West Rim Road gets cash for paving, DA announces tough domestic violence policy, first commercial air service for Taos launched
– 10 YEARS AGO – ‘Happy 2009, West Rim motorists’
By Andy Dennison Dec. 24, 2008
It’s tough to get a pile of asphalt in a Christmas stocking, but that’s the gift residents on the West Rim Road got from the state Department of Transportation.
Andy Dennison reported: “After 15 years of washboard, mud and bureaucratic bumps, West Rim road will finally get paved.”
One area resident, Ted Cone, told Dennison that the news “made my new year.”
Taos County was to receive
$3.5 million to pave 8 miles of asphalt pavement. “That’s great news,” said Mike Trujillo, head of the Taos County Road Department. “We spent a lot of time on that road, but it just wouldn’t last.”
It sounds like one of those decisions that was easy to make. The county road department gathered together all of its invoices and work orders to demonstrate to the state it had spent $1.5 million trying to keep the unpaved road driveable. “That was an ordeal in itself, “said Trujillo.
However, in typical Taos fashion, not all people wanted the road paved. Some of the West Mesa residents thought it would draw too much traffic and fought the idea, well, for
15 years.
The now paved road today probably does have increased traffic. It runs from Río Grande Gorge Bridge to Carson Road and is a preferred route to Ojo Caliente.
District Attorney Sammy Pacheco announced Taos County’s new domestic violence policy and quoted his second-grade teacher in making sure that abusers knew that if police are called, they would be charged: “She used to say, ‘If you don’t think I’m serious, you’re sadly mistaken.”
Indeed reporter Alisa Duncan wrote, “In the first half of December alone, assistant district attorney Shawn Boyne filed 10 domestic violence cases. Since July, at least 55 domestic violence-related arrests have been made. The caseload has quadrupled since the district attorney’s office instituted a policy by which all violations are prosecuted, regardless of whether the victim declines to press charges after police are called.”
Part of the crackdown was due to the state legislature passing the Domestic Violence Act. That law made it possible for victims to file restraining or protective orders against the alleged abuser without having a divorce filed or a legal separation. In addition, local police could arrest the alleged abuser on the spot and local DAs could pursue a case against them.
But that law was passed four years before Pacheco’s new policy. While the article does not specify what caused the delay or why the policy was rolled out this year, it may have taken that long for the DA to gear up to enforce the new law.
That law also provided that victims would have a prosecutor available to them. In the past, the victim had to present the case themselves in magistrate court.
Boyne explained in the article that most who were arrested and charged received suspended sentences and were sentenced to a counseling program. If they reoffended, then they would do time. So far in the program, Duncan reported, “only one individual has reoffended since entering counseling.”
“Our job is not to break up the family,” Boyne said. “Our job is to give the family the tools so that they can make the decision as to whether they want to stay together as a family and how they can stay together in a healthy way...”
– 50 YEARS AGO – ‘First scheduled airline due today’
Staff report
Dec. 26, 1968
Sound familiar? Fifty years ago much hullabaloo was made about Taos being an air destination.
Here’s what the anonymous reporter wrote: “An historic ‘first’ for Taos will be marked at about 11:30 a.m. today when a sleek Cessna 402 touches down at Taos Municipal Airport. It will be the first arrival of the first scheduled (lots of firsts) passenger carrying aircraft ever for the community, and present to remark on the occasion will be a number of town and county officials and businessmen, many of whom have cooperated to bring the service.”
Among the passengers on the TransCentral plane will be the president of the Denver-based airline, Robert N. Maupin, and the carrier’s public relations director, Dave Snyder, the article reports.
TransCentral planned to offer two flights daily to Albuquerque, weather permitting. Apparently, the airport’s equipment was lacking to allow for instrument landings. The airline was allowed only “visual landings.” Once a radio beacon was installed, “the carrier will be able to provide uninterrupted service in nearly all weather conditions.”
The regional airline, which did provide service to several Colorado and Northern New Mexico cities and towns for several years, including Taos and Raton, went out of business in the 1970s.
Trans Central’s was the first of several tries at providing commercial air service to Taos area ski resorts over the next
50 years. Another – Taos Air – will be launched today (Dec.
20).