‘Underpaid’ Monterey Park City Clerk Quits

Complaining that she was overworked and underpaid, Pauline Lemire quit as city clerk midway through a City Council meeting Monday night by reading a surprise letter of resignation and walking out.

Lemire, 55, who had been city clerk since 1982, said she had been working up to nine hours a day on a job that pays $300 a month. She said the council had ignored her requests for a full-time salary and improved staffing and equipment in the city clerk’s office.

Lemire said the difficulties were compounded by the hotly contested election last week in which an attempt to recall two City Council members failed. She said there was an unprecedented number of complaints about harassment at the polls; policemen had to be dispatched to polling places to restore order, and some residents may have been denied a vote because of confusion over absentee ballot requirements.

The election was “a horror,” Lemire said, but she took comfort from the belief that “if I’m getting complaints from both sides, I must be doing it right.”

The election added to her stress and frustration, but Lemire said she quit because of a lack of support from the City Council, which had increased her workload without providing assistance or compensation.

She said the council has held “an inordinate amount of meetings,” which she must attend to prepare minutes. She said she also has been burdened with record-keeping requirements, budget hearings and elections, including the recall last week and a zoning vote scheduled Sept. 22.

Lemire told the council Monday night that it “continues to ignore my requests, refuses to support me, and disregards my needs for a qualified staff and functioning equipment.”

She added: “Without the council’s cooperation, the department can no longer serve the public efficiently and in the manner in which they deserve and to which I have always strived. I have been forced to make a very difficult decision. Unwillingly, but under the current circumstances, you leave me no other recourse but to hereby submit my resignation, effective immediately.”

In an interview, Mayor Cam Briglio said Lemire criticized the council unfairly. Although Lemire said the city provided her office with obsolete equipment, such as a word processor that had been out of commission for a week, Briglio said other city departments function smoothly with the same sort of equipment. And, he said, staffing at the city clerk’s office was short only because Lemire delayed hiring people.

But some council members were more sympathetic.

“We’ve lost a very good asset,” said Councilwoman Patricia Reichenberger, adding that she wished Lemire had raised the staffing issue for discussion again instead of quitting.

Councilman Barry Hatch said: “I blame the city manager for not supplying her with more help.”

But other council members said Lemire was offered ample staffing for the recall election and failed to take advantage of it. One council member, declining to be quoted directly, said Lemire had tried to create a full-time job out of what was intended as a part-time position.

Lemire said that she took office expecting the position to be supervisory, but that to get the work done, she had to spend an increasing amount of time at City Hall.

“I ended up being the day-to-day flunky,” she said. Her only authorized help, she said, was one full-time and one part-time employee.

The council on Tuesday appointed Warren Funk, 44, a retired Air Force major who has been city support services manager since March, to succeed Lemire as clerk until the next election in April, 1988. Funk will oversee the clerk’s office in addition to his other duties.

The City Council earlier this year voted to place a measure before voters in 1988 to determine whether the office of city clerk should be elective or appointive.

After Lemire resigned, the council approved a recommendation from the city manager to assign Funk to oversee the department and begin the process of hiring a person with city clerk experience as a consultant to look at the department and give advice on how to run it.