Nick Seibel, editor and publisher of the Silver City Daily Press, covers top stories each week on the Silver City Report. This week, Fierro residents going without phone service for a month, Silver Consolidated Schools are still fighting with the federal government to keep a previously allocated grant for mental health programs and the long-time Grant County manager announces retirement.
Susan Morée:
Nick, there's quite a story you have about no telephone service for parts of Grant County for a month. What happened?
Nick Seibel:
This seems like a very old-fashioned kind of problem to say some folks were without landline telephone service for more than a month in the area of Fierro. And you think, that's quaint. A lot of folks don't even have landlines anymore. But Fiero happens to be one of those areas, which are pretty common, actually, as you get in more rural places, where there just isn't good wireless service. There isn't good cell phone reception. And so having a landline phone is really important for the folks in that area just for day-to-day life, but especially in case of an emergency should they need to call for EMS or fire. or something. They basically didn't have any access. So a number of residents in the Fiero area, including the post office up at Hanover, were without phone service for more than a month after a thunderstorm on the night of June the 2nd. One couple that we spoke to had contacted CenturyLink customer service and scheduled seven different appointments for someone to come out and fix their phone service and no one ever showed up and it never got fixed. And that continued until they reached out to the Daily Press earlier this month and we called CenturyLink to try to see what was happening and then miraculously phone service was restored. The CenturyLink technician told the couple when he came out that it was a problem with the AI service that CenturyLink uses that somehow the request had gotten stuck in a loop and had never actually been referred to a real person on the ground here in Grant County to look into the problem. But the story’s really kind of raised eyebrows all over, including for the emergency manager for Grant County, who is looking at how this can be addressed if this becomes a problem in the future, because certainly a potentially really bad situation for the folks that live up in that area.
Susan Morée:
Right. And if you can't call for help, what are you going to do? Send smoke signals?
Nick Seibel:
Exactly right. In fact, the couple that we talked to, they talked about needing to schedule just a regular appointment for something non-emergency. And, they had to drive halfway into the Silver City to the Department of Transportation yard to be able to have good enough cell phone reception to be able to make the call and get that scheduled.
Susan Morée:
And you have another story for us about the ongoing saga of the Silver City Schools and a mental health grant that they were getting from the federal government. Tell us about the latest in that.
Nick Seibel:
Such a mess. Yeah, I mean it was a big feather in the cap for the Silver Consolidated School District. They received a $5 million grant from the Federal Department of Education for mental health care, a groundbreaking sort of program that the school district implemented with that federal money, which was a multi-year grant. And when the Trump administration came into office a year and a half ago, they did a lot of things, including rescinding this mental health grant. So first the school district and then 15 state attorneys general took the federal government to court. And in fact, last December, there was an injunction in the case basically saying that the education department couldn't cut off that grant. But, and there's always a but, the Department of Education announced that they were planning on discontinuing that again, and in fact saying that if there wasn't a judgment by the end of this week that they were going to start rescinding that money. And so, the attorneys general went back to court and received a temporary restraining order this week. So all of those things are back on hold, but the feds have not given up declawing back that money that's going to support mental health of school kids here in Grant County.
Susan Morée:
That's too bad. And let's talk about the Grant County manager who has announced that she's retiring.
Nick Seibel:
Yeah, a lot of people are pretty upset about that. Charlene Webb has been the Grant County manager for a number of years. She's decided that it's time to step back and look after her health and her immediate family. And so, the Grant County Commission is going to be doing some hiring here soon.
Susan Morée:
All right, and where can readers find these stories, Nick?
Nick Seibel:
You can find all this and more online at scdailypress.com.
Susan Morée:
All right, thanks so much.