Productive Work Honors Grants’ Hardworking Youth

GRANTS, N.M. – The City of Grants went to work on June 29, the busy schedule included an award presentation to local hard-working youth that helped beautify First Street, and the purchase of new police cruisers for Grants Police Department. At this same meeting, councilors rescinded their fireworks restrictions for the Fourth of July following strong monsoon rains.

Every city councilor was present, with Councilman Zachary Gutierrez joining via the internet.

The council unanimously appointed two community members to advisory board positions. Joseph Galindo was elevated to the Grants Recreation Board, and Jae Luree King was elevated to the Grants Library Board. These two productive citizens are the newest members of their boards and will help make decisions in a hope to better the City of Grants.

Second Street Beautification

Aged 14 to 25, young leadership was enlisted by the City of Grants to help beautify Second Street. With applause from the community, Grants Special Project Director Shannon Divine presented a plaque to one of the youths at the meeting.

Nolan Nate came up to receive a plaque, with Mayor Erik Garcia going down to shake his hand. Devine and Mayor Garcia expressed their gratitude to Nate for the hard work he put in to make the City of Grants nicer.

Each plaque said, “Thank You!” followed with “Proudly Presented To” with each team members name following the words. Nate was the only team member present at the meeting, as all of the other members were unavailable due to summer work or summer camp.

The project took place from Roosevelt Avenue, in front of Grants High School, to the arroyo on Washington Avenue. The young team worked well with physical labor, they dug up two feet worth of dirt and shoveled it into a trailer to haul it away – for the whole length of the project – before planting drought-resist plants like Yuccas, lavender, and Spanish Broom plants. They made the area look nice with landscape fabric, landscape rock, and special etching. All of this work was done by hand.

The City of Grants appreciated the work of this team, and gave all the young hard workers a plaque to show it. Devine explained that the city work crews were a huge help to this project, and she thanked them for their work in assisting the team.

New Police Cars

The council acted with urgency to support local law enforcement. Grants Police Department has a fleet of cruisers which no longer operate, pushing the department to move toward an ecofriendlier bike patrol.

Grants Police Chief Jeff Marez has been coming up with creative ideas to incentivize more visibility and engagement with the public. Bike patrol was created out of necessity but has quicky become a favorite of the chief’s, who had worked patrol when he was just an officer with the department. Bikes have a fatal flaw for police work, however, with nowhere to keep a detainee.

Marez found a solution to the problem when he placed a hold order for newer model vehicles. The city council had even voted to approve this purchase, but the vehicles needed to be built and outfitted with police gear, and were several months out from being ready to drive. This was too long for Chief Marez.

Recently, Chief Marez discovered a better offer with vehicles ready to be outfitted with police equipment. The city council voted unanimously to approve the purchase of four new police cruisers for $148,652. The council then voted unanimously to outfit the vehicles with police equipment for $113,149.44.

Look to next week’s edition of the Cibola Citizen for more information on the June 29 regular city council meeting.