No gold watch when I retire, thank you

I have been our township clerk twelve years come next March. The March I intended to retire from my last term, travel, see friends and relatives, even some world, and definitely spend my children’s inheritance on myself. Then six months into that four year term, grandchildren were living here. No amount of planning on my part will reinvent the last decade of my life; the children are here to stay and I will keep on working.

The first day I started this job, April 1^st, 2004, the township solicitor stopped at the office to tell me his job was to make us look good—the trustees and me. Our jobs are defined by law; our responsibilities are outlined in the pages of Ohio Revised Code. Ed, our solicitor, has devoted his career to township law.

That day he wanted me to know how he feels about townships; the purest form of government, he told me. We are elected by the people to do the business of their township: repair the roads, plow the roads, mow the ditches, mow the cemetery grass, enforce zoning regulations, provide police, fire and emergency services.

Townships exist throughout much of the first west; the immediate post Revolutionary War lands that were not under a form of state government. The Northwest Ordinance of 1797 was “an ordinance for the government of the territory northwest of the Ohio River,” and covered what would be Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and some of Minnesota. It divided the land into rectangles (townships), set aside public grazing areas, set aside some lots of each township to be sold to pay for schools. Rather ingenious.

Ed’s enthusiasm was contagious and I’ve grown even more fond of townships than when we first moved here and found it’s de rigueur to wave at the road crew and the police, as well as your neighbors. 

To be elected to an office one must secure petition forms from the Board of Elections and go door to door collecting enough signatures of registered voters to be placed on the November general election ballot for the office in question.

I’ve canvassed three times, and wondered how I’d get through a fourth, walking up drives, climbing steps, and reversing the process. I’d be such a haggard figure by the second door I’d be done for the day and it would take me six months to collect my signatures. I do have a plan B, and asked the trustee who also will be on the ballot this fall if he would collect my signatures, too. He agreed readily.

Last week I spent one long day at a seminar, sitting on uncomfortable chairs, moving among one hour sessions, learning the most current ways of safeguarding the people’s monies and simultaneously fulfilling my requirement to complete six hours of continuing education per term. At the township’s board meeting I highlighted some items of note and also said that was my six hour requirement for my current term ending March 31^st. I will be slipping out the door at the end of my next four year term before anyone notices I do not have another six hours under my belt.

After the meeting the other two trustees offered to circulate my petitions, too.  The next four years of school lunches, school fees and school clothes seem to be covered.  How lucky can one fiscal officer get, short of running unopposed, or being on a plane to visit my cousin in Texas or my BFF in South Carolina or Ann in Wisconsin.

Credit for this goes to the Akron Beacon Journal, accompanying an article done about the township, probably in 2006. The fire department moved to a new facility, the road department moved into the fire department garage (twice the space) and administration moved into the road department. It must have been winter in the ill heated garage; note the sweaters on all except the trustee who turns heat down and air up. That's Ed on my right. We still sit in the same relative positions; the garage was renovated into the township offices.