Gilroy City Clerk Rhonda Pellin is the gatekeeper to the vast
store of city’s public records
Gilroy – Most residents know her as the woman who helped get them a passport. To the more civic-minded who follow local government, she is the woman who sits by the Gilroy City Council dais, faithfully recording deliberations on Gilroy’s swift development and countless other issues affecting daily life in the city.
Gilroy City Clerk Rhonda Pellin is among the majority of her peers who are appointed to the position, and she’s just fine with that.
“I like being appointed because a lot of elected city clerks are figureheads,” she said, pointing out that about a third of the state’s clerks must campaign for the job. “Their deputy city clerks are really the ones who do the work.”
Not so in Gilroy, where Pellin serves as City Council point-person, gatekeeper to a vast store of the city’s public records, and educator of political candidates and elected officials in the ways of ethical campaigning and open government.
It’s a job with cycles – every two weeks a council meeting, every two years an election – but one that’s constantly changing.
Pellin is the nexus between Gilroy’s elected leaders, the public and city staff. On a typical day, she coordinates the placement of housing projects and new laws on the council agenda, prepares the background documents for council members, and ensures the public gets plenty of notice for upcoming meetings. State laws govern the handling of each stage in the government process. The rules vary depending on the topic, the type of meeting, the urgency of the situation – and Pellin understands the nuances of them all.
“If you mess some of your timing up, it could be grounds to redo it,” she said.
Pellin, 53, has had plenty of time to perfect the system in her 28 years at City Hall. She started in the late ’70s as an administrative assistant in the planning department, where she first encountered the labyrinth of legalities and regulations surrounding government operation.
She worked in the position for 12 years before rising to assistant for City Administrator Jay Baksa. In 1997, city council appointed her city clerk.
“Rhonda is the go-to person when somebody is looking for something or there’s a problem” Baksa said. “I think she’s built up that reputation because once she gets the call, she comes through. I don’t know of a staffer who doesn’t have 100 percent trust in her.”
Baksa gave Pellin high marks for one of her most important duties – the recording of city council sessions in writing, commonly known as “keeping minutes.” Though not considered page-turners by most people, such documents are vital in reconstructing the history of government and often serve as evidence in lawsuits.
Of her career at City Hall, Pellin said her current job is the most stressful.
“You have to be knowledgeable about so many laws, so many acts,” she said. “Our laws change every year, whether Brown Act changes or elections laws.”
Election years are the toughest, since Pellin must ensure that new candidates and council members understand filing deadlines for campaign finance forms, the proper way to handle and report contributions, and a myriad of other issues. She walks newbies through a half-foot stack of documents to make sure they understand the whole gamut.
When she’s not turning the gears of city government, Pellin and her husband Mike “do the car thing.”
She is one of thousands of classic car aficionados who converge on Reno each summer for Hot August Nights, a car show featuring 6,000 classic and suped-up automobile. The Pellins have 13 vehicles in various stages of usability at their home and Pellin can rattle off the year and make of all of them. She drives a ’94 Ford Explorer to work, but has her eye on a ’68 Chevy Camaro her husband is rebuilding.
When she retires at the end of 2007, the couple will trek cross country in their recreation vehicle, with one of their cars in tow.
Pellin said she’s looking forward to her first visit to the Grand Canyon and the East Coast.
Until then, she expects her job of nearly 10 years to continue bringing fresh challenges.
“It’s always different. It’s always changing,” she said. “I can come in expecting to do five things and not be able get to them. That’s what I like best. It’s always something new.”
