The duties and responsibilities of a town clerk are numerous and varied. There is no one place in the statutes to find a list of the duties for this position; rather, the duties can be found throughout many statutes such as motor vehicle laws, election laws, vital statistics, planning and land use laws, libraries and the budget law.
Town Official
Unlike the tax collector, there is no provision in the law to allow a town clerk to be appointed. Thus, all town clerks must be elected and thereby must also be residents in the town they serve. City clerks, however, are appointed by the city council and are subject to the provisions of the city charter. These distinctions aside, most of the duties described below apply to city clerks as well as town clerks.
As a town official, the town clerk is not an employee of the town. The clerk may set his or her own office hours and take what vacation and sick time they feel they can, while still providing the service their constituents expect. However, this does not mean that there is no oversight of the position by the Select Board. While there is no direct supervision of the town clerk by the Select Board in the way that town employees are supervised, cooperation and a spirit of teamwork on the part of all town officials is essential. Only by working together will the goal of serving the town to the best of their abilities be achieved.
The town clerk submits his or her budget request to the Select Board for their consideration who then submit it the budget committee, if there is one. Within the budget request, the town clerk may include compensation, monies to attend training, and other items necessary to run the office. The legislative body has ultimate decision-making power over all budget requests presented at the annual meeting. Thus, if the Select Board or Budget Committee recommend a budget for the town clerkâs office that the clerk disagrees with, he or she can take the issue up with the voters at the annual meeting.