This year’s Professional Municipal Clerks Week will be the first for the City of Washington’s recently hired City Clerk.

Washington resident and former KCII News Director Sally Hart followed in the footsteps of retired city clerk Illa Earnest last December. Hart grew up in Mount Pleasant and has worked in Washington since 2013, and she shares what compelled her to put down the microphone and become a newsmaker herself, “The City of Washington was part of my beat. So I went to all the city council meetings for the past eight years and I really liked some of the progress that was happening, some of the projects that were coming up and it felt like a good time to try something new and I felt like I had the background knowledge.”

Hart is grateful for Earnest’s guidance her first few weeks on the job, and for all the help she’s received from City Administrator Brent Hinson, Finance Director Kelsey Brown, and Mayor Jaron Rosien in getting established at city hall. Hart appreciates the history that former city clerks have helped record for Washington, “When I started here I found it really interesting to go back and see some of the really old minutes books from the 1870s, and how those were handwritten. And some of the projects that they were talking about at the time, the square, or some of their building projects, and what their budget would be for a building was a few hundred dollars or a few thousand dollars compared to what we do today.”

Hart likes being part of the behind-the-scenes work for city projects and what lands on the city council’s agenda. She enjoys helping the public with whatever may occur on a daily basis, and she hopes to serve the city for many years to come.