Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller has once again extended the emergency declaration regarding COVID-19.
Friday’s declaration was the 34th extension of the original, which was declared in March 2020. It allows for additional emergency procedures and assistance due to the virus.
Items in the extension include but are not limited to allowing government bodies and boards to meet virtually, encouraging vaccinations and social distancing, allowing e-signatures on documents, waiving adoption fees at Animal Welfare, and the ability to order the closure of businesses that fail to follow state health department orders or breaking up mass gatherings of more than six hours that may be conducive to the spread of the virus. It also reserves the right of the city to impose stay-at-home orders, close streets or other locations of mass assembly, and private places of employment “in order to protect health, safety, and welfare of the public.” It also allows for the New Mexico Department of Health and Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham to “update restrictions as necessary to respond to the evolving circumstances of this outbreak, and the city may issue further or supplemental declarations of emergency in response to this rapidly developing local health emergencies.”
Closing statements of the document request financial assistance from the New Mexico State Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management and Federal Emergency Management Agency and other “appropriate” federal agencies for costs occurred since the original emergency declaration made March 10, 2020.
To view the whole document, including the prior emergency declarations, click here.
