BULLETIN

Teri Barown

Says Goodbye

To Village Hall

Revered Administrator Retiring

By JIM KEVLIN • Special to www.AllOTSEGO.com

COOPERSTOWN – With regret, the Village Board this evening accepted a notice of retirement from its revered village administrator, Teri Barown.

Appointed village clerk in 2005, she was promoted to village administrator in 2016 after “making herself absolutely essential to our village operations,” Mayor Ellen Tillapaugh Kuch said in announcing the news at the Village Board’s organizational meeting.

Barown said she was enticed to retire because her children are having trouble recruiting daycare for their children during the COVID-19 threat, and that convinced her it was time.

A native of Cooperstown, Barown is a 1979 CCS graduate.  She attended Herkimer Community College to become a paralegal,  then studied business administration at the Utica School of Commerce’s Oneonta campus.

She worked in the late Lynn Green’s law offices on Main Street for eight years, then joined Otsego County government as assistant county personnel officer, a position she held for 12 years.  She then spent three years as NYSHA (now The Fenimore Museum) membership manager, and Laurens Central School district clerk four years.

Joining village government, she called the village clerk position “my dream job,” and village administrator was even moreso, she said when promoted in 2016.

She has three children, Matt, Julie and Nicole, and several grandchildren.

Tillapaugh recalled this evening that then-mayor Jeff Katz had been in discussions five years ago with NYCOM experts on creating a village administrator job.  After looking into options, the experts told Katz, “You’ve already got one.”

Teri Barown was then promoted from village clerk to village administrator.

The Village Board moved this evening to return to that incremental approach, approving a help-wanted ad for a village clerk, and agreeing with Tillapaugh that, for the time being, Barown’s duties should be reallotted to existing staff.