Nick Seibel, editor and publisher of the Silver City Daily Press, covers top stories each week in the Silver City Report. This week, he talks about two new cases of New World screwworm in Grant County, ethics issues at Cobre Consolidated School District and more.
Susan Morée:
Nick, there's been another New World screwworm case in Grant County. What's going on?
Nick Seibel:
Two more actually, yeah, reported last week, one near Silver City and one down in the southern tail of Grant County near Hachita. So when screwworm cases are discovered, basically what the state does, they don't call it a quarantine zone, they call it an infested zone, but substantially the same thing. When the Grant County's first case was discovered in September, we found out through the public meetings they had around that veterinarians and state officials really couldn't figure out how that animal got infected, like it hadn't traveled, no other animals on the ranch where the horse was had traveled recently. So it seemed pretty clear that there were going to be more cases. And one of the things that the state and federal government are looking at is working to release some sterile flies. So basically, if there are flies breeding, that will sort of intercept that and stop things from going further. But definitely makes things more difficult on folks, particularly in the agricultural industry here in this part of the state.
Susan Morée:
What type of animals got infested?
Nick Seibel:
So this time around it was a horse and a calf. And they weren't specific about which one was Silver City, which one was Hachita. But so that makes three cases now in Grant County. The first one is listed as inactive, but that infested zone around that is still in effect. And yeah, so it's going to be some period of time we're going to be dealing with this, even if more cases are not found, because it's 84 days is the time that the infestation zone is active if no other cases are found in that area before those 84 days expire.
Susan Morée:
Okay. And Cobra School Board, there's some ethics issues going on there. What's going on?
Nick Seibel:
Yeah, well, you know, this has been an ongoing thing now for years. The school district has been behind in its audits. In fact, they've had a special audit that has been ongoing and got the results from the first phase of that audit back in July of 2024. Some of the findings in that audit was that there procurement code violations, violations of the state's Governmental Conduct Act, and violations of the anti-donation clause of the state constitution. And so the school board voted at their meeting Monday night this week to authorize the superintendent to file ethics complaints against seven former district employees that were identified in that special audit. As the superintendent said, she asked the board if she had their full backing because she noted that all of those seven employees still live in Grant County and she said it's definitely going to create discord in the community but she felt that it was important to hold people accountable and that it was her professional and ethical obligation to file those complaints.
Susan Morée:
Do those seven still work at Cabre?
Nick Seibel:
No, none of them are current district employees. And we don't know, I mean, I probably could hazard some guesses, but we don't know specifically who they are because in the version of the special edit that was released to the public, individual names are redacted. Although if those complaints get filed, perhaps we'll know more about that in the future.
Susan Morée:
And Hurley Police Department is hurting for officers. How are they trying to fix the problem?
Nick Seibel:
Yeah, they've been working on this for a while. They've been down to one officer, their interim police chief, for months now. They were initially in talks with the city of Bayard about combining their police departments together. Those are adjacent communities in the mining district. Those negotiations fell apart. Depending on who you ask, you'll get a different reason why. But as an interim solution, the town of Hurley has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Village of Santa Clara, another small mining district community. And basically under that deal, officers that work for the police department in Santa Clara, on one of their three days off each week, they're going to cycle through and do a shift in Hurley. And when they do that, they'll be wearing Hurley uniforms and driving a Hurley police unit, and they'll be paid. Their salary with overtime is going to be paid by Hurley, basically to augment their policing coverage in the interim. They did vote to hire a new officer.
Susan Morée:
Okay, and where can readers find these stories, Nick?
Nick Seibel:
You can find all this and more at scdailypress.com.
