By Michelle Fields, Standard Correspondent
For the past 25 years, when Woodstock residents had a problem or a question about town government, the first person they spoke to in person or on the phone was most likely Mary Riley. It is that regular contact with Woodstock’s residents that Riley says she will miss most as she heads into retirement in October.
As an administrative assistant, Riley is a support person for Town Manager Phil Swanson and any of the town department heads who do not have support people. That means that she juggles work for the sewer department, highway department, village trustees, town select board and others.
“I do whatever I can to help whoever needs it,” says Riley. She also tries to support her co-workers helping out more with tax bills during tax time and accounting issues at audit times. She says she also feels supported by them, “My co-workers are great.”
This particularly extends to Swanson who she says, “went out of his way to accommodate individual needs of employees.” She also notes that his attention to the “individual needs of people in Woodstock has made my job easier.”
Twenty-five years ago when Riley started working for Woodstock, she says there were a few challenges she had to overcome.
“At first, keeping the town and village straight was hard,” she says. The timing requirement for notices of meetings and public hearings also took a bit of effort to adjust to, as part of her responsibility is to take the minutes at all select board and trustee meetings.
One night, a number of years ago, she arrived at Town Hall early for a meeting and saw someone in a hooded sweatshirt pacing around in front of the building pulling at the locked doors trying to open them. She got nervous and dialed the “91” on her cell phone with finger poised over the final “1” as she asked the individual if she could help him. It turns out the hooded figure was Alex Hanson, a new Vermont Standard reporter (who later moved onto the Valley News), who got his times confused and arrived over 30 minutes early for the meeting.
Riley says that a long time later Hanson asked her if he had scared her that night and they laughed about the incident for years.
It is helping people that drives Riley.
“She makes a connection with everyone that comes up to the counter,” says Swanson who notes that Riley, a former Woodstock Citizen of the Year, is “like an air traffic controller” directing people.
Swanson says she has sometimes been referred to as a “municipal mother” and in that role she has also been “the patron saint of every school kid…any kid selling anything, whether she needed it or not… she bought it.”
“I love that people call for information that has nothing to do with plowing snow or paying taxes,” says Riley. “I don’t like to give people dead ends. If I can’t help, I at least refer people on.”
“When you are a public servant, you are a public servant all of the time,” says Riley noting that she has written people’s names and phone numbers on her check book over the weekend at Mac’s Market and called them in answer to a question on Monday.
“I will feel badly when someone asks me something at the grocery store and I can’t help them,” she says as she thinks about retirement.
The bottom line as Riley says is, “I love this job and I hate to leave it.”
However, she is looking forward to other possibilities. “I have a lot of opportunities to go places and do things and I’m going to take that opportunity.” No. 1 on her list is getting to more of her grandson’s soccer games in Massachusetts.
Riley has a few trips planned for the fall and spring but is also open to other ideas without rushing into them. “I’ve been invited to join four boards,” she says. She also plans to stay on the Board of Civil Authority (she is currently chair of that board), if re-elected as a justice of the peace.
“I love working the elections,” she says, noting that this is also a way that she can stay in touch with the many people she has met over the years.
She also has a secret interest: “I would love at Christmas time to wrap gifts in a store.”
Although Riley is leaving, she will be coming back at budget time to help with the annual report and planning for town and village meeting. “It was very intimidating for me in the beginning so I want to give my successor a chance to feel comfortable.”
She also has some advice for the next administrative assistant. “Pay attention to everything that is going on around you because you need to know that information. It becomes helpful more often than you think.”
“Mary has laid a good foundation,” says Swanson looking to the future. He adds of the candidates for her replacement, “Every single person who came in (to interview) said these are ‘big shoes to fill.’” Riley and Fire Chief L.D. “Butch” Sutherland, Jr., who are both retiring this year, will be honored at the Celebrate Community night on the Green Aug. 21 from 5:30-7:30 p.m.
This article first appeared in the August 13, 2015 edition of the Vermont Standard.