you
[Music]
you're on morning everybody welcome to
our special work
uh special city council meeting las
cruces uh
city council today is friday july 24th
2020 it's approximately
9 a.m before we begin if you please join
me in the pledge of allegiance
i pledge allegiance to the flag of the
united states of america
and to the republic for which it stands
one nation
under god indivisible with liberty and
justice for all
okay excuse me
okay so now we have our conflict of
interest statement this is where i ask
if any member of the
city council city manager or any member
of the city staff
has any known conflict of interest on
any item on the agenda
none for me mayor none
so we're going to go to item 2.1
resolution
21-020 just need a motion in a second
please
second console okay motion made by mayor
pro tem gandalf second by counselor
and i believe dr griselda martinez or dr
francisco palladis
will be discussing hello hello good
morning mr mayor hello members of city
council how are you
i just want to make sure this is
francisco payares for the record i just
want to make sure that everyone can
listen to me
yes excellent
mr mayor and members of the city council
let me start sharing my screen
if you could please confirm that you're
seeing my powerpoint presentation
yes excellent
excellent well thank you very much mr
mayor members of city council uh today
we have a resolution to
implement the las cruces safe promise
the first thing that i wanted to mention
mr mayor is that this is the initiative
or one of the first discussions right
one of the first
action items that have been coming
forward from the las cruces economic
recovery board
that you created along with the members
of city council uh back
in april if i'm not mistaken so de la
cruz a safe promise
and and a little bit of background and
actually that was my first point uh the
city council las cruces approved
resolution 2161 creating the las cruces
economic recovery ad hoc board
and then on on july
9th the las cruces economic recovery
board approved the las cruces promises a
recommendation
uh for the implementation from you from
city council
what is the las cruces safe promise this
is a campaign
to encourage the residents and visitors
of and customers of las cruces to carry
out
covet safe practices in essence this is
for individuals who want to show
commitment to following kobe 19 safe
practices
uh these are wearing a face mask
maintaining a six feet distancing from
others and other recommendations to
prevent the spread of kobe 19
it will be complementing the new mexico
safe uh promise which is aimed
at individuals and it's a it's a
campaign by the state
as well as the new mexico safe certified
program and also for businesses
to get a certification and get training
in some of the commit safe practices
and and i just wanted to point out that
the state has created this
um certification for certain industries
not all industries are included
yet in there but there's plenty of them
so i'll be explaining some of those
so what is the las cruces safe promise
and the logo on your left is just a
placeholder
um we found that this is pretty similar
to one of the logos in one of the
departments and
we're in the process of perhaps
adjusting it but
right now we've left it as a placeholder
the
safe promise is first of all that i
promise to act as if i carry the
coronavirus
i promise to maintain social distancing
of at least six feet
i promise to wear a face max face mask
hovering wash my hands and use sanitizer
i promise to buy from local businesses
that also make this promise
i promise to practice patience
compassion empathy connection
respect and love that is what the las
cruces say promise and as i was
mentioning to you mr mayor and members
of the city council
this is for individuals that want to
show a commitment in following
covet 19 safe practices and ultimately
trying to restore
the consumer confidence getting people
with with the ability of feeling
comfortable of
going to a business that knows that
practices some
of these
that follow some of these guidelines the
new mexico
safe certified so what are we going to
do we're going to be
launching the las cruces safe promise
and we're going to be
linking and basically we're just going
to be providing a link in the webpage
to the new mexico safe certified the new
mexico safe certified it's a program for
businesses
and these are for businesses that get
basically a kobet 19
practices training program and this is
going to be aimed at
these are the businesses that are
currently part of the list but the list
is potentially
going to be expanding so these uh
basic uh training programs are aimed or
designed for each individual
industry to to fit the needs of each of
the ones
of each of the individual industries uh
what are some of those industries that
are
already capable of getting the new
mexico safe certified and again this is
going to be carried
by the state and the las cruces safe
promise
is for the individuals and we will be
connecting for the new mexico safe
certified program
in the web page uh restaurants are going
to be part of it
hotels are going to be part of it retail
stores golf courses
tours salons and spas offices and call
centers
construction companies fuel operations
manufacturing warehousing and food
production
as well as as well as grocery stores
farmers market
farms ranchers and dairy producers
although
all of those are the current ones that
that
the new mexico department of tourism has
uh established
for some of those trainings uh there's
potential for those trainings to expand
but for right now those are the ones
that are currently in there
so what are the benefits basically of
those businesses that go through this
new mexico safe certified
uh certification first of all they're
going to have an alignment
with the visible new mexico safe
certified brand the usage of the new
mexico safe certified
seal is going to have uh it's going to
be included so they can promote their
business
there's going to be presence in the new
mexico citycertified.org business
directory
there's going to be an admission to
personal protective equipment
procurement collective so that they can
get
some of the pepe at a reduced price the
new mexico safe certified resource
toolkit
they will also receive the latest news
about the revisions and updates of all
together in new mexico the safe
practices
they will also access to a statewide
peer learning groups to share best
practices
troubleshoot common challenges and
access additional resources
uh tourism related businesses who have
their employees go through the new
mexico city certified training will
receive 250
digital advertising credit per person
and up to 2 000 for the new mexico
magazine
so all of these are going to be benefits
for those businesses that follow the new
mexico safe certified
so so far what do we have we have the
las cruces
promise which is the promise for the
individuals and we are going to be
connecting to the new mexico safe
certified
provide basically providing a link so
that businesses
can link so it can't certify themselves
uh into any of these industries that we
were describing
just in the slide previously what is the
strategy
for the campaign well the economic
development department and the community
engagement office
will basically after um your approval on
on
initiating this campaign uh they will be
initiating a three-month timeline
and it is very it's going to be very
similar to the go bond as well as some
other campaigns that have been carried
for quality of life in which we will
develop a brand and an implementation
plan
we will launch the website and the
campaign and actually we've been working
on the website we just need
the approval so we can launch and start
launching it uh
this is a grassroots campaign targeting
at residents and businesses and the
methods in which we're going to make
this campaign
to be to exist with awareness include
utility bill inserts which has to reach
of about 44 000 people
a repeated e-blasts to businesses
there's approximately 3 000 businesses
registered so that's about 3 000 people
as well as to the community partners
right we're going to be sharing this to
some of our community partners so they
can take the promise
social media as well as radio presence
this is going to be an ongoing campaign
evaluation after the three months and
see where we're standing afterwards um
besides having your council options i
just wanted to let everyone know that we
currently have
um the chair of the las cruces economic
recovery work with us
uh mr chris chaljo as well as the vice
chair of velasquez economic recovery
work with us
uh miss debbie moore and we also have
other members of staff
from this las cruces as well as from the
engagement office in case there's any
questions with regards to any of this
and with that mr mayor uh these are
these are
we're ready for discussion and your
council options
very good uh dr payatis thank you very
much for this that
was very comprehensive i i like it a lot
i i have one quick question i haven't
seen any questions come up yet but one
so they'll get the new mexico seal
certified seal and then is there a seal
for the las cruces safe promise or no
that's just not not for the las cruces
safe promise mr mayor for the last
courses they promised we
basically people take the promise and
and this is again for individuals for
consumers
customer service customers for residents
and for visitors
to say that they're going to be engaging
in covet uh
19 safe practices and and this is for
for those individuals to say i have
taken the promise this is this is my
engagement
as a community member that that i will
behave as if i carry the coronavirus and
i'm going to maintain
a face mask that i'm going to be
maintaining six feet distancing
and all of those right and is that seal
something they could put on their
outside their their business that kind
of like sticks to them
for the new mexico state certified but
they will receive
uh this as sealed yesterday
uh looks like dr martinez has her hand
up and then i'll go to the council
members dr martinez
yes good morning mayor city council
that is correct um what we did not want
to do is duplicate efforts
and we wanted to make sure that we were
feeding
the las cruces safe promise into the
which is an awareness campaign
into the training uh opportunities that
are included in the new mexico
um certified uh program so
we definitely wanna keep it as a
grassroots initiative and so
any branding opportunity that we we have
we will take that as
an opportunity for implementation okay
very good
so we have counselors ben como gandara
and sword so counselor bin como thank
you mayor
um and thank you so much dr payatis i
really appreciate the presentation
honestly
what was it like three months ago i
don't even know when we first started
talking about
this recovery council here locally um
this is this is exactly what i imagined
um
this this council would be doing and
it's really exciting i think it comes at
a really perfect time where
um the there's just the narrative
has just been so divisive and and i
think this is something that really
um that's really beautiful and unifying
can really pull people together
um and and and consumers can start
feeling really safe going to some of
these
locations right and and and seeing that
seal
and saying you know what they're doing
the best they can and i'm going to
continue to support
this local business and um so this is
really exciting to me i think um that
logo is beautiful
i'm excited to see the rollout of this
campaign
um i i guess i i did have just one
question
um but mostly i just wanted to commend
the entire council
and and uh the staff that's been
involved in this because i think it's
really it looks really incredible it
feels really incredible so i just wanted
to say thank you
honestly my only question was around um
you mentioned some of the
certifications some of the trainings
who is doing those i miss that is it the
state or
um locally here in las cruces uh mr
mayor councillor
it is the state correct okay so so so it
this this is a series of videos
and actually at the the
to some of the businesses that have
taken some of this uh these are very
helpful and they're they're trained
suited so that they they're still
trading for restaurants there's a
training for hotels because there's
different natures within each
one of those industries so that is the
state uh councilor.com
wonderful and they're easily accessible
it's not like business owners we're
gonna have to wait in line to get a
training they're very easily
great those are easily accessible uh
council when commodores are online
wonderful
um i would personally love to hear from
um debbie and chris if they have
something to add
um i don't really have any questions
particularly for them but i'd love to
to hear from them on on their thoughts
and reactions to this
process yeah thank you counselor but i'm
going to go with the council members
first if
that's okay and then i'll stand anything
okay
so we have uh mayor potem ganda
thank you mayor thank you um dr vallares
um debbie chris and the
recovery council um i know it's been
challenging um for you all um chris and
i
and debbie and i had an earlier
conversation
as they were instant you know initiating
and getting things off the ground
so i want you to know that i very much
appreciate the work
um and and the challenges because i
think
um it's important to know and i agree
with councillor bin como it's been so
divisive
and you have people coming together that
may not have the same
um the same ideas
the same value set and so
i i'm i'm glad that we can we can start
off with something like this i think
this is some
really important but it also pushes you
out to be in a room
that care about las cruces and each of
their entities
obviously um but ultimately care about
las cruces right
that we are gonna we are gonna keep each
other
safe so i very much appreciate i
appreciate this
um my question
um is dr payatas um
will the staff or directors
in the various departments within the
city be able to
become certified um as
as far because i think it's important
that we lead by example
um and and if there are
um places where we can get certified
to ensure that not only our staff feel
confident coming back as we move into
different phases
but that our consumers right there
people people definitely go into our
buildings and and those things so
i know we've put a lot of pios out about
what our safety practices have been
but i'm really interested to see if you
all find
a place to be able to undergo these
certifications
and and get and get certified uh mr
mayor and madame
the i just wanted to be very clear the
certification is for
businesses in itself uh and and i don't
think government entities are still
yet into that however any person
can take the promise anyone can take the
promise
right you and i can take the promise
directors can take the promise anyone
any resident any visitor
any any customer can take the as crucial
promise
so that that that that portion as a
certification in itself
for the department uh for or for our
department
uh from the new mexico safe certified i
i don't think that's possible yet at
least uh
the list of businesses that can get in
there
it has been expanding but government
entities is not one of those
industries quite yet however uh
businesses
sorry businesses people individuals can
take this the last safe promise
right and not the certification per se
so it's it's two elements the las cruces
if promises aimed at the individuals
and the new mexico which is from the
state new mexico city certification
that's from the state
okay i think mr estes mayor has probably
his hand up
to answer some of that mr yes uh david
maestersson
thank you mayor i appreciate that david
meister center i'm the city manager
and yes mayor pro tem uh dr martinez did
approach me early on when we started the
discussion of this
and we do plan on rolling something out
to the employees so that we
in general have a safe practices promise
and understanding for all the employees
for the city of las cruces as well
we were obviously waiting for this
review now by council on approval to
move forward
with the entire las cruces safe practice
uh resolution
and promise from there and then we will
work on something for
the city employees as well thank you
that sounds good david i you know i feel
we're a business right
we provide a lot of services to folks
and customer service is
of utmost importance safety and
well-being so
i would definitely challenge the state
to come up with a government
certification
i think that would be really important
um for us moving forward but um thank
you from the bottom of my heart i really
appreciate the work that you guys are
you all are doing
um could you just know who is um
currently on the
the board the committee i don't um but
excuse me the recovery council i don't
think you
um mentioned that um dr bayatas and i
think it's important to recognize these
folks
thank you uh mr mayor members of the
city council let me just quickly pull up
my list and i can certainly answer that
question
um for sure of course as mr chris chaljo
as the chairman of the board
ms debbie moore as the vice chair mr
michael harris
he's a business owner i believe from uh
if i'm not mistaking
district six if i'm not mistaken
mr george miller a member from the
employee miss sharon thomas
miss brook montgomery miss veronica
archuleta
mr ron fitz herbert mr doc cowan
and miss um susan greenwald
was was just a recently uh she just
recently joined us
ms jolene martinez and ms darlene lopez
from new mexico wordpress connections
those are those are currently the
members of the las cruces economic
recovery board
thank you dr payatis thank you i'm sorry
for interrupting
i just wanted to say that um michael
harris is from district six
thank you doctor sorry for interrupting
that's okay
may protem are you finished
thank you david did you have something
else david myers says you have something
else you want to add
or you forget to put your hand down
okay probably forgot but yes mice and
apology mayor i forgot to bring my hand
down
just don't let that happen again all
right just kidding
counselor
tells her sorry thank you mr mayor i
almost wasn't quite ready
yeah could you go back to slide four
uh and by the way what a wonderful
presentation you had
uh i very easily understand
and uh very thorough all the good things
there's this seal here could you explain
again how that seal
could be used or would be used or is
going to be used
mr mayor members of the city council mr
uh sorry counselor
the the seal right now is is a
placeholder uh
as i mentioned during the presentation
we were just becoming aware that
this is actually pretty similar to one
of the of the departmental seals
so there may be potential for being uh
some changes with regards to it
uh as to the design in itself actually
we had a lot of very useful help
from um the economic development
department folks and
visit las cruces um and actually mr paul
dalgran
is is in the phone call who was the
designer of the seal
as for the use of the seal it the the
use of the seal
if it comes that we need to adjust it uh
it will be for the campaign in itself
this this is
just for the promise and for carrying
out the campaign
but the only seal that will go into
businesses is the new mexico certified
one
which i think is on on slide number
six which that that is the one that one
would go in businesses
whereas this one will go as part of the
campaign uh do you need me to do bring
mr dahlgren so he can explain the the
features of the seal uh
counselors no no no no not necessary um
you can but
um i it's not necessarily just now
um i like it i think having that seal
in a business will tell people that
uh it's safe to use this business
and i i for one would like to see it in
businesses
uh uh to display
along with the state seal on both of
them
and um gives people double assurance
that
their business is uh is it safe for
consumers
um and and you mentioned that as as
part of the campaign here and oh boy is
that
ever if so important in this uh
time we have here
sorry go ahead yeah uh uh yeah if you
want to add something to that okay
mr mayor uh council sort of this uh
there was a discussion during the
exclusive economic recovery board
uh in which the the discussion was uh
let's try not to
duplicate some of the efforts that the
state is already carrying because the
state has already put so much effort
into this
and and that's when we said well let me
apologize the las cruces economic
recovery were said
uh let's use this this uh our our own
portion of the of the lascus if promise
for the individuals and have the
new mexico state certified link to that
because they have all the design of the
trainings
okay okay that's a pretty good reason i
i'm okay with that
um but i also wanted to comment on how
important
it is for the city council to uh approve
this as a policy in the city
here and that it shouldn't be just a an
administrative
effort here because it would carry a lot
more weight when the city council
uh approves it so it's important that
we're doing this today
i am proven and then um we had some
um video clips that we recorded
here in the last couple weeks uh
concerning
uh using masks
uh will that be part of this campaign
the promise campaign do you know
or or if not can we do some more
i don't know who can answer that uh dr
patters
mr mayor uh councillor actually i can i
can defer that question to
uh jamie rickman who who she's going to
be assisting us substantially she's an
expert on campaign deliveries
awesome yes
go ahead jamie yes sir thank you very
