Council voted 4-0 to extend a conditional offer of employment to Lee Ann O’Connor, of Waterford, for the clerk/treasurer position. Councilman Dave Bailey was absent.

The conditions of the offer will be addressed by village attorney Bob Davis and village President Sue Bossardet, then brought back to council for consideration.

O’Connor, a 1984 graduate of Rochester High School, has almost 30 years experience working in the city clerk offices of three of Oakland County’s most popular and busy municipalities.

“I can help you,” she told council during her July 18 interview.

She cited her knowledge of “front-office work,” her ability to successfully manage people, and her skills as both a leader and team player as assets.

O’Connor currently serves as the city clerk for Rochester, a position she’s held since 2001. Prior to that, O’Connor was the Ferndale city clerk from 1995-99 and worked in the Royal Oak clerk’s office from 1988-95.

From 1999 to 2001, O’Connor worked as an administrative assistant in the Ferndale 43rd District Court.

O’Connor isn’t looking to leave Rochester because she doesn’t like it there.

“I’m happy where I’m at,” she said. “I wasn’t looking for a job.”

But “sometimes a change is good” and when Oxford’s interim manager, Jaymes Vettraino, who served as Rochester’s city manager from 2008-15, told her about the opening in the village, she decided to pursue it.

For her, the change would be about enhancing her “quality of life,” not bolstering her resume.

“My career has already peaked,” O’Connor told council. “I’m not looking to go anywhere else. I’d be looking to stay here for my last nine remaining or 11 remaining years of working. I don’t hop around, obviously, very much.”

O’Connor likes the fact that unlike city and township clerks, village clerks are not responsible for conducting elections.

“After working elections for 28 years, if I (can avoid) a 20-hour election day, that would be wonderful,” she said.

She also finds it “appealing” that the village office is open four days a week with Fridays off.

That being said, O’Connor stressed to council she’s not looking for a cakewalk.

“I, by no means, think that this is going to be easy coming here. It will certainly be a challenge,” she said.

Particularly when it comes to performing the duties of a municipal treasurer, something she’s never done before.

But she’s not afraid to tackle this new role. In fact, O’Connor views it as “something I welcome and look forward to.”

Her goal would be to become “as good a treasurer as I think I am a city clerk at this point.”

A clerk is a municipality’s official keeper of the records. In light of this, Councilman Erik Dolan asked O’Connor how she would handle “a situation in which an individual came into the office and was given permission to go into the basement to review records on their own.”

“You have to be present with them or bring the records up and at least let them be (viewed) at the counter where you can observe them.” O’Connor replied. “You don’t just leave your records (with) anyone in a non-public space.”

She’s willing to accommodate customers as best she can, even if that means making herself available to meet with them outside regular office hours.

“Public records are for the public to see, so you’ve got to give them access somehow,” she said.

But O’Connor made it clear she would not give anyone unsupervised access to village records because there’s “confidential information,” things that are “exempt” from release under the Freedom of Information Act.

O’Connor told council she doesn’t believe in doing something simply because “that’s the way it’s always been done.”

“That drives me insane,” she said.

“You’ll never hear me say, ‘The old clerk did it that way,’” O’Connor explained. “(For) anything that a government entity does, there’s a law or a policy or something (else) that says why you can do it, how you can do it, when you can do it. I would look, especially in this circumstance, to go back to that original law and say, ‘Okay, this is the way it’s supposed to be done.’”