ABQ to receive $5M grant for Balloon Fiesta Park renovations - Gregory R.C. Hasman, Albuquerque Journal
Balloon Fiesta guests can expect to see some upgrades after the city of Albuquerque was awarded a $5 million grant from the state of New Mexico.
The money will be used to alleviate flooding issues and for Americans with Disabilities Act improvements at the Balloon Fiesta Park, Department of Municipal Development spokesperson Dan Mayfield said in a news release on Friday.
Work is expected to begin sometime in 2026, he said in a phone interview.
“The fantastic support from the state of New Mexico will improve pedestrian access to the launch field, stabilize erosion and prevent flooding, addressing priority needs at this major recreational facility,” Parks and Recreation Director Dave Simon said.
Over the last two years, the DMD and the Parks and Recreation Department completed many projects at the park. They include: updating the electrical infrastructure, installing security cameras and a public address system, adding 23 acres of new parking, building a new large permanent bathroom facility, and completing an ADA-accessible sidewalk.
“Balloon Fiesta Park is one of our gems in the city and state," Mayor Tim Keller said in a statement. "In the last two years we have improved the park with new electrical infrastructure, new parking, and new bathrooms to make it even better. With this grant, we can continue improving the park.”
Gray wolf relocated from New Mexico back to Colorado - Cathy Cook, Albuquerque Journal
New Mexico’s Game and Fish Department helped send a gray wolf back to Colorado Thursday.
The young, male wolf identified as gray wolf 2403 had wandered from Pitkin County, Colorado, into New Mexico, likely looking for new territory and a mate. The wolf was relocated to Grand County, although the specific release location has not been shared publicly.
“We are grateful to our partners at the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish for their efforts to capture and return a member of Colorado’s gray wolf population,” acting Colorado Parks and Wildlife Director Laura Clellan said in a statement.
Gray wolves were killed out in Colorado in the 1940s, until a Wyoming wolfpack migrated to the state in 2019. Voters approved reestablishing the species in the state in 2020, and Colorado began reintroducing gray wolves west of the Continental Divide in 2023.
Gray wolf 2403 was born into the Copper Creek pack, the first wolf pack established in Colorado by translocated wolves. Its parents were captured in the wilds of Oregon and relocated to Grand County, where they established a pack early last year.
After livestock attacks connected to the pack, Colorado Parks and Wildlife captured the wolves and placed them in a wolf sanctuary in the summer of 2024. The adult male, 2309-OR, had been shot before the state effort to capture it and died in captivity. The adult female and four yearling pups were released in January.
Gray wolf 2403 left the pack in fall. A wolf making dispersal movements to find new territory and a mate like gray wolf 2403 is a sign of the biological success of the program, according to Colorado Parks and Wildlife spokesman Luke Perkins.
Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah have a legal agreement that Colorado wolves who wander outside of the state will be relocated back within Colorado. This is the first time since Colorado’s wolf reintroduction began that the agreement has been used, according to Perkins.
“We recognized during the planning process that we would need to have consideration and plans to protect the genetic integrity of the Mexican wolf recovery program, while also establishing a gray wolf population in Colorado,” Colorado Park and Wildlife’s Wolf Conservation Program Manager Eric Odell said in a statement.
New Mexico, Arizona and the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife have been working to recover an endangered gray wolf subspecies, the Mexican gray wolf, in the two Southwest states since the 1990s.
A coalition of advocacy and conservation groups have taken issue with gray wolf 2403’s relocation.
“A single northern wolf crossing into New Mexico is not a genetic threat to the Mexican gray wolf,” Nico Lorenzen, a wildlife associate with conservation group Wild Arizona, said in a statement. “What is a threat and waste of limited management funding is the continued effort to police wolf movement along state lines instead of following robust science.”
Some conservationists have advocated for allowing gray wolves in Colorado and Mexican gray wolves in New Mexico to mingle.
“The Mexican wolf population here needs genetic diversity,” said Michael Robinson, a senior conservation advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity.
