City employees, volunteers making masks

CLOVIS - The Friendship Senior Center is closed to the public. But last week saw its sewing machines busier than ever.

Stitch by stitch, elastic band by elastic band, a group of seven city employees and volunteers worked Wednesday, Thursday and Friday to make masks for various city functions.

The New Mexico Department of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have recommended that anybody who must go out in public should wear a mask of some type.

Sandy Pieratt, a program coordinator for Clovis Senior Services, said the group made 142 masks intended for anybody riding the Clovis Area Transit System, and then went to work on 300 more masks for city staff. The city employs around 360; Pieratt said many of those employees are working from home, but the masks are intended for those who have to be out.

"Police, fire, EMS, CATS and Emergency Management already have the personal protection equipment their departments need," City Manager Justin Howalt said in a city news release. "However we have other staff, including Public Works, Airport staff, Building Safety and Municipal Court, who are still working in the community as part of essential services. Although we are practicing social distancing wherever possible, and even though face masks have not been mandated at this time, we wanted to provide face masks to our other employees as they go about their work for the community to help them and anyone they may come into contact with."

Pieratt said until she got the call from city administration, she was working at home and putting together virtual activities like bingo to keep seniors entertained as public health orders forced the shuttering of all senior centers.

The city-owned Friendship Center has eight sewing machines that are normally used daily by various sewing and quilting groups.

Now, they're set up with social distancing in mind, with an assembly line process that includes cutting the fabric and turning the fabric pieces into functional masks. Three yards of fabric, Pieratt said, makes about seven masks.

Pieratt said she's not as good a seamstress as others, but knows the work is necessary.

"It's stressful," she said, "(but) you've got to get it done."

MaryLou Kemp, director of CATS, said she appreciated the efforts to help ridership and drivers be safe, and highlighted volunteer efforts of City Commissioner Helen Casaus and material donations from the privately owned Baxter-Curren Senior Center.