ANTIGONISH: Both municipal buildings on Main Street and Beech Hill Road are currently closed to the public as the town and county try to contain the COVID-19 outbreak Antigonish is currently facing.
Following the town’s regular monthly council meeting on Dec. 13, Mayor Laurie Boucher told The Reporter that while town hall is currently restricted to employees only, residents can still do business virtually or over the phone.
“Daily business is still going on,” Boucher said. “It’s just to limit the exposure of our staff and the patrons coming in as well.”
The mayor advised while they’re still open for business, town hall isn’t open to the public.
“It makes a big difference,” Boucher said on already having to move their municipal services online once before throughout the pandemic. “It’s much easier this time than last time switching over.”
Warden Owen McCarron echoed this sentiment to The Reporter following the county’s regular monthly council meeting on Dec. 15.
“It’s much, much easier with all the pieces already in place, so it allowed us to pivot very quickly,” McCarron said. “That’s one of the things that we weren’t able to do last time, is almost make that decision overnight and transition quick so it’s not as disruptive.”
He suggested the municipality shut its office down for public interest, until such a time that they feel like they can return to face to face interactions safely.
“We’ll take the next week and the lead up to Christmas and kind of see where things are in terms of the spread and the number of cases in the community,” McCarron said. “And then traditionally the municipality is closed operations for the three days over Christmas, so that’ll put us into early January.”
The warden added that the county will reassess in the new year and see where Antigonish is in terms of the Omnicron variant’s spread, before deciding whether to resume in-person services.