CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Over the weekend, Nueces County Tax Assessor-Collector Kevin Kieschnick posted to social media that a COVID-19 outbreak happened within his departments.
Kieschnick is in charge of the tax collecting, motor vehicle and voter registration offices.
He said in total he has about 60 employees, recently he has had close to 40 working in the building.
"Got a call Friday night," he said, "that we had had several employees come back positive. Turned out we had about seven of them test positive for COVID between the property tax and the motor vehicle department."
As of Monday, all three offices closed their doors, leaving many residents in a bind right before the holidays.
"My sticker was expired so I come and drive a normal 3 hours to get over here," said Jose Vasquez.
Vasquez said it's not a big deal, but had checked online and didn't see any information.
According to Kieschnick, the offices are set to reopen on Monday, December 28 for normal business hours.
"We’ve all been wearing masks and all that sort of thing since June, so up until this point we hadn’t had any in our office or transmission of it until now," Kieschnick said.
For people that don't want to wait until Monday, they can do their vehicle renewals online, as well as do property taxes online or at the dropbox at the tax collecting office on the third floor of the Nueces County Courthouse.
Vasquez said he doesn't like putting payment information online, "because you don't know if you put the money correct, then they won't give me my sticker so I'll just do it in person again".
As for the public who has been at either office recently, Kieschnick said all of his employees have been wearing masks and they have not had contact with the public since there are glass wall dividers at each office.