much good morning everyone it's a
pleasure to be here with you this
morning
uh thank you for this opportunity just
want to let you know that we have
like a lot of programs going on with the
city currently regarding mask up and and
just building awareness for
the protocols regarding covet so this is
one
aspect of it and so those videos that
you were doing were through the
communications
office and possibly also through quality
of life
too but those are unrelated
but even though they deal with the same
issue um but
we can certainly definitely look into
making video clips or connecting all of
that so it's not so
fragmented and make it a more unified
effort
but we'd need to brand uh the
las cruces promise or a safe promise
came
with that material with those video
clips so
absolutely we can work on that we've got
a preliminary uh
engagement plan that is moving forward
really well
and that'll be something i appreciate
your input on that because that's that's
important to get
all everybody thinking about this on
along the same line so i appreciate
these
and we will definitely incorporate that
oh thank you
uh miss rickman that's awesome uh you
you read my mind this is exactly what i
was thinking
so okay i'm good mr mayor and thank you
everybody who
worked on this by the way uh all the the
board and
and staff and everyone that were working
on it uh then
it's a good job um mr mayor thank you
okay
i'm sure thank you counselor flores
uh thank you mr mayor and uh thank you
so very much for your presentation
dr payatis as always it's top-notch um
and very always uh very easy to follow
so i personally took the uh promise i it
came to me in my personal email
and uh the information i provided
however was my address here at city hall
i took that a day or two ago that these
days are just sort of ones just running
into the other
but it did come to me i don't know uh if
i'm on a special list for the governor
i don't know but um but i did take it
and um so i'm very happy to see this and
thank you uh chris
debbie dear friends um and sherry
and michael jolene and everybody else
who
met to do this uh or no excuse me it was
debbie and chris and the others uh
are well at any rate thank you very much
it's top notch
and i think that i agree with my
colleagues uh joanna excuse me counselor
ben como uh who really propelled this at
one of our special meetings so
um i i want to recognize her for
bringing up the concept of an economic
recovery board which we all of course
jumped on and agreed with and and thank
you very much
uh economic recovery board members for
uh all your work on this i i think that
we're going to be
i think we are uh in the vanguard of um
working on resolving a copied pandemic
and thank you thank you mr mayor
thank you just out of curiosity how many
days you think you can keep that promise
which promise are you talking about
yeah exactly oh that one oh yeah yeah i
promise to yeah
uh or that one oh yes i'll keep that
promise seriously
um forever as long as i need to all
right just wanna put you on the record
uh councillor abate the stubby
thank you mayor thank you dr peters and
thank you chris
and debbie and all the members of the
economic recovery council
for working on this i really do
appreciate it and i'm excited to
see the next pieces um i do have one
question
doctor um uh just to make sure and to
let the businesses know is there any
costs
related to taking this promise taking
the training
um mr mayor and councillor avetastory
not to my knowledge i think this is this
is cost free
any business can go in and do the
problems and take well take the
trainings
the cost is just the time that you
dedicate to it fantastic
thank you um and i'm
hopeful that as we see more of these
local businesses
take these promises that we're able to
showcase them in some way and build up
that community
as we go further so what that might look
like i'm not sure but i
am hopeful that we can really recognize
those businesses that are really
committed to that care
compassion and safety for our community
and thank you mayor
thank you councillor vasquez
[Music]
thank you mayor uh i am in concurrence
with
my colleagues on the council that this
is a terrific campaign
i just want to thank everybody in our
community who volunteered to be a part
of this
um and just want to uh also just
reiterate that along with this
amazing uh campaign which actually i
think builds goodwill and trust between
customers and businesses
uh that we should
the other way to support um our local
economy
and to support um folks in addition to
uh this great campaign just being able
to uh
to also find creative ways to support uh
businesses and workers during this time
uh is should definitely be a component
of of this campaign
uh but overall i'm just highly impressed
and very pleased with everything
that has been presented here staff
volunteers uh
debbie uh chris everybody who
contributed to this campaign
uh thank you so much for your
thoughtfulness and your hard work on
this
i know that personally i would
definitely uh patronize a business and
more likely to patronize a business with
this sticker on it
and i'm sure others in the city feel the
same way so thank you so much
this is a terrific initiative and i
absolutely support it
great thank you counselor
councilor flores did you have another
comment or did you forget to put your
hand down
oh you're muted you forgot to put your
hand down okay counselor
put my hand down i'm sorry no problem
i'm
mr mayor thank you i just wanted to add
one more thing i truly believe that this
is
the kind of thing that is going to
really help us
keep this uh coveted 19 under control
until we get a vaccine or some other
kind
of control of of the disease itself this
is this is
what we really need to do and i just
hope
we can encourage the total population
to follow these promises here and and um
and i and i think we're going to be okay
if we do that
that's all mr mayor thank you very good
okay so in closing i just want to thank
the members of the committee for their
thoughtfulness and being able to come up
with such great ideas
thanks for doing all this and oh you
know what did uh
chairs lego or vice chair moore have
anything they'd like to add
um no mr mayor i think we're good as far
as the committee goes thank you for
having us on today okay and that was
chris schlegel we're just talking
vice chair more anything yes mr mayor
thank you
thank you to you and the counselors for
the support of this program
i will tell you i think this is going to
be beneficial because it's a grassroots
effort
excuse me for interrupting can you just
state your name please oh debbie moore
greater las cruces chamber the las
cruces economic gravity board sorry mr
mayor
i'm so excited a great opportunity for
us to work within the community
for the safe promise that that goes not
only through the business community but
also
so the businesses know that the
customers coming in uh have
are safe and i think we can work with
staff in the committee to
see how we can get that logo printable
where we can cross that and make it
really a
good across-the-board marketing idea
uh from the chamber i will commit that
we're we're getting ready to push i was
ready
waiting for today to push out that new
mexico city certified the chamber is
certified i've gone through it
and so there is a certificate that's on
our window that will be on our window i
was again waiting
uh for that but it is a powerful tool
and thank you again to mr mayor to you
and the counselor and to staff
for all their support to the board
absolutely well thank you again for
all your hard work as well okay if
there's nothing further
uh christine you want to call for the
question please
this is on the motion to approve
resolution 21-0-2-0
counselor beta stevie yes
council vasquez yes councilman cuomo
yes
[Music]
yes mayor yes
okay so next we're going to go to item
3.1 which is basically the
department of health question and answer
we have with us today
don sanchez david morgan and selena
torres so i don't know who's going to
start off first
good morning everyone and so um david
morgan here from the new mexico
department of health
uh just wanted to uh provide uh you know
introduction and uh really we are here
for uh all of you uh any questions that
you have
uh we're here for them
okay don did you have anything you
wanted to say
oops goodness yes good morning city
council
and mayor mr mayor this is don sanchez
uh same thing we do have some questions
that were sent to us by david
um so thank you for giving us some
questions ahead of time to allow us be
prepared
we have dr celina torres with us now
from epione response division she's
replacing dr landon who typically was
with us but he's retired
so we're happy to have her on the call
with us and i think we could probably
start with answering some of those
questions
that were sent to us the other day and
then we had some more this morning so
i'll probably turn over to dr torres if
she wants to start
um with answers to some of those
questions
okay sounds good dr tortoise
can you can you hear me yes ma'am we can
hear you
okay okay great i i apologize i'm gonna
i'm just seeing the new questions but
i'd like to pull up the older questions
and david i know you had some responses
to some of those do you want to start
off with your
responses or do you want me to
i would be happy to or uh okay if
uh it pleases the mayor and uh council
if you folks just want to ask your
questions
as well uh you know as we've done in the
past um
we are happy to do it either way
okay and if you wouldn't mind because um
our the one who transcribes the minutes
uh doesn't get it really watch the video
so if you if you can remember and i'll
try to also remember if you wouldn't
mind just stating your name every time
you speak please
so yes david morgan pio department of
health
no problem so looks like the first
question is going to come from counselor
gabe vazquez
thank you mayor thank you mr morgan and
for your staff for always being
available to us as well as miss sanchez
i guess the role that the department of
health has had in the conversations
or the plan around the reopening of
schools um
wondering if you could provide just some
insight as to the role
of doh and the decisions being made by
the state
to essentially give parents an option
for
for in-school learning and how that also
uh has
uh and the federal conversation also
around
um reopening of schools and how that is
currently
impacting your work and the strategy for
school reopening in the state
councillor vasquez council
mayor david morgan public information
officer department of health
uh there are a lot of moving pieces that
went into
that uh back to school plan uh there are
a lot of moving pieces
um that are going to continue moving
forward
uh there was initial there was an
initial
plan in place and then our case numbers
uh started rising statewide
as they were really starting to spike in
states around the country
uh so that plan did indeed have to
be revised and we
are taking this uh you know in in two
week
bites if you will because uh
forecasting covet 19 cases is
not necessarily as easy as it is to
forecast the weather
for example um so the department of
health has been in contact with
ped on on a daily basis senior
leadership
from both departments have worked
together
to be able to formulate
the the best plan possible under
the circumstances of
how to be able to proceed however
um at the end of the day it's our case
numbers it's our viral spread that is
going to
continue to drive those case numbers
um excuse me that's going to drive
uh our ability to uh be able to get back
into classrooms face to face uh whether
you
are uh in elementary or you're in
graduate school right now
thank you mr morgan i appreciate that um
i i will speak for myself
not for the rest of the council but
absolutely support data-driven decisions
for
um for our schools that you know
hopefully uh you didn't touch on this
but
with the federal or the conversation
happening at the federal level with this
administration
i want to make sure that we as new
mexicans are making the best decisions
for our state
and locally for our communities to keep
our children safe to keep teachers safe
to keep families safe as you know mr
morgan many
of our uh of our young students here
are in mixed households a mixed
generational household and so
there's a lot of children being raised
by grandparents by ants
by other family members not
not not so much um maybe like other
parts of the country
and so the danger of
young people being in contact with the
vulnerable
um is really something that i that that
is a reality for us in las cruces and
i'm sure
a lot of other parts of new mexico and
so i just want to make sure that
we have the best science and the best
data available because there is some
mixed conversations about whether
you know children from certain age
groups or carriers whether they can
transmit the disease whether
um you know it doesn't seem to me
logical that uh a young person couldn't
transmit the disease easier or
harder than anybody else um so i just
want to make sure that
that we are acting in the best interest
of our state and our communities
um especially like i said locally for
those families that are
that are intergenerational uh in in
their households because
it presents a huge danger to our
population here um
so so thank you i appreciate hearing
that you're working with with ped
um i do just want to go back to that
question however around the
federal involvement what is what is the
role of the federal government
at this point in the decisions that we
are making to reopen our schools
um what type of influence i know we've
heard rhetoric about defunding
um you know you know the schools and
and different states who choose them
yes yeah mr mayor members of council
councilor vasquez uh the federal uh uh
issue uh will be something that will you
know always be something
that we will be keeping an eye out for
certainly i can't speak
for the governor's office i can speak
only for the department of health
but also i can think i do think i
you know can go out on the proverbial
limb to be able to say
that you know from the the top down from
the administration
to our state agencies um
we very much uh are have the back
of new mexico residents uh we will you
know continue to fight
or resist any uh attempt
on a federal level uh to defund um
truly um to my knowledge at least
uh there has not been um much movement
on that
short of the bluster that we have heard
uh on the media
uh that said though you know if anything
has taught me if the kovat 19 pandemic
has taught me
anything it's literally how anything can
happen
unexpectedly thank you
thank you mr morgan i appreciate hearing
that
very much so i appreciate the
reassurance on that
uh the other question i have is around
some of our correctional facilities
and and also some of our industrial
facilities that have
industrial private corporations that
have
you know in recent months contributed to
a giant spike
uh in colburn cases
how are we doing with otero what have
would have been the mitigation i guess
measures that the state or the
department of health has put in place
working with our corrections department
since that giant outbreak at otero and
similarly
with the meatpacking plant in sunland
park
since the last time that we spoke i know
several of the council members including
myself raised some great
great concerns about the lack of perhaps
mitigation efforts being taken
to uh uh to get
you know to get those numbers uh lower
um but what has been done on the state
side of the department of health side to
mitigate
those outbreaks in those facilities
since the last time we spoke
mr mayor council councilor vasquez uh
our uh our epidemiologists might be able
to
speak uh more to uh what is
been you know the level of communication
uh between our department uh and the
feds
on this subject most recently uh what i
can tell you though
is that uh that we are
in contact with with the the federal
government and their contractors
regarding the otero facility
uh there is um uh there had there was
at at least at one point ongoing issues
about
um patient transfers where that actually
led to further
spread of the virus across the state
uh but specifically to the otero
situation
one you know thing that i can say uh
because i ended up posting uh here
through
through a zoom a press conference uh
held
jointly by the department of health and
the department of corrections is
uh one thing that i learned along with
the media is that one of the most
challenging things to
be able to try to control
uh spread of the virus at the otero
facility is
literally just the construction of the
facility itself
it is built to maximize communal
interaction and you know
that that has its positives but
in the covid era it couldn't be more
negative
by sheer luck so uh that has been really
one of the greatest challenges
uh to be able to try to
um isolate a potentially
contagious population in a
building that is literally just built
for
communal living
thank you mr morgan i appreciate the
honesty and
answer and i personally will advocate
i'm sorry who's trying to who's trying
to speak
hi this is celina sodas from the
department of health i'm sorry
i just wanted to add to david's um
comment
about the detention facilities and you
know we have a dedicated team that
actually
communicates with the facilities on a
daily basis
regarding you know the new number of
positive cases and also um
assisting and as david said it's a
challenge to try to
mitigate the spread within this
population
so we work with them to try to be
creative and
get the best level of isolation we can
given their constraints
it is difficult because there is
movement of
um you know detainees or inmates between
facilities and we've tried to
you know we continue to try to advocate
for
as little movement as possible that that
will
continue to be a challenge as far as the
spread of the virus to other
other facilities so we we do work
closely with them
on a daily basis and it is a
considerable amount of work but we
it's important to us to continue to to
try to mitigate that spread and protect
uh you know the community as much as
possible
okay thank you dr torres
thank you thank you oh go ahead i missed
you
yes mr mayor councillor vasquez city
council members i just wanted to respond
to your question about stampede to the
meatpacking plant
yeah and just like to let you know
sorry don sanchez with the department of
health southwest region
public health um we you know from from
the get-go they were very cooperative in
making sure that they
established the covet safe practices at
their facility
and so since then we have gone back and
done repeated testing
um every two weeks or so and really the
the positive
positives have been really one possibly
one uh
from the beginning when there was when
there were several so
them they've been very cooperative in
putting those safe practices into place
and it's shown by the decrease in
numbers of positives there at the
facility
we continue to whenever they have new
employees they send them to our health
offices in summit park or anthony to get
tested
so we're continually in in communication
with them um supporting them and they
have
um like i said they've put practices
into place to keep their employees safe
and it's really shown because of the
huge decrease in the number of positives
so we do continue to work with them
um and if they have needs then we're
there to support them with
obviously whatever they whatever they
might need to as far as mitigating any
other situation but we've
been it's been successful so far so we
feel that they're
they're putting the appropriate safe
practices into place for their employees
so just want to give you a quick update
on on that one
okay thank you thank you thank you so
much mrs
i appreciate uh answering to that
question i have one more question uh
before that i just want to say that i
think
um yes we definitely want to protect our
community and those correctional
facility
uh workers who who do work in our
communities and who
interact with uh with folks that are
detained
at the correctional facilities but i
also just want to reiterate that
um that the folks that
to me matters as much we don't sentence
them to death by covet
right we sentence them to uh for
whatever crime they committed
and and and you know accordingly are are
there for a reason but
but it's also we also should be i think
invested in protecting the lives of
folks who who are there
um it's our job i think as a local
government as a state government as a
federal government
uh to protect the safety and well-being
of all of our residents including those
who are detained and so
um just want to make sure that we also
are mindful that these are not
expendable lives
uh whether they're serving time for for
any number
[Music]
we all are going to find their health
and their safety um
as i mentioned before we're not sending
sentencing them to death by covet
so let's let's let's make sure that we
don't do that um
as much as we can with the control that
we have at the state level
uh the the other question i have before
passing it on to my colleagues so i know
how
probably a lot of other great questions
is uh just around contact tracing um
i i know there's been kind of an
evolution of that nationally
of what that means and how we can
continue to best
control this outbreak and figure out who
is possibly infected who is asymptomatic
who is not
um and i uh admittedly maybe have not
heard much i have not
maybe done my own research but trying to
figure out just
what the status is on contact tracing if
the state has ramped up its efforts
