ASSOCIATION MEMBER SPOTLIGHT

ROXANNE BRECEDA, CMC, DIRECTOR OF NETWORKING

Happy Women’s History Month! This month’s featured Association Member is a member I met through a zoom meeting. She is a vibrant and caring member and mentor for CCAC. Her energy is contagious, and I enjoy her story telling. Please meet June Lemos from the City of Fort Bragg.

What are you most proud of in your career so far?

How did you get started, and what advice would you give association members working towards becoming a clerk?

I worked as a paralegal for 25 years at a Fort Bragg law office, then joined the City of Fort Bragg in 2013 as an Administrative Assistant in the Community Development Department. I was promoted to City Clerk in 2015 when my predecessor retired. She was on a leave of absence, so I was thrown into the pool’s deep end and learned how to swim on my own without knowing what the job entailed.

My best advice to association members would be to take advantage of all the guidance and training CCAC and IIMC offer. Connect with other clerks and attend as many annual conferences and new law seminars as possible. Get a mentor. Ask questions on the Listserv. If your agency can afford it, attend the Technical Training for Clerks to help with CMC credits and the Master Municipal Clerks Academy to get your MMC designation. If you’re a bit of a nerd like I am, you’ll love every minute of the educational journey.

I’m most pleased to have attained the Master Municipal Clerk designation. When I received my MMC designation in November 2021, there were only 167 Master Clerks in California and 1,339 in the USA, which was quite an achievement. I’m also proud of helping the City go paperless by digitizing public records requests, meeting agendas and minutes, and FPPC form filings. In addition, I worked to establish a portal for members of the public to view archived records and helped create a new City website. I love serving the people of my community and working with the City Council and City staff to make Fort Bragg a vibrant, safe, and thriving place to live. But perhaps my proudest accomplishment is becoming a CCAC mentor to eight new City Clerks. It is such a pleasure to help people in our field receive the assistance they need to obtain their CMC designations and become competent City Clerks.

What is one place you would like to visit and why?

There are so many places on this earth I want to see, but the one at the top of my list is the island of Flores in the Açores, my family’s ancestral home. My grandfather and his 14 brothers and sisters were all born there, so I bet I have a few unknown Portuguese cousins still living in Flores. I’ve seen photos of this beautiful island, whose coastline is very similar to Mendocino, where I live.