SPOTLIGHT: Town Clerk Barbara Breor
Managing and ensuring the well-being of a town takes a lot of work that often goes unnoticed to the general public. It’s important for townsfolk to understand the roles Town Hall elected officials and Staff members perform in serving the greater Goshen community. To help explain and delve into the many positions that make up Goshen’s government, Goshen News interviewed Town Clerk Barbara Breor.
Breor started volunteering to work in the Town Clerk’s office when she was still in high school in 1985. After learning many of the duties of a Town Clerk she was elected to hold that position in 1996 and has been doing so ever since. You might think that is where her training ended, but not so. She gained her expertise in becoming a Town Clerk through certification classes and first-hand experience. Litchfield’s then Town Clerk Evelyn Goodwind mentored her in addition to receiving guidance from the Connecticut’s Town Clerks’ Association. For over 27 years, Breor has often met with fellow clerks across the state, especially in the Northwest corner. Clerks representing towns in Litchfield County get together once a month or once a quarter to host dinner meetings wherein they’ll discuss changes to local laws and other shared issues.
Town Clerk roles may differ slightly from town to town but their main duties include maintaining and preserving town records, vital statistics, and issuing various licenses and permits. As a Town Clerk, Breor interprets basic language of state statutes and regulations to determine how it will impact Goshen. For assistance or in depth legal questions, Breor may contact her state representatives or state offices such as the Department of Public Health, Secretary of State, and others. She also takes various roles in managing local elections ranging from issuing absentee ballot applications to compiling election results and forwarding them to the Office of the Secretary of the State.
People come to the Town Clerk's office for a variety of reasons. Only residents who were born in Goshen can request copies of their own or their children's birth certificates. However, since 2006, the State created a database for listings of all those born in CT which the Town Clerk can access. People who are getting married in town, need to get a marriage license from the town clerk. If someone dies in town, family members can receive death certificates from the office as well. Family members can also request copies of deeds for property from the office in order to deal with post-mortem affairs. Other certifications and documents the clerk’s office handles include dog licenses, fishing licenses, elections, voter registration, deeds, trade names, liquor permits, and survey maps, among others. It’s important to note that most fees collected through the Town Clerk's office go to the state and do not fund Goshen coffers. As the Town Clerk handles many things for our town, it becomes a bit cumbersome when she is asked to help with tasks over which she has no jurisdiction. So to help us find the correct Town Office for our particular needs, Breor gave us a brief guide. Goshen News will be putting the complete guide to town services on our website www.goshennews.org within the next month or so with Ms. Breor’s guidance.
For a basic guide to town services, check an issue of “Goshen Town Topics”. On the last page, inside cover is a listing of the offices in town, the person(s) to contact and their phone numbers. An overview of a few well utilized offices are:
*Town Selectmen oversee major town concerns. Their duties include calling town meetings, approving event applications, setting up town purchases, proposing town budgets, setting public policy, calling elections, determining certain fees, and creating basic town regulations, among others. First Selectmen are essentially towns’ primary supervisors that oversee town employees and interact with all town departments.
Administrative assistants additionally handle household hazardous waste tickets and work on the town budget as well as many other tasks.
*Tax Collectors, as their title suggests, bill and collect Town property taxes and all related penalty charges to maintain fiscal stability.
*The Tax Assessor is responsible for the discovery, listing and equitable valuing of all town real estate, personal property and motor vehicles. Note: for those having questions about their assessments, the Board of Assessment Appeals is the place to go. They conduct hearings twice yearly; one for house assessments and one for auto assessments for the purpose of adjusting those assessments where warranted.
*Building Inspector, (or Building Official) issues building permits, and on inspections, ensure safety and compliance of regulations set by the State. Permits may include repairs, demolition, changes in occupancy, alterations/renovations of existing structures.
*Torrington Area Health Department--Breor suggests people looking to review their plot plans in order to drill new wells or pump their septic tank to check with this agency.
As we can see, running the Town Clerk’s Office is many times overwhelming and Breor hopes Goshen residents will utilize the Town Phone Directory (and soon the Goshen News Website) to locate the proper town office for our needs. Breor is happy to help with Town Clerk issues. It certainly is comforting to know we have such a knowledgeable and helpful person as our Town Clerk! Thank you Barbara Breor.
