Village clerk in Cary wants to take minutes

Cary Village Clerk Nancy Bragg does not take the minutes for village board and committee meetings, but wishes she did because, well, it’s part of her job, she said.

“I was elected, and I am supposed to be doing my job,” she said. “I don’t feel like I have given the public that part of my job.”

Contrast that with recent news out of Pingree Grove, where Clerk Joanna Wester deputized the village administrator to take meeting minutes for her. She would not publicly discuss why, but in the last election the clerk’s pay was cut from $38,000 a year to $50 a meeting.

In Cary, trustees Karen Lukasik and Robert Bragg, who also is Nancy Bragg’s husband, question why Nancy Bragg doesn’t take the minutes, which they believe runs contrary to village ordinance and state statute.

Lukasik said she has tried to raise the issue several times at board meetings. “I know that we’re not following state statute, technically,” she said. Nancy Bragg was first elected in April 2007. The deputy village clerk took minutes until April 2009, when the position was eliminated due to budget cuts, Village President Tom Kierna said. Former Village Administrator Cameron Davis then put Assistant Village Administrator Tara Semenchuk in charge of the task, Kierna said.

Davis was ousted in April.

But Nancy Bragg said she wishes she had fought against that decision two years ago.

“When Mayor Kierna was elected mayor (in April 2009), he told me that I didn’t need to take the minutes, and he was appointing Tara to do that,” she said. “At the time, I didn’t know any better. I should have spoken up and said, ‘Look, this is my position, this is what I am doing.’ They are not my boss. I am not personnel. I am an elected official.” The ordinance states that the village clerk “shall attend all meetings of the corporate authorities and keep a full record of its proceedings in the form of minutes.”

Kierna said current procedures are in compliance with the ordinance, because Nancy Bragg signs off on all minutes after they are taken by Semenchuk.

“The (village) clerk is responsible for the records and is required to keep the records, which she does. She attests the signatures when needed. She attests all the contracts of the village, licenses, permits, documents, any formality — she attests it,” Kierna said. The village clerk is paid $125 per month, he said.

Bragg said she wants to take minutes at board and committee meetings, but would likely appoint someone else to type them up.

She said she currently takes minutes for the zoning board of appeals, and attends all board and committee meetings.

Trustees Bragg and Lukasik said they expect the issue to be discussed at the next village board meeting July 5.