and some fire survivors have expressed concern about how they’ll be paid for damages that occur after the deadline next year.
“The fire was not the end of the heartache for our communities,” said Leger Fernández in a news release. “The burn scar created by this man-made disaster has left our people in the path of dangerous floods.”
More than a year since Biden signed the Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon Fire Assistance Act into law, FEMA has so far paid $84 million of the $3.95 billion awarded, or just over 2% of the total.
This is only the second time FEMA has been tasked with compensating those affected after a wildfire the feds set accidentally. The first time was also in New Mexico, after the Cerro Grande Fire in Los Alamos in 2000.
Biden says he had to use Trump-era funds for the border wall. Asked if barriers work, he says 'No' - By Colleen Long Associated Press
President Joe Biden on Thursday defended his administration's decision to waive 26 federal laws in South Texas to allow for construction of roughly 20 miles of additional border wall, saying he had no choice but to use the Trump-era funding for the barrier to stop illegal migration from Mexico.
Asked if he thought such walls work, he said flatly, "No."
The new construction was announced in June, but the funds were appropriated in 2019 before the Democratic president took office. Biden said he tried to get lawmakers to redirect the money but Congress refused, and the law requires the funding to be used as approved and the construction to be completed in 2023.
"The money was appropriated for the border wall," Biden said. "I can't stop that."
Still, the waiving of federal laws for the construction — something also done when Republican Donald Trump was president — raised questions, particularly because Biden condemned border wall spending when he was running for the White House. One of Biden's first decisions moves as president was to halt the use of emergency funds to build the wall along the Southern border and ended the national emergency there.
The decision comes as the Biden administration is struggling to manage increasing numbers of migrants at the border and spreading out in the larger U.S. Democratic leaders in New York, Chicago and Washington are asking for federal help to handle the growing numbers of migrants in their cities. Administration officials on Thursday announced they'd resume deporting migrants back to Venezuela, as part of their effort to to slow arrivals.
Republicans, for their part, are hammering the president as ineffective on border policy, with some suggesting they would not fund any more efforts in Ukraine without a substantial increase to border security funding.
The decision was met with immediate criticism from immigrant advocates and Mexico President Andres Manuel López Obrador, who called it a "setback."
"It is a setback because it does not resolve the problem," he said Thursday. López Obrador had frequently praised Biden in the past because "he is the first U.S. president in a long time who has not built any walls."
The Department of Homeland Security posted the announcement of the latest wall action in the Federal Registry with few details about the construction in Starr County, Texas, part of a busy Border Patrol sector seeing "high illegal entry." According to government data, about 245,000 illegal crossings have been recorded so far this budget year in the Rio Grande Valley Sector. It is among the busiest for border crossings in the nation.
"I want to address today's reporting relating to a border wall and be absolutely clear. There is no new administration policy with respect to border walls," Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement. "From day one, this administration has made clear that a border wall is not the answer. That remains our position and our position has never wavered."
Much of the land along the Rio Grande is subject to erosion and is part of federally protected habitats for plants and animals. A federal project along the river would ordinarily require a series of environmental reviews. Congress gave U.S. immigration authorities the ability to waive those reviews to put up such barriers more quickly.
"The Biden administration's decision to rush into border wall construction marks a profound failure," said Jonathan Blazer, director of border strategies at the American Civil Liberties Union. "On the campaign trail, President Biden put it best when he said that the border wall is not a serious policy solution — and we couldn't agree more. Instead of upholding this promise, the Biden administration is doubling down on the failed policies of the past that have proven wasteful and ineffective."
This isn't the first time that border wall has been constructed under the Biden administration. Homeland Security has also worked on roughly 13 miles in the Rio Grande Valley, and another small-scale project to fill "small gaps that remain open from prior construction activities" in the border wall.
But the border wall has been synonymous with Trump's restrictive immigration policies. He said he wanted to build a wall and have Mexico pay for it, then declared a national emergency to fund construction when Congress would not appropriate funds for it.
Trump's allies said the move just showed he was right. Trump, the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, weighed in too — saying the administration's actions proved he was right on the wall.
"As I have stated often, over thousands of years, there are only two things that have consistently worked, wheels, and walls!" Trump wrote on his social media platform. "Will Joe Biden apologize to me and America for taking so long to get moving ... I will await his apology!"
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Associated Press writer Nomaan Merchant contributed to this report.
US government agrees to help restore sacred Native American site destroyed for Oregon road project - By Claire Rush Associated Press/Report For America
The U.S. government has agreed to help restore a sacred Native American site on the slopes of Oregon's Mount Hood that was destroyed by highway construction, court documents show, capping more than 15 years of legal battles that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In a settlement filed with the high court Thursday, the U.S. Department of Transportation and other federal agencies agreed to replant trees and aid in efforts to rebuild an altar at a site along U.S. Highway 26 that tribes said had been used for religious purposes since time immemorial.
Members of the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation and the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde said a 2008 project to add a turn lane on the highway destroyed an area known as the Place of Big Big Trees, which was home to a burial ground, a historic campground, medicinal plants, old-growth Douglas Firs and a stone altar.
Carol Logan, an elder and member of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde who was a plaintiff in the case, said she hopes the settlement would prevent the destruction of similar sites in the future.
"Our sacred places may not look like the buildings where most Americans worship, but they deserve the same protection, dignity, and respect," Logan said in a statement shared by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which represented the plaintiffs in their lawsuit.
The defendants included the Department of Transportation and its Federal Highway Administration division; the Department of the Interior and its Bureau of Land Management; and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation.
The Federal Highway Administration and the Department of the Interior declined to comment on the settlement.
In court documents dating back to 2008 when the suit was filed, Logan and Wilbur Slockish, who is a hereditary chief of the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, said they visited the site for decades to pray, gather sacred plants and pay respects to their ancestors until it was demolished.
They accused the agencies involved of violating, among other things, their religious freedom and the National Historic Preservation Act, which requires tribal consultation when a federal project may affect places that are on tribal lands or of cultural or historic significance to a tribe.
Under the settlement, the government agreed to plant nearly 30 trees on the parcel and maintain them through watering and other means for at least three years.
They also agreed to help restore the stone altar, install a sign explaining its importance to Native Americans and grant Logan and Slockish access to the surrounding area for cultural purposes.
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Claire Rush is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.