It’s been nice seeing so many people upbeat over the past few days. The news that Eddy County went “Yellow”- along with last Friday’s football game, seems to have given many people in Carlsbad a much-needed morale boost. With restaurants back open at 33%, many Carlsbad residents were planning anniversary and birthday dinners that had been postponed for months. Students are talking about going back to school five days a week in just a few weeks. There’s a lot of positive energy in the community right now.
We hope we can continue to keep that momentum going. The state revises its gating criteria every two weeks. We’d like to see the numbers for Carlsbad and Eddy County continue to go down so that we can become “Green” as quickly as possible, but we have to keep treating COVID-19 seriously by wearing masks when necessary and practicing social distancing until we’re fully past this. A relapse would be devastating to our local restaurants, who are trying to make decisions on how many people to rehire and how much food they need to order. Please help us keep our COVID-19 numbers down so our businesses can stay open and we can move forward.
Additionally, please remember that our restaurants have been through so much over the past year. They have to make a lot of sudden adjustments, and they are still tasked with enforcing state COVID-19 policies. Not everything may be perfect on the day they re-open, and we hope to continue supporting them. Some of our local businesses did not survive the turmoil of the past year, and we hope to stick up for each other as a community and support everyone we can.
On the City of Carlsbad’s end, we want you to know that we are also committed to safely making our services available to the greatest extent possible. Since Eddy County is Yellow, we will be able to open things up somewhat in terms of capacity, and we are also going to be expanding our hours to make things more convenient. More information will be provided as it becomes available.
The Lincoln National Forest to our west is one of the many reasons our community is so well known for all its natural beauty. From March 15 through April 15, the forest is sponsoring a project called “BioBlitz,” which encourages residents and families to visit the forest and take pictures and videos. It’s a program designed to teach students how to gather data. There’s an app called iNaturalist and a list of projects for participants to complete. For more information, please visit https://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/lincoln/home/?cid=FSEPRD891655 or email warren.hartman@usda.gov
Sincerely,
Carlsbad Mayor Dale Janway