Weekly News – Aug 10, 2022

Aug 10, 2022

Greetings Everyone,

Our speaker tomorrow is Farmington Police Chief, Steve Hebbe.  Chief Hebbe will give us an update on the Real Time Crime Center.  He will speak about crime trends in our community and nationwide, the officer-involved shooting research study, Farmington Police recently participated in, and updates on our recruiting efforts.  Chief Hebbe will also discuss the renovations and move to the new police building.

A big thank you to Mayor Nate Duckett for presenting to us last week.  The Mayor told us, we are fourth in the state for the size of a municipal budget of  $301,000,000 of which 88 million will go into the general fund, 16.8 million to our 58 parks and recreation, and 21.5 million to public safety, just to name a few of the distribution.  Our police officers received a 15% pay increase, we are most happy to hear! We learned from Mayor Duckett, the city purchased the new 50,000 square foot police building, fully furnished, for a mere $3,000,000.  Mayor Duckett also told us the 2022 gross receipts tax was up 15.5% which translates to 9.6 million in surplus.  He also said, the State of NM has funded our $40,000,000 Pinon Hills Bridge Extension Project.  We appreciate  Mayor Duckett for taking the time to come update us on our beautiful city and we thank him for the wonderful job he does.  We are proud of our Mayor, Nate Duckett!

We plan on inducting into Kiwanis, Raeann Knight of Citizens Bank, at tomorrow’s noon meeting.  Please come join us and welcome Raeann into our fun and exciting club.

KIWANIS BOARD MEMBERS, PLEASE PLAN ON ATTENDING OUR MONTHLY BOARD MEETING IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING TOMORROW’S WEEKLY NOON MEETING.

The Back To School event at Farmington Civic Center, sponsored by American General Media and Presbyterian Medical Services was a huge success.  Thank you to our volunteers who worked this event, Gary Hanson, Kathleen Mellott, Chris Troyer, and Jennifer Perry.  You rock!

Dave Orner of Albuquerque Kiwanis, has gifted Kiwanis 56 library books for our African Library Project.  Nikki will arrange to pickup the books from the Aztec Library.  Dave has offered to share with us, 25,000 more book. We’ll take them!  Thank you Sir Dave! 

The Farmington Regional Animal Shelter (FRAS) is in need of volunteer foster families.  FRAS says, “fostering provides crucial overflow space to animals between homes, too young to be adopted, or recovering from illness or injury.  Fostering also provides lessons for children that can enrich their lives forever and it is rewarding for the entire family.”  The foster application can be completed at  fmtn.org/767/Fostering  or you can visit the animal shelter at 133 Browning Parkway.  If you have any questions, please phone (505) 599-8386.

We would like to thank our guests for attending our meeting last week.  Bobby Brooks of the United States Marines (thank you for serving and keeping Americans safe), son and guest of Bob Brooks,  Debbie Joslin of The Children’s Hope Foundation and guest of Shelly Diede,  Kaylee Ortiz, granddaughter and guest of Bernadette Alarid.  Thank you all for taking the time to attend our Kiwanis weekly meeting.  Hurry back!

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