Nick Seibel, editor and publisher of the Silver City Daily Press, covers top stories each week on the Silver City Report. This week, a big drug bust in mining communities, the Town of Silver City Council votes to keep the Silver City Museum in the midst of budget controversy and an old building gets a new life providing camping opportunities.
Susan Morée:
There were some drug busts last week. Tell us about what happened.
Nick Seibel:
Yeah, last week, a number of federal agencies, including the DEA, the FBI, Border Patrol, and Border Drug Task Force, worked with the Grant County Sheriff's Office to make some big drug arrests in Grant County. They were in both Bayard and Hurley a little bit last week and ended up arresting six folks on drug charges. Five of them are in federal custody now and facing federal charges there. Basically, they put together a long investigation and all the folks are basically accused of being involved in distribution of both methamphetamine and fentanyl. So definitely it was one of those things that happened in the morning sort of woke up some folks out there in those mining district communities, but I think a lot of people are happy to feel like some action is being taken on drug problems in the community.
Susan Morée:
Okay, and the Silver City Museum, there's been some controversy around it lately, and there was a town council vote. Tell us what happened.
Nick Seibel:
Yeah, there's been some real strife around the Silver City Museum over the last couple of years. For more than 30 years, the Silver City Museum, which is part of the Town of Silver City, it's the town's museum, has kind of been aided by the Silver City Museum Society, which was formed more than 30 years ago to kind of be the fundraising arm. For a long time, they ran a gift shop in the museum, they helped coordinate volunteers. In fact, the last fiscal year, they had agreed to fund about $200,000 in staff positions at the museum. But as time went on and there was turnover on the board, there got to be some real friction between the museum administration and the folks leading the Museum Society to the point where really they kind of reached a standoff. They declined to give the town that funding for those positions, leading the museum to be $200,000 over budget last fiscal year. And some of the folks in leadership at the Museum Society had actually kind of been asking the town to consider turning over the museum to them to operate and have it no longer be a town department, which was appealing to at least some members of the town council who are looking to balance budgets and are looking to pay town staff more. There's a lot of ways to spend money and not everyone thinks that a town museum is the best way to do that. So at last week's Silver City Town Council meeting, it was about a three and a half hour long meeting, and about two hours of that was a closed door session where the council was talking largely about the museum and the negotiations. The council voted by three to two to maintain control and continue operating the museum. It was a two to two tie vote of the council with Mayor Simon Wheaton-Smith casting that tie breaking vote, which is a pretty unusual situation on the town council.
Susan Morée:
Do you think there will be more stories around this in the future?
Nick Seibel:
Oh yeah, absolutely. Because the Silver City Museum Society has over $1,000,000 worth of money that they fundraised on behalf of the museum that they still have control over. And obviously the town wants one way or another to have that money go to support the museum, which is what it was raised to do. So figuring out exactly how all that gets resolved is still ahead of us. Although there's a number of people pleased that the town is keeping the museum, there's also a lot of folks that are kind of unhappy with the situation and definitely there's going to be more to come.
Susan Morée:
Okay, well, we look forward to hearing more about that as time goes by. And you have a really lovely story for us about a new campground in Silver City. Tell us about that.
Nick Seibel:
That's right. The Silver City Water Works Building, which is actually, it's a building that housed the pump room and the engineer and his family Silver City's first municipal water supply, built almost 140 years ago. The town has owned it since the 1920s. Thanks to some nonprofit organizations coordinating with the town and a lot of volunteer hours, they've basically spruced up the yard. The property behind the historic building is now a campground, which targets Continental Divide trail hikers, but really is kind of open to anyone to book and stay at. There's a cost, $21 a night to camp there. has access to kitchen facilities and bathroom facilities, and a whole lot of native plant landscaping there. It kind of ties into the Silver Creek Botanical Garden across Silver Creek, the ditch there, and it's right next to Jose Barios Elementary School, which starting this fall will be the home of Aldo Leopold Charter School, and all those students, through their YCC program, did a lot of that work in developing the campground, so it's sort of nice to see new life come to that property, and kind of see things coming full circle in a lot of ways.
Susan Morée:
And where can readers find these stories, Nick?
Nick Seibel:
You can find that and a lot more at scdailypress.com.