From an recent AP article:

Santa Fe tops global list for its clean air
 
 
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — New Mexico’s capital, which regularly tops rankings for its quality of life, has something new to brag about. The first-ever World Health Organization survey on air pollution said Santa Fe’s air quality readings are among the cleanest in the world.
Santa Fe Mayor David Coss said he’s pleased but not surprised as the city consistently gets high rankings from the American Lung Association.
“It’s one of the things we love about living in Santa Fe,” he said.
The high mountain desert city is used to ranking high on lists of best places for living, visiting and playing. In fact, Coss said he is traveling to New York next month to find out if it will win Conde Naste travel magazine’s No. 1 ranking of places to visit.
“We were voted in the top three best cities to visit,” he said. “I am going to see if maybe we are No. 1.”
Santa Fe and the Canadian Yukon Territory’s capital Whitehorse were among the cities with the top rankings in the global survey from WHO, which measures the levels of airborne particles smaller than 10 micrometers — so-called PM10s — in almost 1,100 cities.
Whitehorse had a yearly average of just 3 micrograms of PM10s per cubic meter, while Santa Fe measured 6 micrograms.
“It’s absolutely wonderful,” said Whitehorse Mayor Bev Buckway. “A lot of people come up north and they smell the air and the say, ‘Oh wow. Amazing. The air smells so good,’” she said. “And we tend to take it for granted because we just have that all the time.”
Washington, D.C., had a level of 18 micrograms, Tokyo measured 23 micrograms, and Paris had 38 micrograms of PM10s per cubic meter.
Cities in Iran, India, Pakistan and the capital of Mongolia rank among the worst on the planet for air pollution.
The southwest Iranian city of Ahvaz walked away with the unfortunate distinction of having the highest measured level of airborne particles smaller than 10 micrometers. Ahvaz’s annual average of PM10s was 372 micrograms per cubic meter. Heavy industry and low-quality vehicle fuel are the main causes of air pollution in that desert city of 1.3 million.

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Fiesta de Santa Fe: Spirit of community on parade
Robert Nott | The New Mexican
   

 Some were hysterical — like the float featuring pirate ravens fighting ninja prairie dogs. Others were historical, like the Johnnie’s Cash Store float celebrating 65 years of small-town, family-owned business. Some celebrated long-held traditions of the region, as with the La Sociedad Folklorica float. And some were just cars and trucks draped with banner advertisements for political figures, local organizations and long-standing community groups.

Yet, the more than 100 floats and vehicles involved in Sunday’s Historical/Hysterical Parade — which started around 1 p.m. and wound through the streets of downtown Santa Fe for a couple of hours — certainly shared a sense of community.

Which is what the parade is all about, according to many of the participants, who showed up as early as 6 a.m. Sunday at the starting gate on Guadalupe Street near the DeVargas Center to register and prepare.

“It’s about sharing the true meaning of Fiesta, and not just getting caught up in Zozobra,” said Jessica Lucero, a member of La Sociedad Folklorica and a former La Reina de la Fiesta. “Our float celebrates the state’s official cookie, the bizcochito. A lot of Northern New Mexico traditions are based on family and friends getting together and making memories, and a lot of that activity revolves around food.”

Maria McMahon, who serves on the parent advisory council for the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi, feels the same way. The church’s float featured a roughly 12-foot replica of the cathedral — with room enough for a youth marimba band to play.

“The parade is a huge community event, a huge social event,” she said while volunteers put the finishing touches on the float. “These are the sort of things you don’t always get in the big cities. Isn’t that why we live in Santa Fe?”

Part of that life in Santa Fe — according to some students from the Santa Fe University of Art and Design — is the ongoing battle between defenseless prairie dogs and predator ravens over at the college campus.

Float spokesperson Yusef Seevers related a rather convoluted tale of how the prairie dogs, realizing they were being picked off by the pirating ravens, began taking up ninja battle tactics to fight back. The float featured a rather gruesome-looking image of huge dark birds descending on a prairie dog village.

The float’s band planned to play music throughout the parade as the float moved along the route. But that band’s name seemed to change as quickly as the story behind the ravens and prairie dogs.

“Call us Improv,” Seevers said of the band. “We play original work, contemporary, classical, post-modern, apocalyptic. We span across the entire musical range; we span across boundaries. We are the boundaries. In fact, that’s our new name — call us Boundary.”

