Ground broken on extension

By Bill Donovan
Staff Writer

Larry Maynard, District 6 engineer with the Department of Transportation, speaks at a groundbreaking ceremony for Bengal Boulevard near Gallup High School on Friday. The new road will help ease traffic congestion around the school when it is finished in September. [Photo by Brian Leddy/Independent]

GALLUP — Harry Mendoza can remember the exact time when he first realized that an extension was needed for the Mendoza Boulevard.

"It was 10 years, two months and 16 days ago," he said.

On that date, Mendoza was beginning his first day in office as a McKinley County commissioner and he decided that one of his primary goals was to get a road built between Mendoza Boulevard which extends from Nizhoni Boulevard and ending at U.S. Highway 66 just east of the high school.

When the extension was built no one had an idea that one day the city's high school would be constructed in the area and that there would only be one road going in and out from the school.

But Mendoza soon made everyone aware that an extension was needed to allow high school students another way to get into and away from school.

It took many visits, by Mendoza and others, before the $4.5 million was raised from federal, state and county funds to build the extension.

County Commissioner Dave Dallego said he remembered getting a meeting with Gov. Bill Richardson just before Christmas last year and asking for money for the project. Knowing that Mendoza had been there many times in an effort to get money, he and other county officials decided to just refer to the project as the Nizhoni extension.

But as soon as the project was brought up, Richardson turned and said, "Is this the road that Mendoza has been bitching about?"

Dallego had to fess up that it was but Richardson must have been in the Christmas spirit because he agreed to allocate enough money from his discretionary funds to allow the project to get under way.

The county on Friday held the groundbreaking for the project just off of Mendoza Boulevard and construction is scheduled to start on Monday and be completed by the end of September.

Larry Maynard, District 6 engineer for the New Mexico Department of Transportation, said the project fits in perfectly with the goals of the state in that it makes the roads safer for students who are driving to and from the high school.

"The students will no longer have to compete with business people as they go to school," he said. If the new construction saves the life of one student or one teacher, the project will have been worth it, he added.

Also singled out during the ceremony was City Attorney George Kozeliski, who was able through his contacts to get all of the right of way approvals for the project.

Mendoza, asked after the ceremony, about how he felt now that the project was a reality, said it had been a long, long process.

"But right now I feel great," he said.