Gray wolves are protected under the federal Endangered Species Act, although the federal government has attempted to delist the species, inspiring lawsuits from conservation and advocacy groups. In November, U.S. Fish and Wildlife declined to create a nationwide recovery plan for gray wolves, igniting fresh legal challenges.
The Mexican gray wolf has a much smaller population than the gray wolf, and a recovery plan is in place for the subspecies.
Lawsuit alleges former Volcano Vista administrator made up benefactor for personal gain - Colleen Heild, Albuquerque Journal
Shirts for the annual Volcano Vista High School Powder Puff game in 2023? Thank "Charlie."
Drinks for staff after the game the following year? Don't worry, Charlie's got it.
"Charlie" was touted as an "amazing benefactor" for the high school of more than 2,000 students on Albuquerque's West Mesa, according to a newly filed lawsuit.
As it turns out, there was no benefactor, only a unauthorized slush fund siphoned from student activity fees by the school activities director George Woods,alleges the lawsuit filed last month by Albuquerque Public Schools.
Charlie happened to be the name of his daughter's dog, the lawsuit alleges.
Woods, who didn't return Journal phone calls seeking comment, submitted his resignation in April after APS launched an internal audit into the missing fees. Woods had been activities director since 2018, according to APS spokesman Martin Salazar.
The lawsuit, filed in state district court in Albuquerque, contends that Woods converted up to $14,600 from student fees to his personal use without APS authorization. The lawsuit also contends he signed contracts with various vendors as an APS administrator without following the school district's procurement processes.
When the need for cash arose, the lawsuit stated, Woods would pick up the tab and claim the money came from a benefactor known only as "Charlie."
During his employment with APS as a teacher and administrator, Woods "was entrusted with funds raised through school-sponsored activities," the lawsuit states. "As a result of defendant's actions, (APS) suffered damages, including loss of funds intended for student and educational programs."
Over the past decade, several employees at other district schools have been found to have tapped larger amounts of student activity funds for their own use, with at least two criminally charged and one of those convicted.
Asked if APS has decided against pressing criminal charges against Woods, Salazar in a written response stated, "An investigation was conducted and the decision was made to proceed administratively."
APS couldn't discuss specifics of the lawsuit, Salazar stated. "APS already had strict policies in place prohibiting this type of thing. Those policies weren't followed, and a subsequent audit discovered the problem."
The audit, triggered by a whistleblower complaint, coincided with a ruling in another lawsuit filed against Woods and APS in late 2024. In that case, a federal judge in April ruled against Woods and APS in a lawsuit filed by the then-vice president of Volcano Vista's student Senate. Woods oversaw the student Senate.
In that case, filed last December, U.S. District Judge Matthew Garcia of Albuquerque found Woods and APS "likely unconstitutionally punished" the unidentified student for posting after hours away from campus a social media message criticizing Woods and the student Senate program. The judge ordered APS to undo the disciplinary measures imposed and reinstate the young woman to her student body position.
That student's lawsuit alleged in part that Woods "often had student purchase things out of pocket and `Charlie' would repay them after the fact," according to the APS audit last April.
"Defendant made multiple remarks boasting about 'Charlie' — an alleged benefactor the Defendant claimed was paying for things," states the APS lawsuit filed Nov. 11. "A witness stated that the Defendant disclosed that Charlie is the name of the Defendant's daughter's dog and the `Charlie Fund' was a cash (slush) fund."
The audit found the slush fund included fees students and their parents paid so that between 12 and 16 students could attend a summer leadership workshop at New Mexico Tech in Socorro. The workshop, affiliated with New Mexico Association of Student Councils, is a four-day, three-night leadership skills building workshop, Salazar stated. The cost was between $200 and $400 for each student.
In October 2023, Woods is alleged to have used the slush fund to reimburse a staff member for the purchase of shirts for the school's annual Powder Puff game during homecoming week. He credited a "benefactor named `Charlie' who liked to help out their program," the audit report states. The next year, following the Powder Puff game, Woods "invited the staff to meet him for drinks following the game."
"When it was time to leave, (Woods) paid the entire bill and told the staff not to worry about paying, that `Charlie,' got it," the report states. Days later, a staff member at a meeting with other school faculty was "discussing how nice it is for Senate to have this amazing benefactor, 'Charlie,'" the audit report stated.