Santo Niño Regional Catholic School parents and students set up a more sedate, playful float across the way, one based on the children’s game Candyland, replete with Candy Cane Forest, Gum Drop Mountain and the Chocolate Swamp.

School Principal Theresa Vaisa said the fifth-grade students came up with the concept for the float — on which small buckets filled with candy rested. The students also made their own Candyland costumes.

Kindergartner Shania Murillo was helping prep the Candyland float around midmorning Sunday. Proving herself to be a master at brevity, she answered all questions in one word. Does she like Candyland? Yes. Is the parade fun for the community? Yes. Will she fall off the float? No.

Aside from some vehicles promoting local and regional politicians, there was little sign of political floats, be they historical or hysterical. But citizen Susan Lopez entered a car decorated by banners calling for Public Regulation Commissioner Jerome Block’s resignation.

“Resign now,” one of her signs read. “Our schools need the $.”

As both a mother and a Santa Fe Public Schools employee (though she emphasized she was not speaking for the district), Lopez said the news that impeachment hearings for Block could cost taxpayers $1 million motivated her to get involved.

She said parade officials initially suggested to her that they would not let her in the parade. “They said the float has negative connotations and they want to keep it cheerful,” she said.

“I pointed out that this has always been a political parade, that I am not defaming anyone, and that I am just stating the facts. This is not politically motivated — it’s common-sense motivated.”

She credited parade officials with accepting her argument and letting her take part. Perhaps it helped that she had the popular Peanuts character Charlie Brown walking near her car during the parade.

When the parade was over, Lopez said she received almost unanimous support from spectators along the way, although one lady said to her, “That’s not nice.”

Other floats were musically oriented — like the one that Capital High’s performing-arts department entered with a “Yellow Submarine” theme. All four Beatles were present, as were some Blue Meanies, the Walrus and other “Submarine” characters.

But Capital senior Jennifer Valerio was pretty honest about why the group chose this theme: “Because our marching band was learning ‘Yellow Submarine’ to play in the parade.”

Parade officials said there were no major problems or disruptions during the event. Oddly enough, they said no one seems to know when the parade actually started as part of the city’s Fiesta celebration, though they are fairly sure it dates back at least 50 years.

 WINNING ENTRIES

Hysterical

1st place: Wings for Hope/Toys 4 Tots

2nd place: Santa Fe Spirit Cheer

3rd place: The Hive

Musical

1st place: Santa Fe Care Center

2nd place: Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi

3rd place: Divine Destiny

Western

1st place: Bear Creek

2nd place: First Impressions

3rd place: Santa Fe County (Fair) Queen

Historical

1st place: La Sociedad Folklorica

2nd place: Johnnie’s Cash Store

3rd place: La Chica Latina

Link to Original Article Here

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ARTICLE:

Santa Fe Economy: Optimism tentative, but definitely in the air: Turnaround time?
Bob Quick | The New Mexican 

It’s not a rip-roaring recovery, but things are finally starting to pick up after several woeful years, say local business people, an economist and others.

“I think we can say the worst is behind us,” said Mark Boyd, an economist with the state of New Mexico’s Department of Workforce Solutions. “The economy looks a lot stronger these days.”

“The feeling I get in the last couple of months that things are starting to turn around, thank God,” said Maggie Hanley Welles, the new association manager of the Santa Fe Gallery Association.

There’s still negative job growth in New Mexico, Boyd said, but the economy has reached the point where it’s going to start showing some positive growth again.

Santa Fe, Boyd said, was ahead of the rest of the state in lost jobs, especially when it came to construction. “Construction jobs stayed down a long time,” Boyd said. “It was a huge hit, and it showed just how deep the recession was.”

Most recently, the mining, logging and construction sector of the local economy lost more jobs — 100 jobs since November, according to the state Labor Market Review.

On the other hand, three industries — information, government and other services — reported over-the-year employment gains.

Four important industries — retail trade, transportation, warehousing and utilities and educational and health services — reported flat employment levels.

“The Santa Fe job market has been weak for over two years but is improving,” the Labor Market Review said. “At its worst last summer, the number of jobs was down as much as 6.8 percent over a
12-month period.”

By the end of 2010, Santa Fe’s employment picture started to improve with the pending construction of a new Walmart, with 300 employees, later this year and the announced expansion of CleanAIR Systems, with 50 new jobs.

Boyd expects revised economic performance numbers to be available around the end of March.

