It’s called Duke City Fix , and even though Perry enjoys the group blog about Albuquerque, he says it can’t supply news like the other three traditional news sites he visits.

That has him worried as the news industry faces declining revenues and staff cuts.

“Bloggers, we get a lot of information from the media ourselves,” he said. “If the news media is not really reporting that, how are we going to find out? There are a lot of interesting stories I’ve only gotten from The Tribune and nowhere else.”

The closing of The Tribune is the Albuquerque example of a news industry that’s in turmoil nationwide. Local news junkies, independent online journalists and bloggers say they’re concerned about a growing information void, even as some of them are taking steps to fill it.

“We’re going from newspapers to the Internet, and we’re not there yet,” said Heath Haussamen, an independent journalist who reports on and analyzes New Mexico politics at nmpolitics.net.

“Newspapers are hurting, and Internet sites, on local levels, aren’t quite making it yet. Some are, but it’s not common.”

Haussamen, who also wrote a column for The Tribune, began his site in March 2006 while a reporter at the Las Cruces Sun-News. Advertisers began contacting him, and he quit his job with the newspaper two months later to work full time on the Internet. His site’s daily traffic has increased tenfold since launch to around 800 unique visitors a day, and he estimated $1,700 worth of monthlong ads are running on the site now.

“In a small state like this, I don’t think this kind of site can make the kind of money to support a family,” he said. “That’s one of the difficulties.”

But money isn’t the main appeal for Haussamen. It’s the freedom to do the in-depth work he enjoys.

“One of my big frustrations was that hard news or investigative stories weren’t getting done,” he said. “I was told, ‘There’s no time for this.’ ”

But there was time for lighter stories like covering popular ice cream flavors during the summer, he said.

“I thought,” he said. “it was a waste of my time to be doing stories like that.”

Those are the kind of stories Perry, who runs a blog focusing on Albuquerque mass transit big-abq-things.blogspot.com, expects that newspaper or newspaper Web site readers might see more of as journalism organizations shrink.

“It’s essentially just stuff to make ratings,” he said. “Car crashes, a murder. It’s not really stuff I’m interested in like, say, city government — kind of smaller things, which are admittedly less interesting to most people.”

A news world full of popular-ice-cream-flavor or car-crash stories might sound harmless, but with less investment in difficult, investigative, time-consuming journalism, Chantal Foster, the founder of Duke City Fix, sees serious threats.

“The deep work, the deep thinking, data analysis — that’s one of the things I particularly see as the greatest loss for civilization,” she said. “Our best work as humans comes from the times in which we’ve objectively looked at what’s going on around us.”

It’s the kind of work she and other Duke City Fix users, who volunteer their contributions to the site, typically don’t have the time to perform, she said.

Paying people to do that type of work for Duke City Fix is a possibility but not a goal, she said. It would only happen if it helped accomplish the site’s core mission: creating a socially constructive online community that expresses Albuquerque’s identity.

“It would be a means to an end,” she said.

Foster said she has received requests to sell ad space on the site, but she has not done any serious estimation of potential revenues, nor does she plan to any time soon. She recently began accepting a small number of Google ads to help pay for the cost of running Duke City Fix.

Looking to the future, she sees online newspapers evolving into a mix of the hyper-personal, opinionated approach of blogs and journalism that strives — but can’t, she notes — to be objective and opinion-neutral.

“It will be some compromise between that hyper-personal and obviously biased voice we’re used to from bloggers and what I call the false screen of journalistic distance,” she said. “It will be a shift, but it will be a welcome shift.”

Joe Monahan, the man behind New Mexico Politics With Joe Monahan, doesn’t see objective news going out of business, but he does see it getting smaller and becoming one of many niche information products on the Web.

“That top-down model — here’s your newspaper; here’s what you get — is coming to an end,” he said. “That doesn’t mean professional journalism is coming to an end. It’s just going to be transformed.”

He guesses readers might see an evolution of the model seen now: A traditional news organization, along with others, provides the initial information, while journalists — or bloggers — provide analysis, reaction and additional, original reporting.

“I do see people like me doing it full time and making a living off it,” he said. “I’ve had a successful financial model. It’s just a question of how many people want to do it. It’s a tremendous amount of work.”

Monahan described his site as “significantly profitable” but said the money is still less than what people will want to make.

