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My family and I have lived in Farmington for less than a year and have had a terrible experience. The service everywhere (from Lowes/Home Depot, any grocery store, any restaurant you go to) is the worst I have ever experienced in my life. Local contractors and other professional services are untrustworthy and dishonest. It has to do with the general lack of education of the work force. Any one who has a decent education leaves and you are left with a manager at Lowes who has a high school degree, meth mouth and a 20 oz Mountain Dew in his hand (sorry for all the references Lowes, I had a bad experience every time I went!).
There is a general feeling of apathy towards everything there and due to the demographics of rough necked oil/natural gas workers and miners, it will not change. These jobs are the dominating vocations and with this demographic you get no culture, sophistication or concern for community. That last sentence sounded really snobby but now that I don't have these things where I live, I realize how much they are missed. I realize that there is not much choice for some to move here but if you can avoid it you will do yourself a favor.
I have read other posts about violence and crime and these are true yet the neighborhood we lived in was very safe and you can avoid the crime and violence scene pretty easily. Having the reservations so close by makes for a negative just because there are many things like violence, drunk driving, and sexual assult that are VERY prevalent and you don't hear about it too often in the news.
There is only one good school in the area (Country Club elementary) and housing prices in this district are pretty steep for a young family starting out. They participate in the core curriculum program and it is a well run program.
In general, it is the land of a lesser standard of living. There are good people here but it does not make up for the poor qualities that Farmington has. We are moving ASAP and will not miss the town at all!!
My family and I have lived in Farmington for less than a year and have had a terrible experience. The service everywhere (from Lowes/Home Depot, any grocery store, any restaurant you go to) is the worst I have ever experienced in my life. Local contractors and other professional services are untrustworthy and dishonest. It has to do with the general lack of education of the work force. Any one who has a decent education leaves and you are left with a manager at Lowes who has a high school degree, meth mouth and a 20 oz Mountain Dew in his hand (sorry for all the references Lowes, I had a bad experience every time I went!).
There is a general feeling of apathy towards everything there and due to the demographics of rough necked oil/natural gas workers and miners, it will not change. These jobs are the dominating vocations and with this demographic you get no culture, sophistication or concern for community. That last sentence sounded really snobby but now that I don't have these things where I live, I realize how much they are missed. I realize that there is not much choice for some to move here but if you can avoid it you will do yourself a favor.
I have read other posts about violence and crime and these are true yet the neighborhood we lived in was very safe and you can avoid the crime and violence scene pretty easily. Having the reservations so close by makes for a negative just because there are many things like violence, drunk driving, and sexual assult that are VERY prevalent and you don't hear about it too often in the news.
There is only one good school in the area (Country Club elementary) and housing prices in this district are pretty steep for a young family starting out. They participate in the core curriculum program and it is a well run program.
In general, it is the land of a lesser standard of living. There are good people here but it does not make up for the poor qualities that Farmington has. We are moving ASAP and will not miss the town at all!!
I don't understand what you were looking for in Farmington. If it was an educational bastion, good luck with that anywhere in rural America, and as big of a town as Farmington is, it's still rural.
People leave to get an education and generally don't come back. If a person were to leave Farmington and get a degree outside of education or one of the very few jobs that exists where a college degree matters, they end up working as a manager at Lowes. Or waiting tables. Or whatever low-paying service industry job they find. If they leave and want to move home to work one of those jobs they get paid the same as the person that never left but they have student loans that saddle them, so they leave to find jobs where there better opportunities that pay higher, i.e. cities.
Roughneck jobs pay well for being uneducated. Service jobs don't pay well no matter who you are. Farmington is a "border" town so those are your main options. I grew up in rural Colorado and New Mexico, including the Four Corner Region, and I get that if you're looking for a high quality of life, with an educated workforce, it's going to be hard to find in remote/rural areas. If you don't know what to expect with Native American culture, it's going to be a shock. That's why I fled Gallup when I graduated high school, not because of the cultural differences but because I could find better financial opportunities elsewhere.
Farmington is right in the middle of the southwest (CO, UT, AZ, NM) With no other cities for hundreds of miles in any direction. The culture is backwards, highly conservative, close-minded (and probably closeted) and hostile. It is a desert wasteland infested with rez dogs and rednecks. Any intellectuals are very hard to find here, as anyone who actually gets more than a 2.0 GPA in high school usually leaves out to college and (most of the time) NEVER comes back, for great reason.
I used to be top of the class, happy with life, and with a bright future. Then my dad abruptly forced us to move here, and the schools and culture destroyed my brother and I. AHS had a 50% graduation rate back in 04. Half of the dropouts were probably morons, and the other half had good reasons to; the school was horrible with teachers who didn't do their job and hostile savages for students. They screwed over his classes which prevented him from graduating on time, so he dropped out and become yet another one of these roid-monkeys with no education.
I dropped out too, but I got my GED at age 16, and got my associate's. I'm now almost 19 and working my ass off at these two crappy jobs to save up as much money as I can so I can get a car and resources and move to vegas to work towards higher education with one of my friends.
The four corners is one of the worst places I've ever been to. I've been to 26 of the states in the USA, I've been to Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and Malaysia. I've also lived in Europe during the 90s, visiting a majority of the countries.
I've lived in a small texas town near the desert wasteland. It's TEXAS, and they still weren't nearly as close minded, racist, and bigoted as the idiots in farmington.
bossgaggs, I sincerely hope you can escape this failure of a town. But if you have any empathy for human beings, I insist that you allow me to escape these moronic savages, so I can re-build my character and intellect, and work towards getting a Doctorate in a STEM job.
If Berzerker is even half accurate he has saved me the trouble of looking into Farmington as a place to retire. I can't say I have been there nor was it really on my list. Be kinda nice as it's closer to some areas I like to hike maybe. Anyway this is the kind of info you can't really get from just checking real estate listings. Trulia however does give a good inkling of crime in a neighborhood.
Farmington always gets roundly bashed--and my guess is that it goes back to 1973 with the killing of 3 Navajo men by three Farmington High school thugs.
Farmington is a barely-majority white city that abuts the largest reservation in the Southwest. (Correct me if I'm wrong on that one).
I lived there for almost 3 years, and if I hadn't gotten so homesick for Texas and family, I would have stayed right there.
I had no problems with anybody of any race/ethnicity there, but I also didn't go looking for trouble. It does have its share of problems, just like any place does.
It has a reasonable cost of living (once you get past the high RE prices) and most amenities. There is always something to do, whether you like outdoorsy stuff or otherwise. It's close to hiking, skiing and scenic/historic places.
Another mark against it may be its relative conservatism, an anomaly in NW New Mexico.
Best climate in the world--I miss the incredible aridity and the nice winters--relatively mild summers come along with that.
New Mexico magazine had an article this month: 25 Reasons to Love Farmington. I'm sure that will get a lot of bashing, too. I was surprised--nobody pays any attention to anything in NM other than Santa Fe (a bastion of liberalism), Albuquerque or the mountain towns.
Ok, I'm done. Let the bashing resume.
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Farmington woes
