Letters to the Editor

By KEVIN HOLSAPPLE
Los Alamos

Councilors – Please take action to support the establishment of an MRA Commission that will evaluate MRA proposals in the light of day, operate in a manner that is transparent to the public, and make recommendations on proposals prior to the County Council about funding them.

In my experience, the County staff is inexperienced in the kinds of proposals that may come forth, is not committed to true transparency or public participation, and lacks a good grasp of local business community priorities.

The Council seems to lack the bandwidth to conduct in-depth evaluation Read More

By BRUCE WARREN
Los Alamos

I was sorting out some old paperwork recently and came upon this essay, which I wrote when I was 13 and a student in the Freshman Class at Sutherland, Nebraska.

The America it describes is no longer recognizable today. All of the freedoms it mentions are under attack by the current administration.

The Constitution is being shredded in order to give Trump authoritarian powers.

In 1956, memories of World War II and its epic battle to defend democracy were still very strong.

Today, we need to fight the internal enemies of democracy that are running our government.

Essay: What Read More

By LESLIE LINKE
Los Alamos

I implore Los Alamos County to install streetlights on Diamond Drive along the golf course.  It is a very dangerous stretch of road.  Instead of spending millions of dollars to reconfigure our children’s baseball and soccer fields and install AstroTurf at exorbitant cost, this money would be MUCH better spent on making our community safer.

About 6:40 p.m. on January 15, 2026, I hit a deer.  I’m the most careful driver I know, and I always go through that stretch of road slowly, watching for the deer.  He was not there, then he was two inches from my front left bumper.  There Read More

By GARTH READER
Los Alamos

Hey Los Alamos, how would you feel if development of public lands occurred with:

• No/limited input from the surrounding community
• No/limited input from user groups
• No approval from oversight entities
• No environmental or engineering reviews
• No consideration of the long-term impacts of the development

Now, how would you feel if this occurred in Los Alamos County and our surrounding Federal public lands? Well guess what, it is happening right here, right now.

There has been an explosion of “user defined” trails being carved out of your public lands. These trails are Read More

By GEORGIA STRICKFADEN
Los Alamos

Dear County Council and Los Alamos Citizens,

As an advocate for Open Spaces, I find that the North Mesa Park Master Plan contains an encroachment into an already “heavily used” natural amenity on the eastern canyon edge. Please keep reading. At the end I have a suggestion for an alternative.

Quoting from the Introduction in the North Mesa Master Plan, 

“SITE ANALYSIS AND INVENTORY
COMMUNITY CONTEXT & CURRENT USES

The North Mesa Recreation Area encompasses approximately 26 acres of County-owned land on the northern edge of Los Alamos. The site is zoned Read More

By LYNN HANRAHAN
Los Alamos

A nice Sunday afternoon walk in mid-January around North Mesa. Not much happening. Said hello to all the horses and goats at the stables. Sort of worried when I saw a young dad pulling a wagon with two toddlers down North Mesa Road but it wasn’t really any of my business.

Kept going past the Picnic Grounds toward the Roundabout – the final stretch back up the mesa home.  Got to the last little crosswalk segment and was on the cusp of crossing when a car going easily 60 or 70 maybe, appeared out of nowhere coming from the direction of the Golf Course and blew the crosswalk. I thanked Read More

Read More

By RICK NEBEL
Los Alamos

This is a response to Dr. Prisca Tiasse’s recent op-ed on innovation. Although I’m not a policy person, I think what she said made a lot of sense. Low cost and overhead are important for making your company resilient. Startup companies usually don’t have a lot of resources.

Right now, there are 10 acres of undeveloped land at the old, cleaned up nuclear waste dump on DP Road. Utilities have just recently been installed, and 480 three phase power is available. My understanding is that the cleanup level isn’t high enough to build housing on it. Recreational facilities may also Read More

By GEORGIA STRICKFADEN
Los Alamos

After many planning and tweaking sessions, which were primarily dominated by an exuberant bicycling crowd, the North Mesa Park Master Plan was approved by the Parks and Recreation Board on Dec. 11, with very little discussion. The plan now will go before the County Council.

See for yourselves the North Mesa Park Master Plan here.

Neighborhoods adjacent to the park include Tsikumu Village, La Mesa Mobile Home Park, Pueblo Canyon Cliffs, Broadview Estates, and two apartment complexes. These residents will be most affected by the developments proposed in this Read More

By SANDY CHARLES
Los Alamos 

There certainly has been much written about a duplicate bridge for Los Alamos. It makes the Los Alamos Daily Post headlines at least once a week (They play weekly).

Actually, we could greatly use two duplicates to the Omega Bridge—one from the end of Los Pueblos on Barranca Mesa to the Los Alamos Middle School on North Mesa, and another from the Los Alamos Middle School over to downtown. (I believe there is room to attach one near the Masonic Lodge.)

It seems this project will be commencing quite soon. Now is the time to offer all your great ideas on the construction, Read More