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The City of Santa Fe is considering what, if any, changes should be made the the city charter, the founding legal document for city government. Six opportunities remain over the next few months for the public to give input about the kinds of changes they would like to see regarding the balance of powers between the mayor, city council, and staff positions. These findings from the public will be presented to city council in early 2027 where they will deliberate and discuss items that could wind up on the Fall 2027 local election ballot.

The broken remains of The Soldiers' Monument Obelisk are now on display at the New Mexico History Museum. Back in March, the Santa Fe City Council voted to put the pieces on display so the public could see the current state of the stones, and begin to understand the difficulty of restoring the monument with the original pieces. There's no admission fee to see the display.

Amira, the state-mandated AI reading screener, recorded K–3 students’ voices for two years, and parents say they were never told. At the Thursday, July 30, 2026 board meeting, Superintendent Christine Griffin announced the district will refrain from using Amira until the state Public Education Department issues guidance. If none arrives by August 14, the district says it will switch to i-Ready, which does not record student voices and was used formally in the district. Click here more information.

If your kid is in kindergarten through second grade in New Mexico public schools, an AI program called Amira is talking to them and recording their voice. And your school probably never asked you. Of the parents tech policy expert Ifeoma Ozoma has spoken to, not one was notified or given a way to opt out.

Ozoma says the real value for this private company is the data: terabytes of voice recordings from five-to-eight-year-olds, with no state privacy protections. Amira’s CEO claims the company “never ever” shares data, but a Willamette Week investigation found its Portland schools contract collects place of birth, disability information, even migrant status, and allows disclosure whenever “required by law.”

Wanna do something about this? Download the opt-out form and turn it in soonish, because assessments start in the first 30 days of school. You can also show up to the SFPS board meeting July 30th and demand Amira be made opt-in. And share this with another parent.

As you drive down Airport Road, you’ll find a community called Tierra Real, which is one of the only mobile home parks where the residents not only own their homes, but the land itself. The city started annexing neighborhoods off Airport Rd between 2012 and 2015, including Tierra Real, promising all the amenities that come with being a part of a city: maintenance of roads, streetlights, sewers and parks. But that didn’t happen in Tierra Real. It turns out that mobile home parks are considered private property. While usually they are owned by a corporation who can pay for maintenance, at Tierra Real, it is actually the responsibility of the residents to pay these costs. But unlike people who live in gated communities and pay into HOAs to take care of maintenance, these residents do not have the money to do so. To complicate things even further, the city says that they can only take over the maintenance once the residents get it up to code, something that will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Two years ago, residents took matters into their own hands and started cleaning up their neighborhood. We talked to Miguel Acosta from Earth Care, who has been working with neighborhoods across the Airport Rd Corridor to coach them in community organizing and capacity building, and to members of the Tierra Real Association.

The Association is holding a garage sale to raise funds for their community on July 25th:

You can drop off your donations at:

6385 Kryshana St.

From 2:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.

If you're unable to bring your donation, please call or text Martin at (505) 310-7422. We will be happy to arrange a convenient time to pick up your donation from your home. You may also bring your donations directly on the day of the garage sale before 8:00 a.m.

For the last year, the Community Kite Project for Gaza has folded kites representing each child killed in Israel’s genocide, and raising money for Palestinian families in the Gaza Strip. 505OMATIC spoke with Sarah Ruth, the Albuquerque artist behind the project, and Antoinette Noor Khader, a Palestinian-American poet, singer and founder of the Among the Rubble Collective.

Originally on display at the First Unitarian Church of Albuquerque, the project officially moves to El Museo Cultural de Santa Fe this Saturday with a family-friendly kite-folding event including music, poetry, and homemade Palestinian baklava and hummus. Presented in partnership with the Southwest Coalition for Palestine, Palestine Solidarity Santa Fe and Santa Feans for Justice in Palestine, the exhibition continues at El Museo for the next couple of weeks.

Among the Rubble Collective runs an ongoing mutual aid project providing water, hot food, blankets, and shoes to Palestinians in Gaza. In fall 2025, as Israel forcibly displaced Palestinians from the northern part of the Gaza Strip, ARC partnered with author Sim Kern to help more than 30 families move out of Gaza City.

Now, the Community Kite Project for Gaza is trying to raise money to evacuate a Palestinian family out of Gaza through neighboring Egypt. When the border is open, it can cost $5,000 in cash to evacuate just one person, and brokers take up to a 40% cut when withdrawing cash from bank funds, Khader said. Organizers have already raised about $15,000 toward the effort but the family has ongoing living expenses like baby formula, school tuition, tent repairs, and electricity.

The poem If I Must Die, by the late Palestinian scholar and poet Refaat Alareer, inspired the project. At their previous event, they played a recording of Oyoun, one of Alareer’s students and a cancer patient who has gone through two pregnancies, reading the poem; we have reproduced parts of that recording in our video with permission.

You can donate directly to the evacuation fund here.

You can also donate directly to Oyoun here.

What do you think? Does this make you wanna support this event this year?

more on Zozobra addiction to slop: https://www.505omatic.com/gloomscrolling-the-outrage-at-zozobras-a-i-onslaught/

As we celebrate 50 Years of Pride in the Land of Enchantment, we join Dr. PJ Sedillo in his home for a tour of the Pride Archives, 280 panels of local queer history, before their display this weekend as part of Albuquerque Pridefest.

If you haven’t been following the AI drama over at Zozobra‘s official Instagram account, here’s a one stop shop for the entire saga

With costs rising, ABQ is trying to put more money in workers' pockets with a slight minimum wage increase. City Councilor Tammy Fiebelkorm (District 7) has spent the whole year trying to get it across the finish line and argues (as the only economist on council) that the minimum wage should actually be A LOT higher. After a contentious meeting on Monday, the city council passed the ordinance on a 5-4 vote; now it heads to Mayor Tim Keller's desk for a signature.

Did you know New Mexico primaries are open for any registered voter to participate? You don't have to be affiliated with an official political party to show your support this TUESDAY, JUNE 2nd (or through early voting) for a party candidate the midterm election on Nov 3, 2026.

You can see our interviews with some of the candidates we were able to catch HERE!

After nearly a decade as New Mexico's top election official, Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver is term-limited so she's running for Lt. Governor. We interviewed her a couple weeks before the June 2nd primary. She calls private equity "bad, bad, bad" but isn't ready to back public ownership of PNM the way her opponent is, and she thinks the next governor needs to listen harder to people living below the poverty line, undocumented New Mexicans, and rural communities.

Sen. Harold Pope wants to be a different kind of Lt. Governor for NM. We interviewed Sen. Harold Pope Jr. a couple weeks before the June 2nd primary election to learn more about the issues he's running on and why he thinks fellow Democrats might be changing their stances on Blackstone. Go to 505omatic.com for a full length version of our interview where we dive deeper into Sen. Pope's stance on Project Jupiter, the previous administration's legacy, and how he'd work with the Democratic candidates for governor.