Santa Fe City Councilor Matt Ortiz gave SFR a look at a binder showing the expenses and revenues of Santa Fe 400th Anniversary, Inc, the largely public-funded non-profit organization that’s staging events for the celebration. In SFR’s earlier reporting on the anniversary budget, 400th Executive Director Libby Dover declined to share such details. But now that the non-profit, aka “the committee,” is asking the city for another $750,000—see the New Mex story today—they didn’t have much choice but to open their books.

Some highlights:

Dover makes $10,000 a month!

The other five employees average $4,000 a month. Not bad considering the local average.

Salaries aside, it’s a pretty bare-bones operation.

The chair of the committee (Maurice Bonal) has his own office at $300 a month. For what? Meeting with all those corporate sponsors they don’t have?

Whoever manages the committee’s decent-looking but content-free website (the registered administrative and technical contact is Bonal) is pulling $2,100 a month. Hmm… (Their graphic designer has a pretty good gig, too.)

The committee expects to bring in under $200,000 in revenue from events.

One more after the cut.
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Only a day or two after we put our holiday gift guide into production, I received a phone call from the New Mexico Environmental Law Center. They told me about the Justice Bar and proceeded to get me all mouth-watery and candy-craving. But since it was too late to slip it into the gift guide, I knew I had to get the word out some other way. I love blogs.

The Justice Bar is the NMELC’s fundraiser this winter. Made entirely of fair-trade, organic chocolate from Sweet Earth Organic Chocolates, these chocolate bars make the best of what’s around. Even the fillings are as local as can be – the Dark Chocolate Chile bars are spiced with red chile powder from Chimayo and pistachios from Eagle Ranch Farms in Southern New Mexico. If that wasn’t enough, NMELC just released its Milk Chocolate Pecan bar, which contains organic nuts from Mesilla.

The bars are $6 per 3 oz. bar, and are produced through with Señor Murphy Candymaker (locations in the La Fonda hotel at 100 E. San Francisco St., 982-0461, and the Santa Fe Place mall  at 4250 Cerrillos Road, 471-8899). The bars are also available through the NMELC (1405 Luisa St., Ste. 5, 989-9022 or nmelc@nmelc.org).

It should also be made known that, when SFR staffers got their hands on some of these bars, they were devoured within minutes. Even I (and I can’t handle anything even remotely spicy – even pepper on my eggs is a bit intense), absolutely loved the red chile chocolate. Mmmmm.