After 28 years, Deputy Clerk Retiring to Arizona

Sue Glavin has seen a lot of changes in her 28 years at Village Hall.

The longtime Deputy Village Clerk still remembers when she was first hired in 1983. She was 38 years old, and she had just left a job at Northwestern Mutual. There was no Internet, and all of her payroll duties were done with a pen, paper and telephone call to the payroll company.

“We would have to call them on the phone and tell them how many hours people worked. You didn’t have access to anything,” she said. “Now we have it so everybody that works has their own account and it automatically puts them in.”

“That’s a memory I don’t want to go back to, that’s for sure.”

When Glavin retires at the end of the month, she will be the longest-standing employee at Village Hall, having worked under six village managers. She said some of the Public Works employees that work in the field have been with the village for as long as 33 years.

When she first started, she said the village had a larger staff of DPW employees and police officers. She said DPW staff has dwindled from about 40 to 24 over the last three decades.

Most people might know Glavin as the voice that picks up the phone at Village Hall, so she has been on the receiving end of all kinds of phone calls.

“Oh sure,” she said. “Sidewalk shoveling or people wondering why they don’t have water.”

Although she hasn’t worked on an election night, she has helped with other election duties, such as absentee voting and voter registration. In the last presidential election, she said voters were lined up outside the doors of Village Hall waiting for absentee ballots.

In her 28 years at Village Hall, this is the first time she has ever seen a recount of ballots.

So what does Glavin plan to do in her retirement years? A lifelong Wisconsinite, she plans to move out of her home in the town of Raymond, near Caledonia, and pack it up and move to somewhere warmer.

“I want to move to Arizona,” she said. “I would like to move to someplace warmer and just take it easy.”