Town Clerk's Office

Description

    The State of Connecticut Statutes governs the Town Clerk’s responsibilities. The Town Clerk also functions as the Registrar of Vital Statistics. The Town Clerk’s Office is the major records repository for the entire Town of New Fairfield including a great number of documents ranging from land records to probate certificates. The office also does all of the indexing and scanning of the land records and maintains the New Fairfield land maps on computers. The office provides certified copes of records ranging from Birth Certificates to Land Records.
    The Town Clerk’s staff issues and maintains a variety of licenses such as sporting licenses and dog licenses. The Town Clerk also plays a major role in elections, primaries, and referendums, which include certifying election results, and the Absentee Ballot program.
    Additionally, all the official business of the Town is kept in this office. An added obligation of the Town Clerk is to act as the guardian of the Town Seal, affixing it only to proper and valid municipal documents.
    The Town Clerk’s mission is to efficiently maintain all land records, maps, trade names, vital records, military discharges, and minutes of all Board and Commission meetings.

Accomplishments

    During the past few years the Town Clerk’s office has made many upgrades to better serve the public. The land records computer system was updated, enabling the public to access the land record indexes starting on January 1, 1972 with our search computer. Because of the positive reception to this computer, we have added an additional search terminal.
    Through historic preservation grants we have been able to perform backfile scanning of our land records images, indexed prior to the installation of our upgraded computer system. This allows the public to view and print land records starting in December 2002 from our search computer. A portion of the historic preservation grant for 2008 will be used to continue backfile scanning of an additional 45 land record volumes. This will provide computer access from our search terminal of land record images starting in December 1999.
    Historic preservation grants have also been used by our office to compile Board and Commission minutes, agendas and regulations in convenient volumes on archival paper. These volumes have also been microfilmed for historic preservation. This allows the public the capability of searching for information in an easy format in one location.
    Historic preservation grants have also been used to purchase new fireproof cabinets to store our election and historic information.
    Prior to becoming New Fairfield’s Town Clerk I attended classes and received certification as a Connecticut Town Clerk. My full-time assistant has also received this certification. My staff and I attend classes to remain up to date on new changes to our office duties. We work to fulfill the needs of the taxpayers of the Town to the best of our abilities.
    Volume in the office continues to grow – last fiscal year we recorded numerous documents. As Registrar for the Town, the office handled many vital records. As you can see, the Town Clerk’s Office is expanding its efforts to being a public friendly environment where the taxpayer comes first.