Still, with the affordability and ease of Web publication, he sees many opportunities for young journalists willing to strike out on their own.

“As this new generation takes over, they’ll find the model that fits,” he said. “The key is to have the freedom to publish.”

She had to do something to help with the family’s monthly medical bills, which were running in the thousands of dollars.

She had to do something about the family’s house payments as her employee, who preferred to remain unnamed, shifted money to health care.

“They’re wonderful people in a situation that’s awful,” said Campbell, co-owner of Campbell & Campbell Real Estate Services in Albuquerque. “We’re just trying to do everything we could do.”

Campbell helped organize a fund-raising barbecue, raffle and donation drive that, with the generous assistance of her staff, had collected $4,500 as of mid-December.

Campbell isn’t the only one in the Albuquerque area making an extra effort to help those in need, especially around the holidays. Stories of generosity are too numerous to track down, but a few can serve for the rest.

Some people are sharing food and belongings to set an example of generosity for their children. Others want to repay the favor of being helped themselves.

Some, like Campbell, want to help create a world of goodness where they would be treated with the same sympathy and kindness.

“If something happened to one of my kids, I’d look at it like the same thing,” Campbell said. “I would hope people would step up and help.”

She expressed amazement with the number of people who have helped.

“There are a lot of big hearts out there,” she said. “Sometimes I think we just don’t hear of it all the time in the news; the majority of which you’re going to get is negative.”

Classmates who care

Jana Henton, a fifth-grade teacher at S.Y. Jackson Elementary School, also says a lot of good gets missed.

Take the students at her school who have raised about $37,000 so far to help pay the medical bills of their classmate, Lane Cuthbert. The 10-year-old fourth-grader has Wegener’s granulomatosis, a potentially fatal disease that inflames blood vessels and can damage organs, and his classmates wanted to lend a hand.

“We want to help him because he’s really nice, and it’s really nice to help someone who is nice,” said Megan Schoepke, a fifth-grader who serves on the Student Council. “I hope he feels better, and I hope they find a cure for him so he can get better.”

The students have held a pickle sale and benefit dinner. A growing collection of donated books will be sold Jan. 30. Funds from the school’s annual St. Patrick’s Day bake sale will also go to Lane.

Robert Foster, Lane’s father, said he wasn’t surprised by the community’s reaction, but by the extent of it.

“It is just amazing,” he said. “The people coming up to you and saying, `I live right here, this address. If you guys ever need anything, just come on over.’ That just helps us deal with it and get through it.”

Henton gives credit to Lane’s classmates.

“The ideas and energy behind it have been generated by the kids,” she said. “Kids have good hearts.”

A mother’s hopes

Good hearts are made, not automatic, warns Placitas resident and mother Kathy Goldsmith.

“If all the children grow up thinking you’re not supposed to help, what’s going to happen to the people who actually need it? If everybody stops helping, it’s just not going to work. Life won’t work,” she said.

Goldsmith has been giving away extra food, donated by friends trying to help out her and her two 3-year-old daughters, for about a year to anyone who asked. She expanded her effort by posting a notice on Craigslist.org, a Web site that offers free classified ads, that invited anyone who was hungry to give her a call.

“We just ended up with too much food, and we don’t want it getting wasted,” she said. “We’re trying to help people the best we can, and hopefully karma will shine back on us.”

Over the past year, she said, she has helped about 200 people. Goldsmith also put out an open invitation to anyone looking to share a Christmas dinner. So far one family and one other person have responded.

“I think America was set up to help out people, no matter their race, color, financial status,” she said. “That’s part of being human, too – just trying to help each other.”

Dinner for strangers

After encouragement from her children, Rio Rancho resident Yolanda Sosa advertised a free Thanksgiving dinner on Craigslist. She received 10 responses, far more than she had expected.

“Every one of them asked for it for themselves, except for one,” she said. “She was asking for it for her neighbor.”

The neighbor’s husband had just left her and her three kids, ages 15, 10 and 8, without any money, Sosa said she was told, the result being a canceled Thanksgiving dinner.

“My children and I have been in that situation before where we’ve needed help and somebody came in to help us,” Sosa said. “I was like, `She’s gong to have a Thanksgiving dinner.’ ”

With the clear chance to help someone who saw a neighbor in need; a freezer full of turkeys, purchased during a sale at Smith’s; and her children enthusiastic about sharing meals after participating in a food drive at school, the decision was easy.

