Exactly $15 million has been approved by New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham for the long-planned building of a new Magistrate Court Building in the city of Bernalillo.
The project is one of around 80 capital outlay requests approved this spring for larger Sandoval County and getting a subsequent thumbs-up from the Governor. Altogether, the state’s fourth largest county is seeing some $44.6 million in new capital outlay spending.
Officials in Sandoval, which is additionally the fastest-growing county in the state, have wanted to relocate the Magistrate Court from its existing address at 1000 Montoya Road to a district court site off New Mexico State Road 528 as part of a part of an overall court facility expansion in what is the state’s 13th Judicial District.
Other capital outlay projects approved for Sandoval County include $2.1 million for the building of a new county animal shelter; $2 million for electric grid work at the Santa Ana Pueblo; and $1.2 million for the building of the new Sandia Pueblo Child Development Center, which is expected to be completed in the summer of 2025.
Just over $1 million is targeting the construction of a new Fire Station Number 8 in Rio Rancho.
Additional projects include $951,000 for work at the Ask Academy in Rio Rancho; $650,000 for the construction of an applied tech program building on the Rio Rancho campus of Central New Mexico Community College; and security system improvements for the Rio Rancho Public School District, with $350,000 in funding.
The number of individual capital outlay projects for Sandoval County has grown as the county’s population has seen a near doubling in the last two decades from 89,000 to nearly 156,000.
By Garry Boulard
