The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the New Mexico Public Health Department recommend that unvaccinated people continue to wear masks, while vaccinated people can remove them.

What that means for Gallup-McKinley County Schools has yet to be determined. At the June 12 board meeting, GMCS Superintendent Michael Hyatt said he would pass along the guidelines from the New Mexico Public Education Department for the upcoming school year as soon as they became available. He also said the CDC may be changing the mask directives again.

Hyatt said the district would address issues about students’ return to school in the fall by sending out a survey to parents about in-person...

Four Corners Detox Recovery Center picks up the ball

When NCI (Na Nizhoozhi Center) was closed down during the pandemic, the state’s Behavioral Health Services Division approached the Santa Fe Recovery Center for help.

Santa Fe Recovery, which was established in 2005, became the parent of a Gallup branch now-called Four Corners Detox Recovery Center. The newly-established operation opened in January.

Then, only a few months later, on May 14, Rehoboth McKinley Christian Health Care Services suspended operations at the WellSpring Recovery Center.

That’s when the detox center decided to expand its services.

On June 24, a little more than a month after WellSpring closed...

Which local events to fund; how much to give

The Lodgers’ Tax committee met May 25 to determine how upcoming area events would be funded.

Since the hospitality industry took a hit last year during COVID, the amount of money available for this year’s funding is smaller than it has been.

Gallup’s Tourism and Marketing Manager Jennifer Lazarz told the Sun how the tax works.

People pay Lodgers’ Tax when they stay at hotels in Gallup. The tax comes out to five percent of an area hotel’s daily rate. When a person pays $80 a night, $4 goes to the Lodgers’ Tax.

Lazarz said that Gallup’s average daily rate for hotel rooms was $66 the first week in April 2020. During the...

Week ending Friday, July 9, 2021


Seafood Bake

The deadly heat wave that roasted the U.S. Pacific Northwest and western Canada also cooked more than a billion seashore animals to death, leaving a putrid stink near Vancouver, B.C. University of British Columbia experts say the heat, combined with low tides in the middle of the afternoon, created dangerous combinations for animals like clams and mussels for more than six hours at a time. Observers say temperatures above 50 degrees Celsius occurred on some rocky shoreline habitats. Professor Dave Sauchyn of Canada’s University of Regina says this summer’s unprecedented heat occurred years earlier than predicted by models, in a sign...