Dalton Gardens restores deputy clerk role after workload strains city staff

Dalton Gardens moved to rebuild a thin administrative office Monday night, restoring a deputy clerk post after two years without one and giving city leaders a second set of hands for records, customer service and coverage.

The City Council approved the change unanimously at its regular meeting, reopening a position the city cut in 2023 to save money. Mayor Curt Jernigan said the decision came after leaders saw a clear need for more administrative support and concluded the lean setup no longer fit the workload.

The city has been operating with one clerk for about two years, a structure that left little room for vacations, cross-training or overlapping duties when staff were tied up with daily business. Jernigan said the goal was to improve efficiency, accessibility and long-term stability, a familiar balancing act for small cities trying to keep costs down without slowing service.

The new deputy clerk, Sandra Leppert, has already been working in a temporary capacity, helping modernize and digitize city records. That work lines up with Idaho law, which says the city clerk must keep the council journal, maintain custody of city laws and ordinances and serve as the municipal records manager.

Councilor Sue Supp backed the move and said the office should be able to stay open during lunch, a small change that can matter in a city office where residents often need quick access to records, forms and staff help. Jernigan also said the extra coverage would allow Clerk Sandy McFarland to take on treasury functions without leaving the office short-handed.

The financial impact is modest by city-budget standards. The deputy clerk salary is listed at $17,472, and the total fiscal impact for fiscal year 2026 is estimated at about $26,000. The cost will be covered by an internal general-fund reallocation from May 1 through Sept. 30, not by increasing the overall budget, and city leaders said the position should cost less than it did in 2023.

Dalton Gardens’ regular council meetings are held on the fourth Wednesday of each month, and the April meeting was listed for April 29 at 6 p.m. The timing underscores the same point driving the staffing change: in a small city, basic government functions depend on a narrow number of people, and when one of them is stretched too thin, everything from records access to routine front-counter service slows down.