The year was 1984. Mayor Jerry Sheets and council members’ Leland Pierce, Lynn Wilkinson, Rick Schindler and K.D. Bennett decided to hire a rather inexperienced, 29-year-old mother of two as Elgin’s newest city clerk.
Maybe it was her apparent thirst for knowledge, her welcoming smile or simply her open and honest ways, but there is no doubt that thirty-six years later, the decision to hire Vicki Miller the Elgin City Clerk proved to be the right one.
Although it has been many years since she first walked into the city office to begin her career as City clerk, Vicki Miller still remembers that first year well. “ My first office was a desk located in the firehall.” Chuckling, she added, “I was right next to the bathroom. I remember feeling nervous, but I was comforted by the plan for me to attend clerk school, and knowing the former Clerk, Betty Buelt, was going to come train me. Unfortunately, Mrs. Buelt ending up in the hospital and never was able to return to help me.”
“ I remember two weeks into the job, they sent me to clerk’s school. The three-year training program was arranged so that one year would emphasize finance, one year would emphasize general duties, and one year would emphasize economic development.” Chuckling again, Vic noted, “That year’s focus happened to be economic development, and it was way over my head.” She continued, “ My first year was definitely interesting. I started in March, and Betty got sick and wasn’t able to train me. Then Mayor Jerry had a heart attack, and then the hail storm hits in June, causing immense damage all over town, including the need to drain the recently filled pool. In July, we had an armyworm attack at the pool and unfortunately had to drain it again. I remember Chris Stuhr was a first-year pool manager at the time, so she and I battled through our first year together. With the hail storm and other events of that year, I just had to jump right in.” To read the whole story turn to this week’s edition of the Elgin Review.
