City choses Mendoza Road for funding

By Zsombor Peter
Staff Writer

GALLUP — After spending hundreds of millions of dollars on state-owned roads around New Mexico over the past few years as part of Governor Richardson's Investment Partnership, the governor is turning his attention to city and county roads. It's the $250 million second phase of the project, called GRIP 2, and the City Council will be selecting the project it wants the money to help fund today.

Staff has picked out Mendoza Road, which will cost $3,480,000 to overlay and restripe the section that already exists and to install storm and sewer lines along the section being built.

Because GRIP 2 still needs to be approved by the New Mexico Legislature, the resolution the council will be voting on tonight would also lend the bill the city's support.

GRIP 1 helped pay for the reconstruction on Interstate 40 west of Gallup and will be used to widen U.S. Highway 491 to four lanes north of Tohatchi.

The council could also end up picking a new handle for the currently named Municipal Golf Course Tuesday.

Since announcing its intention to rename the course in November, the city has received 65 suggestions from 32 individuals. The Golf Course Committee selected its two favorite entries for the council to chose from: Fox Run, for the foxes occasionally seen running across the course, and Cedar Ridge, for the trees that surround it.

The city has renewed its efforts to improve the course over the past few years, and ithired a superintendent to revive the greens last summer. Assistant City Manager Larry Binkley said the name change is intended to signal a change in the course's fortunes and to erase some of the stigma associated with municipal facilities.

The meeting is scheduled to begin at 7:30 p.m. inside the City Council Chambers.

At 6:30, the council will start planning the city's 2008 budget with the first of two hearings for department heads. It's their chance to tell the council what they want in their budgets for next year.

Binkley said the department heads were told to plan budgets equal to this year's. Although the general fund is anticipated to grow by three to four percent, he said, most of the increase will be taken up by employee raises.

The city must have its budget in to the state by June 1 for approval. The fiscal year begins one month later.