New Mexico church leaders react to getting green light to open at 100% capacity Salina Madrid
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New Mexico s updated health order allows houses of worship to open at 100 percent capacity, regardless of the color-coded risk level for each county.
“This change was made in light of recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions that enjoin states from enforcing capacity limits on churches that are more restrictive than other entities like factories and schools,” Nora Meyers Sackett, press secretary for Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said.
For months, due to Doña Ana County’s positivity rate and it’s placement on the states color coded map, houses of worship in the area have been operating between 25 and 33 percent capacity.
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Eventually the company landed on offering a $500 sign-on bonus for every new hire.
“I think part of it is, it’s almost like we’re competing with unemployment,” administrative assistant Dory Nuñez said. “… Why would anybody want to, I guess, start at a minimum wage job when they can be earning more money … on unemployment?”
Fresquez Companies isn’t alone in the struggle to find employees.
Help wanted signs are cropping up in the windows of many restaurants and businesses around the city and state.
“It’s a big struggle,” Twisters COO Bahjat Shariff said. “People are making a lot more money being unemployed than employed, and the world is coming back to dine-in and eat-in a little bit at a time, so the stimulus really paused people applying to jobs.”
New Mexico Republicans moving state convention to Texas Daniel J. Chacón
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The Republican Party of New Mexico is holding its annual state convention next month, but it won t be in-state.
The three-day event, dubbed Operation Freedom, will be held in Amarillo, Texas, which has much looser COVID-19 restrictions than New Mexico, where mass gatherings under even the most lenient conditions are limited to 150 people. It was named Operation Freedom because had we been able to have it in our own state, we would not have to travel, Kim Skaggs, the state GOP s executive director, said in a telephone interview Monday.