if there's anything that the city could
do locally
to increase that but it certainly seems
that in a day
i think yesterday where we had our
largest number of cases statewide
that that's still a very important part
of the solution so an update on contact
tracing would be
would be great
council vasquez just want to let you
know sometimes you kind of fade at fade
out in and out so
i don't know what's oh sorry
yeah you freezes my my internet is for
whatever reason very unstable i agree
i apologize for that uh my question was
around just a general update on contact
tracing the state's efforts on contact
trace
okay yes mr mayor uh council uh
counselor uh vasquez dave morgan
spokesperson for the new mexico
department of health
uh right now contact uh tracing uh
remains a priority for the department
rising case levels have made contact
tracing increasingly a challenge
um we currently have about 250 people
that are trained and uh are being
dispatched
regularly daily for contact tracing
we need about 600
total and we are in the process of being
able to hire all of those temporary
employees there is a lot uh that goes
into
the contact tracing process more than
you know even i personally knew until uh
until recently uh because there is a lot
of training involved
there's a lot of specific questions
there is uh
there's some kind of a a call flow to
this
uh but then also if there's just the
sheer number of
cases so you know what we have uh
been doing in the last week is uh
starting to uh call for volunteers
within our public health division
for those that have been teleworking to
be able to if they have uh
the ability to add to their duties to
uh please do so uh for additional
contact tracing because it's that
contact
tracing that uh um uh
in in many cases leads to being able to
find more cases and
allows us the potential to be able to
isolate those
and to be able to help slow
the the the spread of this virus but um
with those with case numbers uh rising
uh it is going to be
a very difficult balance um
for everyone across the board from
hospitals
uh you know to the department of health
uh to
testing but specifically you know uh
talking about contact tracing
our ability to be able to trace contacts
is uh right now something that we are
working very hard on
to be able to get to as many as we can
as fast as we can
thank you this is celina i i would just
like to add to what um
david said to mr mayor council and
councilor vasquez
you know one of the challenges that we
have at the department of health even in
contacting cases to do our investigation
and identify
the contacts is people not answering our
phone calls
you know we don't have a standardized
message when we call that says
department of health and even if we
um did i don't know that people would
answer so we have a it's
difficult to get people to answer our
calls uh you know we
try multiple times we were trying to
estimate yesterday
how many calls we've made in in this
past week to cases to contact
and it's uh you know almost 10 000 calls
within a week it's a lot of leg work to
just get people on the phone
um you know one for the most part once
people are on the phone they're very
uh willing to provide information and
are grateful to get our guidance
but that initial step so i think as a
community
within your county within your city you
know promoting or
advocating for people to you know if you
have been tested if you think you may
have been exposed
please answer the phone if you see a
number that you don't recognize you know
we have different strategies we try to
leave messages saying
this is the department of health i'll
call you back in 10 minutes please
answer
we also use text messaging but sometimes
we just can't get a hold of people so
i think that message goes a long way in
helping us get in contact with people
sooner
as david mentioned it's a huge uh you
know undertaking if you imagine just
yesterday we had 343 cases new cases
if each of those persons just had one
contact that's an additional
343 people that we need to contact you
know
contact give them instructions have them
in quarantine and check in on them for
14 days
so it exponentially grows every single
day
um and so it it's huge but we're pulling
every resource we have to try to get
this
you know managed as best as we can
and uh david morgan uh new mexico
department of health
spokesperson i would also uh add to that
uh
some some statistics that i have
in front of me with regarding uh being
able to reach uh
folks uh our success rate on the first
try
is 55 i imagine there are a lot of
people
like me if i don't recognize the phone
number i'm going to let it go to
voicemail initially
uh 55 success rate on the first call
second uh call uh we uh you know are at
about
65 by the third call
uh we do get eighty percent of the
the people that we are seeking out for
for contact
tracing so um
i can't reiterate uh enough what what dr
torres said you know
the uh need to answer the phone or
to uh to to follow up with a phone call
from us is very important
can i say can i ask you a quick question
do you all have capability of text
messaging
or are you allowed to do that as a means
of follow-up
yes um david morgan spokesperson new
mexico department of health
so uh we have in the last month
uh implemented a um a pre-test
registration site that allows you to be
able to pre-register for testing at the
department of health locations online
and
it's there that you get to be able to
choose
uh where uh what medium how you get your
message back
about your test results are you wanting
a text message
uh is it leaving a voicemail all right
do you want an email instead
we offer the full spectrum of
uh where you are most comfortable and
it's most convenient for you to be able
to receive those test results
all right thank you
dr torres if there's anything we can do
from the city's perspective
in terms of getting that information out
to the public about answering those
phone calls or about being communicative
with the department of health
i did not uh think about that and hadn't
thought about you know the
the difficulties in in
the contact tracing process and i'm sure
folks
that don't recognize a number are apt
you know they're apt to not
answer especially those millennials who
never answered their phones
uh myself included by one year by one
year
but but regardless if there's anything
our public information office can do
uh to get the information out that if
they if they get a call from the
department of health
uh that they should answer it we are
happy to do that i mean we gotta be all
hands on deck
in terms of getting this virus under
control and so
that might be mayor's suggestion i might
make to our public information office
with guidance from the department of
health
to perhaps put out a message to our
community uh that says that the
department of health is actively
contacting people
as part of the
calls for mexico numbers and to uh to
answer and and respond so that
um we can all do our part that might be
part of the equation
in in this whole process so
with that i i know my colleagues have
some other questions i have some
additional questions but i will pass it
on to them for now thank you man
okay well thank you counselor counselor
bait the stevie
thank you mayor and thank you uh
david dawn and dr torres for joining us
today
um i have a number of questions but i
think i'd like to start with a follow-up
with that
um the tracing um are we
look seeing any specific patterns of
where um cases are occurring here in our
community
um and what does that look like what
type of data are we able to collect from
that tracing that we're getting here in
doneanna
this is um selena sodas department of
health um
counselor uh this uh that's a good
question and so you know during the case
investigation process that's when we
identify
areas where our the person that has
tested positive may have
exposed other individuals during their
infectious periods
um and you know there are multiple
um commonalities that we're seeing can
you know show up uh workplace
clusters are as you guys know are pretty
common and they continue to be common um
you know given the holiday weekend that
we had july 4th
after that we had a significant amount
of individuals reporting that they had
attended parties with large groups of
people
um and you know those are a little bit
more difficult to
trace because they didn't necessarily
know where the party was or who the host
was or
um and or the host contact information
so it becomes difficult to do contact
tracing
uh with very little to no information um
so the areas where for contact tracing
where we have good response
and are able to mitigate as much as
possible our work
workplace employers um you know there's
a lot of i think it was mentioned
yesterday
in the press conference that there has
been a lot of
effort into food establishments there
have been
a significant number of cluster
outbreaks in those areas
and then of course you know within your
region of the state
we have a pretty large
a correctional facility cluster and then
also some
long-term care facilities that have
multiple individuals so
those are the trends that we continue to
see i mean the cases
uh do tend to be in the younger age
groups that's what the
is trending currently um
but you know that could change as the
weeks go by
thank you for that um and following up
with the
the i guess the restaurant and food
industries are we seeing those cases
mostly with
employees or are we seeing um connection
between
transfer between employees and customers
um having those
types of transmissions
uh this is selena sotis again um so yeah
it's
it's really difficult to identify
um customers uh that
that may have been exposed some
restaurants have
you know when the dining rooms are open
we're asking customers to provide their
contact information should they become
exposed
but the majority of what we're seeing in
the food establishments is is with the
employees thank you for that
um and then could we just get an update
um if we have it
on what our active case numbers look
like for this region right now
and though and our transmission rate um
just to update the public and to
give us a baseline of where we're at
right now
absolutely so um for the
um south uh west region which is your
region of the state we
transmission we refer to it as our
effective which is basically
the you know for one case how many other
cases can that person
uh has that person transmitted the virus
it's an estimate obviously
um and you know we would love to have
anything below one
or even zero right because that means
that that case did not transmit to any
other people
um and the good news for the southwest
region of the state is that they are
effective for this
uh week was less than one it was 0.9 so
it's gone down
um of course there's a lag right in the
estimate and the modeling
uh because this took into account cases
from last week so then we had this bump
this week so
we anticipate that probably it will go
up but um
the r effective for for the southeast
region is 0.9 and for the entire state
is one so it's a little bit lower than
than what it is for the state um
the percent positivity for this up for
dona ana county
is 5.3 so that means that of all the
tests
testing done in dona ana county um five
percent of the
of those tests are are coming back
positive um
if you compare that to the state so the
state right now we're at 4.7 percent
so dona county is a little bit higher
than the rest of the state
um again this is a weekly estimate and
can change it's with for the last seven
days
the measure of the last seven days but
it gives you a little bit of perspective
of you know how the percent positivity i
know there were a lot of questions about
how we count cases and whether people
that are tested multiple times
are counted multiple times in our case
counts and so
we um currently you know the guidance
that we have
based on what we know about the virus
and the infection is that
um what regardless of what how many
times a person tests positive we are
counting them once as their single
uh you know as a single case
people are tested multiple times for
different reasons
sometimes if they're in hospitalized
they're tested multiple times to
determine when they may be able to be
removed out of their out of the covid um
unit there's also people that are
screened
uh you know every two weeks if they work
in long-term care facilities or
residents so the way we take our case
counts and do our estimates
and our modeling is based on a person
level not a
positive test number level
okay thank you um and then
you know i'm i'm sure many people have
seen on the news
that um testing um criteria
is changing at some hospitals um that
are doing testing
are do you think that we will see those
types of changes
here in our community and how are we
doing
on our testing and um and capacity
so the department of health um this is
elena sodas department of health
sorry um so the department of health has
um
you know we are still aiming to do 2000
to 2500 tests per day statewide
the um area where the testing happens it
you know depends on many
factors for example rapid response to an
employer setting
a hotspot that we identify looking at
our data
if we know that there's a high
prevalence or a known cluster of
positive cases we
direct some of that testing in that area
that being said we have a lot of other
partners within the state that are also
doing testing
the governor did touch on this at the
press conference yesterday but so the
larger facilities that use reference
labs are
no longer going and david please correct
me if i'm not right on this
are not are no longer going to be
testing asymptomatic individuals however
the department of health will still
test those individuals at the public
health offices or
testing events that we set up
and so you know the expectation is for
now that we will
continue at the same pace and test as
much as we have been
until you know if we have to
re-evaluate and strategize how we're
going to direct testing we will but for
now
it's going to remain the way it has been
thank you
and um for jonah anna what is the
testing capacity that
the department of health has per day
you know that's a good question that i
this is selena soda's department of
health and i don't know
the answer to that question david do you
have a sense i mean
i know for department of health what
what we have what our capacity is on a
daily basis
but i'm not sure that we can speak to
what the reference labs
can do you know on a daily basis because
it's not just collecting the specimens
but then it's within the lab
getting the testing you know the
specimen process
and and the results out so there are
multiple
facets of that david do you have
anything to add to that
yes definitely uh testing capacity
by county is kind of hard to figure out
because there are multiple
agencies or private practices involved
in testing so for example memorial
medical center has
been testing all this time their
uh their samples go to a different lab
than the department of health's lab we
also
have uh a private service um
that is also doing testing uh and
they um they do their testing
in house and it really varies uh based
upon
the test supplies that they have on a
given day
as to how many tests that they do
don sanchez can probably speak to how
many
samples that we collect per day and
also you know those results
from the department of health go
straight to our scientific
laboratory as well for testing
and then just while i'm talking here uh
yes
dr torres is uh right the department of
health is
still testing asymptomatic individuals
uh
but uh within that while our criteria
hasn't changed we still
want to make sure that you know certain
uh people are prioritized you know
including those who
are actually having active symptoms of
covet 19
those who are asymptomatic uh but are
close contacts
uh or household members of known covid
cases
um asymptomatic people who uh
work in congregate settings like nursing
homes long-term care facilities
and then also patients who are scheduled
for surgery
they need to get tested uh and so
when we're talking about the challenge
of testing and you ask what the priority
is in a perfect world the answer is
everyone
but with uh rising interest in
testing and the disproportional growth
of caseload that just is going to put a
challenge in the strain on every aspect
of
the healthcare system
thank you um and don i'm not sure do you
i'll have the numbers of how many cases
are how many tests
you guys can um acquire in a day
through your drive through by
appointment
yes yes uh councillor abetus duvet mr
mayor city council members this is don
sanchez southwest region director for
public health division
so here in las cruces um we
average about 200 a day in it obviously
it varies one thing that has
changed that's kind of shifted over the
past two weeks as we used to have
by appointments you'd call you make an
appointment well we've changed that to
just being drive through every morning
because the demand just really started
to kick up about two weeks ago
so we at the las cruces office see
anywhere from um
you know almost 200 to 250 a day
in the morning when we do testing there
are public health offices out in the
county uh summon park anthony chaparral
uh it varies it averages from 30 to 90
sometimes it just depends on on the day
and i think what's going on and of
course i think as mentioned before for
my colleagues when we have rapid
responses to
a lot of what we're doing is we're
directing those employers to come to our
offices so we're having to just kind of
maintain
staffing at the offices to do the
community testing versus
going out to some of the um rapid
response and so that has something that
has just
has changed we're needing to get more
people through the drive-throughs
that we have at our office mmc
averages around 400 a day they had a
high of 600
on the 13th last monday so that was the
high that they've seen
they have gone to testing just monday
wednesday friday
so we are really ramping up our ability
to test
um additional folks on tuesdays and
thursdays we haven't seen a huge
increase
this week they started this week um
going monday wednesday friday
so we're just making sure that we are
ramping up our our staff and our
supplies to be able to support whatever
the testing needs are in the community
and then as
as david mentioned we have a private lab
as well that does testing and they
average i think about 400 a day so we do
have i think a large testing capacity
within the city and then also within the
county we also have the clinica
obviously that's also providing testing
not only in las cruces but in three
other communities in the southern part
of the county
thank you and since there has been an
increase in that testing are we seeing
any changes on when um people can expect
the results whether they're
positive or negative
and uh this is don sanchez uh councillor
stuve
uh mayor city council and i'll also
defer to my um
my colleagues dr torres as well um now
that we have like david mentioned the
online registration application
um if folks go ahead and register
they again like david mentioned they
will they can um
if they have a negative result they can
go ahead and
determine how they want to get the
information again texting
email or phone call or all of the above
so those the turnaround time for the
negative results in my
understanding is is fairly quick 24 48
hours
maybe 72 um the positive
uh calls i know that all goes through
our case investigators
and i might just give that um have dr
torres answer
that question yes and this is celina
sodas department of health um
our um we are
the normal route for is for the case
investigators to
i you know let the individual know that
they've tested positive however
we also have staff that are calling
individuals to make sure that they get
their results
sooner than later so they may be called
before they even have their
start their case investigation process
the reference labs
also send the results to
providers and providers are reaching out
to
to people to let them know so um dawn is
correct in that it is about a 20
24 to 48 hour turnaround to get the
results
um sometimes it could be a little bit
you know 30 uh 72 hours
that being said you know most of the
time when we call a case to let them
know that they have tested positive they
already know about their results so
the turnaround is pretty quick to let
people know that they're positive um
the case investigation maybe may lag a
little bit but once they're given the
result they are given the initial
instructions on
you should isolate you need to stay home
department of house will be calling you
with some more information
thank you and if um an individual has
gotten a
test by one of the other partner
agencies
will they expect similar results or will
it vary through
the different site that you go to
whether it's through department or
health or a different agency
david morgan public uh information
officer from new mexico department of
health the
counselor of victor stuveg mr mayor
members of the council
uh what
your experience may vary uh from
uh location to location so you know if
you're
depending on the facility uh they may
ask
different criteria they may require
different information
than the department of health uh and
it also they may not uh and then when it
comes to test results
it also has uh a lot of things come into
play there as well
uh to uh include uh testing capacity
where is their sample sent for example
there are still
locations that will send their labs out
of state
for example cbs pharmacy and
so that extends the turnaround time as
