MILAN, NM – On April 11, Village Clerk and Projects Coordinator Denise Baca was awarded Clerk of the Year at the Spring Meeting for Clerk/Finance Association out of 106 municipalities in the State of New Mexico, Village Manager and Finance Director Candi Williams said, “We are so proud she is getting recognition for all her hard work and dedication to the Village of Milan and its residents.”
Each municipality has the opportunity to nominate a city clerk through a letter sent to the New Mexico Municipal League. Each letter includes the achievements of the clerks and their qualifications. Baca said she wasn’t aware that she was nominated. She said, “When [Candi] told me we have to go to Ruidoso for training, I told her ‘No, I can’t go it’s my son’s birthday.’… She said ‘no, we have to go.’ and she told me something about an audit, it was something with our audit, so we went. So, we got there and they started reading the nomination letter and I looked at her and said ‘you didn’t.’ She goes ‘We did!’” Also present at the event was Mayor Felix Gonzales and Mayor Pro-Tem James Mercer.
According to Baca it was a massive shock, and it was nerve-wracking to stand up in a room full of about 120 people. Baca said, “I was just hoping they wouldn’t make me do a speech. It was nice.” Now following her win Baca believes that the clerk of the year award is ‘big shoes to fill’. She said, “People are kind of watching me now, which is fine, it’s a good thing.” Baca also believes that although it’s good that she won this award it’s important to keep a level head. She said, “I’ve got to keep my head straight and keep doing what I’m doing. I guess I was doing a good job so, I’m going to keep going in the right direction.”
Baca said that it’s important to be a good clerk because it is a lot of responsibility. She said, “Ordinances, resolutions, minutes… It’s a lot. There are no two days ever the same, you’re constantly learning. They change the rules so often at the State level that you have to keep up. You’re reading constantly, you’re looking stuff up, you are doing your research before you answer questions. A lot of that.” Baca said that it’s also important to have a clerk in government because they help to write the laws. She said, “You keep the laws in order. If there’s questions, if there is somebody that isn’t sure they want information, they come to the clerk.”
Being a clerk was not originally Baca’s go to plan when she was looking at careers and what she wanted to do. She said, “I needed a job, I had two kids, I had family. So, I applied at the City and I didn’t think I was going to have a chance. I had no government background whatsoever. When they hired me, it was a shock. I sat in a room basically the first week reading ordinances, reading resolutions, reading state statutes, just trying to familiarize myself with municipal laws. So, that was a big learning curve for me, the first probably two years were nothing but learning for me.” Baca also said that the Municipal League was a very big support for her as a clerk and still continues to be a big support. She said that the hardest part of being a clerk is organization. Baca said, “You have to stay organized and you’ve got 15 things going on at one time and you have to know which one is top priority, how to get them all done. The biggest thing is staying on top of your job and staying organized.”