Local News

The city of Las Vegas appears to have found its way out of a budget predicament that could have meant big cuts for its general fund.

City Manager Sharon Caballero said the city received a letter from the state last week indicating that it had approved a revised city budget.

The state Department of Finance and Administration had been concerned with a longstanding $740,000 deficit in the solid waste department as well as a $260,000 shortfall as a result of miscalculations in the last fiscal year’s expenditures and revenues.

Certified officers at Highlands University can now carry guns.

Discussions about arming the Highlands police force have been going on for more than a year in committee meetings and student and faculty senate meetings. The Board of Regents on Friday unanimously voted to arm the certified officers.

President Jim Fries said Highlands is its own police jurisdiction and is required to be the first on the scene.

The state hopes to start the Grand Avenue improvement project in 2009 and get it done a year later.

Paul Gray, district engineer for the state Transportation Department, said the project already has $4.7 million, including $1.2 million in federal economic development funds, enough to make the project a go.

Transportation officials recently promoted the project shortly before a session of the state Transportation Commission, which met for a couple of days in Las Vegas.

An employee of Alta Vista Regional Hospital has sued his employer over what he calls a pattern of bias against northern New Mexican Hispanics.

Carlos Coca, who has held a number of supervisory positions at the hospital over the years, filed the lawsuit earlier this month in state District Court.

His attorney, Dennis Montoya of Albuquerque, states in the lawsuit that Coca has been a target of discrimination in the years since Tennessee-based Community Health Systems Corp. bought the formerly nonprofit hospital in 2000.