Nick Seibel, publisher and editor of the Silver City Daily Press, covers top stories each week on the Silver City Report. This is a transcript of his conversation with Susan Morée.
Susan Morée:
So, Nick, there was a really terrible stabbing in the Mimbres Valley. Tell us about it.
Nick Seibel:
It happened on the roads into Silver City from the Mimbres Valley. EMTs with GilaRegional Medical Center responded to a call out in Mimbres and picked up a 35-year-old out there who was being transported to GilaRegional Medical Center. And on the drive into the hospital, basically the EMT that was driving the ambulance looked back and saw that the patient had started fighting with the EMT attending to him in the back of the ambulance. He pulled the ambulance over and opened the back, pulled his coworker out and found that he'd been stabbed in the neck, actually, by the patient. So they locked the door. You can, apparently, lock a patient inside the ambulance, and a contractor at the Chino Mine was actually driving past, picked them up, gave them a ride to another ambulance, and ended up getting treatment for the EMT, who I understand is recovering from the injury. Sheriff's deputies came out and released the man from the ambulance, placed him under arrest, and he's since been charged in that case. The whole incident resulted in a relatively brief lockdown at Gila Regional Medical Center. It was definitely a rough day last Wednesday. Glad that everyone's going to be all right there.
Susan Morée:
Yeah, that's a terrible story.
Nick Seibel:
Definitely, could have been worse.
Susan Morée:
Yes, very much so. Let's talk about the five finalists now down to four at Western New Mexico University. What's going on there?
Nick Seibel:
Yeah, yesterday afternoon, Western New Mexico University announced that Cameron Braxton, who's currently Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at La Salle University, had withdrawn his name from consideration. He'd been scheduled to visit Silver City on Thursday this week, which means that the pool of finalists is down to four, conceivably making the Regent's decision a little easier. Those campus visits begin today, so there will be a campus visit today and on Friday, and then next week on Tuesday and Wednesday. So all of those visits will include a public session for members of the community to meet and greet those finalists. Each one of those is in Miller Library up on campus from 4 to 5.30 in the afternoon on those days that those candidates will be visiting. And then the regents have said that they expect to have a decision made later on next month.
Susan Morée:
Okay, I'm sure we will all be looking forward to finding out who the next president of Western New Mexico University will be. And tell us about Silver Consolidated School Board. There's something new happening there. Tell us about it.
Nick Seibel:
Silver Schools have been very proud that they were awarded a$5 million grant for mental health initiatives through the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. That's a federal grant there. Silver Schools were the only school district in New Mexico that got awarded one of those grants. Of course, there's been a lot of upheaval around that as there have been around federal moneys in general over the last year or so. The Department of Education announced that the mental health grant didn't meet the new administration's priorities last year and that they would be discontinuing the remainder of that grant. Anumber of state attorneys general, including New Mexico's, took the government to court and basically won a judge's decision saying that money should be reinstated. And then late last month, the judge granted a motion from the Department of Education allowing it to basically put off paying some of that money because of the timing of the ruling in the winter holidays. And then they subsequently got another injunction on further payments. Silver Schools kind of doesn't know what the future of that federal money is, but fortunately, the State of New Mexico has stepped up to help them cover some of the costs of the people that they had brought on board. Of course, it's always been the school district's plan to sustain the mental health programming that they have done with this big grant beyond the terms of the grant. It just made the runway a little bit shorter, and thanks to the State of New Mexico, the PED, and the Department of Health, they will be able to keep those people on board to keep that programming going in the school district.
Susan Morée:
Okay, mental health is very important in the schools. And where can readers find this news?
Nick Seibel:
Yeah, we'll have reporting on each one of the presidential finalists' visits to campus and a whole lot more at scdailypress.com.