well
but uh for the department of health uh
as as everyone has said our turnaround
time for being able to
report results to you especially if it's
a positive test
is within 24 to 48 hours
and then for a negative test uh there
may be
a a little bit of a lag on that
because we're prioritizing speaking to
the positive patients first
um do you have an indication on what
that lag might be
so the lag can vary um
i would put it in the area of four to
five days uh at tops
but um what uh what is that
issue there is when there is a negative
for all the negative test results they
have to be entered into
a database so the more we test
um the more people we need to conduct
the testing but we also need more people
for
for the data entry portion of this so
uh my understanding is we have had
uh days in a week where we do get
back up backed up but we also get caught
up
as well so i don't have an exact
um accurate uh number to give you i have
what amounts honestly to a guesstimation
okay thank you and um
my last question before i turn it over
to my colleagues i know i've asked quite
a few
so thank you for being with me um you
know
back on our last meeting we talked about
testing capacity here
in las cruces and perhaps there were
we were going to be partnering with
either nmsu or
maybe burrell to be able to do that
testing here locally
um did that ever come to fruition and
what does
that look like
to be able to run the tests here in las
cruces
counselors duvet mr mayor city council
members this is don sanchez public
health division southwest region
director
that we are still working on trying
you know working with the facilities and
msu to support them i know that that is
at the secretary and i appreciate the
governor's level as well
um i will definitely follow up with uh
secretary kunkle just to see what the
status of that is but that definitely i
think there is intention to
support that work locally as well to to
expand the lab capacity in the southern
part of the state so i will definitely
follow up on that
point and and respond back to um
dave and maestas for you all
thank you i think um as we move forward
i've
i've been a strong uh supporter of being
able to have those
capacity um levels here in our community
you know as we see cases go up as things
get busier
um i'm you know concerned uh
if we aren't able to kind of i would say
do everything in house i want us to be
able to
test here traced here run the tests here
that way in case there are capacity
issues in other parts of the state
we can still move and provide those
services for our community
um and so i think that's something that
i really would
i hope can get done and and well before
we start getting into
you know flu season and and the winner
so thank you and thank you mayor thank
you counselor
mayor protem kandara oh before i begin
for those of you
the speakers dr torres dave morgan don
sanchez
thank you very much for your formality
but just that you're
more than welcome just say don sanchez
or don and then just you don't have to
tell us your title again we've got that
and and you can just jump on and you
don't have to like i said i appreciate
the formality but you can just go in and
answer questions
thank you mayor thank you mr morgan
morgan dr torres
um miss sanchez for participating
this has always been one of the more
important
areas i think for us to ensure that we
have
um you all here to update us
um i appreciate um counselor vasquez and
kamzar suvi and they asked a lot of the
questions that i
that i had but i wanted to clarify some
things around
a number of testing sites here in dona
ana county you made mention
of many but i understand that there were
others like la clinica and the familia
and um
um i always confuse
miss angel's group i always want to say
saint luke's but i know it's not that
amador health clinic
list them for me i think it's important
that the public know where they can go
um would be helpful
don you might this is selena torres uh
you might have
john you might have more information but
but uh i know that
um in the southwest region at least the
las cruces public health office
and memorial medical center is what i
have on my list today for testing
sites um john do you have more to add to
that
correct thank you dr torres yes we have
so it is memorial medical
center las cruces is the health office
there on solano
um and then pathology consultants is
another the private lab off
of telstra provides testing as well
in the morning um as far as amador
councillor gondara
they do provide some testing they also
do some uh you know working with some of
the
their specific population uh with
working with the shelters and what have
you in that area so they as well
do testing i think for specific
populations right now
they're pretty pretty limited in their
capacity to do any kind of broader
community
you know surveillance type testing so
the main testing facilities right now
in las cruces that i'm aware of and i
think david alluded to cvs i'm not sure
for pharmacy the private
pharmacies are doing some testing too
but right now we have
the solano building monday through
friday from 7 to 9 a.m
and you can register online through the
cv
dot see the website is cv test
reg dot nm health dot org
so folks can go ahead and register
online and with that
you get a confirmation code it also
one thing that's happening is we are
when people register online
it is uh showing dates when they're
available to come get tested
uh and i think that it's showing like a
week a week away but they can
absolutely go any day to be honest with
you and just bring that code with them
to get tested at our facility
and then again memorial medical center
is testing right now same thing seven to
nine in the morning from
a monday wednesday friday through the
middle of august
and la clinica de familia at their
central medical clinic
they test there on mondays and i can't
tell you the date but i can def i mean
the times i can definitely get that
information to more specifics for you
all to share
that would be great and helpful i do
want to say i've been in a number of
meetings with pam angel and you're
absolutely right don
they're limited to certain zip codes
like eight eight zero zero
one um i know specifically i won't
i'll have to go back and look at nodes
and we're very
specialized groups obviously community
of hope
they're doing a lot of stuff for our
farm workers
going to sites and testing them there
and and if i can get through my notes
i will send out the zip codes that they
have specifically
been allowed to provide this service
they're also
in the process of communicating with the
federal
with the feds just to loosen up some of
the
their requirements to be able to open it
up a little a little more
um okay um
can you talk to me about
um the the the spread rate um
how many if one becomes
um covet positive what is the spread
rate looking like
currently how many uh would they um
affect
i didn't get that from everything that
you spoke of
does that make sense yes it does this is
selena torres um
yes so so what we call that the art
effective and basically what it means is
for
for every person then you have you know
the number tells you how many other
people we
um predict they would uh fact
so for the southwest region of yes
it's 0.9 yeah so it's below one right
yay okay hopefully we can
keep it there maybe lower it um did i
hear correctly from doctors grace that
someone asked uh i think counselor made
this scooby about
um sort of our our um
the you talk you talked about dr torres
workforce clusters like where they're
where you're finding them and i thought
i heard doctors grace say
restaurants 18 um is where people are
um or where you're seeing um
kovid is that accurate and could we get
a possible
percentage um rate here in dona ana
county or how would we go about doing
that
david morgan spokesperson department of
health so
uh restaurants are actually
uh the uh uh the oversight of
restaurants is overseen in new mexico by
the new mexico environment department
so it's um it's very unique how
we are overlapped in terms of our
services
but what what they have found
and also within the new mexico
environment
department uh is also the state osha
office for occupational health and
safety so
they do uh look at restaurants
uh on a regular basis and
what they what we did find uh at the
point
uh where uh the governor decided to
cap the um
customers being uh allowed to set inside
restaurants
came because of um an
increasing number of rapid responses
that did
have to come statewide
at various locations around the state
i don't know a specific county number
for us or a number for a specific city
and this is not to say that it was all
restaurants
at all either still you know
when you look at health care
when you divide up our rapid responses
per sector health care still
exceeds restaurants but
by the middle of
july you know we're we're still seeing
um a high number of rapid responses
that we had to do for
restaurants so what i'm trying to say
at this time really is that
you know while i can't give you the
exact number you know i can
tell you that every response is a rapid
response
um you know we are working with the
facilities about ceasing operations
temporarily and committing to uh
you know getting people retested is
necessary
disinfecting workplaces and and
implementing a safety plan
on that but there is also
a growing body of scientific
evidence that that kovid 19 may actually
be airborne
and that really just
takes our social distancing to a whole
different
level if it is airborne then it is
potentially there when
we are out walking it is there when we
are in a restaurant
trying to enjoy a meal there
were a lot of factors that went into
that
thank you mr morgan i i guess for me i
think it's important
as much data as we can have about
um those types of things in terms of
where we're seeing this
seeing the spread specific to our county
the more helpful i think it'll be for us
to
continue to manage and monitor that
i think those are things that when you
all are meeting
on your daily um your daily calls those
are things that i think are
really important to talk about i i don't
see
a lot of of consistent information and a
lot of people not showing up to those
meetings i mean i'm reading those things
because you are
you all of you that are sitting here are
our representatives and we have people
from the las cruces
city city of las cruces um there as well
i think it's
just very important that
you continue to give us as much
information that
that we can that you can related to the
our effective rates and
where are we seeing this specifically in
our in our community because as policy
makers we're trying to
you know um provide we're trying to
make policy for the protection of of
our entire um um um
citizenry so i i i think i
and i understand i understand what all
that and you know that there's just so
much that it entails you guys are
are so busy and i i don't want to sound
ungrateful i'm i'm very grateful to
everything that you do
i'm a huge proponent of department of
health that's where i started i got my
start
um so i understand what you do and what
the barriers
are um there but as much information
that can be given to us regularly
i think um the better um i'm also
would like to recommend i think hustler
vasquez
talked about this spoke of this
specifically
but anything that are that we can do to
work on
public service announcements with
department of health we're doing a
we did a whole mask up thing but things
that
that that in terms of
maybe these are the numbers that the
contract tracers are using if you get a
number
you know a call like this maybe you need
to answer
or whatever we'll be texting you i mean
just just trying to get as much
information
that we can now um through our psas
and our our communication office um the
better
i'm also um asking david maestas i know
that there's still a number of our
employees
that are that are working from home i'm
not sure to what capacity or not
and i'm wondering if there can be some
um
you know um
maybe they can help department of health
with this contract tracing
um and calls and maybe get trained up
for
something like that again i i'll leave
that to mr maestas
but i i think that would be so helpful
to the department of health
that we continue to use
our our employees utilize our employees
to the best of our ability
to help um the department of health with
this contract tracing i know this is an
administrative
function but just trying to think
outside the box when you hear
the numbers of you know you have 250
people trained and we need 600 total
um i think there could be some numbers
in our employees that
you know that could could help in this
endeavor
so again thank you so much um for
all that you do um i think mayor that's
um at least
um most of my question mayor proton
that's an excellent idea i know david's
on the
wants to make a comment but uh and i
understand where you're coming from but
that is
a policy issue and i think that's
something there that we could probably
uh easily support anyway so david you um
maestas you want to comment yes mayor
thank you
uh david myers interim city manager uh
mayor pro tem gandra
several of your items especially with
respect to information
one of the things that i can do
differently than
has been done before you might recall
quite some time ago i sent a link
and that link was directly to that
presentation spreadsheet that department
of health
has on their website and it shows the r
value
uh and different rates that they're
looking at throughout the entire state
and has quite a bit of information um
for
our county and for the
southwest region
what i can do when i get to
[Music]
we're having a hard time hearing you
david so um okay very good you want to
take
you want to take the video down and then
there you go yes sir very good
sure i don't i don't miss anything so
there
there are some links to the department
of health website that has
information on our values and those
specific items that
council is is asking about what i can do
is every time i send out the link for
the multi-agency or i'm sorry the report
from the multi-agency coordination group
i can send out these links as well so
you'll have the information
both from our multi-agency coordination
group as well as the information from
the department of health that you can
easily access the other thing that david
morgan has been
very good about is sending us updates on
locations and testing times
when they come through either on a week
basis or bi-weekly depending on when
when they have them scheduled i can
include that
in that email that i send to council as
well so that you have that information
we do post that on our covet button but
this way you'll be able to see it
quickly
and it'll also give us the opportunity
to remember to send
a reminder out to the community when we
post it as well
to let them know uh here are the
additional locations and times that they
can go to
hopefully that will help with the
information being passed on the council
and help you with the questions that you
might have and then with respect to
assisting the department of health with
testing we have done that
our fire department did have staff
assist
with testing locations throughout the
county throughout the community
so yes as mayor pointed out with respect
to administrative or policy
uh review on that we can look into that
and if the department health needs it
we can get with them for assistance
thank you very much
thank you thank you david i'm not
talking i'm i i think the testing
is is great i'm talking about the
contract tracing
i think is yes ma'am we have a number of
employees at our home
um i don't again i don't know what
capacities they're
they're at and i i know i don't think
they're at a hundred percent i could be
wrong
but i think if we can um
really partner with department of health
to assist them
in reaching those numbers um would be
helpful
i appreciate the links um i i have those
links and i have gone on
it's more about um the contract tracing
the percentages of where we're finding
um you know are their workforce clusters
where are those clusters
those are all really important things
that i think we should have
at our fingertips and i don't don't see
those from the um
the communications that i'm receiving i
could be wrong
but i i and i'll stand corrected
counselor david morgan the department of
health uh
i think moving forward for these q
a sessions uh we need to bring new
mexico environment
into the mix so you are able then to be
able to get that county level specific
data that will come with
with workplaces where cases are
occurring in the workforce and so on
so i will work with my counterpart
in the environment department to see
about bringing somebody
in for the next one
and mr mayor councillor gundra i think
on on david's note this is dawn too i
think
even the depart the environment
department website
they have listed on there the rapid
responses and it's updated daily so you
can go
on there and you can see exactly in
which county throughout the state
there's been a rapid response that might
give you another idea a snapshot of
where
the the positives are happening and
there it's pretty much widespread under
all industries
so but that's a good a place to go and
just see what's going on within it has
dona county
uh and i think that david morgan sent
that to david maestas to also share
would be a good website as well plus i
think having some from an environment
like david mentioned would be a good
good opportunity to ask them some direct
questions
thank you thank you
okay i appreciate that i think that's
super important and maybe something we
should be
adding to our website did i hear that
david that said it's on the covet
website currently what uh
what don was referring to was the
environment
department's information that they post
and i did send david maestas that link
this morning that's perfect thank you
david morgan thank you so much
thank you let's see here councilman
cuomo
thank you mayor um and thank you to the
department of health staff who have
joined us i'm sorry to
have seen dr landon retire but i guess
if i was him i would also retire in the
middle of a pandemic no better time
um thanks dr torres for joining us
um and thanks to my colleagues for the
great questions as we move forward
my question uh list gets shorter and
shorter
um i did i have sent over a question uh
through mr maestas last week
um regarding actually what mr morgan
just mentioned and i'm wondering if you
mr morgan or dr torres can um can talk
more about
the aerosol transmission of covid um and
the dangers of
of that um those findings that data
on on this on this thread of it being um
airborne particularly in in
enclosed spaces um so
i'm hoping you can touch a little bit
more on that
dr torres
[Laughter]
this is yes um so you know there there's
lots about this virus that we don't know
and um and it's ever changing so the the
things that we do know is as you
mentioned
you know in enclosed spaces the uh the
risk
of transmission goes up we know that the
the transmission mostly occurs person to
person
through these droplets um there is
evidence that it
you know if droplets are on a surface
and that high surface is touched by
somebody and then they touch
their nose or their mouth that then they
you know can become infected
as far as percentages of how often this
happens or in what
you know um with certainties like this
you know if these many people
are in this space it will occur uh we
don't have exact numbers
uh i think the best way to view this is
that you know the number of
the amount of risk so within a closed
space
with a crowning with people not wearing
mask
masks that's the greatest risk you know
if people are masked then the risk goes
lower then
if people are distance then it goes
lower and then if people are not within
an enclosed space then the risk is even
lower
so it almost needs to be
looked at as you know what level of risk
are
you putting yourself in we know that
none of the interventions
we have are 100 but we know that in
combination
these interventions lower our risk
significantly so
you know in an ideal world everybody
would adopt all
the interventions but what we can hope
for is that most people adopt
most of the interventions and then we
get the best uh
you know the best mitigation possible um
i hope that answers your question
it's a little vague but the the data is
is not there yet no i understand thank
you dr torres i am
i just recently read the an article in
new york on the new york times about
about this aerosol spread and and um
definitely wanted to touch face with you
about it and i'm sure you're
tired of repeating those simple steps
people can take um
to protect themselves and others but i
apprec the the more we repeat it i think
honestly the better so thank you for
that
um i recently
read um also an article here locally
about
the press conference doctors grace
secretary grace had a couple
weeks ago or last week i don't even
remember at this point um but he had
talked about
um the the pattern
that there are more asymptomatic people
um testing positive is that right and
can you talk about that pattern and i
think he said that was a positive trend
i'm curious if you could expand on that
sure um selena thought this was salinas
um so you know yes we are seeing an
increase
in individuals that are um that are
testing positive that are
reporting to be asymptomatic um you know
and
this a lot of this gets into
um well there are people that are just
definitely symptomatic and whether or
not we are just identifying them earlier
in their course of illness
and so they have not developed symptoms