The meal was delivered to the neighbor through the woman who originally contacted Sosa on Craigslist. The gift made the neighbor cry, Sosa learned through an e-mail.

“My son, I saw the tears forming in his eyes when he read that e-mail,” she said. “I think more it helped my kids than it did me. They knew they were making somebody else happy.”

The Sosa family plans on giving away a turkey for Christmas.

“I try to do everything I can to teach my kids that it’s not about you, it’s about helping other people,” Sosa said. “It gives you hope to know there’s good people in the world.”

The Albuquerque Tribune published this article Dec. 24, 2007.

With cold weather and snow flurries expected this weekend, they just might. But Public Service Company of New Mexico has a little good news to offset the bad.

The company estimates more natural gas will be used this January than last, but expects the average residential bill to be less than last year’s.

That’s because January’s per-therm cost of natural gas dropped by 19 percent from last year for PNM customers.

This January’s average bill will likely come in around $116, according to PNM. Last January it was $129.

Company spokeswoman Susan Sponar said the drop was due to a warmer winter in other parts of the country driving down demand for gas, thus lowering its price.

The company also estimates that average bills in February and March will be less than what they were last year. They’ll still be in the $91 to $110 range.

PNM encourages its customers in numerous ways to cut down on their natural gas bills.

That includes weatherizing your home, sealing off unused rooms and lowering the heat during the night.

“Being more watchful” is how Benavidez describes it.

He keeps his home’s doors closed. At night, he puts his thermostat at 70 degrees, down from 75.

If those measures don’t cut it, there is help for families struggling with bills, as long as their household income meets certain requirements.

Last year, 5,100 households got assistance through PNM’s Good Neighbor Fund, which gives grants to households fighting high heating costs, Sponar said.

This year’s numbers aren’t yet in, but more than $700,000 has been raised.

Another option – the federally funded Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program – is creating some confusion.

That’s because the grants available through the program are far less than they were last year, said Betina Gonzales McCracken, communications director with the New Mexico Human Services Department.

Instead of households getting one-time grants of about $417 as they did last year, they can expect $127 this year, she explained.

Blame the funding.

Gonzales McCracken said that last year, the state added $23 million in emergency funds to the federal funding, which has held steady at about $10 million for the past four years.

This year, the Human Services Department might get $2 million in state help, she said.

“While the price of gas is going up on a regular basis,” she said, “they (the federal government) have not increased funding for this program.”

Last year, a record number of households received assistance through the program – 71,794, Gonzales McCracken said.

“We’re assuming we’re going to serve the same amount of people as last year,” she said. “With less money, the benefit is going to be a little bit less.”

The claim comes from James Martinez as he glances out the front windows of his Fastsigns business, admiring what has been a Downtown curiosity for months.

Across the way, jammed into the southeast corner of Second Street and Lead Avenue Southwest like a grown tree into a flowerpot, is the structure inspiring his statement: a three-story, 8,000-square-foot home-to-be with towers and a mansard roof hinting more of a European castle than a Duke City dwelling.

“Everybody who passes by goes, `Uh, what is it?’ ” says Martinez. “We look at it every day. Everybody thinks it’s pretty cool.”

So cool, in fact, that a change to his business cards might be coming to capitalize on the behemoth’s visibility.

“As soon as the castle gets built, we’ll change them so they say, `Across from the castle,’” Martinez says.

The “castle” belongs to Gertrude Zachary, a successful local jewelry manufacturer and antiques dealer, but she prefers to call it her dream house.

“I spent almost a year with architects going back and forth,” said Zachary, who started her business venture in 1974 with jewelry production at her Second Street facility. “I spent a lot of time in Europe, and it just reminds me of Europe. It is things I’ve seen that I put together.”

The home will have gargoyles, an antique door from Chicago’s Kellogg Mansion and stained-glass windows from a 150-year-old church in Pittsburgh.

“I’ve always wanted to build a house,” Zachary said.

But one 20-year Albuquerque resident wonders, why there? Of all the places to build a home, why on a seemingly small lot within earshot of train tracks and rumbling engines?

“It just looks out of place, to be tactful,” says Jeanine Ingber, 53, as she walked a Downtown sidewalk. “It’s just really gaudy. It doesn’t fit in with New Mexico architecture.”

But Zachary wouldn’t have it anywhere else.

