Gazing back: A glimpse at Rio Rancho’s past

From the April 7, 1983, edition of The Observer: “Attorney recommends ordinance changes.” An attorney for the City of Rio Rancho recommends a provision in the proposed revision of the signs ordinance for amortizing non-conforming signs be reconsidered and possibly deleted.

The proposed ordinance generally allows a maximum of 50 square feet per sign in commercial areas — where most of the controversy over the present ordinance stemmed — and a limit of one sign per premise except in the case of corner businesses, where two signs are allowable.

Among its proposed provisions is a section that would require owners of signs that exceed allowable numbers per premise and dimensions by more than 10 percent to bring them into line with the ordinance within a three-year period.In a March 28 memo to city officials, city attorney Stan Hatch … says a flux in recent New Mexico court cases and statutes poses strong arguments for eliminating that amortization provision at this time.

From the April 7, 1993, edition of The Observer: “Rio Rancho granted $1 billion Intel Corp. expansion project.” New Mexico won an intense bidding war last week, when Intel Corp. chose its Rio Rancho plant for the largest expansion project in the history of the semiconductor industry.

Intel, which last year became the world’s largest computer chip maker, has announced plans to spend $1 billion to construct a 1.3-million-square-foot addition to the facility that will create at least 1,000 new on-site jobs. Rio Rancho will be the manufacturing home of the recently introduced Pentium processor.

From the April 9, 2003, edition of The Rio Rancho Observer: “Heroes in service: ‘Class of ‘99’ on the front line.” Sooner or later, Mary Jo Benco expected to see her son’s name in the paper. This is probably not the occasion she hoped for.

“He’s talked about politics, and says he’s going to be president,” Benco said.

Instead of giving presidential orders, however, Nate Benco is now learning to take them as he prepares to ship from his base in Baumholder, Germany, to the war front in Iraq.

– Compiled by Argen Duncan