LINO LAKES, Minn. – (July 26, 2018)- Julie Bartell has been working as a city clerk for a long time.
“When I started, I was using a typewriter and a rotary phone,” Bartell said. “I was fortunate enough to work for the city of Minneapolis for 30 years and then come out here to Lino Lakes and it’s been a great challenge.”
The work of a city clerk can vary depending on the size of a city, but no matter what, the job requires a lot of focus, a lot of planning, and a lot of details.
In her work as city clerk, Julie is the secretary to the city council, the city’s record keeper, the data practice officer, secretary to the charter commission, and she’s also the city’s election administrator – a job aspect which takes a lot of her time.
“For most of the year. We actually start working on elections in April,” Bartell said.
The work starts with finding and training election judges who will oversee each polling place.
“Elections are somewhat up and down,” Bartell said. Bartell says that although preparations can take a while, they’re necessary to ensure voters have a smooth experience. Then it’s getting the equipment and the ballots ready to go. Testing of equipment is a big part of the security of the election system. Voter scanning and automark voter assistance machines are tested numerous times to make sure they’re counting accurately.
When Julie is not working on elections, she enjoys finding more efficiencies for the city and its residents. One thing she has been focused on it digitizing years of records and codes.
“The city code is actually a document that contains all the regulations and laws of the city,” Bartell said. “I knew that I was going to be able to bring that online to make that more accessible.”
She’s also working on housing records. Every single house in the city has its own file.
“There’s was a room at old City Hall that contained nothing but old records,” Bartell shares. ” We’ve brought that down to a very small group of records.”
Beyond the really big projects, she’s also finding simple efficiencies with the city council, working with them to save paper, and to get information faster.
“I worked with council on the transition to electronic packets for them. I worked on writing a couple licensing regulations including the special event ordinance that guides special event regulations in the city,” Bartell said.
Julie knows that not everything she does is easily visible to city residents, but she knows that what she does has a daily impact.
“There’s a button that’s close to my heart and it says on it ‘nothing works without clerks’, so that’s kind of our motto in the clerk world,” Bartell said. “We know we work behind the scenes a lot, but we know that our work is important and we take a lot of pride in it.”
