GRAFTON — The job of the town clerk is typically a ho-hum affair.
With duties such as recording births and deaths, issuing dog licenses and registering motor vehicles, the elected, part-time position tends not to attract many candidates.
But in Grafton this Town Meeting, the town clerk’s job is drawing a lot of attention as the longtime incumbent faces a write-in challenge waged by a former deputy following the clerk’s sudden unexplained absence and transfer of ballot-handling to a resident of another town.
The incumbent clerk in question is Bonnie Haubrich, 72, a retired Dartmouth-Hitchcock administrative supervisor who has been Grafton’s clerk since 2010 and also serves as Grafton’s elected tax collector. She has no interest in relinquishing the role.
“I just love my job, every bit of it,” Haubrich said between responding to residents’ needs from behind a plexiglass screen at her office at Grafton Town Hall on Friday. “I like helping people in town.”
The anodyne comments, however, belie bewilderment felt by some in Grafton, including members of the Selectboard, over how Haubrich has handled her recent absence, which led to an unexplained closing of the town clerk’s office and the temporary transfer of her duties handling ballots for Town Meeting.
Grafton residents and Selectboard members said they were taken by surprise when a notice was posted on the town’s website on Feb. 14 announcing that the town clerk’s and tax collector’s office would be closed “until further notice.”
With Haubrich absent, many of her duties ground to a halt and people in town were wondering where she went, including members of the Selectboard, who said they were left in the dark.
After Haubrich had been out for a week, the three-member Selectboard held an emergency meeting on Feb. 24 to appoint a temporary deputy town clerk “because that office had not been serving the public since prior to Feb. 14,” the Selectboard said in a statement it posted on the Grafton town website.
The Selectboard had two candidates ready to step in and open and pick up the duties: Kami Hammond, a former deputy town clerk who worked under Haubrich, and Heather Hunter, an EMS volunteer and the town’s welfare director who had also been, for a brief period last year, a deputy clerk for Haubrich.
When the Selectboard members finally got a phone number to reach Haubrich, they went into executive session to call her on speaker phone. Haubrich was in the hospital when the Selectboard spoke with her, and she told them she would be back in her office on Saturday, Feb. 26, to process absentee ballots, according to the Selectboard’s post.
In addition, Haubrich informed the Selectboard that it had no authority to appoint a temporary deputy for the town clerk.
“She did not want anyone else touching her things,” said Cindy Kudlic, chair of the Selectboard. “I suggested, ‘What about the moderator? At least he’s an elected official who’s already sworn in.’ And she said, ‘Nope, that’s not necessary. I will be there Saturday. I will take care of it.’ ”
(The Grafton town moderator is Steve Kudlic, Cindy Kudlic’s husband).
But when Saturday rolled around, Haubrich “instead sent her husband and a woman who lives in Danbury into the town clerk’s office to process absentee ballots,” the Selectboard’s statement said.
The Selectboard said that prompted them to contact the town attorney “for assistance once again to try to remedy the situation.” After consulting with the town attorney, the Grafton Selectboard issued a statement for “anyone who questions why we didn’t do something more.”
The statement said the “town clerk does not work beneath or at the direction of the selectmen. The law does not allow us to do anything about the current situation without her cooperation and approval. … We have insisted and demanded that she find a deputy. At this time our hands are tied, and only she can remedy the situation.”
Selectboard member Tom McGinty acknowledged the relationship between the Selectboard and the town clerk “has gotten a little tense.”
Reached Friday at her office, Haubrich said she had to leave work suddenly on Feb. 14 because she had to be hospitalized at Dartmouth-Hitchcock with COVID-19. She was there a day, then back home for a few days, when she had to be admitted a second time. Finally, she was discharged on Monday, Feb. 28, and cleared to return to work by her doctors and returned to the office Tuesday, March 1.
Haubrich said she’s now feeling “great” and was laughing with residents on Friday who were coming into the town clerk’s office to conduct business. She said her inability to hire a deputy — she is interviewing a candidate now — has been hampered by the low pay of the job, which discourages applicants.
Moreover, she made clear she wasn’t happy with the Selectboard’s candidates, even though they had both worked for her, and Hammond also had experience assisting in the Orange town clerk’s office.
“They didn’t have a qualified person to do that,” Haubrich argued. “If you do not have a qualified person, you cannot assign somebody all these tasks.”
Haubrich also pointed out that the town clerk in neighboring Canaan had agreed to temporarily take over processing vehicle registrations, so Grafton residents did not face a long inconvenience while she was away.
“As far as I’m concerned, the town was covered. Canaan was very gracious processing (vehicle) registrations,” she added.
The sequence prompted Hammond, 48, to run for her former boss’ job as a write-in.
“I want to serve the town where I live, and besides, it’s fun. You get to meet and talk with everyone in town,” said Hammond, who announced she was running for her old boss’ job in a post Tuesday on the Friends of Grafton Facebook page.
Hammond, who has lived in Grafton for 30 years and was the deputy town clerk in 2012, ordered 10 campaign signs this week and on Friday afternoon planted the first one “on my mother-in-law’s front yard on Route 4,” she said. She planned to sprinkle most of the other signs along Route 4 “where anyone will let me.”
Hammond said her priority would be to “create communications between the departments and to appoint a deputy so we don’t run into these situations as much.”
She called her rival and former boss “smart and capable” but “change is good.”
And while she understands it’s an uphill battle to win as a last-minute write-in, she hopes her candidacy will draw attention to the need for a deputy town clerk to serve as a backup.
“That would be a win-win.” Hammond said.
Contact John Lippman at jlippman@vnews.com.
