For many folks, the thought of sitting at a desk, poring over financial numbers and shrinking budgets while balancing the pleas of an angry taxpayer with the demands of an elected city official would have them saying, “Thanks, but no thanks.”
But for Cathy Clark, it’s not just a job she likes, it’s a job she loves.
And it’s one which she’s been doing for the past 30 years, 17 of them as the clerk for the city of Clarksdale.
“I love my job. I love working with the numbers. I love working with the budget. I love taxes and doing the distribution. I do like working with the board and sharing in some of the ideas and thought processes and being a part of that.”
But she admits the job is difficult and can be very challenging.
“The downside? It’s too much work. It’s overload. There’s too much expected of you and not enough employees. It’s difficult and it gets kind of frustrating,” Clark said.
“I’m the type of person that likes to get everything done, so I had to get used to not getting everything done.”
Welcome to Clarksdale
Born and raised in Fort Worth, Texas, Clark would have never made it to Clarksdale had it not been for a chance meeting with her future husband, Ricky Clark, a roofer who was in Texas at the time doing repairs following a hail storm. His family was from Tallahatchie County.
The two would marry and move to Clarksdale in 1987. Soon after, she would take a job with the City of Clarksdale as an accounts payable clerk. She would advance to become the city’s chief deputy clerk in March 1995 and was promoted to city clerk for Clarksdale in July 2001.
“I love the small-town life, but I will say when I moved here, it took me about a year to adjust from Fort Worth, Texas, to Clarksdale,” she said. “Thank goodness my job was with the city clerk’s office. I started my job December 1 and we collected taxes. So, guess what? I got to meet all the people of Clarksdale. It gave me a good opportunity to meet people.”
Heart of the city
Clark oversees eight employees. They handle the collection of fees associated with court, privilege licenses and permits, as well as do accounts payable, payroll and deposits.
“I always say, ‘We’re the heart of the city.’ Because we do the accounts payable, we do all deposits, we do payroll,” she said.
One thing that has made a clerk’s job easier is automation. Clark says there were no computers in city hall when she started in 1988.
“We did everything on a typewriter,” she said, adding there were big, clunky 10-key calculators and she still remembers the “big bag” cell phone that the city clerk prior to her used to have to carry around.
“it was really big and she’d carry that bag around and we were like, ‘Wow, that’s too much,’” she said with a laugh.
Nowadays, there are computers and cell phones and she requires that each of her employees scan in every document and save it to their work station.
“It is so much easier to find it in your computer than to go find the hard file,” Clark said.
A new boss
While there has been major changes with automation, one thing that doesn’t change is the fact that Clark often has a new boss every four years when the election cycle rolls around.
She said it’s an adjustment each time there’s a new administration.
“Everybody has their own ideas, their thoughts. While there are laws that govern how we do things, they’ve got to learn those things. So, it takes, sometimes, a good year for a new administration to get settled. You’ve just got to be patient,” Clark said.
Currently, Mayor Chuck Espy and Commissioner Willie Turner Jr. just recently passed the one-year mark of their terms in office, while commissioner Ken Murphey is in his fifth year and commissioners Bo Plunk and Ed Seals are both in their ninth year on the board.
Clark said the current mayor and board are “probably the most active board we’ve ever had.”
She said she is a fan of the Thursday “vetting process”, which is a meeting open to the public and was instituted by Espy and gives commissioners, city staff and the public an idea of the items that could come before the board at its regular meetings on the second and fourth Mondays of each month.
“I like the opportunity where we get to sit down and talk about these things before the actual board meeting on Monday,” Clark said.
And the city leaders depend on Clark’s guidance and advice.
She obtained her Mississippi Deputy City Clerk certification in 1994, which was a three-year tested program. In June 2012, she became a certified municipal clerk collector. And she furthered her education by becoming an International Institute Municipal Clerk and obtained her IIMC certified municipal clerk membership in March 2013.
And she capped off four years of studies and hard work with her master’s in municipal clerk certification in July 2016.