“I love Downtown, probably because I was raised in bigger cities,” Zachary said, noting the home will have dark gray stucco and a metal roof when finished next fall.

It’s also convenient having the house next door to her antique store.

It’s one of three shops she opened in the city following the success of her original jewelry manufacturing operation, which still thrives down the street from her new home.

That means an easy, five-minute car drive to work at two of her four operations, she said.

And as far as the train noise goes, she has this to say: “I’ve lived Downtown before. You always get used to all the noise. After a while you don’t even hear them.”

Rob Dickson, the man who launched the Lofts at Albuquerque High, points out the house is a powerful step toward further developing Downtown.

“It’s good because someone’s investing their dollar and is wiling to live there,” he said. “Downtown is inching in the right direction, but obviously there’s always room for more momentum.”

The momentum is already building. About 400 new residential units are coming in the next two years to the area near Zachary’s new home, according to an official with the city’s planning department.

“With this house and with those other two blocks developed . . . this will be a very strong housing area,” said Richard Dineen, planning director with the city. “It’s emerging as a little housing district.”

The house is the largest in its zone, Dineen said. Approving the permits, despite the home’s distinct appearance, required no special notification of neighbors or unusual reviews.

“I think it’s going to be a lot of fun,” he said. “People love this kind of stuff. It’s different and it’s different for Albuquerque.”

FACTBOX:

Local businesswoman Gertrude Zachary expects her 8,000 square-foot home at 414 Second St. S.W. to be finished in the fall.

The home, which will have gargoyles and is inspired by her trips to Europe, already has locals talking. Here’s what a few neighbors think.

Who: Stevan Gutierrez, 19, who lives in neighborhood.

Quote: “It doesn’t really fit in. It’s just different, I guess.”

Who: Sandy Hill, owner of Studio Hill Design Ltd., a business near the home.

Quote: “I think all infill is good, especially down here. For us, it will help people find our office. Take the Lead exit. Turn left at the castle. Landmarks are always good.”

Who:Jon Wilkins, front-desk employee with Los Chileros de Nuevo Mexico, a Southwestern cuisine business across the street from the house.

Quote: “I was surprised it’s a residence Downtown. The castle could be a start for new development. It’s great.”

There are trees with decorations, gift exchanges and time spent with family and friends.

It’s the differences that drew Amber K – that’s her full name – to the spiritual practice she estimates could have 7,000 members in the state.

“Most mainstream churches don’t have a big emphasis on the sacredness of nature,” she said. “If I’m sitting indoors on a church pew, I feel bored. If I’m out walking through the mountains, I feel like I’m in touch with all that is sacred. That was very important to me.”

While many New Mexicans celebrate Christmas today, those who share Amber K’s beliefs celebrate Yule, a pagan holiday falling on or around Dec. 21 that marks the winter solstice and the beginning of the year.

It’s one of eight annual holidays celebrated by a religion that reveres nature, recognizes numerous deities and has much to offer yet is misunderstood by many, Amber K says.

“Most people don’t know any more about Buddhism or Hinduism or Shinto than they do about paganism,” she said. “The most valuable thing paganism has to teach is that the Earth is sacred and worth cherishing and worth preserving.”

Amber K came to paganism from the Unitarian Church about 30 years ago. Prior to that, she practiced the religions of her parents, Roman Catholicism and Episcopalianism.

Now she’s a priestess in the Wiccan faith, which she describes as a type of paganism. She’s also executive director of Ardantane, an educational center for pagans in the Jemez Mountains. About 125 students enrolled in classes this year, she said, and 175 students are expected in the upcoming year.

People drawn to paganism tend to be “spiritual mavericks” because it’s a religion that is open to incorporating many beliefs, she said.

“The fact is, if anything seems useful or true or good to us as individuals, we’ll incorporate that into our spiritual practice,” she said. “There are also pagans who don’t do that, who swallow a very set sort of beliefs and practices that are pretty rigid, but I would have to say the majority are pretty much wide open to spiritual truth wherever you find it.”

That flexibility is one reason Kim Pennington-Dozier, a Jemez Springs resident, says she was drawn to paganism.

She is publicity director with Ardantane and has been practicing shamanistic witchcraft, a type of paganism, for about 25 years. She was raised Baptist but felt constrained by that set of beliefs, she said.

“You just have the Bible, the word of God, and you have to believe it,” Pennington-Dozier said. “I just always had questions that couldn’t be answered.”