Bryan Chippeaux, president of Century Bank, said Santa Fe took longer than many places to feel the effects of the recession and is now seeing a belated turnaround.

“Real estate is improving, but no one is calling it a trend,” he said of Santa Fe’s real-estate market. “Everybody is nervous.”

Chippeaux said Santa Fe has benefited for the last year or so from a stronger stock market performance. Santa Fe is a beneficiary of discretionary income earned from investments in stocks and bonds.

As for Century Bank, “we made money this year, just not as much as we’ve typically done,” Chippeaux said. “We’re working much harder and making less money.”

One reason for that is the federal regulations that continue to come down, often resulting in additional expenses for banks, he explained. That means a lot of banks will be looking for additional fees to compensate for those expenses.

As for Santa Fe’s important tourism sector, Art Bouffard, president of the New Mexico Lodging Association, said last year’s tourism numbers “showed a slight uptick” over the previous year. “We think it’s going to increase slightly in 2011.”

Santa Fe’s Community Convention Center is bringing visitors to town, but not enough, Bouffard said. “It’s a lot of locals. They’re not bringing money to Santa Fe.”

Bouffard also said the Hyatt Place, Santa Fe’s newest hotel, off Cerrillos Road, “is doing fairly well.” Given the downturn in the economy and tourism numbers, no other hotels in Santa Fe are being planned, Bouffard added.

Keith Toler, director of the Santa Fe Convention and Visitors Bureau, said “the word is out that we’ve got a convention center. So far this year, 74 events are under contract, with another 38 tentatively planning to sign contracts.”

He added: “We will probably exceed the 182 events we had last year” at the convention center.

Among the returnees are the Bead Fest and the Japanese Cultural Festival. One of the largest conventions, with 500 visitors, is a cancer research group arriving in mid-February.

Art sales have been and will continue to be an important part of Santa Fe’s economy.

When it comes to those sales, “I am somewhat of an optimist,” said Welles of the local gallery association. “We’ve seen mixed reports of slow times and fairly good sales this month and during the holiday season.”

Welles calls it “lucky” that Santa Fe is a winter resort as well as a summer one. “It’s good for the hospitality industry and for the gallery industry,” she added.

Artists, Welles added, “need to be very creative and exert a certain amount of ingenuity to keep their numbers up.”

This includes visiting art fairs around the region and the country and doing art auctions online, she said.

Welles also said a new website, www.santafeart.tv, was launched at the beginning of the year and is a “fantastic way” to foster interest in Santa Fe galleries and artists.

The Santa Fe Gallery Association has also introduced a new category of association membership that allows for associate business members to join at reduced rates.

“This is a good time to be a member,” Welles said. “We’re really trying to get this show on the road.”

Link to Original Article Here

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This top ten list is as follows:

1)  Bend, Oregon: Once a destination town, now a highly sought after place to live, Bend represents a great place to find retirment real estate.

2) Las Vegas, Nevada: Into shows, gambling, and the sun.  Las Vegas has all of these.  Combine that with a giant inventory of homes, and prices 50% off what they were only a few years ago, and you’ve got a deal.

3) Phoenix, Arizona: See Las Vegas, without the gambling.

4) Napa, California: Fantastic weather, great proximity to a world class city and pristine vineyards, lower prices have made this a desirable place to find a retirement home.

5) Fayetteville, Arkansas: Home to the University of Arkansas, low home prices reign supreme for retirees.

6) Punta Gorda, Florida: If boating, fishing, and hugely discounted real estate is your thing, this place may be for you.

7) Burlington, Vermont: This beautiful Northeastern hamlet has great restaurants, outdoor activities, and the University of Vermont.

8) Ft. Meyers, Florida: See Punta Gorda, but bigger.

9) Santa Fe, New Mexico: If you’re reading this, you know why this place is so great. If you don’t, give us a call and come visit!

10) Santa Cruz, California: While still expensive, home prices have dropped. Combine that with some of the best California coastline and a laid back attitude and you possibly have retirement heaven.

Link to the U.S. News and World Report Here

Contact Matt Desmond and Ryan Bolton

one of those is the Dale Ball trail system. In Santa Fe, unlike the other fitness “meccas”, you can access the trails within five minutes of downtown. The Dale Ball Trails are 17 miles worth of city own and maintained trails in the foothills of the rockies. This trail system also provides access to the Santa Fe National forest, and endless miles of  hiking, biking, running, snowshoeing, etc.

