As I start my 18th year as Town Clerk, I wish to share with the residents of the Town of Newburgh some of the challenges we are currently facing and how we propose to resolve them.

As we move more and more towards a cashless society, we are taking steps towards the capability to accept credit and debit cards for our transactions. Thus, we are answering the demands of many of our clients who have remarked on the absence of this ability prior to now. We hope to have this service operating during the early months of 2019.

Your Town Clerk’s office possesses legal documents (such as birth certificates, marriage licenses, and death certificates) going back over 135 years. We are seeking to have these documents electronically scanned and preserved. This will not only make them far easier to retrieve, it will be a protection against a calamity. As the plague of identity theft permeates our society, it is more vital than ever that these documents be kept safe while available to those legally entitled to possess them. This is an expensive procedure and we are actively pursuing grants to help us make it a reality.

Our Town Clerk’s office remains the threshold for requests made under the Freedom of Information Law. We are proud of the highly efficient manner in which we conduct this; yet we believe computerizing the process will render the process even more efficient. We are working towards doing this and hope to have it in place during early 2019.

We shall continue in the future, as we have in the past, to post the minutes and agendas of all our Town meetings on the official town web site in a timely manner.

My deputies, Joseph Pedi and Lisa Ayers, and our records manager, Janet Simmons, greatly enjoy the privilege of serving all of you. We eagerly look forward to doing so throughout the coming year and beyond.