Community News

This is the second in a series of stories that look at the various departments, boards and committees that make the town function, offering thumbnail sketches of their duties and responsibilities. This week: The Town Clerk.

One of the busiest offices in any town hall is that of the Town Clerk. It is often residents’ first point of contact when they need to conduct business with a municipality.

“I try to make it a priority to greet everyone with a smile and to help them in whatever way I can,” said Norfolk Town Clerk Deborah Nelson. “I am often the first face they see. My motto is, ‘If I can’t help you, I will find someone who can.’”

A town clerk’s duties are many and varied. Nelson has administrative and executive functions as both town clerk and registrar of vital statistics as dictated by the state’s General Statutes and town ordinances.

She records and indexes land records, generates daily/weekly/monthly reports and prepares and scans land records for the archives. She uses software to receive and calculate recording fees and conveyance taxes for deed transfers, survey maps, trade name certificates and other recorded instruments.

She also assists title searchers, attorneys, genealogists and the public in finding specialized information; records and indexes all vital statistics such as births, deaths, marriages and veterans’ discharge papers, and prepares monthly reports for the Department of Public Health.

The clerk, or her assistant, Trina Hamlin, prepare and record minutes of town meetings; receive files and minutes, agendas and legal notices from all boards and commissions, and help keep the Town website up to date.

When elections, primaries and referendums roll around, she assists in voter registration and in the preparation and issuance of absentee ballots. Once elections are over, she administers the oath of office to the successful candidates.

Some jobs are more fun than others. “They come to me for marriage licenses, dog licenses and sporting licenses, as well as for Tobey Pond and transfer station permits,” Nelson said. “People want to talk about their dogs or their weddings when they are getting their licenses. And it’s always exciting to [register] a new baby. It’s fun.”

The town clerk is also a notary and handles confidential correspondence.

Becoming a Certified Connecticut Town Clerk (which Nelson is) takes about two and a half years,  a five-module classroom training program, at least two years of on-the-job municipal clerk experience and passing a final exam. 

Nelson got her certification while serving as assistant to town clerk Linda Perkins, and succeeded Perkins when she had to resign due to illness. She was elected to the position in 2025.

The town crew will start work Monday on the stretch of sidewalk in the village center between the Icebox Café and the post office. The work may require removal of a tree near the post office and residents are already objecting.

Tree warden Matt Klimkoski marked the tree and posted a notice about its removal. Residents had 10 days from the August 4 posting to register complaints with the warden. Per state statute, a public hearing is required if objections are raised.

A public hearing has been set for Thursday, August 20, at 7:00 p.m. at Town Hall. “I just hope we will be able to get everyone into the upstairs meeting room and don’t end up out in the parking lot,” said the selectmen’s administrative assistant Barbara Gomez.

“We will have to see what happens with the sidewalk,” First Selectmen Henry Tirrell said. “The concern is that when we excavate for the sidewalk, the tree’s roots will be damaged. It’s a pretty sizeable tree and its roots are also growing toward the [utility lines].”

He added that if the tree is removed, the tree warden will choose a suitable native species of tree to replace it. 

The sidewalk construction will probably continue throughout next week and possibly into the following one, depending on the weather.

Birthday banter between the transfer station’s Swap Shop founder Susan Sloan and attendant Jim Powelzyk led Sloan to throw a gala party for the 70-year-old last Sunday at Norbrook Brewery. 

The event was a first for both of them. “I’ve never done anything like that before and Jim had never had a birthday party,” Sloan said. 

She termed the event a “good friends’ function,” saying it offered townspeople a chance to mingle. “Jimmy knows so many people in town,” she said. “He knows tons of people at the transfer station, drives the ambulance and knows everyone in the fire department.”

Having decided to do something when Powelzyk reached a milestone birthday, Sloan conferred with some friends who offered to help. “I would watch who he talked to at the transfer station and then I would run up and slip them an invitation,” she said.

About 100 people attended the event, which included a bountiful buffet prepared by Lisa Ludwig of LisaBeth Confections and music by Andy Styles and friends. All the left-over food was sent for use at the firehouse where Ludwig’s husband is an assistant fire chief.

“Jimmy was quite surprised,” said Sloan, who succeeded in keeping the event a secret. “He doesn’t like being the center of attention, but I told him this was a good way to have people pay attention to him.”

The Norfolk Volunteer Fire Department’s fire truck committee opened bids this week for a new pumper truck that will replace a 31-year-old vehicle in its fleet.

Six vendors submitted bids ranging from $1.2 million to $1.5 million and provided various options for payment and delivery, which would probably take two years. The firefighters will assess the bids and make a recommendation to the selectmen next week.

“It’s my understanding that they have already rebuilt the pump on the old truck once,” First Selectman Henry Tirrell said. “Is it worth trying to rebuild it again if something goes wrong in a truck that old?”

Last spring the town allocated $130,000 in funds remaining from the retirement of its pension fund to start a savings account for the truck, with an additional $130,000 included in the 2026-27 budget.

“The fire department has done some fundraising toward it, and we also have preliminary approval for $885,000 in congressionally directed funding through Senator Blumenthal’s office,” Tirrell said. “But that has to go through the Senate Appropriations Committee and then pass the House, the Senate and be signed into law by the president, so it’s not guaranteed.”

He added that if the town does not receive approval for the grant this year, it will apply again next year.

The cost of apparatus continues to escalate—last spring the truck was estimated to cost $1.1 million and the lowest bid was $1.2 million—and the selectmen and firefighters are eager to secure a quote. “I hope we can have a special Board of Finance meeting this month and then a special town meeting” to approve it, Tirrell said. 

Tirrell anticipates one other item on the town meeting call: authorization to construct a three-bay garage on the site of the new fire house. The garage, which is expected to cost $300,000 to $350,000, would be used to keep the department’s extra equipment out of the elements.

Tirrell explained earlier this month that the garage was cut from the fire house plan to reduce costs but, with successful fundraising and the expectation that the fire house construction costs will be below the $4 million in borrowing authorized by townspeople, town leaders would like to restore the facility to the plan.

The Church of Christ has been invited to move forward with a full application for a grant from the State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO). If selected as the grant recipient, a full $200,000 one-to-one matching grant will be awarded to the church to complete the preservation work on the meetinghouse altar window.

The selection process is structured in multiple stages for SHPO greants, requiring an initial consultation or pre-application before a full application can be submitted. SHPO reviews the initial concepts and notifies applicants if they are officially invited to complete a full application. The full application includes detailed proposals that are reviewed by staff and Preservation Connecticut before being submitted to the Historic Preservation Council for a final funding vote.

The task of restoring the church’s stained-glass windows began in 2016 and has already seen conservation of all five Tiffany windows at the east end of Battell Chapel as well as the Maitland Armstrong window on the chapel’s west face and three of the side cathedral windows in the chapel. 

Fundraising for the windows was paused in 2019, when addressing the precarious condition of the church’s 1813 steeple took priority. With the steeple now repaired and restored to its proper place over the sanctuary, attention is focused on the altar windows in the meetinghouse sanctuary. The soaring windows are made of German Bavarian glass and came from the studio of Franz Mayer & Co. of Munich, Germany, the same studio as the windows of Norfolk’s Immaculate Conception Church. 

A goal of $300,000 was set for repair of these windows and the two cathedral windows in Battell Chapel. The church is requesting contributions toward the restoration work and online donations can be made here. [https://secure.myvanco.com/L-ZK04/campaign/C-14H6T?access=tile_direct] Questions about the windows or the fundraising effort can be directed to Marie Civco at Marie.Civco@gmail.com.

The three-bay garage cut from the original proposal for the new fire house may become a reality after all. 

Bids for the fire house project came in at far more than had been anticipated and a number of features such as the ventilation monitor atop the building and a tower that would have contained hose-drying apparatus were pared away to contain costs. Among the cost-cutting casualties was the garage, which is meant to keep extra equipment out of the elements. 

At Wednesday’s Board of Selectmen’s meeting, board members approved further exploration of the potential cost of restoring it to the project.

“We’ve been able to fundraise very well,” explained First Selectman Henry Tirrell. “So, with the project where it stands now, we can put it back in and still spend less than the $4 million borrowing limit the town approved.”

Tirrell said at present it is assumed the town will have to borrow only $3.7 million “with more donations to come.” The building is expected to cost $300,000 to $350,000, much of which fundraisers hope will be covered by those donations.

“It would be cheaper to do the garage while the contractors are onsite,” he said. “When we have more firm numbers, we will take it to town meeting to have it approved.”

A garden party celebration of the life of former town clerk Linda Perkins will be held Saturday, August 8, from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. at her home at 7 Mountain Road. Perkins, an avid gardener, died February 28th at the age of 79.

Her daughter Barbara said she is choosing to “celebrate her now because she was such an advocate for Norfolk.” She wants everyone to feel free to attend the event. “This is the house where she lived since 1972. These are her gardens and her legacy. It was always a place where people could come and feel welcome.”

Perkins was town clerk for 14 years before resigning in 2024 after a long absence for medical reasons. It was the last of the several careers she had pursued, including being a dorm parent at Laurel School in Norfolk, teaching in Canton, being a legal secretary and then working as a travel agent. 

First Selectman Henry Tirrell this week offered updates on several infrastructure projects underway or to be undertaken in Norfolk.

He said the Mountain Road bridge replacement is nearing an end. “They are waiting for the brackets for the Aquarion water main line, which will be suspended from the side of the bridge,” Tirrell said. “The brackets need to be cleared by the project engineer. If weren’t for the brackets, the bridge would be complete this month, but now we expect to finish by October.”

He reported that the town will package bids on the two bridges in South Norfolk that were wiped out in flash floods in 2023 as one project. The bids will be let this fall. 

The Old Goshen Road bridge restoration will begin April 1, 2027, with the Smith Road bridge to follow on April 1, 2028. “We will have one contractor for two years of consistent work,” he explained. “The town will issue the bid, but the project will be managed and paid for by the state and federal governments.”

The town crew has cleared the blockage at the Wood Creek flood control dam that has been backed up since winter, Tirrell said. “We finally got it cleared. There’s been a bunch of water in the Blackberry River and a definite odor, but the water level is down dramatically now and the smell should decrease.”

Finally, the public works department is getting ready to work on Laurel Way Extension and the sidewalk between the Berkshire Country Store and the post office. The sidewalk work will probably start on August 17. 

The ill-fated Big Green Slide at Botelle School has been successfully repaired and is again open to the public, according to Troy Lamere, foreman of the public works department. 

The 60-foot slide, a favorite with the town’s children, has been replaced once and now has been repaired twice since 2019. Most recently, it developed cracks at its top, so the supplier added extra support to the top piece and extra rings to the structure as it goes down to prevent more problems in the future.

“How to Love a Forest,” a talk by Ethan Tapper, an internationally recognized forester, will be held at Church of Christ Congregational on Friday, August 14, at 4:30 p.m.

Tapper’s work has challenged long-held assumptions about conservation and land management. His talk will draw on his experience with Bear Island, the Vermont forest he has worked to restore. Beset by invasive plants, exotic pests, overabundant deer and poor logging practices, the land had reached a critical point. Tapper intervened with management actions that seemed counterintuitive at first, bringing in loggers, using chemicals where necessary and intentionally disrupting parts of the forest to support its long-term recovery. The result is a study in modern stewardship.

Tapper’s book, “How to Love a Forest: The Bittersweet Work of Tending a Changing World,” received the 2025 New England Book Award for nonfiction.

To register for this free program, click here.