So please, join us in celebrating and personally thanking Dale, for the gift he has given Santa Fe.

And according to the American Lung Association, all of these things have an extra level of richness due to the cleanliness of the air.  Currently, Santa Fe is ranked 2nd in the country for cleanest cities in regard to year round particle pollution. This surely won’t come as a surprise to most Santa Fe residents, most of whom bask in the clean, fresh, mountain air daily.

Admittedly, at times during the windy spring months when dust fills the air this may be a bit hard to believe. And like today, when there is a fire in the bosque of Albuquerque, the air quality doesn’t seem all that pristine.  But in Santa Fe we are spoiled.  Most days are crystal clear, and the hues of the sky are unlike anywhere else.

Other cities on the top 25 list include: #1: Cheyenne, WY (not shocking as the population of the entire State of Wyoming hovers around 500,000), #3: Honolulu, HI (ahhhh, Hawaii), #4 Anchorage, AL ( a bit like Wyoming),  #7: Tuscon, Arizona, and #8: Albuquerque, NM (our neighbor to the south).

The cities on the other side of this list include: #1 Phoenix/Scottsdale, AZ (interestingly only a couple hours from Tuscon, #7 on the cleanest list), #3: L.A., CA (really, is anyone surprised?), and #5 Pittsburgh, PA. 

Just another reason to love living in the City Different!

Link to the American Lung Association rankings

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The prettiest towns list doesn’t rank any one town as the prettiest, but rather lists multiple towns that fit their criteria. This criteria was designed by an eclectic mix of people ranging from designers, photographers, artists, and writers. They took into account physical beauty as well as historical significance and interest. There are a few surprises (at least to us), and I was pleased to see a town on the list that I am very familiar with, Deadwood, SD. Other towns to make the list include; Dillon, MT, Cambria, CA, Union, WA, and Rockport, ME.

Forbes Prettiest Towns Article

The “Best Small Places For Business and Careers” list is filled with mostly western and mid-western towns. Santa Fe ranked 23rd due to it’s projected job growth, educational attainment (percentage of people with college degrees), culture and leisure, and array of small colleges. As with much of America, Santa Fean’s are probably a bit surprised by the “projected job growth ranking (8th overall), as many feel the local potential for job growth is, uh, well, not that great.  However, as we are perpetual optimists, we hope they are right. Other towns to make this list include; #1 Sioux Falls, SD, #7 Bend, OR, #11 Rapid City, SD (woohoo!), and #21 Lawrence, KS.

Forbes Best Small Places For Business and Carrers Article

Regardless of what the boys at Forbes say, we continue to think that Santa Fe should make every positive list that they can come up with. I guess that’s why we live here.

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Festivities are abundant in Santa Fe as well. Throughout today and the rest of the week there are many activities for the environmentally conscious.  Check out the list below for a schedule of eco-cool activities in the City Different.

Today!

9:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m.: Tree planting at Agua Fria Elementary with The Santa Fe Watershed Association and Earth Care International.

3:00 p.m.-7:00 p.m.: La Montanita Co-op is hosting an Expo of local nonprofits and businesses.

6:00 p.m.-8:00p.m.: Join the Green Drinks  group at the Rio Chama Steakhouse for a presentation and book signing by San Francisco eco-entrepreneur Scott Cooney.

6:30 p.m.: The Native Plant Society of New Mexico presents a free talk by Robert Sivinski, New Mexico state botanist on “Southwestern Cienegas — Rare Habitats for Endangered Wetland Plants” at REI in the Railyard.

Friday (23rd)

10:00 a.m.-3:00 p.m.: Garden celebration and work at the new Hopewell Garden.

6:00 p.m.-10:00 p.m.: Earth Care International’s Youth Allies present an Art and Social Change Show at Warehouse 21

Saturday (24th)

10:00 a.m.-3:00 p.m.: Tree planting and service day at The Community Farm and San Isidro Park

10:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m.: Santa Fe Garden Fair with garden exhibits and discounted plants at the Santa Fe County Fairgrounds.

10:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m.: Water and Energy Expo at the Hilton Santa Fe Historic Plaza

Sunday (25th)

10:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m.: The Water and Energy Expo continues at the Hilton Santa Fe.

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Of course, it talks about Santa Fe real estate, the local economy, and the views/thoughts of locals.

Here is the article: