Thanks for the election

Editor:

I want to thank all of the Sandoval County residents who re-elected me as Sandoval County Treasurer. I appreciate your continued support. I’ve always had an open-door policy and my office is non-partisan. I or my staff will be most happy to assist you. We’re available to serve everyone. I invite you to stop by the office or call 867-7579 or 867-7580 with any concerns you have. Your tax bills are in the mail and please do not be upset with me or my staff for receiving your bill or increases in your bills. There are a couple of reasons your bills might have increased. For example, taxpayers in Rio Rancho will see an increase for the newly passed CNM tax which voters approved. It is effective this tax year. Another reason could be an increase in your assessment. Questions regarding valuation, change of address, ownership and exemptions are handled through the Assessor’s office at 867-7562. Recordings are conducted in the Clerk’s Office. 

Our office is primarily responsible to collect and distribute your property tax monies to all governmental agencies and special taxing districts. I have no authority on your valuation nor do we set the collectable tax rate. We are also responsible for all financial investments.

I pledge that if I don’t have the answer, I will try to direct you to the right person. I also pledge to treat everyone with respect and to uphold the trust you have put in me.

Again, a b-z-z-z-zillon thanks for your support.

Lorraine Dominguez

Sandoval County Treasurer

Check the facts Jack

Editor:

Once again, The Observer has proven itself to be a poor neighbor by failing to check facts before publishing someone’s rant (Nov. 3, Letters to the Editor, “What is church coming to?”). A telephone call or visit with one of our bulletin editors would have revealed that the telephone number our letter-writing parishioner complained about was not a church number, but that of another of our parishioners — a private, U.S. citizen with the same right to free speech that all private, U.S. citizens are entitled to — and even more to the point, that none of the parish staff had any knowledge of the content of the message at that number. Had anyone here known, of course, the telephone number would not have been published in our church bulletin at all, for just the reason our letter-writer mentions.

Insofar as the Catholic Church’s pro-life teaching goes, our position on abortion, euthanasia, etc., has been in place, in some form or other, for the past 2,000 years. Thus, we are not the ones who made abortion a political issue in this country; the U.S. Supreme Court did that in 1973. Our church is simply continuing to say what we have always said on the subject. Truth is absolute and unchangeable. That some of our church’s members happen to disagree is irrelevant.

Please be more careful in the future, and take the time to verify allegations. An editorial disclaimer could have been printed in conjunction with the letter The Observer received that would have allowed its writer her own free-speech rights and clarified the matter.

Jeannette Schlicher

Director, Adult Ministries

St. Thomas Aquinas Church

Don’t believe fairy tales

Editor:

A few decades ago, it was announced that there was an aquifer “as big as Lake Erie” under Albuquerque. Independent hydrologists — those not obliged to keep developers and their ever-dutiful minions, politicians, happy — rolled their eyes at the outrageous claim. Today, Albuquerque diverts San Juan-Chama water — assuming it flows out of the high country in drought — because the aquifer is petering out, a story not unlike that of the Ogallala Aquifer under the Great Plains that was assumed so big it simply could not be used up. Yet, it shrinks like an icicle in July.

Now, the media reports (The Observer, Nov. 2) — and never asks key questions or independent sources — that enough water for 300,000 people for 100 years rests beneath Rio Rancho. Even assuming one believes that fairy tale, a fundamental question remains: What will those 300,000 people do 100 years out as that closed, non-recharging aquifer, too, peters out? There is no water even today to make up the difference, with even less chance in a by-then far more arid, more populated Southwest. There will be no San Juan-Chama bailout for Rio Rancho.

All this is disturbingly similar to the “devil take tomorrow” thinking on Wall Street that led to the current financial crisis. Politicians owe us better than a similar “devil take tomorrow” attitude or risk a dangerous water gamble — on the backs of future residents — to try to continue land speculation for a bit longer as the core of Rio Rancho’s too-long real estate development-dependent economy.

Kathleene Parker

Rio Rancho