She’s celebrating this Yule by attending a drum circle. Last year, she took part in a toasting ceremony that involved announcing your accomplishments and hopes for the new year.

Many misconceptions surround paganism, Pennington-Dozier says.

“That we worship the devil is the big one,” she said. “We don’t even believe in the devil. How can you worship something you don’t believe in?”

Amber K said some people mistakenly consider paganism as anti-religious or nonreligious, or consider its practitioners hedonistic and self-involved.

“That’s not it at all,” she said. “It’s just a lack of education” that leads people to those beliefs, she added.

Pennington-Dozier said some pagans fear making their beliefs public due to concerns over misunderstandings of the religion and keeping their jobs.

However, she has found New Mexico to be very open, she said.

“It’s just the people,” she said. “They’re more accepting.”

During his weekly visits to the living memorial, it helps him remember Mia, just days old when she died.

It helps him imagine taking walks with her, imagine what she would look like if she were alive today.

“It has kind of freed me of the misery of not being able to know her,” says Baca, 39. “There is a form of healing.”

Baca is one of hundreds who have planted a tree through a roughly 20-year-old city program giving people the chance to remember their loved ones while bringing a bit of clean air, beauty and shade to the Duke City.

“This is something that kind of finishes things after the funeral’s over that I think people generally feel good about,” says Jeff Hart, who oversees the program as superintendent of the city’s park management division. “Even though people are hurting, it’s a positive thing.”

For $200, people can have a tree planted in a city park. They also receive a certificate noting the event and a tree-side plaque displaying their choice of words.

The planting is practical and ceremonial, Hart says, and very emotional. Participants can help deposit the soil, and they have a chance to say a few words. He has seen everything from preaching pastors to people playing an electric guitar.

Baca came up with the saying for Mia’s plaque. It reads: “An angel sent by God to touch our hearts forever. In Grandpa’s heart you will remain eternally, Love Papo Herald.”

“I was looking so forward to hanging out with her,” Baca says. “This way you feel like you’re doing something, even though they’re passed on.”

He was inspired to plant a tree by his fianc‚e, Loretta Martinez, 45.

To remember her son who died in a car accident seven years ago, she adopted a one-mile stretch of highway in northern New Mexico. Each of his birthdays has her heading north to clean the roadway.

Baca admired the memorialization and wanted to do something for his granddaughter. His tree ended up inspiring Martinez.

She said the beauty of Mia’s tree – across the street from the cemetery where Mia rests – made her want one for her son to be placed nearby, though she intends to wait until next year.

“It’s somewhere you can go and sit down,” she says. “A tree gives you comfort through its shade.”

Next year is also when the couple plans to get married, and Martinez said there’s the possibility of having the ceremony next to Mia’s tree, or, if her son’s is up, both trees.

“It makes you feel like they’re near you, whenever you go by and see that tree,” she says. “It’s growing; and, in the summertime, we know it’s going to have leaves, it’s going to get really pretty, and it signifies life. Even though they’re not here, it still signifies their life.”

FACTBOX: Living memorial

For about 20 years, the city’s tree memorial program has offered Albuquerque residents the chance to remember a loved one or celebrate an event by planting a tree in a park. It costs $200 for a tree, its planting, a commemorative certificate, a plaque with room for 65 characters of the purchaser’s choice and care for the living memorial.

When you can plant: September through May

Most popular parks for the memorials: Altura Park near Carlisle Boulevard and Indian School Road, El Oso Grande Park near Montgomery Boulevard and Morris Street

Typical tree: Six-foot to eight-foot tall caliper

Number of trees planted this year: 57, which is average.

Number of trees planted throughout the life of the program: More than 550

Trends: More trees have been planted recently for people in U.S. military; more pets are being memorialized

Other memorials available: A park bench is $1,200

More information: City of Albuquerque Park Management Division at 857-8650 or City parks

Source: City of Albuquerque Parks and Recreation Dept., Park Management Division

FACTBOX: Cookbook help

To help pay for a city park bench in memory of a friend’s son who died, Albuquerque resident Linda Reisen and her friends put together a cookbook they sold at craft shows and to acquaintances. They raised $2,500 for a $1,200 bench, and used the extra money on memorial trees for other friends who had lost their children. Reisen said in 2007 they want to continue to sell the book – called “I’ll Have What She’s Having” – and make the funds available to any Duke City resident looking to memorialize a dead loved one through the city’s programs.

