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It must be the holiday
season – I’m about to spend my third weekend making biscochitos and tamales! All
of us will be caught up in the flurry of holiday activity, it’s hard to avoid
it. Why, even at the Laboratory we’re in the midst of our Holiday Drive,
gathering donations of food and gifts for families in Northern NM. And, even
though Lab staff have been wrestling with issues like the pending management
contract announcement, we managed to surpass last year’s United Way
contributions! It’s been a pleasure to see that the staff are definitely in the
spirit of giving back to the communities in which we live and work. And, I’m
sure that many of them are baking and cooking up a storm too!
As always, if you have any
questions or issues that you’d like us to check into, please let us know. Best
wishes for a safe and fun holiday season!
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Dazed by Business
Incentives? |
A partnership between Santa
Fe County and Santa Fe Economic Development Incorporated—or SFEDI—has produced a
new resource for small local businesses: a program to connect businesses with
economic incentives offered by the State.
New Mexico now offers more
than 30 incentives for businesses—including incentives for job training, rural
jobs, high-wages, and manufacturing investment. Finding the incentive program
applicable to a particular business can be daunting and
time-consuming.
Val Alonzo, SFEDI’s
Workforce Development Director, and Robert Griego, Santa Fe County Planner,
developed the new local program to help with the process. During a personal,
on-site visit, they gather data on the business’s activities, size, projected
growth, and other factors. They then correlate the data with State business
incentive criteria that determine if the business qualifies for the credits or
payments—which can be substantial. The data is also used, confidentially, to
gather statistics on Santa Fe County businesses to help in job and workforce
development.
Contact Val Alonzo at
984-2842 for more information.
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Sailing Ship in the Jornada
del Muerto |
Northern New Mexico is
world-renowned as the site of the Manhattan Project and Los Alamos National
Laboratory. On November 19, south of the Bosque del Apache and a stone’s throw
from Trinity Site, the governments of the U.S., Mexico, and New Mexico opened a
stunning memorial to the ancient heritage our communities share. Governor
Richardson and dignitaries from around the world dedicated the El Camino Real
International Heritage Center.
In presenting the history
of the Camino, the Heritage Center’s exhibit notes the importance of Ohkay
Owingeh—the Pueblo of San Juan—highlighting its place in history as the northern
terminus of the Camino and the first capital of New Mexico. The exhibit also
depicts the trail's use for millions of years as a seasonal migration route for
birds and mammals and for thousands of years as a major trade route for
America’s indigenous populations.
The award-winning Center
was designed to evoke the image of a sailing ship rising out of the middle of a
wilderness. A spectacular bridge allows visitors to go beyond the history
exhibit and feel what it was like to be a traveler in the forbidding Jornada del
Muerto, which stretches from north to south as far as the eye can
see.
You’ll find the El Camino
Center at exit 115 on I-25. It’s open Wednesday–Sunday, 9 am–4:30 pm. Admission
will be free through June of 2006.
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Fewer Blind Alleys
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The Technology Transfer
Division is helping another enterprise make the jump from research to business.
A small drug-research company that uses technology developed at the Lab is the
most recent recipient of a Los Alamos County Economic Development Loan. The
County’s Financial Assistance Program is lending Caldera Pharmaceuticals $2.2
million to build and equip a facility to use MESA technology to conduct rapid
protein tests for the pharmaceutical industry.
MESA is designed to reduce
the cost of developing new drugs. Finding a new drug can be expensive because of
high failure rates from adverse protein-drug interactions. MESA opens the door
to measuring these interactions quicker and more efficiently. This could save
hundreds of millions of dollars in drug-development costs as drug companies go
down fewer blind alleys.
This summer the MESA
process won a prestigious R&D 100 Magazine Award because of its promise of
speed in the disease-fighting process. According to MESA inventor and Caldera
founder, Ben Warner, “We can do in eight minutes what others do in a
day.”
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Five Win Business Spirit
Awards |
Five northern New Mexico
entrepreneurs were honored by the Empowering Business Spirit (EBS) Initiative at
an awards event at the Española Valley Fiber Arts Center on November 3. Funded
by a $2-million grant from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, the EBS Initiative in
northern New Mexico is a network of over 20 small-business service providers,
educational organizations, entrepreneurship advocates, and government entities,
including the Technology Transfer Division at the Lab.
Winners of the $250 awards
were Jason Goodhue, Taos Valley Honey; Aspen Noelle, Aspen Noelle Couture,
Espanola; Rosemary Lonewolf, Artist, Pueblo of Santa Clara; Sue West, Sue West
Productions, San Miguel County; and Michelle Martinez and Lisa Maestas, Little
Bug Child Development Center, Taos.
Española City Councilor
Joseph Maestas was the master of ceremonies. “The EBS network is what rural
economic development is all about,” he said, “coming together to help small
businesses gain access to the services they need to grow and be
successful.”
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Procurement Progress
Report |
The Laboratory made
progress in fiscal year 2005 in contributing to northern New Mexico's economy,
the Lab's Small Business Program Manager Dennis Roybal has announced. Buying
from northern New Mexico businesses increased by more than five percent over
2004—for a total of over $420 million. Small business set-asides more than
doubled—from $61.9 million to $154.5 million. Purchases from small businesses
increased by $5.5 million—to more than $376 million, just under 40% of the Lab's
total purchases.
Roybal said Small Business
Program staff are working on several fronts to continue making progress. He
listed the recently launched forecasted
opportunities website that alerts businesses to upcoming purchasing
opportunities, a small business mentoring program, and strong implementation of
small business subcontracting plans as important initiatives.
"The results show that our
efforts are working, but we still have more work to do," Roybal said, citing the
need to increase procurement by businesses that qualify under the categories of
woman-owned and service disabled veteran-owned.
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GMA to Visit Taos
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ABC’s Good Morning America
has confirmed they will be sending a crew to do a segment on the Lighting of
Ledoux Saturday evening, December 3rd, from 5 to 8pm. The Taos County
Chamber of Commerce was instrumental in convincing GMA to visit Taos and
experience our unique blend of cultures. The tentative date for airing the
segment is December 11, 2005.
Lighting of Ledoux Street
is an annual Taos event ushering in the holiday season. Named after two French
fur trappers, Ledoux Street is situated on a slight ridge where several adobe
structures were built at the beginning of the 19th century most probably by the
brothers Ledoux. At that time there was a bristling fur trade in Taos. With the
influx of artists in the years after 1898, Ledoux Street became the community’s
first art district.
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CALENDAR
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