WELLS — Town Clerk Katherine Bergen was appointed to an office in disarray.

The books reordered and transferred to a new town office building, Bergen is retiring this year. Her assistant, Nora Reed Sargent, is running unopposed for the seat.

"It's time," Bergen said Monday. "I think I've gotten Nora up to speed pretty well. … I decided to just do something else."

Longtime Town Clerk Lance Hopson died in June 2000. A transition team from the Vermont Municipal Clerks and Treasurers Association found years worth of unfiled documents in his office. Hopson's successor resigned after about a month and the next clerk resigned after about a year.

Bergen took the job in October 2001. With a handful of volunteers, she set to filing mislaid documents such as mortgages and deeds, some going back as far as 1993. Town records were up to date early the following February.

Bergen also worked on the transition into the new town office in 2006. When she took over, she worked out of a former store owned by Hopson's family that had served as the town office for decades.

Though she plans to help her successor with the transition, Bergen said she has a few ideas for her upcoming free time.

"My house needs an awful lot of work," she said. "I want to take my dog down and do some herding classes."

Wells has two contested races this year. Kevin Moffit is challenging Select Board Chairman Don Preuss for a three-year seat and Second Constable Norm Brown for that position.

Moffit, 42, described himself as a laborer. Asked about his qualifications for the Select Board seat, he said he was a resident in town and pointed out that it was the only requirement to run. He also said he did not see any particular issues before the town.

"There's going to be two other members of the Select Board there," he said. "We'll deal with problems as they arise.

Preuss, 60, works as a contractor. He is finishing his first term on the board.

"I think, as a town, we've come quite a ways," he said. "We've done a lot of grant work and stuff that just wasn't done before."

Preuss said he was particularly proud that the board got a state grant to install a box culvert in a problematic part of town.

"That saved the taxpayers a lot of money," he said. There had been an ongoing flooding problem that's taken care of."

In the coming year, Preuss said he hoped the Select Board could serve as mediators in a growing conflict between two groups of residents on Lake Saint Catherine over management of portions of the lake.

"Over half Lake Saint Catherine is in Wells and our tax base is funded largely by the lake," he said. "We don't have any direct say. … We can influence them and hopefully mediate some of the bad relations between the two groups."

The town budget is down slightly, from $757,263 to $738,138, a decrease of $19,125 or 2.5 percent.

The school budget went up from $2,108,275 to $2,148,463, an increase of $40,188, or 1.9 percent. However, Rutland Southwest Supervisory Union business manager Louis Milazzo said the amount to be raised by taxes was down from $1,724,294 to $1,674,692, a drop of $49,602, or 2.9 percent.

"That's basically due to an increase in local revenues," he said. "The biggest driver is a surplus from fiscal year '09."

gordon.dritschilo@rutlandherald.com