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Town clerk says election and records workload is rising; office budgets seek modest increase for digitization and staffing
Summary
Rockport's town clerk described rising in-person transactions, absentee-ballot processing and vendor-driven online fees; staff proposed splitting an assistant position with planning, continued scanning/digitization and requested modest funding for training and records preservation.
Town Clerk Liz told the committee that her office is handling increased volume of transactions and absentee ballots and has shifted staffing to meet demand.
Liz explained that some activity ' including new license-plate transactions ' generated a surge of counter visits and that absentee ballots continue to grow: "Probably about the same if not more" this year, she said.
The clerk's budget reflects a planned split of an assistant position with the planning and community development office; Liz said the extra part-time help brought in last year "has been great" and cited benefits-splitting when staff time is shared across departments. She also described the persistence of an uncollectible personal-property tax receivable dating to 2017 that staff wants to write off to clean the books.
On digitization, Liz said in-house scanning is underway but that full vendor digitization was priced beyond current resources; the committee encouraged staff to track online uptake and consider user incentives, but noted the state sets many fee rules that limit local flexibility.
No formal votes were taken. Committee members asked for usage statistics (online uptake, absentee trends) and a clearer performance metric for clerk operations to track progress toward more online services.
