AUBURN — The tax office at Auburn Hall remains closed this week due to three positive COVID-19 cases among staff.

Following an announcement of the closure last week, the tax and city clerk’s offices were initially slated to reopen Tuesday, but the tax office reopening was delayed as the affected staff continue to quarantine at home.

The clerk’s office reopened Tuesday as scheduled.

According to Matt Fifield, Auburn’s deputy fire chief who has led the city’s COVID-19 response, Auburn has conducted a second round of COVID-19 testing of staff who were considered to be close contacts of those testing positive.

Thankfully, he said, there were no additional positive test results. However, because tax office employees remain out or have been asked to quarantine, the office doesn’t have the proper staffing to reopen.

“As a result of contact tracing and as a precaution, some employees have been asked to quarantine,” Fifield said. “As you can imagine, we require a certain level of staffing to be able to provide adequate in-person customer service to our residents. For that reason, we decided to keep the tax office closed for now.”

He said the city clerk’s office has been reopened, “business as usual.”

Fifield said other city staff has been “diligently checking and responding to emails and voicemails” regarding tax office business.

“City leadership will continue to monitor the situation over the next week as we cautiously proceed toward a reopening of the tax office that is safe for our employees and for the public,” he said.

When the closure was announced last week, Fifield said that “given the building design, safety practices that are practiced daily by our staff, contact tracing and preliminary testing,” a full closure of Auburn Hall was not needed. He said Auburn partnered with Promerica Health and has “employed all needed preventive steps at this time.”

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