{"id":22681,"date":"2025-04-16T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-16T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/our-view-hurd-bands-solar-and-a-college-presidency\/"},"modified":"2025-04-16T11:00:00","modified_gmt":"2025-04-16T11:00:00","slug":"our-view-hurd-bands-solar-and-a-college-presidency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/our-view-hurd-bands-solar-and-a-college-presidency\/","title":{"rendered":"Our view: Hurd, bands, solar and a college presidency"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rep. Jeff Hurd, who represents Western and southern Colorado, is challenging the president by being one of two Republicans in the House so far to sign onto a bill that asserts Congress\u2019 right to have a say in determining the country\u2019s tariffs (Journal<\/em>, <\/em>Apr.<\/a> 7). That power is in the Constitution, Hurd points out, and it\u2019s not for the executive office alone to decide.<\/p>\n

The bill would require Congressional notification within 48 hours of the president\u2019s intention to impose or increase import duties and afford legislators 60 days to approve, or not, any new tariffs.<\/p>\n

While the legislative effort has no chance of passing given Donald Trump\u2019s authoritarian control, and pledge to veto, Rep. Hurd deserves great praise for being willing to be visible in doing what all of Congress should be doing.<\/p>\n

At some point, Republicans will find their voice. The sooner the better.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Music makes the world go round. For Montezuma – Cortez Middle Schoolers, their teachers, families, a supportive administration and community, it certainly does.<\/p>\n

In an era of reduced funding for education, the Journal\u2019s <\/em>editorial board is pleased to know that not only is the district\u2019s music program going strong \u2013 with 100 students enrolled in band at the middle school and 300 at Montezuma-Cortez High School \u2013 but excelling such that it is (Journal<\/em>, <\/a>Apr. 9).<\/p>\n

Congratulations to Montezuma-Cortez Middle School band members for working hard and taking home superior ratings, top honors, at this year\u2019s Northwest New Mexico band evaluation, to band teacher Andrew Campo, and to the NWNM band directors who invite the students back every year. The opportunity to perform, be evaluated and learn to receive feedback is a critical life lesson.<\/p>\n

The earlier its learned the better, whether through art, social studies, history, math or music, studying, learning a language or musical notes, performing and being evaluated is not easy, especially in the 11 to 14 years.<\/p>\n

For a chance to come together as a community and across generations, come out for the free all-district band night, a tradition for over 50 years, at 7 p.m. Thursday in the MCHS gymnasium.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

The Montezuma County Board of Commissioners did a wise thing last Tuesday by placing a six-month moratorium on processing any new large-scale solar energy development applications (Journal<\/em><\/a>, Apr. 9). Their rationale seems simply to make sure the county\u2019s land-use code has adequate language to define utility scale solar energy development, something the current code does not do, before any more applications are considered.<\/p>\n

In fact, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in a 2024 report <\/a>identified Montezuma County as one of 10 of Colorado\u2019s 64 counties to have \u201csome solar land use regulations\u201d and one of eight of counties to have \u201cno relevant definitions present\u201d in its land-use code.<\/p>\n

This pause will allow time to review the code and remedy that and not affect the JUWI Inc.\u2019s proposed 140-megawatt Canyonland Solar Project that will be considered again at planning and zoning\u2019s May meeting. Kudos to the commissioners for making sure the county has all its T\u2019s crossed and I\u2019s dotted with an important emerging industry.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Congratulations to Dr. Heather Shotton for, on Friday, April 11, with unanimous support of the Fort Lewis College Board of Trustees, being named FLC\u2019s president (Journal<\/em><\/a>, April 11). Her confirmation is historic, as Shotton, a descendant of the Kiowa and Cheyenne nations and citizen of the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes, is the college\u2019s first Indigenous president.<\/p>\n

She has served in leadership positions at the college for three years, was intimately involved in crafting the new strategic plan, so knows FLC, the community and the challenges of delivering higher education in Colorado.<\/p>\n

Now the serious work continues. Demographic changes mean that there are fewer high school students in the state and in parts of the country who\u2019ll be able to become college freshmen, and Colorado\u2019s funding of both pre-K-12 and higher education is lacking. The value of a four-year college education is periodically questioned, and this is one of those times.<\/p>\n

For workforce preparation, which some parents and students want, that can mean additional certificate programs that signify accomplishment in more specialized areas, and even more internships and academic related work experiences that the college is already so good at.<\/p>\n

It is not an easy undertaking to be a college president. We wish Dr. Shotton well and great success.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rep. Jeff Hurd, who represents Western and southern Colorado, is challenging the president by being one of two Republicans in the House so far to sign onto a bill that asserts Congress\u2019 right to have a say in determining the country\u2019s tariffs (Journal, Apr. 7). That power is in the Constitution, Hurd points out, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[125],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-22681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-newsletter-opinion"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22681\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22681"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=22681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}