Town Clerk candidate Jenna Deane has a laundry list of training, titles and work experiences she says she can bring to the table if elected on May 3.

She’s trained in handling vital records, voter registration, Town Meetings, Town Census, dog licenses, public records requests. She’s a justice of the peace and a notary public. 

Deane’s also a mother to two sons, one who’s 16 and another who’s just shy of a year old.

“They’re my drive,” Deane said of her sons. 

Deane ran for Town Clerk once before, on a write-in campaign in 2019. She says now that at the time, she chose to focus on her family. Now, she says, she’s ready to take on the mantle of town clerk.

The position represents the frontlines of Town Hall, Deane said.

“I think, honestly, that the clerk’s office is the first stop,” Deane said of how residents look for information about town. “The clerk’s office is kinda like the switchboard of Town Hall.”

Residents go to the clerk’s office for a myriad of queries, she said. The clerk similarly has their hands in much of town governance — they administer oaths of office for elected officials, handle minutes for boards and committees and issue business certificates.

The candidate says she has what it takes to handle it all, and she has her experience with the town’s inner workings to show for it.

Deane said she worked in a property management company for seven years, where she picked up her office administration skills. In 2016, she began working as a department assistant in Town Hall for Wareham, where she says she was trained in handling municipal business.

In 2019, Deane moved to the town’s building department, where she’s worked as a department assistant ever since.

Her work in the building department gives her a deeper understanding of how town departments work with each other, she said. 

If elected, Deane wants to make some town services more accessible.

“I would love to streamline services for the residents,” Deane said, adding that some documents, like vital records, could be made available online. “I would love to see notary services [come back].”

Deane also said she hopes to work on digitizing records, possibly through the use of community preservation funds to preserve town ledgers. Records of old Town Meetings, marriages, deaths, births and genealogy reports are held in big town ledgers that are becoming worn, she said.

“If something’s not done with those records,” she said, “they’re going to continue to deteriorate.”

For more information on Deane’s campaign, check out deanefortownclerk.com.