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Santa Fe horse trainer and racing enthusiast Tony Martinez talks about his days working at the Santa Fe Downs in the 1970s recalling the names of horses and jockeys from that era as his wife his wife Lou Martinez fills in gaps during an interview at their home on Thursday, June 6, 2025.
Santa Feans remember The Downs
Thousands of people gathered at The Downs at Santa Fe as the Grateful Dead stunned a Santa Fe crowd.
The afternoon of the legendary concert on Sept. 10, 1983 — one of two shows the Dead performed that weekend — was tempestuous. A prolonged desert shower forced the band to pause. Then a rainbow appeared across the property, viewed as something transcendent by the band’s rambling and loyal disciples.
“There was this glorious revelation. The sun came out and the Dead came back on,” said Don Usner.
The show came amid The Downs’ heyday, when it doubled as a popular racetrack and entertainment venue southwest of Santa Fe. The old grandstand, sitting vacant along Interstate 25 in La Cienega for the better part of 25 years, recently was demolished, making memories flow for local Deadheads of a certain age.
Deadheads aren’t the only ones with fond memories of The Downs. A former horse trainer, 83-year-old Tony Martinez has almost perfect recall for races run there.
“We had some really, really good times at The Downs,” Tony Martinez added. “We really, really miss it. It just gets into your blood.”
He is one of many longtime local patrons of The Downs who lament its demise and now its disappearance. The faded grandstand has been demolished, toppled in the last few weeks to make way for redevelopment plans by property owner Pojoaque Pueblo.
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Darvi Soto, left, Andres Davis-Martinez Brandy Huerta and Eddie Mendoza from Station 7 don their gear before a training exercise that closely resembled an escape room challenge in full turnout gear on Thursday, June 5, 2025 at the Santa Fe fire training facility on Siler Road. Recently, the Santa Fe police and fire departments have made significant progress in reducing their vacancy rates.
Santa Fe makes progress on police, fire vacancies
Although vacancies in the Santa Fe police and fire departments have long been a stubborn problem, the city appears to be making progress on tackling it.
The fire department has 10 vacancies currently but is in the process of hiring several new firefighters, which will leave it with four vacancies in its frontline operations division after July 22.
The police department has 13 vacancies out of 169 sworn officer positions, but two new officers are expected to join the force June 21, leaving it with 11, Deputy Chief Ben Valdez said. That’s down from 38 vacancies in July 2022.
“We have a better story than we’ve had in quite some time,” Valdez said. “These are rates that we have not had, I’d say, in at least 10 years for police officers.”
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Bob Wolf, a volunteer at the Food Depot, prepares bags of groceries during a food distribution effort at the Food Depot on Siler Road on June 5, 2025.
Local nonprofits face funding cuts
Twenty-six trucks were supposed to deliver groceries to The Food Depot between April and December of 2025.
Two weeks before the first truck was scheduled to arrive, staff at the Santa Fe food bank learned the food — a mix of expensive and tough-to-source groceries like yogurt, milk, chicken and produce — wasn’t coming after all, Executive Director Jill Dixon said.
The goods were from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Emergency Food Assistance Program, which in March was hit with $500 million in funding cuts.
It’s a common story for New Mexico nonprofits these days. A new report commissioned by the Thornburg Foundation, Anchorum Health Foundation and Santa Fe Community Foundation surveyed more than 200 nonprofits across the state, finding “federal funding cuts may disproportionately affect New Mexico.” Some $1.1 billion in grants has been awarded to the surveyed New Mexico nonprofits with only about half paid out so far.
The other half of that money can be — and in some cases, has been — clawed back, all while philanthropic funders are likely to see a surge of funding requests and steep competition for private dollars.
Read it all at santafenewmexican.com.