yet that's one one possibility
the other possibility is that you know
depending on the
quality of our interview with our during
our case investigation
some people are willing to give more
information than others so we could
potentially be
overestimating the number of
asymptomatic individuals however we
don't believe that to be true but that
is a possibility
um and then the other uh trend which is
most likely is you know we're seeing
that
we know that um younger individuals have
a different
and less severe response in general to
this
infection than older individuals and so
since our numbers are going up in that
age group
week by week it it it trends
it makes sense that we're also trending
with an increase in the number of
asymptomatic individuals testing
positive
so it all kind of sort of fits with
those puzzle pieces but
you know we we don't necessarily go back
and and interview these people
you know after they have we've done the
initial case investigation so it could
be that they later on do develop
symptoms we just
have not um you know we don't have the
capacity to do that at this point
okay and then two follow-up questions
regarding that particular issue on
younger people and asymptomatic folks
can you help
clarify um what the reasoning then
behind us
for some locations to stop testing folks
without symptoms given
um the current trend and rising of of
those
particular cases and then my second
question is
this trend of the younger folks 20 20
year old range is that just here and
doing new mexico are we seeing that
across the country
uh selena sotis again so yeah the the
trend
i i believe the trend is across the
country that we are seeing an increase
in the younger
um age groups and that and i think it
also has to do with
the younger age groups are the ones that
are most likely to be also out in the
workforce
they are doing the jobs that still
require individuals to be
at a workplace so that would explain
some of that
as far as the reasoning behind
um the you know our partners
not uh deciding not to test
asymptomatics i think it's more of a
prioritization and you know they're
doing this because of the capacity that
they have to
process the specimens and get results
out in a
in a quick manner so as david mentioned
in an ideal world we would test
everybody whenever we needed to
but i think that that is the
prioritization and it's a good point
that you bring up that
you know asymptomatics are
asymptomatic carriers are most likely to
spread the most because they are walking
around
as though they are you know interacting
with the public as though they feel that
they don't
they're not infectious which just brings
us back to the same point we keep
talking about over and over again which
is reiterating to the public about
you know the safe practices that we can
all do
uh you know it would be great if
everybody um walked around
acting like as if they had it because
that would probably
you know decrease everything
significantly but of course we we can't
we don't want to cause mass panic either
so um
it is a good point that you bring up and
and ideally if we could
test more asymptomatics that would be
great but but it's kind of the situation
we're in
yeah absolutely so but you don't foresee
the department of health moving in that
direction
um at all right and not
right so absolutely so as it stands
currently we're still
testing we haven't changed our testing
prioritization or capacity
um that remains as is um you know we do
uh we will continue that as long as we
can
great great great um thank you for that
um
you know i hadn't looked at the
dashboard on the online dashboard
in quite a while probably honestly
because
i was too scared to um you know i keep
seeing the governor's daily updates and
i don't remember the last day doiana
county had
numbers in the single digits um they've
been
pretty consistently 20 and above every
day
but i noticed you know early on march
april may even
our biggest concern were sunland park
anthony their cases were just spiking
and i just looked at the at the
dashboard by zip code and
my particular zip code is close
to the number of cases positive cases as
anthony and sullivan park i mean we're
probably 20 behind
i'm curious about if you have any
thoughts regarding
i mean obviously sunlin park anthony
maybe they're doing something right
right like
they've seen perhaps their numbers
stagger off do you think that's accurate
are you looking at doing an accounting
that closely if not
is that something um that we can do
locally
counselor
certainly um one aspect to uh
to the case numbers within your zip code
would also be
the population living in your zip code
if you have
you know um people in their 20s and 30s
there in large numbers that is where we
are seeing the largest number of
cases right now uh and uh
useless and also sad trivia the last
time we were at
single digits for new cases in dona ana
county
was on june 23rd
also david on july 1st we had eight
ah very good yeah i have my policy
analyst tracking it as well so
just thought i'd throw that out there
thanks that seems like forever ago um
um thank you for that david dr tortoise
did you want to add something
yeah i also you know this is another
challenge that we
encounter at the department of health is
uh
correctly um assigning people to where
they actually live
so you know uh we're working on getting
people to identify their correct address
but you know we i i know i don't know if
you've noticed in the press release for
example there will be
corrections to each county each day and
so you know somebody has
an el paso address uh but they also have
a las cruces address and so
we identified them as the daniana
resident but then when we did the
investigation realized uh no they
they're not a new mexico case so so
those things change
day to day um you know and zip code also
changes day to day so it's great to
watch it and i think it's
it's important uh for situational
awareness for your communities
most importantly but um you know there
are these caveats about
identifying making sure that we have the
correct residence address for
individuals and
you know until we do the investigation
and talk to the person
do we get an actual a real location of
where they live that you know of course
everybody has complicated
life situations like i you know were
staying with my aunts in las cruces and
then i got sick and so i've been here
this whole time but i actually really
live in el paso or um you know i
i work in in las cruces but live in el
paso and i put my friend's
address because i i wanted to make sure
that i got the results and
so there's a lot of complexity to the
case counts and
that's been the thorn in my side for
this whole pandemic and i've spent
countless hours uh assuring that all
county counts are
as accurate as we can make them and so
uh
yeah i'll just say that it it is you
have to take it with a grain of salt
when you look at those
especially zip code level data great
well thank you i appreciate your
diligence for sure on that
um and maybe my last um
well i do want to uh point out that um i
very much agree with councillor vazquez
on
um our prison facilities whether they're
state federal
or ice detention facilities and um just
what a travesty that's been and
obviously not on not on the department
of health right but just maybe generally
in the criminal justice system how
poorly we've
we've taken care of people who are
detained and um so i appreciate the work
that department of health is doing to
ensure
people are being tested and taken care
of um i
my last point in point slash question is
around
um workers and i think my biggest fear
is that we're gonna we're seeing more
and more people who are
essential workers perhaps working in
food and
food production industry whether it's
meat packing plants onion sheds
agricultural fields the dairies in the
south valley
that there are a lot of folks who um are
afraid to get tested because
they're gonna be asked to stay home for
14 days or in some cases what i've heard
is that they're being fired
um for testing positive and um
you know my fear is that more and more
people will be really afraid to get
tested
regardless whether they have even if
they have symptoms
um and that they're just going to keep
showing up to work because they have no
other source of income for their
families
um thus increasing the risk of the risk
of spread
um you know and so i'm curious about
um the coordination that the department
of health is doing with
um the department of workforce solutions
to ensure worker safety
workers rights are being protected um
and that you know we are
um that we're
telling workers that it's okay to go get
tested especially if you have symptoms
um and that your rights are protected so
i'm curious if you can talk a little bit
about about that coordination with um i
know that you mentioned the
the a couple other departments um
but i'm curious specifically regarding
workers in the department of workforce
solutions
yeah david morgan department of health
counselor bencomo
this really underscores i think the
importance of being able to
have new mexico environment where is
new mexico's osha team is housed
added to the mix to these meetings
because
what you're speaking of um falls into
the overlap now
between environment and workforce
solutions we don't have a direct
role in that but we are
we have been uh available in the past
for
consultation with the department of
workforce solutions and
we still are we do communicate regularly
but specifically what you're looking for
there that is going to be
in the realm of those two agencies
great and then um what does do you know
mr morgan what sort of the oversight
looks like for some of those
larger employers like i said like some
of the ag
some ag industry uh dairies
are you are you visiting doing an
investigation into those
employers only if someone files a
complaint or is there
some is there sort of a blanket uh
oversight strategy for these industries
that have
um a lot of employees in one place um to
ensure that they're
they're they're taking care of their
workers yeah absolutely
uh it is usually a positive test result
that uh
sets the ball in motion for the
department of health
with um with the
environment and new mexico osha involved
what that also leads to is additional
conversations
not just the uh you know underscoring
the importance of
letting the department of health in to
be able to test all your employees
but they are also guiding them with
regards to
you need to be able to see operations
immediately you need to get some
retesting done you've got to disinfect
your workplace
now and you've got to be able to
demonstrate that you have a safety plan
for this moving forward
this is something that that we've
developed together
with our combined agencies and it is
proving to be effective up to now
great thank you for that clarification i
think i will um perhaps follow up with
don
um regarding some of these um concerns i
have but i'll i'll email her offline and
um i really appreciate all of you for
being here with us and for answering all
of our questions
thank you mayor thank you councillor
sword
thank you mr mayor yeah a lot has been
discussed already and
uh i don't want to take too much extra
time up but there's a couple of things i
wanted to say
but to start with i am awesome that uh
the three of you are from the department
of
health are here with us today and thank
you so much for taking the time
uh to be with us and answering our
questions um
first of all let me tell you a real
short story i was on the phone
with a teacher who happened to be from
valencia county
um who was telling me how she took a
test
on a friday this is just a week or two
ago
uh and i was talking to her too
and she hadn't gotten her results yet um
and so that was concerning me and i was
wondering how
we are here in dona ana county i'm
getting the response back and i'm
i'm glad that question has been asked
already i would just say this as
uh concerning that if people who were
getting the test
uh were told that if they were going to
have a positive test they would be
told within 24 hours in 24 hours i
should say and that if they didn't hear
anything in 24 hours they most likely
didn't have a positive test
that would have helped this teacher in
valencia county
but anyway um i would like to emphasize
the fact that we need to get this
information out to the public
the such as things such as the online
registration for testing
this is the first i've heard of that and
other things like where to be tested
when to be tested how to be tested and
all those uh
things that uh people should know if we
could have
a news release by our pio that we could
spread through
social media and other media that would
be
really appreciated of that and uh david
you're doing an awesome job there at the
at the department of health uh
you're so knowledgeable and you give you
give
such great information um and um
i'm just really um impressed so
i won't delay belabor anything more mr
mayor uh let's move on to the next
counselor thank you okay well thank you
thank you for being that role model
there
counselor but uh sort counselor vasquez
looks like he has another comment
i don't mayor i apologize i forgot to
put my hand down so
okay no no no problem no problem uh see
councilor flores
thank you mr mayor and thank you dr
torres
and um sanchez and david morgan thank
you all so much and thank you for
your work uh at this time and always of
course department of health
we don't have our health you don't have
anything so thank you very much
i am concerned about um a couple of
things
um one of them first and foremost uh the
detention centers
and there might be others in the state
i'm not aware of uh but are
down here and and we have to be
concerned about the entire state not
just
uh the entire united states entire world
at this point
but germaine to us is the
detention centers here that are
federally
run i mean well federal jurisdiction i
should say they're privately owned
but i know the governor in california i
just saw a little thing
on cnn because i was i've been
admonished from watching cnn too much by
my beloved uh
mayor pro-tem gandara but i believe i
heard governor
nason say that he was going to release
a lot a lot of prisoners
um and the um
we have uh with all due respect to the
to the office we do have a rogue
person in the um at the white house
and and i you know what what
are we prepared to deal with an
onslaught of release of federal
prisoners
here in new mexico because
those seem to be hot spots for the
coveted infection
so that's my first question do you have
an answer to that
any of you has it been something you've
talked about or anticipated
is the answer no no one has thought
about it
you're talking specifically federal
prisoners counselors
i'm talking about the impact yes well
federal i'm talking
in i haven't heard of anything like that
well we've seen federal prisoners well i
i yes i am talking about federal
prisoners uh
your honor and the reason is because
uh we do have that potential going on
right now
in our state of having federal troops
being sent to albuquerque
and and again being that we do have a
rogue
president um of the united states
i'm afraid that he's just going to
willy-nilly uh
say we're going to release uh all the
federal prisoners
uh because of covet i mean you know i'm
just saying
are we prepared for that and since there
was no no one jumped to answer that i'm
going to
presume or deduce that uh that
possibility hasn't been considered
um so i'm sorry that no one can
have has thought about that that's a
good deduction it's a deduction
i said that's a deduction yes this is
selena soders i will just say that
you know the the jurisdiction of federal
prisoners
it does not fall under the department of
health so i mean we would
we have been in communication with
correctional facilities about
protecting the health of the inmates and
detainees and the staff
but as far as the uh you know policing
of
individuals that are released that would
not uh
fall under the department of health so
i'm not sure
david if you have any any other
information related to that
i would not have any uh information
related to that
counselor flores though i would
i would definitely say uh the answer to
your question
is more political than it is uh
medical and uh it's uh
it's something that the department of
health wouldn't be able to
directly address okay this is something
that would need to be
addressed directly from the
administration itself
oh uh governor the governor's office yes
ma'am
well i i certainly agree to
dr torres uh response or reply or uh
comment
and yours as well um it is political
everything we do is political you know
the color of the red food coloring in
your velvet
uh cake is regulated by the fda
everything we every decision we make is
you know somehow as a potential
connection
to uh political decisions made
um you know that are out of our control
my question um well it looks like it's
something you're not anticipating
and i'm just saying in the event there
would be
a release of say they were all pardoned
they are now within the jurisdiction of
new mexico they are no longer under the
federal jurisdiction of the prisons
i'm just saying um and the reason i'm
saying that is
because governor a the governor in
california made that announcement
i haven't followed it up to see if he's
come through with it and i don't know
how california is going to deal with it
but i'm just saying that um if there's a
governor somewhere saying he's going to
do it i'm not saying that our governor
would do it i'm just saying that it
is a possibility so i just want to raise
that as a concern
the other concern i have and
and it was addressed by
mayor pro tem gandala is to find out
exactly where these
clusters are and the reason for that and
again
we're touching on a political issue
you know very well mr morgan and we have
um you know we have the restaurant
association
uh very upset um because they believe
that there isn't a problem they want to
serve they want to serve they want to
serve they had a demonstration or
a protest or whatever it's called that
they had
just about a week or so ago and
then the governor uh came down so i
would like to know
i would like to know we we have clusters
in so far
as um you know getting addresses from
people
when people are tested are they asked
where they are currently working
yes place of employment is a question
that we do ask okay so then you would
have
information data that you can extract
from that to see
where uh people are employed and then
that information
could be uh then uh fed into
uh you know a column that shows that
they are employed in this industry or
that industry
um and it seems to me that uh based on
everything that's been said this morning
it confirms again stuff that we've been
hearing now for months and months
that uh closed enclosed areas are are
more are potentially more uh
dangerous or um contagious i mean it's
more of an environment to to get that
airborne uh contamination
infection um so would it be possible to
get that information
okay councilman flores uh councillor
flores
david morgan department of health uh
again this is a
a a question that underscores i think
the importance of being able to get
our colleagues from the environment
department uh
involved in the next uh for future q and
a's
and i think that's an excellent idea
david and i and i hope
mr mayor if we can possibly have a
meeting
next friday or sometime soon to have uh
osha and the department of environmental
uh uh new mexico well the environmental
department that oversees uh
restaurants we need that data because
you know it seems like again um as david
pointed out you know he said something
was political and everything
has become political and it's kind of
like the
us against salmon as uh council ben
cuomo said earlier
it's everything has been so divisive
everything
it's it's me against you you against me
and it's broken into political parties
and people don't understand that we're
in this together
and yes we can say that you know glibly
but in fact it's it's it's something we
really need to
to look at and um so
um so those are my i have so and the
other
uh and and uh counselor sword touchdown
context letter
yes can i just add to that uh this is
sonya torres i just wanted to
to bring one one point that i think is
really important with getting
employer information is that you know we
really have to assess
if the individual work during their
infectious period
because if they did not work during
their infection period then there's no
reason to
scrutinize the the pla the place of
employment
um so it's a little bit tricky when we
ask somebody to register
while they're getting tested to give
their employer because you know that's
just like oh yeah that's my employer
during the investigation is when we
identify
if there were actually exposures at the
workplace and then we need to
to do further you know take further
public health action so
um i i agree the data is very important
for for
the community to be able to um you know
have have it handy and use it as as you
know data-driven
uh policy changes and actions but but
there are some caveats that you just
need to be aware of
yes and i and i understand all of that
and there's a lot of uh
and that's why when data is collected
there's always that
those percentage points that are you
know you know you give
you give room for those percentage
points where you may be off in so far as
the results
so thank you dr torres for that
um as far as getting the word out
david uh morgan you um
you have a wonderful presence a
wonderful voice i i think and i've been
saying this
