Local leaders craft regional plan to move from red to green
Local civic leaders gathered online for the Enchanted Circle Council of Government’s special meeting on Monday (Dec. 21), and discussed how members could work together on a regional plan to reduce the spread of COVID-19.
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham recently instituted a county-by-county scoring system of red, yellow and green in order to provide local communities benchmarks to safely reopen their economies. At present, all 33 New Mexican counties are considered red (very high risk).
“A number of our businesses are suffering. A number of our constituents are suffering,” said Taos Mayor Daniel Barrone. “We just want to see if there’s a way that we can get moved from red to green, or even to yellow, so that we can see more [businesses] open.”
When a county lowers its positivity rate to below 5 percent, or lowers their number of cases to less than eight per 100,000 people per two-week period, it can be scored as yellow (high risk). The current positivity rate for Taos County is 6.7 percent.
Public messaging
Civic and business leaders are using public announcements and social media to persuade the public to wear masks, practice social distancing and get tested.
“We’ve been doing full-page ads. We’re about to get permission for a radio campaign. Doctors will be giving individual testimony. We’ll be changing the banners around the town,” said Taos town manager Richard Bellis. “It’s going to take a concerted effort, particularly now that we have our ski resorts open to some extent, and we’re going to be sharing tourists among our businesses.”
Testing and screening
The governor has required COVID-19 testing for all employees in ski areas throughout the state.
“The village has created a mandate to have random employee testing every two weeks,” said Taos Ski Valley Mayor Christof Brownell. “And also to do a pre-employment, negative COVID-19 test for all employees of the village.”
Hotels and short-term rental properties have been asked to screen their guests, and notify them of the New Mexico public health order. The ski valley is also screening guests with a questionnaire when they buy lift tickets.
Red to green
“The more people we get tested, the better our numbers — if they’re negative tests. That’s one of the ways to get us from red to green,” said Barrone.
But getting local businesses to test their employees is proving to be a challenge.
“If you get tested, then you have to isolate for the next 10 to 14 days. And if you’re not feeling sick, they think, ‘why would we go test when we would lose that time at work,’” said Angel Fire Mayor Jo Mixon.
Red River Mayor Linda Calhoun said the COVID-19 cases she saw weren’t due to tourists, but due to locals traveling to Albuquerque and bringing it back with them.
“We’re going to have to start thinking about overcoming this attitude of our local people towards tourists,” said Calhoun. “If we completely decimate our businesses by not allowing them to be open right now, and then we spread the attitude ‘we don’t want tourists here,’ then when we open again, we’ve got another hurdle to overcome.”
“You can’t just tell everybody else to [test],” said Calhoun. “You’ve got a responsibility too.”
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