Town Clerk/Treasurer makes the case for an additional staff position.
Listing all the Clerk/Treasurer's responsibilities, Heather Roberts says she and her assistant have little free time for longterm projects to improve record keeping and service.
The Record Staff
Town Clerk/Treasurer Heather Roberts couldn’t have come up with a more dramatic opening to her FY2027 budget presentation to the selectboard recently, trying to make the case that her office needed an additional staff person: She listed all her responsibilities and tasks. It took her nearly two minutes to go through them all:
“I wanted to start by giving an overview of the tasks that we handle on the clerk/treasurer’s office on an ongoing basis: Elections administration and ongoing voter checklist maintenance; weekly payroll; employee benefit administration; accounts payable and associated vendor management; warrant preparation; W-2 and 1099 preparation and distribution; all town cash receipts; purchasing for all town departments and occasional committees; grant and debt cash flow administration and record-keeping; water/sewer account management and billing; water/sewer allocation administration and billing for future users; tax billing and collection, both on time and delinquent; management of tax and water/sewer appeals or abatement requests; land records recording, indexing, and preservation; vital records maintenance and certified copies; marriage, dog and liquor licensing; voter registration; overweight vehicle permits; DMV registration renewals; land posting; annual workers comp audits; fixed asset tracking; scheduled reporting to other departments in town committees as well as outside agencies such as the Department of Labor, the Vermont Tax Department, the IRS, The Labor Union, Valek, and the Secretary of State’s Office. In addition, as the repository for the town’s data, we routinely research and respond to requests for information from other departments and the general public.
“While I believe Kitty (Frazier) and I do a great job of keeping up with the ever more complex workflow in the office on a day-to-day basis, it leaves little time for long-term planning, organization and documentation, process improvements for increased efficiency implementation of new technologies and digitization of historical records to make them more accessible and useful.”
Roberts then told the selectboard that with an extra staff person the office can accomplish needed longterm projects such as:
Organizing and digitizing a vast number of records; here’s a few:
Land and deed records going back to the 1700s (2000-2025 have been digitized).
records of major decisions by selectboard; and
plat maps.
Re-organization and codifying the storage of multiple types of town records: “We’ve had multiple generations of filing systems,” she said; they need to be made consistent and easily accessible.
Installing an electronic payment system (currently payments can be made only by check).
While some of the clerk/treasurer’s tasks are seasonal – hunting licenses, tax collections, elections, etc. – many require considerable preparation ahead of time. And, also, there is a steady stream of people coming to the clerk’s office for any manner of help.
“We also anticipate a significant increase in workload,” she added, “related to the planned development at Haystack Crossing, Riggs Meadow at Windy Ridge, Hinesburg Center 2, Ernest Way and Tractor Road.”
The new staff person, she said, would split their time between regular duties and managing the tasks related to the town’s water/sewer department. For that reason half the cost – $40,000 (salary and benefits) – would be borne by ratepayers and the other $40,000 would be paid through property taxes.
“An additional staff person in the town clerk’s office,” Roberts added, “would allow us to continue to meet the needs of our client base while modernizing our processes and enhancing the services we are able to offer.”
Roberts’ proposed budget – which would amount to a 25 percent increase – comes on the heels of proposed increases by the school district, police and fire departments and the Carpenter-Carse Library. Even the recreation department proposes a major hike to reflect an employee signing on for town health benefits for the first time and a whopping rise in the cost of the Fourth of July fireworks.
Roberts left a door open, however.
She suggested that as an alternative her office could reduce its hours of public service, something she didn’t want to do but, again, said it might be an alternative to give her and her assistant time to tend to some of the long-term planning and records upkeep and improvement.
The selectboard members indicated clearly they are concerned about all this demand and the impact on property owners.
Selectboard member Paul Lamberson was the first to react: “You’re just going to hear me say it over and over tonight: double-digit percentages in this time just – and we just heard preliminary awful news about the education tax – but these increases will hit us all.
“As of this very moment, I would let you know that I’m more intrigued by service reduction – I mean hours open for the public – and that I think that’s an acceptable burden that we all have to bear now.”
Selectboard member Dennis Place also expressed concern about the potential impact on taxes. “Do you think you could give it another year and just change your hours for this year and then see how it goes till the next year?”
“I mean, I do think it’s possible,” Roberts said. “That’s why I mentioned it in my comments.”
In a subsequent meeting of the selectboard, Town Manager came up with another idea: the administrative assistant for the planning and zoning departments – currently at 14 hours a week – would become a 20-hour a week job with 16 hours devoted to working in the clerk/treasurer’s office. The selectboard seemed interested and it will become part of the nitty-gritty budget discussions in January.
In Roberts’ initial presentation meeting, Odit made an interesting admission in the context of the rush for additional staffing in the FY2027 budgets of all departments.
“It’s been a number of years where these departments have come to me saying, ‘We need more help to meet future demand.’ And I kind of played the gatekeeper and said, ‘Yes, [but] that’s probably not worth asking for [at this time].’
“Looking back, I feel like that maybe was a little remiss on my part, because the board wasn’t seeing what the departments really felt that they needed to meet future demand.
“So that’s why this year the department budgets are pretty much coming to you unfiltered because I think it makes sense for you to see what they’re seeing and what they’re asking for and what in previous year, which wasn’t making it to you.”