since i've been on council now that um
las cruces doesn't really get and excuse
me we do
we do we do get the um fcc
uh requirement of being aired by el paso
stations
and i is there any way dr morgan that
um that that you could
or dr torres or the department of health
or
or sanchez to be on
uh get to get spots on the local
stations
at uh air uh the city of las vegas or
dona ana county
on a daily basis you know get like a one
minute spot to just do a quick
quick report or two minute you know um
i i think it would be great for us to
have that um first of all have that
presence
uh in the lives of people because i
think that a lot of
a lot of our residents don't have access
to what we're talking about right now
because they don't have a computer in
the house
but most people have a tv and the local
stations abc
cbs and um and nbc
krwg airs a lot but a lot of our stuff
but to have those national
and they pick stuff up too so i would
make that request dr morgan if you could
do that
and then um
and then i have a question about um
the cbs and other uh non-uh
doh facilities conducting the testing
is there any oversight as to what they
do
by the department of health or how does
that work
counselor flores independent uh medical
entities
can they do
their their their own thing in terms of
process of
being able to collect the samples uh
where they send
the samples for actual testing
uh they also make the criteria
for testing for their individual
locations
so uh some people may ask for
a driver's license uh some may actually
ask for immigrant status these are not
things that we
ask for uh for example uh
with the regards to uh the
uh the actual testing uh one of the lab
partners that we have utilized
um you know that's been kind of hand in
hand with us throughout this process
is tricorn which is based in albuquerque
and that is where the vast majority of
actual testing is done that is where
the majority of sample results from the
state
go to is between those two different
labs
those two particu that tri-core itself
specifically is uh jointly owned by
loveless and presbyterian hospital
systems
which um you know really do
dominate the marketplace up there
in northern new mexico so
you know we all are working towards the
same
goal of being able to test people
to be able to find out the results to
do our part collectively to minimize
case numbers and slow the spread
but there is not a uh a specific
uh guidance that uh a health department
uh
uh delivers uh to private entities on
the subject like this
so you know you just mentioned that they
asked for immigrant status
uh for a lot of people a lot of people
that would be a deterrent to getting
tested and
and if if they um and then there might
be people who don't know
that if they go to cvs that they'll be
asked
um has is that is that
information out there for the public to
really understand
i just found out about cvs yeah right
now so
counselor flores uh we do have uh on our
covid uh
web site uh a clear place to go
uh for a directory of testing services
around the state you can look it up by
your city you can look it up
by a specific day and
any location that is listed
that is not a department of health
location
does also uh include the disclaimer of
uh you know testing criteria could be
different from location to location
uh questions that you could be asked
could be varied
by location the location uh so um you
know if you are
not reaching uh out specifically to a
department of health location
we certainly do encourage people to call
uh ahead of time to be able to know what
uh what they need to bring what the
testing criteria is
and so on for the department of health
right now
our goal remains
being able to test as many people as
we can absolutely thank you david and
would
is it uh how should you say it would it
be
i don't know what the word is kosher for
you to
um for the department of health to alert
people to the fact that some of these
non-doh testing
facilities might be asking for their
immigration status or their immigrant
status
there is a lot of discussion going on
about
external messaging that the department
of health will be doing
in terms of um of campaigns
uh on uh on television radio
social media uh and that is one of the
things that
is being discussed but it is a message
that we certainly uh openly communicate
okay well thank you very much again and
um
david and dr torres and uh ms sanchez
thank you very much and
uh mr mayor or mr maestas it'd be great
and
i think uh mr morgan you indicated that
you'd be contacting either the mayor and
or
um mr maestas about
uh getting the uh the uh
environmental uh department in and
perhaps we can have osha as well
yes i will be working on that great
thank you thank you again very
very much for your work all three of you
thank you you're welcome counselor beta
stubey
thank you um an additional question
regarding
hospitalizations in our area um how
are we doing are we seeing those
increases
um are we seeing more
cases from southern new mexico i know
that we had to act
as kind of a hub station for other
um southern regions and are we seeing
any
individuals from el paso needing to come
up here i know there's a lot that are
coming up for testing
are we seeing that reflected in any er
cases
counselor david martin department of
health um
what uh i i am unaware of uh
whoops there we go my apologies my
screen completely changed in
mid-sentence
i am unaware of any patient transfers
from texas into new mexico we have
received
patients in northern new mexico in
albuquerque hospitals
from arizona as needed
that said though we we get
the the data regularly from
our hospitals across new mexico to
include
within the county as well so you know we
are always aware
of bed count uh we are aware of a number
of icu beds
we are aware of the number of
ventilators
in use and we have had
uh while the cases have gone up uh and
we've had
younger people having uh kobet
uh affecting disproportionately people
in their their 20s and 30s
more that has led to for now
a decrease in overall hospitalization
and i also know that el paso county's
icu capacity while
they continue to have uh increased cases
and they do continue to have increased
hospitalization they have not
reached a level of capacity that has
been any threat yet to donate county
and las cruces
you know um and i don't know if this is
something you're able to sure not are
you able to give us what
donaiana county's capacity is at right
now
i am actually attempting to look that up
right now and dr taurus i think you
started to say something and i
talked over you that's okay david
i i actually was just gonna say i do i
do know how many um
texas residents we have had hospitalized
in new mexico and
it's very few this was as of you know
last week and we
it was less than two percent of our
hospitalized cases
were uh were texas residents
so it's not um it's not a big amount and
i will say that we have a
you know a good proportion of our
hospitalized new mexico residents that
are hospitalized in el paso
so um so just you know as for context
that
it we are we are happy having some of
our new mexico residents
uh hospitalized in el paso thank you
and when we look at those
that capacity um and i know it's not
just about you can have a ton of beds a
ton of ventilators
but staffing is always an issue um with
that
and especially if you do get those high
acuity cases
um how are we doing on staffing and
what is the plan if we do have staffing
issues
to um bring in i guess other
other nurses doctors specialists that
might be needed in this area
[Music]
so staffing is not reported to us we
don't um
we don't keep a close tab on on staffing
within the hospital
um and you know i
i know that early on in the pandemic we
worked with hospitals and the hospital
association to create
um the our um gosh the word is escaping
me but it's the pandemic plan
and what you would do uh we have you
know steps and phases and one of them is
crisis standards of care and how you
adjust
based on surges in patients and then
potentially loss in staff and so
so a lot of disabilities have plans laid
out on how that
will you know what they will do it
should they enter one of those phases
um but david you might want to speak
more on
staffing if you have any information on
that yeah um my apologies uh for uh
being
slow on the unmute button uh david
morgan here department of
of health counselor a beta student uh
in addition to um you know
the the need for for medical staff is
you know always
uh an issue for new mexico but in
addition to
that we do have uh that is housed within
the department of health
the medical reserve corps which does
have
a a a great number of back up
medical people that are willing to step
in
we had our medical reserve corps numbers
swell last year when we went through the
migrant surge
we needed to rebuild that
that infrastructure and we had people
come through by the hundreds so
uh that's not to say that uh the medical
reserve corps is
the perfect solution for the scenario
that you describe
but i just want you to know that at
least there are options out there
thank you i i do appreciate that and
and this might also be something for um
our
for mr
oh if there's plans you know in our
southern region
we are able to have a lot of different
care capacities
but i do know sometimes we don't have
the same technology that even
albuquerque or el paso does
for those high acuity cases things like
ecmo machines and things will we be able
to
bring those types of
resources down here should we need um
has there been any thought to be able to
bring those types of machines and
staffing
um to help patients that might be seen
in the southern region because i know
with this um disease they can move very
quickly and when you have unstable
patients i think it would be hard to get
them transferred up to albuquerque or el
paso to get that level of care if need
[Music]
be
counselor david morgan department of
health i'm not really sure who
uh um who specifically the the question
was directed at um i can only speak to
on the department of health front we do
along with the department of homeland
security
and emergency management for the state
even working with the national guard we
do have
we do have ventilators we do have
additional medical equipment
that is in a stockpile that is there
ready and waiting uh in the the case of
a surge
they remain in the stockpile right now
because um
even as the cases are are rising uh in
the state
we are at least um able to mitigate
any potential for surge up to now but
that stuff
is there when we need it okay and how
long would it take to deploy that
um equipment to dona ana county
i am not positive on the the time frame
but what we're talking about emergency
management services
we are talking about a very fast
turnaround
you know we are only at the end of the
day all of us here
are only a few hours away from
albuquerque and santa fe
fantasy okay that's good to hear i i
think it's just something that we need
to consider
um making sure that our residents can
get that
uh level of care if they need to and
thank you mary that's all
and thank you everybody for answering so
many questions from us
okay thank you council ben cuomo thanks
mayor
um sorry just really quickly i want to
address i don't want to leave
counselor florida says comments on um
the release of uh folks who are
incarcerated
um sort of hanging um i
the governor of california definitely is
releasing
a lot of folks who have been unjustly
incarcerated for a long time so this
is not violent offenders this is people
who have been
in prison for an unjust amount of time
and they're actually looking
at the way the justice system has harmed
people and
no better time than during the time of
covid to
release people from a place that frankly
doesn't care about people's health
um and and so i just wanted to to point
that out
because i think it's important to
discuss something like this not out of a
place of fear but out of a place that
of upholds justice much like many of the
judges here locally have
have noted and if the governor moved
towards doing something similar i would
highly
here in new mexico i would highly
support it so i just wanted to
make that known because i think um the
way it was stated it
made it seem like it was just a release
of a bunch of folks but it's very much
intentionally uh folks that have been
incarcerated
um unfairly
was that a statement or a question no
that was a statement i'm done thank you
oh okay uh we have uh mayor protem
gandera
thanks mayor um these two questions are
specifically
um for dr torres um what is the re
where are we at in terms of a vaccine
what can you tell us
specifically what are you hearing um
what does that look like um time frames
those things
those kinds of things
um yes thank you for your question this
is selena torres so you know we
um we are very much entrenched in the
response and
um would like to spend a lot of time
invest you know researching on what
vaccines are available and what what our
time frame looks like
it looks like there is the vaccine
coming out of oxford that seems
promising um i think that you know
there's a lot of promising vaccines but
what is going to be our um uh what's
going to be hard for us
is to figure out how to get everybody
vaccinated and then as we know a lot of
people do not like to get vaccinated
so there's a lot of logistics and then
also
um you know there's also a lot of um
resistance to even getting the vaccine
in general so i think we
you know even if we have a vaccine in in
the fall
i'm not sure that we'll be able to roll
it out immediately and get everybody
vaccinated
as we would all like to so that we can
start to see what
life looks like past covid um
you know there there is some new
information coming out of cdc
about reinfection and what that looks
like
and also whether or not people
have some kind of protection or immunity
after they've recovered from covid and
so
some new data is suggesting that you
know it looks like
people may have some protection for at
least three months before they can
potentially become reinfected again so
that
that is um good news we
did not know at all if people could
could become reinfected or when they
could so we were
treating any new exposure uh you know
with even if a person had recovered as
if it was an original exposure so it
makes our lives a little bit easier as
far as
isolation and quarantine protocols but
you know i think the science is moving
pretty quickly and on the vaccine
development front
i think the public health response to it
is going to be very very challenging
especially since
our systems are spread really thin and
taxed already
in the response you know we at the
department of health
have employed almost every division to
help us in this response so as you can
imagine
they're juggling you know that our
immunization program
is trying to figure out how they are
going to roll out flu vaccine
once the season starts in in addition to
still helping us with cobit response so
we have
a lot to try to organize and figure out
um but you know we just keep moving
along and new information comes every
day i'm sorry i don't have anything more
specific but
but those are the kinds of things we
talk about at department of health as
far as like how are we going to
implement these things i i appreciate
that um i know there's just so much it's
still up in the air and
lots of plans lots of discussions and
and i'm i'm sure
um planning that is is
um a part of of those discussions and
lastly my question is about
um what are you seeing with folks that
have you touched upon it a little bit
about
um people testing positive for covet and
kind of
after immune if you will
for at least three months but what sort
of
things are you finding in terms of
lingering effects
that covet has any medical conditions
i'm reading
some things about um
a scarring in the lungs and heart
conditions
and just difficult recovery can you
speak to that dr torres
yeah um so you know we again this is
another area where as the
infectious disease epidemiologist we
would love to be able to spend a lot of
time understanding
long-term effects of this infection and
what that
means and and we um
we try as best as we can you know our
current response
and investigation process does not
allow for us to look long term the
the data that is coming out though is
suggesting that you know this
is a widespread kind of inflammatory
response
and um you know a lot of the post-mortem
or you know after somebody has died and
they've done autopsies what they're
finding is just
you know blood clots in every single
organ system and
so the um it's nothing that anybody has
really seen before and it's puzzling and
so there are groups that are evaluating
this
and you know the response is just
different
with different people even in people
that have
underlying conditions they might not
have as severe of illness as people that
that are perfectly healthy so there's a
lot of questions still to be answered
and
it is on our radar to try to evaluate
that we do work closely with cbc
to do some in-depth um following of
hospitalized cases
to get a better sense of severity of
severity of illness
and what that looks like in our
hospitalized cases um my suspicion is
that to see
cdc will eventually expand that to
uh you know look at long-term effects so
um you know what somebody that was you
know intubated and
for months and then recovered and is now
out what is their
you know what is their how long is it
taking them to recover
are they completely recovering and so
you know we've we've done
similar studies with other types of
infectious disease
um so i suspect that that'll be the next
phase to roll out with cdc but we
quickly you know stood up this study to
look at
hospitalized cases and new mexico is
contributing data
to cdc which then gives the national
picture of what it looks like
in you know what hospitalized cases look
like in the united states so
we are one of 10 states that
participates in that program and so
it's great that we can provide that data
um
you know i'm not sure what it's going to
look like now that the federal
government has decided that hospitals
report directly to them
but under this under this program
through cdc
we are collecting extensive information
that
kind of gives the picture the national
picture of what
what a hospitalized covet patient looks
like and how we can perhaps
you know identify our greater risk
populations and
look for some early interventions we're
also evaluating in the hospitalized
setting
what you know the current interventions
are doing so there's a lot of
investigational drugs that are being
used off label
and we collect that information as well
it's early on
now and a lot of that data hasn't been
analyzed but um
but new mexico is contributing to that
which is just
something we should be proud of yes
absolutely thank you dr dora thank you
mayor and let's see here
oh that's it okay well great well thank
you
again don and dave and and dr torres we
really appreciate it very much
thank you for spending your uh morning
with us to share with
with us and answer many of the great
questions that my colleagues have
asked you again thank you and uh hope to
hear from you all again soon
thank you thank you thank you mr mayor
thank you city councillors we really
appreciate all the support and
partnership with the city from your fire
to the police department to city council
so we really appreciate
the partnership that we have with you
all and your interest so we will
definitely be in touch
thank you so much thank you everyone
and last is going to be section 3.2 the
appropriations update and miss natalie
green will
be presenting
good afternoon mr almost afternoon mr
mayor members
council natalie green with the city of
las cruces
i will be presenting um a short
update and then there's also some other
staff that will be assisting me today so
i will get started
so just an update on the council
appropriations as you may remember
council allocated
about 1.8 million dollars by the end of
the fiscal year
we have expended about 51 percent of
that
and then we do have a balance that many
of those agencies and
departments are still trying to spend
and that funding went to support
ppe health initiatives food initiatives
housing
initiatives and some economic
development initiatives
so an overall accomplishment um
staff and council should be proud to
know that we helped
um about 15 almost 1600
in direct financial assistance so that
was
assistance with utilities or housing
costs
general uh financial assistance
we were also through our partnering
agencies able to
house 255 people and then we have
a number of agencies providing a variety
of supportive services
so that's going to be things like
um like uh dona ana's community united
uh the third district court so
things like that and then in terms of
food and nutritional services
we served approximately 121 000 people
and that's in different
direct meal services and food baskets
and that is citywide and then
through various efforts and i'll get
into this more detailed and later slides
we've
distributed approximately 22 000
mass through different initiatives and
that's going to be not only through our
mask ups
but uh through chris's creatives and
then we did
some some outreach with quality of life
and some direct assistance to some of
our non-profit partners
for the utility assistance fund so
council did provide
an additional allocation in fy 20 of 125
they have expended all of that fund they
are currently using their
their regular fy 2021
fund um and they are continuing to
expand that to date they've spent about
um cap math today
but just under just over 20 000.