For more information, contact Linda Reisen

With the expansion of a deep-space viewing telescope network that began in New Mexico, the Mora resident has three more.

A collection of five telescopes in the southern part of the state has expanded its reach into the night sky by teaming up with telescopes in Australia and Israel.

Now known as Global Rent-a-Scope instead of Rent-a-Scope, the network of telescopes allows those curious about deep space to rent time on the devices using a Web browser.

“You feel like you’re making a contribution to science in some manner,” Kirby said. “It’s very intense, but I just found it fascinating.”

Kirby, 57, used to investigate skies light-years away up to 40 hours a week, but health problems forced him to pull out. Now, unable to stay up throughout the night, he buys time on the telescopes and donates it to others. He’s still considering a team project with other astronomy aficionados around the world.

With the addition of two telescopes in Australia and one in Israel, he said viewing can take place 24 hours a day because there will always be a night sky available at one of the observation points.

That means new projects – those tracking celestial objects for long periods of time – can be undertaken.

“As dark came up on us, light would be coming up on them, and we’d just hand it off and I could take over here,” he said.

As Arnie Rosner, the man behind Global Rent-a-Scope, said, “The sun never rises at Rent-a-Scope.”

About four years ago, Rosner set up two telescopes at an observatory in Mayhill. He quickly expanded to five to accommodate demand for the service. The Australian telescopes joined a couple of months ago, and he hopes the Israeli telescope will be online within the week.

“What I ended up doing here is providing the resources for these brilliant people we work with to do their thing,” said Rosner, one of several partners in Global Rent-a-Scope. “We just kind of stand behind the curtain and turn them loose and see what they can do.”

He said about 500 people buy time on the telescopes, including professional researchers, amateur astronomers, students and others. With the 24-hour viewing available on the expanded network, he said tracking certain asteroids near the Earth and planets outside our solar system would be made easier.

“A big threat to our current civilization is one of these large asteroids might be on a collision path with the Earth,” he said. “The important thing about 24 hours of observation is you have a longer period to capture decent data.”

One bit of data collected by the telescope set-up in New Mexico is asteroid 117715. It’s also known as “Carlkirby.”

The man who discovered the asteroid in April 2005 did so while using telescope time donated by Kirby.

“I’ve got a rock floating around up there with my name on it,” Kirby said. “I got a thrill out of it.”

“We don’t have to wear these, right?” he asked Ralynn Botzler, Ria’s sister and volunteer coordinator of the event Ria describes as “speed-dating for business networking.”

Attendees at events organized by Albuquerque company Strategic Networking - such as this one held Wednesday night - have five minutes to connect with one of the 23 other people invited to each high-speed networking meeting. The business will be a year old in June and owner Ria Botzler - who collects rubber ducks and brings them to the meetings to add a sense of fun - says it's likely she'll add another monthly event in July to meet growing demand.

“You don’t have to,” Ralynn replied, “but you can if you want to.”

Ria Botzler collects rubber ducks and says their presence – king ducks, queen ducks, purple ducks, small ducks and large ducks are plopped atop tables and counters throughout the location of a Wednesday night meet-up – brings a lighthearted cheerfulness to meetings organized through Strategic Networking, her nearly year-old company for which she got the idea after seeing a speed-dating scene in the movie “Hitch.”

“I looked at this (speed-dating scene) and I said, `This would be an incredible format for business networking,’ ” she says. “It solved all the problems I saw in traditional networking.”

Problems like getting the chance to really know someone, says Padilla – who chose against wearing the rubber-ducky necklace.

Problems like meeting enough people, says attendee Tod Novak.

And problems like gracefully bowing out of a conversation you don’t want to be in, says Stephanie Flanagan, another attendee.

“There are some people you meet and they’re lovely to talk to,” Flanagan says, “but you pretty much don’t have any need for their services.”

But that goodbye can get awkward. When to say it? How?

How about a whistle?

After a pair of strategic networkers have spent five minutes together, Ralynn blows a whistle. Half of the participants – usually 24, but because of last-minute cancellations just 18 today – stand, nod, smile, shake hands and say goodbyes before shifting one folding chair to the left. Then the shakes and nods and smiles – plus some interest-arched eyebrows – begin again as the movers take their new seats for another five-minute session.

