A reasonable person listens to a District Court judge when he issues an order from the bench. Once youâve been dragged through depositions, examinations, records searches and arguments, the judge has the final say.
   Our local electric cooperative isnât that quick on the take-up. While we celebrated the departure of John Tapia, who was a clear roadblock to public access, the remaining staff and lack of oversight by the Board of Trustees has Jemez Mountains Electric Cooperative on a path that will lead back to District Court Judge Jason Lidyard.
   Lidyard made no bones about his decision on our records fight that ended in a Nov. 20, 2020 decision by Lidyard that the Co-op must produce all the documents requested by the Rio Grande SUN, including vouchers for payments to vendors, board books, supporting financial information, among other things.
   City of Española and Jemez Mountains Electric Cooperative are still trying to figure out who exactly owns which street lights in the city.
   Española City Manager Xavier Martinez said the two organizations met Feb. 12. The goal was to address issues with billing and establish who owns which light poles.
   âAll this needs to be nailed down and figured out because thereâs some issue with the billing,â Martinez said. âWe donât know what exactly the city is being billed for, we want to get a solid breakdown on that.â
   The Co-op provides maintenance on streetlights in Española and then bills the city for the lights it owns.
  At an executive session Tuesday trustee members of the Jemez Mountains Electric Cooperative elected new leadership, placing Dennis Trujillo as the new president of the Co-opâs board.
   Bruce Duran was elected to the seat of vice president, John Ramon Vigil is the boardâs new secretary, Dolores McCoy is the new treasurer and Stanley Crawford is the assistant secretary treasurer.
   All votes for each seat were unanimous.
   Trujillo said the COVID-19 pandemic provided some major challenges for the Co-op.
   âIt will be difficult, we are facing a lot of challenges regarding COVID and our big commercial users arenât operating at this time so weâre seeing a loss in revenue.â