Being Town Clerk Means Knowing Where Every Dog License Is Filed

People are often surprised by what a town clerk does. They assume I stamp forms. I do stamp forms. But in a small Vermont town, the clerk's office is also the vault for land records going back to the 1790s, the place where you register to vote, license your dog, get a marriage license and record the sale of your house.

I was elected nine years ago, after retiring from the library. My office is two rooms in the town hall, open four days a week. I have one part-time assistant and a fireproof vault the size of a walk-in closet.

The land records

The most important thing I keep is the land records. Every deed, mortgage, easement and lien in town is recorded in bound books. The oldest are handwritten in brown ink, with property lines described by "a large maple at the corner of the stone wall." Lawyers and title searchers come in weekly to trace ownership before a sale.

If a deed is not recorded properly, a family can discover decades later that their right to use a driveway was never written down. I have seen it happen twice. Accuracy here is not bureaucracy; it is people's homes.

Elections

In Vermont, the town clerk runs local elections and administers state and federal ones at the town level. I maintain the voter checklist, send out absentee ballots, train election workers and, on election night, help count.

Our town uses a tabulator for most elections, but small local votes are often counted by hand. Teams of two count each stack of ballots and the totals must match. One November we were off by one ballot and found it stuck to the bottom of a box. That is a good night's sleep lost and recovered.

Dogs, deaths and weddings

Dog licenses are due every April. The fee is small and part of it goes to state rabies control programs. Every year about 40 owners forget, and I make polite phone calls. One man has licensed a dog named Senator for eleven years. I am fairly sure there have been three different dogs.

I also record births and deaths that occur in town, issue marriage licenses and certify copies of vital records. I have issued marriage licenses to people I watched grow up in the children's section of the library. That is one of the best parts of the job.

Why the job matters

• Clerks are often the most accessible face of government. People walk in with problems they cannot solve elsewhere.
• Records outlive every official. A mistake I make today could matter in 100 years.
• In a small town, trust in elections often comes down to trust in the clerk.

When I retire again, someone else will hold the vault key. I hope they will love the brown-ink deeds as much as I do. I have left a note in the drawer about Senator.