Tag: Rio Rancho Observer

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Wrong Items Donated To Rio Rancho Goodwill

From the Rio Rancho Observer “Bullets, pipe donated to Goodwill“

Someone donated bullets and a duffle bag holding smoking paraphernalia to Goodwill last week.
According to a Rio Rancho Police report, an officer went to Goodwill at Southern and Unser about 10:45 a.m. Feb. 12 after employees sorting through anonymous donations found a glass pipe in a black Adidas bag and various calibers of ammunition in other property. There were 50 .22-caliber rounds, three 12-gauge shotgun rounds, a .410-shotgun round and what appeared to be one .22-caliber rifle round.
The items were entered into evidence at RRPD.
About 3 p.m. the same day, the officer went back to Goodwill after dispatch was told a man claiming to own the Adidas bag was at the store. The man told the officer he’d just gotten out of the hospital and a friend told him his property had been dropped off at the store.
The store manager said there was no way to verify who left the bag in the donation trailer, and the officer couldn’t charge the man claiming to own the bag because he couldn’t verify the owner of the pipe, according to the release.

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Don't Hit A Cow In Rio Rancho

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There are too many issues with cows in northern Rio Rancho. It surprises me that the owners of the cows aren’t more concerned with where the cows are. If they don’t care about potential car accidents with someone being harmed or killed, I would expect they would be concerned about what is their lively hood. I’m afraid that someone will die before something is done about it.

This letter to the editor of the Rio Rancho observer “If you hit a cow, make sure you have NMLB phone number to verify owners” documents one persons attempt to hold someone accountable.

I want to share the following information with my fellow Rio Rancho residents. On Sept. 20, 2010, about 8 p.m., I slammed into a cow on Unser Boulevard near Progress Road.
In 2010, there were 10 accidents involving cows and, luckily, none of us was killed. I’ve spent the last 2 years working to hold someone accountable, including the City of Rio Rancho, to keep residents safe, but to no avail.
Also, I’ve also done lots of research to help us. I contacted the New Mexico Livestock Board (NMLB) after my incident and gave the NMLB administrator the cow’s ear tag number that the Rio Rancho police officer retrieved after my incident; the administrator told me it was a King Ranch cow and that the “family should be sued for negligence.”
I took the King Ranch brothers to court but the administrator testified that she never told me it was a King Ranch cow and that the cow’s ear tag is not the identifier. The case was dismissed on Sept. 20, 2012 with still no one held accountable.
If you or someone you know has an incident involving a cow, ask the officers to contact the NMLB at 841-6161 to identify the cow by its brand; the NMLB is the only entity that can identify cattle. Also, Rio Rancho is a “fence out” area meaning that cattle owners have the responsibility to keep their cattle fenced out of our highways.
We only have ourselves to help with the cow situations; let’s keep passing valuable information to each other.

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No Hockey This Winter At The Santa Ann Star Center

The Santa Anna Star Center was built in Rio Rancho to primarily be a venue for the New Mexico Scorpions hockey team. Not only are the New Mexico Scorpions not playing there, the New Mexico Mustangs won’t be playing there either according the the Rio Rancho Observer “Mustangs ‘inactive’ for season“.

The New Mexico Mustangs, who called the Star Center home for the past two seasons of North American Hockey league competition, were officially “granted inactive status” by the NAHL and will not compete in the league in the 2012-13 season.

A ticket to a Mustangs’ game wasn’t exactly the hottest item in town: The team drew an average of 802 fans for each of its 29 home games in 2010-11 and then 721 fans for each of its 30 home games in the just-completed season.

The situation with the Santa Anna Star Center was covered by the New York Times in 2011. The company that convinced the city to build the center, Global Entrainment, went around the country getting a lot of cities to build similar arenas making promises that didn’t come true.

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The Village At Rio Rancho Will Be Here Some Day

The Village At Rio Rancho, a Albuquerque Uptown style outdoor shopping center, is still coming soon. According to the Rio Rancho Observer the city planning and zoning was to approve the plan on January 24th (and they did) which would allow the developer to start work on the Cinemark movie theater.

Building a new movie theater so close to the recently built Premiere Cinemas is a mistake according to me. I’m more interested in having the rest of the complex built where I predict there will be an Apple Store.

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Rio Rancho City Government Gives Up On Green2V While The Rest Of Us Did Months Ago

Green2V logo

Here we are in December of 2010, where is Green2V which hasn’t broke ground this summer as promised? I was skeptical of Green2V from the very beginning. A company no one had heard of with no website (and still doesn’t have a website) decided to build a new factory in my hometown of Rio Rancho, New Mexico with a very aggressive schedule.

An article from Rio Rancho Observer says that the city is giving up.

On Dec. 15, the Rio Rancho City Council will consider two measures repealing the city’s incentives in trying to lure the green energy start-up company. “We think that based on where we are right now, it’s been eight months since we first received those assurances (of funding), the documents are a bit stale,” said City Manager James Jimenez. City Councilors are being asked to repeal the Green2V industrial revenue bond inducement resolution the city passed in April, and the city’s economic development act it had with Green2V.

