City clerk reflects on ongoing career

The first thing Trussville Mayor Buddy Choat did when he considered his mayoral run was make sure Lynn Porter wasn’t leaving.

“She is considered by many as the ‘face of City Hall,’” Choat said.

Porter, an employee of the city of Trussville since 1982 and city clerk since 1986, works a job that is spent largely behind the scenes, a role she relishes.

“At the end of the day, probably 90% of the city doesn’t have a clue what the city clerk is or even that there is a city clerk,” Porter said.

Those residents should take notice. Porter is the city’s custodian of city records; handles matters, including meeting minutes, for the Trussville City Council; writes proclamations, resolutions and sometimes ordinances; manages city elections; oversees a small staff that, along with Porter, won the Ned and Goldie Paine Memorial Gatekeeper group award in 2017; and has even washed the dishes in the kitchen.

“Whatever needs doing, that’s my next job,” Porter joked, but it seems true.

This November will mark Porter’s 37th anniversary as a city employee. She has the most seniority of any city employee and exceeds the employee with the second-most years of service by nine years. When she came to work in 1982, the city had 50 employees and 3,000 residents. It now has 230 employees and more than 23,000 residents. In the early 1980s, Trussville had virtually no sales tax base. Every October when the fiscal year began, the city would make a 90-day loan to pay salaries and light bills until January, when business licenses were paid for. This happened for five or six years until the K-Mart opened on Chalkville Mountain Road and more than doubled the sales tax for the city.

Trussville is not at all today what it was back then. The annual budget for the city in 1982, when Porter began working for Trussville, would not pay a bi-weekly payroll today for all city employees.

“It’s just mind-boggling,” she said. “I tell people when I came to work here we had a sign that said ‘Welcome to Trussville’ on both sides.”

Back then, Trussville’s limits started at the Cahaba River and reached the Dew Gardens subdivision, and from Green Drive to Queenstown Road. It amassed roughly 12 square miles. Trussville today reaches approximately 35 square miles.

In her early years on the job, she issued every business license and building permit, covered City Council meetings and handled payroll and the books.

“I did it all,” she said. “I’ve enjoyed it. It’s never the same thing any two days.”

That experience has proven invaluable, as she possesses a wealth of knowledge to help current employees. She understands everyone’s job. All the jobs she was doing in the 1980s have morphed into five other positions today.

She’s been in the same east corner office of Trussville City Hall since the late 1980s, a room filled with filing cabinets, ordinances, resolutions, contracts, proclamations and anything else the custodian of city records would keep.

Porter grew up in Trussville on Brentwood Avenue in a house in which her parents still live. She has been a widow for 16 years, and she has a son and a daughter. Her daughter is the city clerk for the city of Gardendale, making them the only mother-daughter city clerks in the state of Alabama.

“It’s home to me. I grew up here,” she said. “I graduated from high school here. Even when I got married and moved away I was just in Roebuck Plaza, and then I’ve been back in the city for 31 years. So, it’s home.”

Porter could retire now and would be eligible for full Social Security in 2020. With each city election, her position is appointed by the City Council. Her plan was to retire in late 2020. However, the closer that date approaches, the more she leans toward continuing her work, so long as the City Council appoints her.

“This should have been the job from Hades for me because I don’t like controversy, I don’t like politics, and I don’t like change,” Porter said. “Somehow I’ve made it. I have enjoyed it. I think all in all the job has been entertaining.”

If she continues into 2020 and beyond, she will no doubt field dozens of phone calls daily as she does today. She will record meeting minutes until her hand is numb. She will continue being the behind-the-scenes employee who helps run one of the fastest-growing cities in Alabama.

“I like being able to help somebody,” Porter said. “And if that help is just to get the garbage people back because their garbage has been missed, or if it’s something a little more complicated, I get some satisfaction from feeling that I’ve done something. At the end of the day and when my career is over, I would like to be able to look back and feel like I’ve represented the city well.”