“Face-to-face human contact: There is nothing ever that will beat that,” Ria Botzler says. “Whatever type of networking you’re doing, when you have that face-to-face contact, and you make an impression, you’ve essentially moved yourself up in the phone book of their available contacts.”

One of Strategic Networking’s most ardent followers is Botzler herself. She participates in almost every meeting to find clients for her accounting business Checks and Doublechecks. It’s a reason she started the organization, which charges $24 per person, per meet-up. By design, every meeting comes with a new set of participants, each one from a different industry.

“It helps small business, which is one of the missions of both of my companies,” Botzler says. “Whatever it is to help people run small businesses, I’m all about that.”

In June, Strategic Networking will be a year old, and by July, Botzler expects growing demand to add another monthly meet-up to the one already scheduled.

“We typically have a waiting list,” she says. “June is more than half-full right now.”

This summer, she plans to host a Strategic Networking event in Denver. She has offers to do the same in Chicago and El Paso.

“There’s potential for going national,” she says. “There’s also potential for franchising it with the right elements in place.”

The plan calls for energy-efficient appliances, rain-capturing and wastewater-reuse systems in new construction to reduce the water consumption in unincorporated areas of Bernalillo County – areas estimated to have used 12.2 billion gallons of water in 2005 alone.

Those areas don’t fall under the jurisdiction of the water utility authority overseeing Albuquerque and other areas of Bernalillo County, and Bernalillo County Chairman Alan Armijo wants to see the regulations equalized.

“The drought in the last year and water availability has highlighted it (water conservation),” Armijo said. “We needed to look at stronger restrictions.”

Proposed regulations – affecting roughly 108,000 people living in unincorporated areas of Bernalillo County – include an option for building gray-water systems into new homes in order to meet water conservation goals.

Gray-water systems capture waste water from bathroom sinks, showers and washing machines and use it to water lawns and flowers, but not crops.

Kerry Bassore, water and conversation planner with the Bernalillo County Public Works Division, said such systems could reduce a home’s water use by as much as 29,000 gallons per year.

John Stomp, water resources manager for the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Authority, said gray-water systems “would have a big impact on outdoor (water) usage.”

However, a $500 rebate offered by the authority for gray-water systems has never been used, though it has been available for two years, he said.

Why? Look at the cost, he said. To retrofit a house with a gray water system could cost $5,000 to $10,000, by his estimate. He said it would cost less if installed in new homes.

He said the water authority’s water-conservation measures – closely mimicked by the draft ordinance – have helped push Albuquerque’s per-capita water use down by 35 percent in 10 years.

The draft ordinance’s other proposed options for meeting conservation goals in the construction of new homes include installing energy-efficient appliances and an on-demand hot water system.

Armijo said the draft had been in the works for about a year. A final version could be approved by January, but getting additional public comment on the regulations could put off an approval until the spring, he said.

The ordinance also proposes banning spray irrigation from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. from April 1 through Oct. 31. Additional restrictions could be imposed if a drought watch is declared by the New Mexico Drought Monitoring Committee.

Armijo would like to see watering restrictions permanently imposed, regardless whether a drought has been declared.

“I don’t think you can look at it for a few months, a few years,” he said. “We’re in a cycle of drought in this community.”

Most of the draft ordinance concerns water-conservation measures for new development, leaving existing homes and other structures unaffected.

A representative with the Home Builders Association of Central New Mexico said that’s problematic.

“There’s more to water conservation than just new houses, and new houses are already meeting standards in place by the city,” said Katherine Martinez, the association’s director of government affairs. “Existing houses are the biggest percentage of where water is lost.”

While the proposed regulation doesn’t require water conservation upgrades in existing homes, Martinez said that could be an effective step, and encouraged incentives for such a measure.

“That will save a great deal more water than the new construction,” she said.

The new standards for one- and two-family dwellings and townhouses would take effect in January 2010.

However, developments larger than 10,000 square feet that are not a single-family home would be hit with the new requirements immediately.

Those requirements include installing a gray-water system or collecting rainwater with cisterns.

The lack of time to prepare for new regulations is a concern, said Lynne Andersen, president of the New Mexico Chapter of the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties.

“Anything that’s going to be phased in, we can usually deal with it because you can build in those costs at the beginning,” she said.

Armijo said such concerns would be considered, and the ordinance could change before its final approval.