if we continue to see the trend we are
seeing they're spending about 30 000 a
month so they are going to need
additional funds
later in the year or or probably sooner
than better
um and that's that should be about a
hundred thousand and i believe
utilities is available for questions on
that
um the fire department uh there's not
much on this slide but fire is
available to answer any uh questions
they continue to do
some ppe assistance if
we get the surge that we are
anticipating in
the fall they are going to need
additional funding
for to stockpile ppe
they are also assisting in doing some
food boxes to seniors
and checking in with homebound residents
and they can speak more to that
um if council has questions we did
work with quality of life and did a mask
up event it was very successful so we
had approximately
600 more residents stop on by we
distributed about 1700 mass
345 water bottles and 5 000
sanitation kits that was prepared by the
fire department
my understanding is there may be
opportunity for some additional
drives subject to some funding to be
able to purchase some of that
ppe so that ties in with fire
departments need
senior programs is available if you have
questions as well they've been doing a
lot of things so they have
grab-and-go meals some home delivered
meals they've been doing some
well boxes food baskets they're also
doing some some mass distributions not
only with their mascot events but to
to their um as part of their regular
monthly visits and then through their
transit system they are handing out
um mass as well to their patrons
um i'm sorry i'm just reviewing my notes
from lynn
so uh for the vulnerable populations
they are working with the city and
county on the strike team
and addressing some of those needs and
they also partnering with some of our
non-profit partners to help do some food
and nutrition services
so those agencies are casa de peregrinos
loaves and fishes adelante fyi
sounding sun county care management
and southwest vocational rehab and
tresco
um at this point um in the presentation
i'm gonna pass you over to francisco
actually yes excellent thank you natalie
and
hello mr mayor members of city council
uh and for economic development the
technical assistance that leads to micro
lending
uh the contract has been signed with
live fund and we're expected to launch
this
on august 3rd some of the deliverables
included in that
are uh 50 businesses served through the
technical assistance
that's right 20 businesses to receive
loans and 500 thousand dollars in loans
received
nelly can you move to the next slide
please
yes
there was also a request to getting some
of the numbers from
the unemployment insurance claims
this uh data this data was collected
from the new mexico workforce
connections
uh the dona unemployment claims is
the panel on your left as you can see at
the pre-covet levels
of march and this is a data that that
comes on a weekly basis
uh we're pretty low compared to what
happened
and at the at the peak of what the what
we
the first closure happened uh so we were
having levels uh at the beginning of
march of between
74 to 80 uh weekly um
unemployment insurance claims uh to that
peak that we observed
in the first week of april the last week
of march of close to 2000 unemployment
claims
that number has been steadily coming
down uh it has
a very similar trend to what the new
mexico unemployment claims
look like and the latest information
that we have is for the july 11 meeting
sorry for the july 11 uh week it's uh
560 which is still pretty high compared
to the pre-copied levels
but not as high as it happened as the
initial closure can you please move to
the next slide
in terms of change to change on a
june to june basis this is preliminary
data that comes from the
bureau of labor statistics the biggest
change as you can see the the red line
and then this is for the las cruces
metropolitan statistical area
uh by industry the biggest uh decrease
that we had was in leisure in
hospitality
as well as and that that category right
there includes restaurants as well
so within this we we saw the biggest
decrease uh there were
as you can see in many instances lots of
decrease
with uh employment this is payroll
equipment by the way
and there were also some increases some
of those
so there were some increases in
transportation industries there were
some increases in construction there
were some increases in
a little bit of increases in
manufacturing and wholesale but for the
the rest the vast majority of them there
was a decrease
thank you mr mayor natalie
okay at this time i'm going to invite
amy to jump on in and she's going to
give you a quick update on the cares act
good morning council uh mayor and
council amy johnson basford grants
administrator
uh so the last time that i presented to
you i gave you this beautiful
spreadsheet i've decided to summarize
that
into a few slides here first of all i
want to let you know that the city has
received
in total 7.14 million dollars
in federal and state funding for
the coveted crisis and i'll just briefly
go through the federal awards that we've
received
we received from the faa for the airport
000 that is for operations there is no
match to that
and that money is available until
expended
the fta we received a little over six
million dollars for roadrunner transit
for their operations
again no match this is very important
because normally we have a one-to-one
match with our fta funding
this is available until expended so it
should cover
transit operations for the next 11 to 15
months
then we have the department of justice
burn grant funding its justice
assistance
funding is what it's called this is
a allocation of 69 622
for las cruces public police department
these are specific for covid related
expenses
equipment and salaries there is no match
to this but it does have a two-year
uh spending limit from hud which
natalie can speak to if you have
questions on that we received an
allocation of 560
000 plus for community development
she has submitted a plan on how that
will be expended there is no match for
that
and that is pending contract execution
all of these uh a lot all of these
awards were based on allocation
calculations from the federal government
and um although they did require some
application process
the amounts were were set by the federal
government if you can go to the next
slide natalie
and then from state agencies
some of the first one is the new mexico
department of public safety they receive
some federal money from the doj
burn justice assistance funding as well
we submitted an application and did
receive full funding for that of 151
thousand
this is also for the police department
for specific covet related expenses
equipment and salaries
it has no match but it does have a
two-year expenditure problem
uh program period
and then we received from non-metro uh
area
agency on aging through
the family's first act which is a
somewhat different act than the cares
act it didn't get quite as much
coverage as cares but it is also a
federal assistance program that was
passed by congress
we received 107 000 plus dollars for
senior programs
specifically for congregate and home
delivered meals
there is no match for this and it
expires
on 9 30 of 20
i'm sorry i should have changed that it
needs to be 20 not 21.
and then we received another uh
allotment from the non-metro
area agency on aging from the cares act
funding
for 133 000 for senior programs
to include our respite care nutrition
services and supportive services
again there is no match and this one
does have a two-year period of expiring
on 9 30
21. if you can move forward
natalie so what do we have out there
pending still
well we have still the application that
we submitted to fema
for the assistance to firefighters
grants we requested 101
plus thousand that is for fire ppe's
that does include the ppe's that are
going to
various departments of the city
it require it covers covid19 response
expenditures equipment and overtime
there is a 10 percent match required
there
and then there is the fema disaster
recovery funding um that is an
ongoing application we are anticipating
a request of approximately 300 000
for the first year of of the disaster it
does have a 25
match um and it is on a reimbursable
basis and
this is specifically to prepare for
respond to
and recover from the covid crisis so
many of the things that don't fit into
the other categories we are able to put
into the fema disaster recovery and be
reimbursed for
unfortunately um loss of revenue
and the leaves the extraordinary leave
and the quarantine leaves will not be
covered under these
um this category
and then we have one to the imls which
is for our museums and libraries we've
requested 350 000
through an application this is to
provide digital programming at the
museum and
library there is no requirement of match
and we are anticipating an announcement
in august as to whether we've received
that particular funding or not natalie
if you'll
move forward here's some other
recovery funding that we are looking at
and um keeping in mind first of all we
received from meals on wheels america
a twenty five thousand dollar grant for
senior programs
specifically for congregate and home
delivered meals
there is no match and we were awarded
that
that is not through cares funding that
is uh private funding
um they then came back to us and said
they have a second round available so
we've submitted an application for an
additional seventy five thousand dollars
for
the senior programs congregate and home
delivered meals
um that is pending we received notice
this week that they are
overwhelmed with applications and it
will take um
longer than they anticipated in
providing us
information on the awards we're hoping
to hear from that
um before the end of july
the cares act program also had an
application process
for eda economic development
and the grants office as well as many
community partners have been working on
trying to
create a viable application
that revolves around a project for the
workforce
development and re somewhat of retooling
our workforce towards specific uh
industries that we feel might be
um providing uh high quality jobs in the
in the future after hopefully uh
hopefully
towards the end of our crisis but for
sure
after our crisis and then finally we
have from the new mexico department of
public safety
um for the department of justice burn
justice assistance grant there will be a
second round
of funding from that agency um
and it will be uh we anticipate the
announcement for those applications to
be submitted sometime in the fall
natalie if you'll move forward so the
big question everybody
has on their minds is what is the state
doing with that 125 billion dollars for
municipalities with populations under
500 000
i want to remind all of you that the
only municipality in the city in the
state of new mexico
to apply for and receive direct funding
from the government was albuquerque
because of the size of their population
and during the special session in june
the state legislator considered
multiple ways of distributing this
funding
that was then vetoed by the governor
because
she felt that it was her prerogative to
determine the distribution of that
funding
and so now we are anticipating in fact
today we are anticipating
um dfa to send out
what they call reimbursement forms and
guidelines
um for um getting direct coveted
expenses reimbursed
um we'll have a tour we turn around to
do this but that
they are anticipating that this may be a
quarterly uh
option for us again one of the main
things that
has held back the state in really
distributing this funding is that the
federal government
is not allowing revenue reimbursement
with any of these funds
the hope is that with the cares act
number three which is currently
in discussion at the congressional level
um
will go back and allow for revenue
reimbursement to
occur with cares act funding um
and that would allow the state to
distribute
the funding in the manners that we've
talked about in the past which may
include
the internet sales tax calculations uh
population calculations they had a
variety of different options for
calculating what they would send out but
until that happens
the state is somewhat tied in being able
to just distribute out that money
to communities so they are starting at
least to provide
some um reimbursement for direct covet
expenses
and the grants department with every
other department in the city will be
working on those things
um on what those expenses would be
and i bel i think okay if you'll
move forward natalie i think that was
the end of my
uh comments but i'm happy to answer
questions of any of the council
thank you amy did you mean um i thought
i heard you say 125
billion did you mean 1.25 billion
uh mayor it is 125 billion that we were
awarded
um to the state
that the state that's an awful lot of
money i i think it's 1.25 billion but
okay
mr mayor i can help explain that okay
it's 125 billion to all the states
for those states that have pop municipal
populations under
500 000 the state did get 1.25 billion
yes
yeah okay so the 125 billion is for all
the
states all the city okay okay that that
sounds right i i didn't think
the state would go i apologize mayor for
miss speaking on that
oh no no problem it's okay it's okay
it's not easy
yeah we're about all ready to jump in
our car and go to santa fe right now
yes yeah okay so did you have a question
counselor sword
you got your hand oh i'm
i'm sorry i didn't put my hand down from
before i
there guess one little thing i was going
to mention uh
you know as as natalie green pointed out
all the
things that the city is doing and of
course we all agree that that
is uh so necessary in this
time of our crisis uh it's so important
but
i think we've got to keep in mind that
we need some
long-term um support
for people that we're giving this money
to
now um so that they can sustain
themselves
in going way into the future even when
the covet 19
um hopefully cross your fingers is over
with
um but of course i you know
we can do some things but i think we
really need help with the state and
especially the federal government so i'm
hoping
that in the not too distant future we
get some help
from the federal government to do that
so um
i i don't know what that's going to look
like to get this long-term
help uh but um um but it's needed
period that's all mr mayor thank you
thank you
uh council ben como mayor pro tem and
councillor beta stevie
thank you mayor and thank you natalie
can you go back to
the slide with the unemployment rates
please
thank you um i i mean obviously i'm glad
to see them be this low
um much lower than march and april right
but i think they're still
significantly higher than we usually see
them
um so i think it's important for us to i
mean i think
natalie you mentioned it right but uh
the agencies we worked with like
community action agency the uh um
community foundation of southern new
mexico catholic charities they've all
expended the funds that we
had originally um provided for them so
that they could provide
assistance to these 2709 folks perhaps
and so
given though that there are still um
there's still a higher level of
unemployment claims
that um you know phase two or i don't
even know what phase we're on anymore
continues to be pushed back um fairly so
justifiably so
i want to make sure that um these
agencies um
continue to get support from us so that
they can continue to support our
communities who are currently struggling
um is there mr mayor is there um
i mean i don't know what what what
happens next right but i think
we definitely need to look into another
sort of
local relief ordinance where um
we can start thinking about providing
additional funds to these agencies
sure absolutely in fact that's um i
don't know if you recall but
the last week when i brought that up to
see if
council wanted to do a second round
david my assistant mentioned
this was going to be part of today's
update so
absolutely so let's uh we'll get the
rest of the comments from the co
from my from our colleagues and then
we'll determine
uh if and what at what amount if um
council wants to move in that direction
great um
and of course i'll continue to push for
assistance
that gets you know more sort of direct
cash in people's pockets so they can
spend it the way they need to
mortgage and rent
oh you froze
am i gone
we lost your response
i can hear you now okay i'm gonna turn
my camera off um
i was just saying that i definitely want
to advocate for
um providing assistance to agencies that
can get
more direct relief to uh
community members to residents who are
struggling like cash assistance
mortgage and rent assistance things like
that um
and then um i did notice that
perhaps so given that the utilities
department has its own
emergency relief um and perhaps we need
to extend that given how quickly they
went through it this
this year um but i did notice that i
think one of the agencies
also was providing utility relief so i
want to make sure that we're not
that the that the assistance
that any funds we're providing to the
community aren't doubling down so that
they can get the maximum stretch
to to residents right so if we already
have a utility assistance fund through
the city
we shouldn't add another one through
another agency um does that make sense
natalie
mr mayor uh councillor ben coleman
natalie green for the record yes that
would make sense we do try
and many of the agencies um are on the
call today
and they work with each other to make
sure we're not duplicating effort so
that is a consideration that staff and
the agencies are working on
great yeah i think i had seen that
catholic charities was doing some
utilities assistance and i wanted to
just make sure that
they know that there's already that so
that whatever funds they receive
can go to people helping them pay
mortgage and rent
um you know filling gaps that don't
currently um
don't aren't currently being filled
anywhere else so um thank you natalie i
appreciate this and
and this workforce data um i i know that
at least
i was one of the counselors that asked
for it so i really appreciate
i appreciate it dr payatis thank you
all right thank you councillor we have
uh mayor pro tem
thank you mayor um and natalie
dr bayatas and amy
um you know i i wanted some more
information about the current balance
um the 901
thousand dollars where is that at
um who has expended their
funding um kind of looking at
and so i'm wanting a little more detail
on that can you give me
some more information on what that
balance looks like and where it
where it is for each of the agencies or
the staff the
city stuff can you be more specific
sure mr mayor um members of council
mayor councillor ganda again natalie for
the record is my spreadsheet up on the
screen
it's the workforce one natalie um the
main light is on the screen okay let me
let me share the appropriate screen
because i do have
um i do have a spreadsheet that has a
little bit more detail and i apologize
it's the
my personal spreadsheet that i use for
tracking so it's not going to be the
prettiest thing but
um let's see
so and again a lot of this is subject to
the fiscal year the agencies may have
spent the funding already but because
of the transition within fiscal years
not only did we have to amend
some contracts but we also have to renew
and carry over that
funding and that happened monday so
some agencies continue to spend but we
just have not reimbursed them so this is
this is actual expenditures out of our
accounting system so it may not be
reflective of the indus
individual agencies but um
again uh you should be able
the the yellow column is what the
current balance or our projected balance
of those accounts are um
but if you have are you saying that
they're more specifically these are
agencies that we do business with and
other so this could be their contract
not specific to our covid
again natalie for the record this is uh
only coveted funding
okay and let me zoom out a little bit
some of the funding is in our other
funds most of it uh sits within
our health care fund and then of course
we had a few initiatives that
uh were done outside of this fund like
the
the um economic development and uh the
habitat for humanity
so they they are working um on billing
us and
and much of that funding will be
exhausted within the next few months
okay
okay so and natalie
i appreciate seeing that i think that's
um really important for us to
for us to see this so there are just a
couple or three agencies that have used
their funding um more specifically to
covet um i'm i'm wanting to
understand from
each of them kind of what the gaps or
barriers what they were
looking at and before you answer that i
do want to remind us that
although we have a utility fund that's
specific to our water and gas
it could be um you know electric like
people coming to
ask for paying for electric and whatnot
and and
if you could be more specific when when
they
bring up um you know this is what we
paid for
that it's electric bill right or or
whatever
whatever else that might entail
um would be would be helpful um so i'm
interested in
understanding sort of gaps and barriers
that
this money um didn't couldn't pay for i
think we try to be as flexible
as we could um with the funding or very
specific things and i'm i'm
i'm kind of i'm again i'm gonna
keep talking about our senior services
i'm very concerned about these
these folks that are shut in there's
that organization that's
working with paul ford's group that
based on the limitations
of our particular programs don't um
completely address
um i want to make sure that that they
that we're addressing those that the
needs
um accordingly can you talk to me
natalie about summer
some of that trends you know i'm looking
for things of that of that nature
uh mr mayor mayor protem gandala i'm
going to defer to senior programs i
believe they're on the line and also
fire department they have some
information
on some senior specific stuff
good afternoon mayor council this