Woods received the "benefit of funds belonging to (APS)," the lawsuit stated. "It would be inequitable and unjust to allow (Woods) to retain benefits derived from public funds intended for education purposes."
APS seeks compensatory damages in an amount "to be proven at trial," including attorney's fees, and "punitive damages due to the malicious and reckless nature of Defendant's conduct."
New Mexico DOJ unveils statewide gun data center - Joshua Bowling, Source New Mexico
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez on Monday announced the creation of a “Crime Gun Intelligence Center” that will help local police departments and sheriffs’ offices across the state analyze data from firearms and spent casings found at crime scenes to identify repeat offenders and gun traffickers.
The initiative has been on Torrez’s to-do list since winning election in 2022, he said, and he credited New Mexico Democratic U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich for securing the federal funding needed to make it happen. In addition to housing a small team of analysts within his New Mexico Department of Justice, Torrez also installed machines that can analyze shell casings, recovered firearms and more within four local law enforcement agencies: the Gallup and Roswell police departments, along with the San Juan and Doña Ana county sheriff’s offices.
The machines compile images of ammunition casings in the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network and let analysts compare them to other entries for potential matches, much like the federal fingerprint database. Torrez’s intention is that the agencies with the machines can become hubs for rural New Mexico, as previously the Albuquerque Police Department had the most advanced NIBIN machine in the state, requiring officers from rural departments to drive several hours to use it.
“It really does enhance public safety, not only in our ability to more quickly solve these problems and understand trafficking patterns, but it also keeps police officers in their communities,” Torrez said Monday. “We shouldn’t have sheriffs’ deputies and police officers from smaller departments being forced to drive into our larger cities to take advantage of this technology.”
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez was joined on Dec. 15, 2025, by Roswell Police Chief Lance Bateman, San Juan County Sheriff Shane Ferrari and Gallup Police Chief Erin Toadlena-Pablo to announce the creation of the Crime Gun Intelligence Center. (Joshua Bowling/Source NM)
The new system starts at the crime scene. Officers gather any physical evidence, like shell casings that are left over when someone fires a gun, and enter detailed photos of them to the NIBIN network. Then, the network examines the photos and evaluates the thousands of other entries for possible matches, which it then sends to Torrez’s Crime Gun Intelligence Center. Analysts there will review anything the system flagged as a potential match, and then send those leads onto local detectives.
Nationally, gunfire has for years been the leading cause of death for children and teenagers. New Mexico’s firearm mortality rate of 25.3 deaths per 100,000 people is nearly double the national rate, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In Albuquerque, this technology has played a key role in solving two of the city’s most high-profile shootings in recent years. Officials with the New Mexico Department of Justice said that analysts’ work of reviewing shell casings helped lead to arrests in the 2022 case of a man accused of targeting and killing Muslims, as well as in the case of failed GOP candidate Solomon Peña, who was convicted in August of orchestrating drive-by shootings at the homes of prominent New Mexico Democrats.
Torrez said he hopes to further expand this system into northeastern New Mexico and wants the New Mexico Department of Public Safety in Santa Fe to sign an agreement that would bring its existing NIBIN machine into the new statewide initiative.
“Every time we take a crime gun off the street, we’re stopping a future shooting,” said NMDOJ Special Investigations Bureau Director Kyle Hartsock. When he began his career in law enforcement 20 years ago, he said, it was common practice to “shrug your shoulders” and discard shell casings once a crime was adjudicated.
But officials on Monday said that holding onto images of those casings has proved an invaluable practice to identify gun trafficking patterns.
Finding spent casings from a gun crime in Farmington and matching them to a previously logged crime in another city, such as Albuquerque, can help police identify trafficking across the state and the nation, law enforcement officials said. Recently, both Republicans and Democrats in the state Legislature called on Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham to put public safety on the upcoming legislative session’s agenda, citing a “crime epidemic” and a new analysis of federal data that found an outsized gun trafficking problem in New Mexico.
“Violent crime does not stop at the city limits,” San Juan County Sheriff Shane Ferrari said.