City Clerk Ann Ollinger says goodbye; makes it through six mayors, oodles of council members with good cheer

CEDAR RAPIDS - City Clerk Ann Ollinger retired last week after almost 35 years in the clerk's office, with five of those years as chief deputy clerk and the last 18 and half years as city clerk.

The City Clerk serves at the pleasure of the City Council, and in her run as clerk Ollinger managed to keep her post through six mayors - Don Canney, Larry Serbousek, Lee Clancey, Paul Pate, Kay Halloran and now, Ron Corbett - and a busload of City Council members.

“It's been an interesting ride,” says Ollinger, 65. “I've just been able to go with the flow, and I've gotten along just fine with every council member and mayor we've had.”

She says City Attorney Jim Flitz has helped along the way by indoctrinating each new mayor and council member at the start with this: “If the clerk's not happy, nobody's happy.”

The City Clerk's Office now has six employees in a city with about 1,400 city employees, and the office's duties are primarily two: processing licenses for an assortment of matters from taxicabs to liquor sales; and managing information for the City Council and archiving it for later use and for history.

“We make the council members look pretty good when we have a good council agenda with all the information for them,” explains Ollinger. “There's a lot work behind that. We want them to look good.”

Ollinger recalls the days when clerks typed all the council agendas, using carbon paper to make copies for each of the council member. The office now scans most of the agenda's supporting documents so council members, department employees and the public can view the documents via computer.

During her tenure as clerk, Ollinger has managed to get the City Clerk's historical records to safe quarters in the basement of the city's Parks and Recreation Department office on 42nd Street NE. She says she knew all the way back in 1987 that the basement of City Hall on May's Island, which was entirely filled with water in the flood of 2008, might not be the best place to store important records.

“I love these old documents and these old books,” she says.

Ollinger is leaving city government in a period when there has been much discussion among City Council members about just how far from Cedar Rapids they need to go to find people to fill top posts and to find consultants to help them.

Ollinger is proof that an employee in a top city post can achieve and become beloved even if she or he came up through the ranks and not from somewhere else. Ollinger started as a clerk at City Hall in 1975, was named deputy clerk in 1987 and was picked by the City Council as City Clerk in January 1992.

The council now has picked Ollinger's chief deputy clerk, Amy Stevenson, 44, to take her place.

“I think it's a great process,” Ollinger said about naming a chief deputy clerk to be clerk. “You've been in the office, you're learning the entire time you're here. To have someone come in from outside, it wouldn't be as smooth as it will be now.”

Former Mayor Paul Pate says Ollinger offered “a lot of continuity” as the faces on the City Council came and went. “She was our base to keep us moving smoothly.”

“On a personal level, I loved her sense of humor,” Pate says. “You could always count on her, when you got real serious at a council meeting, you just looked over at her and she'd give you a little gesture or something to tell you ‘Hey, don't take life so serious. Smile. Roll with it.”

Former Mayor Kay Halloran says those from differing City Council who came back to say goodbye to Ollinger last week made it clear, “she's been an important part of it for a lot of years.”

“Ann is a jewel,” Halloran says. “Over the years, Ann kept things glued together when lots of other people did not.”

Former Parks Commission Dale Todd went to City Hall to say goodbye of Ollinger, says, like Pate, that Ollinger always had a look to remind him not to take matters too seriously.

“And Ann knows where the skeletons are buried,” Todd says. “She was a woman who could keep secrets.”

Ollinger laughs at the last thought, not denying it not be willing to reveal any of the inside stuff on the way out.

Prodded to talk about this city leader or that, she only talked about one. She said she liked former City Manager Jim Prosser, who left in April.

“It was a learning (experience),” she said of Prosser. “He was very interesting and a very good city manager.”