you can can you repeat that question
counselor
yeah um i'm not sure sonia a couple of
weeks ago i i received a letter
forwarded on
to um lynn gallagher as it relates to
some gaps
of that our programs aren't um meeting
just because of the specific you know
the specifics on each of the programs
for instance their meals and wheels are
very specific to
uh i guess a certain
i don't know all the definite all the
guidelines
but i'm concerned about gaps
that that that maybe our programs aren't
addressing
i know that paul ford is is making so
these are things like
the shut-ins and not able to get
um mills on wheels maybe because of
their income i i don't know that but
still
they're needing assistance um is there
any waiting a waiting list for any
of the of the areas i think those are
all really important i'm glad that we're
using the money but i really want to dig
in a little deeper
to have to have a better understanding
of what you all are encountering
out in the field so that then we can
propose something
that addresses those needs and and
that's not what i'm hearing here
um and that's what i'm asking okay i can
definitely answer that
we currently are feeding uh anybody
that's coming to the program
that is request a senior that's
requesting or
uh exhibiting a need um we are
we currently moved all the people that
were coming to the centers that were
walking to the centers
because they wanted to walk to the
centers and move them to our home
delivered route
just to minimize that exposure so we
moved those people to home delivered
we are receiving our numbers have
increased we are receiving a lot of
referrals
we are providing weekend frozen meals
to any clothes that we have both on our
congregate which means those that come
to the center and pick up lunch
and those that our shut-ins that are
homebound
so anyone that wants a weekend frozen
meal one for saturday and one for sunday
that's what they're getting our home
delivered
meal clients also receiving breakfast so
they receive both a breakfast and a
lunch so currently we are offering
meals monday through sunday for all
our homebound seniors and
including those that normally wouldn't
qualify under our grant
we are providing those meals and then
also for the ones that are coming by
to the grab and go sites we have a lot
of caregivers
who are bringing their clients to our
grab and go sites
and that just helps them minimize that
exposure that they have out in the
community
either by grocery shopping or by going
to a restaurant
so we're trying to do the best that we
can to minimize that and service many
people
both disabled and eligible okay
so with those disabled and thinking
about folks that might not
have the ability to um
you know get up and unfreeze a meal
microwave it those things um
how are you addressing that and with the
funding
would you need additional funding to
deal with
just people's daily living
um sort of uh assisting them in cleaning
their home that kind of thing
so what we are currently doing um we are
receiving referrals from the state
the referral services from the state uh
we get emails with
information a lot of people that we
are being referred sometimes are under
our age they're under 50 but we are
working with other agencies
so we work with social security the case
managers are really open to helping
people
apply for disability or working with
other agencies that might serve that
population
so there's a constant dialogue with
different people in the community
i know we worked a lot with paul ford
and his team during the inception of
covet
to be able to get those seniors that
were high risk
meals and food boxes and
just check on them also our drivers
when they go in when they deliver the
meals every day those are our eyes and
ears
to see how the clients are doing and of
course we also refer to adult protective
services
um our case managers are constantly
uh referring people to income support
division
calling those case workers so we're
trying to do
a lot with our you know with our with
the capacity that we have at the time
and anyone that we feel uh based on our
daily observations
our daily well-being calls anyone that
we feel that is in need
you know we have to make those referrals
to adult protective services
the police department fire um any other
agency
just to make those connections and make
sure that those people are
being taken care of
thank you thank you sonia so do you have
any
anybody on a waiting list that you can't
quite
manage given um you don't not have the
capacity
for maybe the workload that kind of
thing
you know what i consider ourselves
really blessed because we currently
don't have anybody on a waiting list
um the only people that may not be
receiving services are the people that
don't feel comfortable
or don't want anybody in their home and
our respite care we have been providing
a lot of respite care
uh families just so that they can have a
break
um and even some of those sometimes will
come back and say you know this week i
don't feel like i need anybody
but you know we are consistently calling
them both that are on
our on our case loads and just making
sure
they're doing okay okay
how how are you working with donaiana
communities united there's that time
banking program
that i think would be really helpful for
those folks um
that not only you know for folks that
you're checking in
but not daily but there's a connection
there with someone
right i'm i'm also concerned with
um you know depression anxiety suicide
ideations those sorts of things
do you have any connection with donaiana
community united they are a funding
a group that we have funded but i've
always felt that that time banking
organization or program has been really
helpful for folks
you know currently i couldn't give you
any numbers of any referrals that we've
made
but i can start we check with staff the
case management staff
but like i had mentioned uh earlier we
um
we reach out to different organizations
based on the need
and based on what's going on so if it's
somebody that
is disabled it's being referred to us
you know we'll go ahead and reach out to
those agencies that provide services for
the disabled
and then we'll also try and figure out
if there's anything else we can do
um i know our case managers have been
delivering food boxes we have some
churches that
our drivers deliver food backs to on a
monthly basis
so it's just trying to figure out where
all those resources are
and even some of those resources i know
that some are limited
but we're just trying to do the best we
can to connect those people to what's
available
and of course we always welcome um
new agencies or services that want to
partner with us to make sure that we are
covering everybody out there
so we possibly can okay all right
so is mr ford on the line to give us an
update natalie um things that he's seen
and concerns i know that um this
particular groups
made very specific um
had very specific concerns about paul um
no longer having funding and the numbers
are just going up the kind of calls that
he's getting
as it relates to transportation of
picking up
our elderly right getting them
established back in their home
etc uh mr mayor mayor for
canada i'm going to defer to chief
enriquez i believe he has his hand
raised
and he can answer for paul and then um
just as a side note uh lorenzo alba is
also on the call and he's been doing a
lot of senior nutrition so if you have
any questions
for him he's also available to speak on
that sounds good thank you
yes good afternoon mayor and uh council
mayor pro jim uh
yes paul ford has been working uh
throughout
when the uh coronavirus pandemic first
started
um and there was no
uh gathering and we wanted to keep the
distance and
and protect staff uh one of the
governor's orders was
like for caseworkers and things of that
nature the the individuals working at
senior programs were not allowed to see
the clients we as a fire department and
paul ford
especially with the mih program was then
um allowed as the fire department
is essential and can treat people we
took
on the high risk clients they turned out
to be about 45
seniors that were high risk that needed
assistance
and he'd follow up and check on them at
that time we had the
funding and staffing available
to assist paul with that so during those
times it was working good
i think there was a timing issue when uh
the end of the year budget came up and
we had the reopening as well by the
governor
opening up certain things that case
managers were able to go
we turned over those high risk back over
to senior programs
um and so that's where i think
uh the the resources and the other
agencies that paul was working with
especially faith-based churches uh
facebook organizations
were were working all together to assist
this vulnerable group now i can tell you
we're back on track senior program
is doing theirs paul has about a handful
of those high risk
that he still delivers food boxes
through casa peregrinos and other
faith-based
organizations provide food paul is also
working
with the other agencies to align those
resources
as needs from mental depression
other other things prescriptions with
pharmacists and
and just other agencies to help those in
need and as we get those referrals
we start to do that i think when you
received your email
as i was saying i think there was a gap
in the
reopening and shifting of clients from
back to the senior programs away and
maybe some funding issues with the
budget but
we have a grant uh now that even the
state put on hold where we will have a
case manager
but we're allowed to put another staff
member an emt
in the mih program to assist paul and to
help us with that through some grant
funding so
i believe we're back on track there will
be some gaps of course
but i think we're back on track with uh
the
the email that you had sent in reference
to some of the issues
um i think the biggest one is the
transportation
for um some of the
senior staff that needed to seek medical
attention in el paso and that was
something that we couldn't deliver
but i know a lot of the faith-based
organizations we're taking care of that
and helping
help him with that i thank you chief i
appreciate that and i i do know because
i hadn't made
reference to the fiscal year ending and
one will begin
there should be some different you know
some new
not new funding but a replenishing of
the funding and such
she did mention the trent the woman that
i was communicating with
it did mention the transportation i
think the problem is is that
she that group is getting ready to
transition out
for the fall and there's a huge gap
um and so i i am
so they're no longer going to be able to
provide yes they were
providing that transportation and it was
getting increasingly
more difficult for them to do that
that's huge volunteer organization that
basically
you know is being called out from the
hospitals
upon the um patients discharge
and and so i'm hoping that um
it sounded like there had been some
convening of groups coming together but
there hadn't been
um a solution or a strategy developed
to be able to help this because it was
happening more often
um and so that's challenging and so i
guess i'm just saying
like to know what the gaps are we need
to
provide a certain funding mechanism or
an additional program
that that goes out to to pick up
our constituents right our citizenry
from el paso to bring them home
then i'd like to hear about that so we
can make the necessary adjustments
so thank you thank you um chief enriquez
um is the transportation the the
still um free through the roadrunner
during covid i believe so
see if david's on the david or
i don't think my mike is david donahan
or david maestas
can you guys respond letter is on the
line two mayor
mr mayor david dawn for the record uh
roadrunner is still free
we are working on return expanded return
to work plans
uh for some time in august to go back to
more normal services
related to hours um that
we just started that discussion this
week we're hoping for
august 17th to go back to
expanded evening and saturday hours
but one of my discussions with staff
specifically to yesterday was
that we want to maintain the free status
one because of the need in the community
and the
limited transportation opportunities but
the other thing is
it also makes our workers safer by not
having to handle cash
so that that's one of our motivating
reasons and
under the cares act we're not require
that we got for transit
we're not required to collect fares
that's been
an opportunity to suspend that so our
plan is not to charge fares
and we're not currently okay thanks
steve
thanks thank you um i think that's it
for now mayor i
am in agreement for a second phase of
funding if we can i just i just want to
again continue to hear the gaps and
barriers what
covert has created i i continue to be
very concerned
with our immigrant population
um when um counselor ben gomo asked to
go back to that slide i think it was
like 10 with the unemployment
um compensation those things i wondered
is our
are our immigrant workers or families
being
able to utilize that i i don't
think so i would be challenged i think
so how do we how do we help it just
feels like when we
know more specifically that in our
service industry
that a lot of our immigrant um work our
workers our
immigrant or mixed status that that that
that slide to me is somewhat inaccurate
right it and and so how do we how do we
know what
those numbers are and how do we continue
to help
um our our workforce um especially
as we move forward and know um
and and i continue to hear workers being
deathly afraid to go to work
and yet we have the restaurant
association really pushing us
um to open up our restaurants and and
whatnot
and thankfully we i hope that people
have
been encouraged with getting um you know
being able to do
outside dining and such but when you
hear things like
18 is sort of where
um people are contracting covet through
restaurants that's a lot
it's a lot and so we really need to um
reconsider
um what we're asking not only our own
our restaurants but our workers
um it's a very very scary time so i
continue to feel like we
we should i i don't know where we could
get that information
oh joanna you sent me a i don't know who
sent me
i don't remember maybe it was somebody
else who sent me an article
with the sheer numbers of what we know
in new mexico
but more specifically i wonder if
somewhere we can get those numbers
um specific to las cruces uh around our
immigrant
population because you know they're
afraid to get to get
tested they're afraid to go and seek
medical attention
they don't apply or can't qualify for
all these cert that you know the
services that the feds are putting out
and state is putting out as it relates
to um getting unemployment
so continue to be i'm really worried
about that
especially as the kids are are moving
into
um virtual learning i i
and i noticed that mayor the money that
we gave the schools
hasn't been utilized and i think they
were looking at
um this next school year
and so i just want us to keep an eye on
that and making sure
we are effectively
helping and where where there is the
most need
so i think sure well let me just
thank you for your comments on that let
me just share with you what i'm
every week or every other week the
various mayors around the state
have calls and so i'm just going to
share with you what i'm going to suggest
to them regarding the restaurants
real quick basically
to though i know still no indoor dining
i understand that but
i wonder if they would allow food buffet
so um the food's prepared you know
people can go in
they have to wear a mask they just get
the food get it ready to go and then
they're out the door so they're not
sitting in there they're they're just
running through you know just
they can still sell their food but they
just they don't sit inside
they just uh you know just dash and go
grab and go and you know pay for it and
out out the door they go so it'll still
allow them to
to have the cooks to people employment
but you're not sitting there you have
your mask on and so on and so forth so
we'll see what the rest of the mayors
say on that
um and then what i was thinking and i'll
let
first council float us and then i'll let
the councilman cuomo jump in but
basically what i was going to suggest
was to let natalie and staff kind of
go back and see who may need some
additional funding and then bring that
forward to us and then we might approve
that for the second round
council flores question yes thank you
uh thank you mr mayor um francisco
fayades are you still
available i have a question
about um yeah just counseling folks
oh wonderful thank you so if you could
go back to slide
10 the one that shows the employment
unemployment levels
uh
um
well oh there it is
okay thank you um dr fayades
um to what are the how are the
unemployment claims being filed
because i know that some of the rules
have changed
i know that um we as employees
play pay into that unemployment fund
and um and when we're unemployed
we apply and then there's
a time when the funds run out or there's
a
time limit um so
to what are the um you know the
downturns attributed do you know
what factors and thank you very much uh
councillor
uh flores mr mayor the
the specific process which the
administrative process for which that
this gets
filed i i do not know it exactly
in council flores uh this is more of a
question related to workforce
connections and exactly how their
administrative process
goes to filing the claims i know that
there were some changes
with regards to some of the legislation
and and this may be tied to where they
get some of their money from
uh they may be getting some of their
money from the federal government or
either the state government
and depending on how they get it
they they might change the eligibility
of how they
they can access some of the of the
claims i i do
remember that furloughed employees could
access it i
do know that that employees that were
that were laid off because of the
pandemic can access it
but there was also some changes with
regards to
self-employed individuals that were able
to access it
but those rules have been changing and i
know they've been changing even faster
with the pandemic
um that that so that that isn't that is
a question that that exceeds my
administrative abilities
i think that that would be but i can
definitely look for it and request some
information as to what
qualifies someone to be unemployed um
with new mexico workforce connections
that's a follow-up question i can pursue
as to with your second question
what accounts for some of that downturn
that you have seen right there
uh some of the information that we've
been able to to see at least from from
from commentaries and
and from discussions is that the ptp
uh um loan as well as the idle loan that
came from the government
for sort of from the federal government
uh did require
some businesses to rehire back
the employees in order to access them so
that this could be a portion of what we
are observing
here uh that by rehiring back some of
the employees
in order to access some of these loans
uh they they're forced to
well the claims usually come down
uh another portion of that might be the
the stages of the reopening of the
economy
so as it has progressively been
increasing we're not as restrictive as
we were in the middle of uh
well the latter portion of march early
portion of april
have also um allowed to some of the
operations to follow through
so as as more health data has become
available and some of the
recommendations have become available
and more information from
from the from the health perspective has
become available um
we we have now seen more businesses that
have adapted to
uh so that that could be another portion
to that
um so so that's that's the response that
i can give to both of your questions i'm
not sure whether they're full responses
to your answer
uh but there are at least as a portion
of that
yes i i appreciate your answers very
much dr payatis
and if it's if there's any way of
breaking it down to find out exactly
what those contributing factors are
or what the factors are uh it'd be good
to know exactly what our
workforce looks like um
it just it just seems incredible not
incredible but it just
i just want to understand how we could
go from having
um almost 3 000 unemployed to you know
about 500 unemployment at this point
because i i'm just i mean there must
have been wonderful things that happened
with workforce
solutions in our department there or the
federal government
subsidizing employers i i would love to
you know think that that's what it was
um
so anyway thank you very much uh by uh
dr payatis i appreciate it i look
forward to a follow-up thank you
thank you mr mayor okay thank you
counselor
so uh again thank you very much for this
information and um
david uh maestas yes so david
you think that uh well let me just make
sure
counselor ben como so council bencomo
we're good with just letting staff kind
of
go through clarify some of the numbers
maybe reach out to those
uh nonprofits that we help on the first
round
see if what what what amount of funding
they may need for round
two and then bring it back to us yes mr
mayor i think that's fine
okay okay uh david that's
my ass this we're good yes mr mayor
thank you
that's exactly what i was looking for
the discussion we had here today was
was very good uh we did have members
from the community as well available
but it does sound like we have a clear
direction on how we want to move forward
and then we can put together uh based on
the input
now today and follow up with our
community uh
some recommendations to council uh for
the next round of funding
very good okay well if there's nothing
further entertain a motion to adjourn
motion made by councillor florida second
by councillor ben cuomo
although those in favor signify by
saying aye that we adjourn
was supposed okay we're gonna endure it
at 12 36 p.m thank you
you all have a safe and happy weekend
thank you mr mayor you too bye-bye
bye thank you everyone thank you
i