The article goes on to say that the city was promised 3 times that the money was coming and that the city of Rio Rancho trusted former Intel executive Bill Sheppard. There’s a quote from City Manager James Jimenez that I think is true as well.

“We pride ourselves as being competitive when it comes to economic development and aggressively pursuing (projects). Frankly, I’m well aware that we would have been criticized heavily if Green2V had been able to get its financing together and locate in Arizona if we knew we had a chance to bring them here and didn’t – for whatever reason – aggressively pursue them.”

The Albuquerque Journal had an article in May titled “Betting on Solar … Again” about the poor track record of OCS capital who was supposed to originally finance Green2V.

OCS lists numerous clients and industrial revenue bond financed projects on its website that have never materialized, among them the $16.5 million Big Event Amusement facility and Beach Waterpark in Albuquerque; the $210 million Nuchick poultry processing plant in Artesia; and a $22 million project to build an aircraft manufacturing plant in Odgen, Utah. The website does not mention that none of these projects came to fruition. Although the OCS name appears on a letter included in the bond application Green2V submitted to the city, Housley said Green2V never paid OCS money and terminated its relationship because it found another company to work with.

Then Green2V switched from OCS capitol to GP3, Ltd. The New Mexico Watchdog couldn’t find that either OCS Capital or GP3, Ltd seem to exist.

New Mexico Watchdog has learned that no limited partnership called GP3 exists in California according to the records of the California Secretary of State. The only limited partnerships with the term “GP3″ in their titles have had their partnership status canceled. One was GP3 Asset Acquisition, LLC, which was formed in 2007. It traces back to an Ann Arbor, Michigan, address, but is no longer a recognized limited partnership in California. The other was entitled Walton 425 GP3 IV, and traces back to a Chicago address. But its status as a limited partnership in California has also been canceled.

I can’t blame the City of Rio Rancho going forward with this based on the recommendation of the governor but clearly all of those involved should have done more research on the company. It doesn’t appear that the city is out of a significant amount of money. Hopefully the City will do a better job in the future of bringing in high tech companies.

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A Rio Rancho Wireless Provider's Tower Comes Down

http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/tDrp0F_UB5g&hl=en_US&fs=1

A video on YouTube show the Roadrunner Wireless WiFi tower on Tulip Road in Rio Rancho, NM, being taken down by the City of Rio Rancho in late 2008. The poster of the video suggests a conspiracy by the city to prevent private business from operating freely.

A communications tower belonging to Roadrunner Wireless Services in Albuquerque, NM supplied wireless Internet to the citizens of Rio Rancho and Albuquerque, NM. This tower was taken down involuntarily on November 24, 2008. The Rio Rancho government illegally interfered with an Albuquerque business, stopping them from supplying wireless Internet to the citizens of Rio Rancho, NM. Now the citizens of Rio Rancho and Albuquerque have no wireless Internet for their jobs, education, etc. They were denied this access because the Rio Rancho government wants an outrageous and unfair amount of money in exchange for the right to deploy wireless Internet. Rio Rancho, NM is now a nationwide joke and embarrassment.

The poster of the video exaggerates the reasons for the towers disassembly. The Rio Rancho Observer says the tower was forceable removed because it did not have a permit and violated ordinances.

The city says the tower must come down because of an order issued by the 13th Judicial District Court in Sandoval County on May 23. The city sought this order from the court because when the tower was erected, it was done so without a building permit and subsequent inspection to ensure safety. The tower is also in violation of city ordinances for height and setback requirements for structures placed within a residential area. The height restriction is 32 feet, plus an additional 10 feet for roof-mounted structures such as chimneys and antennas.

While I support the ability of private business to do business in Rio Rancho, I certainly cannot support them doing it in a way that circumvents safety or city ordinances. This was near my house and as far as I can tell they haven’t tried to installed one legally two and a half years later.

Having looked at the possibly of subscribing to a city wide wireless provider, I found Roadrunner Wireless substandard. Their website used to look like it was mad in 1995 with a flashing star background, tables layout and broken images. Their website today is only slightly better but their coverage map of Rio Rancho can’t seem to load images.

The other city wide wireless provider, Azulstar, barley has coverage.

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More Fun Comments In The Rio Rancho Observer

The Rio Rancho Observers “Letters to the Editors” section continues to entertain. I think this person was on drugs when they wrote it.

Drugs legalized?

Editor:

According to an article in the Albuquerque Journal, we should legalize and subsidize drugs in order to prevent drug addicts from being killed while in the felonious pursuit of stealing, or robbing, using weapons of minor destruction.

It’s about time someone came forward with a logical solution to this problem, gee golly gosh, all along we thought it insurmountable.

Well, it just goes to show if you think long enough about a problem a solution will present itself.

Well people, you can rest easy now, sell your handguns, get rid of that ball bat and start feeding your pit bull again. The world, well maybe New Mexico, is a safer place now thanks be to solid intelligence, not unmixed with a heavy dose of whatever it is in that pipe, has arrived.

Quis,quid, ubi, quibus auxiliis, cur, quomodo,quando?

(Who, what, where, with what, why, how, when?)

Bob Harpley

Rio Rancho