“That was very difficult to get,” Clark said of the master’s certification. “I was very lucky to get it in four years. I took a lot of classes.”
Mission as a mentor
“I want to do my job and I want to help people,” said Clark, who adds that’s what inspired her to become more involved and take on a leadership role with the Mississippi Municipal Clerks and Collectors Association, which includes some 200 members from the biggest of towns, such as Jackson and Southaven, to the smallest municipality.
“I want to be able to help other city clerks because I know how difficult it is. That’s the one thing I stress… mentoring,” said Clark, who was named as the president of the state organization on July 1. It’s a position she’ll hold for one year.
She said all Mississippi cities share similar problems. The big issue is a shrinking sales tax and fewer funds for operations, while there are problems associated with the question of who handles tax collection in a city, as well as staffing and high turnover in police departments.
“We’re all in the same boat and you get relief, believe it or not, with the opportunity to talk and discuss and sometimes find out what other people are doing,” Clark said.
Clarksdale challenges
As Clarksdale’s city clerk, Clark is responsible for record retention, logging minutes and dealing with ordinances and tax distribution, as well as putting together a budget.
And her ability to put together the current budget with no city tax increase was praised by Espy.
Clark admits it was a challenge with it being Espy’s first budget, as well as the fact the city was dealing with fewer revenues due to a drop in the amount of money generated by sales taxes and fines.
“I appreciate his focus in it,” she said of Espy. “We had less money this year.”
She foresees less sales tax revenue continuing to be a problem for Clarksdale. And Clark said “it knocked the breath out of me” when she heard the news that the operator of the Northwest Mississippi Regional Medical Center had plans to close the hospital.
“It scared me. It really scared me for Clarksdale,” she said in an interview Friday. “But I do feel lots better about it now. It sounds like it’s going to work out. But the thought of a city that has a population of 18,000 and not having a hospital… you can’t have that. There’s too many people that we have to cater to.”
Still, she believes good things await Clarksdale. Clark thinks the proposed Corey L. Moore Sports and Recreation Complex would be a big boost. She points to Wingstop locating in the old Greyhound station, the expansion at the MAP manufacturing plant and a downtown that is coming alive as all positives.
“Things are happening. It’s a slow process, but they are happening,” Clark said. “I have to believe it’s going to get better.”
What’s her future?
Clark sees herself working another five to seven years.
“I do want to enjoy retirement. It’s what I’ve worked hard for, but at the same time, I can’t imagine it,” she said, adding that it’s now her goal to train a mentor to take over her role.
She enjoys traveling and counts two trips to Scotland as her favorite journeys. There was “an amazing trip” to Israel and Jordan, as well as vacations in Jamaica.
“I like to travel with my family. I like them to be part of it,” Clark said. “Family is very important to me. I always want to spend time with them.”
And that sometime was a challenge when she was balancing the role of mother and Clarksdale city clerk. She was able to combine the jobs of being a soccer, baseball, basketball and softball coach along with balancing the city budget and meeting the weekly payroll.
“I do put a lot of extra hours in, and I just have to pick and choose when I do it,” Clark said. “I may have gone to a sporting event and turned around and came back up here and worked all night long. Or I came in super early in the morning. I’ve been known to come in here at 4 o’clock in the morning.”
Clark said she loves to cook and there would be early mornings preparing meals for the day, but she said there was one constant. They always sat down for family dinner each night.
“We might have ate at eight, nine or 10 at night, but we always had dinner,” she said. “I always wanted to make sure that all my kids had all their meals, we did all our projects, we did all our homework. We were able to get everything done.
“Obviously, they’re all doing very well. I’ve been very fortunate with my children.”
Her two daughters, Angela Knight and Chelsea Clark, are both nurses, while her two sons, Joshua and Patrick Clark, work in the oil business. She has seven grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
She’s known as “Mema” by her grandkids, as the term has special meaning for Clark, as it’s what she called her mother, who passed away in 2000 because of breast cancer.
“I thought it would be cool to just kind of take that on,” Clark said.
For Clark has shown: Taking on multiple things has been something she’s excelled at.
