Some citizens asked for — and the Town Board seemed willing to consider — a referendum to move the town clerk/treasurer from an elected position to an appointed one.
The town has been struggling with the position since Linda Terry resigned in February to take a job with another municipality. Beth Frederick was appointed to fill the job, and the Town Board expressed satisfaction with her work, but struggled with how to pay her more for what they saw as an increased work load.
With the additional pay issue unresolved, Frederick resigned as of Aug. 13 and Bev McCumber was appointed to the job.
Resident Marilyn Zirbel called for the job to be split into two posts — which it once was — and for both to be the subject of a referendum to make them appointed.
“If it went on a referendum, people would be able to address it,” Zirbel said.
Frederick, during citizen comments, also urged the board to act on the referendum. Like Zirbel she stressed that making the job appointed would increase flexibility on pay and finding personnel, since appointed staff would not have to live in the town so they could stand for election. She also said splitting the jobs would give a better separation of duties when handling town funds.
No Town Board member objected to the referendum idea and Supervisor Ken Monson said he would champion putting the matter on a future board agenda for discussion.
I am definatley in favor of a POSTED position instead of an elected position for both the town clerk/treasurer and the deputy town clerk. This should have already been addressed for it to make the referendum a reality, but because they kept takign it off the meeting it won’t be addressed and again the towns people will lose this opportunity. This would bring in experienced people to apply, not people that are well known in the town, but have no clue as to teh job at hand. Beth was our Ace in the hole. She was not only local and knew most of teh people, but she had her degree in exactly what our needs are. The other thing I want to mention ONCE AGAIN is that Beth was NOT looking for a pay increase. She was looking for MORE hours to do the tasks that have not been done completely over the many years due to the fact there werent’ enough of hours to complete them. paris is a growing community which inturn means that the town responsibilites are growing. How do you expect one person to do the job of two people in 20 hours? Maybe when Beth was in, she might have opened a can of worms so to speak as far as what has been done and what should be done, but that was in the best interest of US the town people. In all reality I could run for this position come April and if I have enough of votes I get the job, but do I deserve the position? heck NO. I can’ barely balance my own check book let alone the towns money and as far as typing goes, I’m not a big fan of it. I do emails for my potential custoemrs with lots of typo’s, but that’s what they make spell check for. Bottom line is that we need a qualified person in this postion that will take the bull by the horns and get the job done. I personally would love to see Beth come back, but I think there has been too much pussy footing around for her to even consider the position again. I hope she reads this and will at least consider it IF and WHEN it happens.
And now we’re going to finally have a meeting on the referendum after having it requested to be posted on the agenda for months. I saw it in Legal Notices today…but did the general public catch it there? And the two people who were asked to work on this/research this form the Town…didn’t know about the meeting, neither one of them. It’s also not on the Town web site. Oh, that’s right, nothing has been updated on the web site since August 3rd, right around Clerk Frederick’s last day. Of course the Board will have to “ponder” this referendum and the position description (if they remembered that is part of the decision-making process), add into the position enough hours to get the job done and, as usual it won’t get to the referendum stage in time for the November elections and then we’ll wait yet another two years to see any sign of progress. Is this something new? Uh-no.