Master of mud
Delegate keeps campaign promise to fix roads

ABOVE: Edmund Yazzie, a council delegate from Thoreau, says Country Road 27 north of Coolidge, needs to be paved. BELOW: A truck travels down County Road 27 north of Coolidge on Saturday afternoon. Yazzie is working to improve the condition. [photos by Brian Leddy / Independent]

By Bill Donovan
Staff writer

THOREAU — When Edmund Yazzie was trying to get support to run for the Navajo Nation Council, he promised the people if elected, he would work day and night to get county roads 27 and 51 improved.

Since this is something that Thoreau residents have been saying they needed for decades, it came as no surprise to many in that area when he actually won the race.

That was two years ago and what has come as a surprise to many is the fact that he has actually gone ahead and done what he said he would — work night and day to find the money to improve those roads.

A tribal Council delegate who actually is keeping a campaign promise — that’s something you don’t read about much in newspapers these days.

And he’s having some success.

Last month, he went before the McKinley County Commission asking for $40,000 to do a center line survey on portions of those county roads, the first step to getting the roads chipped and sealed so that residents will be able to use them year-round.

“Right now, I’m only talking about a total of 10 miles on both those roads,” he said.

He knows it is going to cost between $500,000 and $600,000 but he has ideas on how to get that money.

He’s been calling officials for the Navajo Nation Department of Transportation almost daily, talking about how the county roads in Thoreau are impassable, even with a four-wheel drive, when it snows or rains. As for school buses, forget about it.

A couple of hundred Navajo families live along he roads and depend on them to travel to and from the Thoreau area. Right now, however, dependable is not a word that can be used to describe transportation on either road.

On one level, the almost daily phone calls to Navajo DOT shows a persistence that is unusual these days in a politician, much less than someone with only a couple years of working in the Council under his belt. But before he became a Council delegate, he worked at various times as an investigator for the Sheriff’s Department and the McKinley County District Attorney’s office.

There he learned the art of patience as well, knowing that it may not be this time or even the next time when the suspect will break down but eventually, if you keep at it, they all do.
So he used this technique to get people who had the power to help his constituents want to do it. So it didn’t come as a surprise when DOT officials finally blinked.

He didn’t get any money but he was told that someone has been detailed to work with him — on a daily basis if necessary — on the road improvements his chapter wants.

It’s a start, he said. Get the people in power’s attention — money usually flows.

County Manager Tom Trujillo is impressed, saying Yazzie has been one of the most, if not the most, active tribal Council delegate in the county trying to get things improved for his constituents.

Not only has he been involved in the road issues in his area but he was also involved with the county sheriff’s department and the Navajo Nation Division of Public Safety to get cross deputization improved so that sheriff deputies would be able to handle crimes that occur on Indian land and tribal police would be able to handle crime in off-reservation areas so that people were safer.

Trujillo said Yazzie has also been involved in a county project to make life better for young people in Thoreau who have been complaining about nothing to do.

So the county is working to create a skateboard park in the Thoreau on county land. Thanks in part to Yazzie’s efforts, this should become a reality in a couple of months.

As for Yazzie, he’s having a ball. “I’m enjoying being a Council delegate,” he said, adding that he realizes that it’s not a easy life.

“You’re on call 24 hours a day,” he said, pointing out that during the 15 minutes that he was interviewed for this story, his cell phone rang three times. “I often get calls at 11 p.m.,” he said.

Each phone call is important. After all, it may be someone who will bring his goal of making those road improvements one step closer to reality.