Submitted
Trish Fryer
By Katy Savage
PITTSFIELD— After 27 years, there’s a new face in the town office.
Trish Fryer started training to be the new town clerk and treasurer about three weeks ago. She will be taking over from Pat Haskins, who is retiring after 27 years in August.
“It will be very bittersweet but I’m ready to go off and do other things,” said Haskins.
Haskins, 62, and her husband, 65, who works for the ski patrol at Killington Resort, is also retiring this year.
Haskins said they wanted to be able to spend more time visiting their children, who live in New York and Idaho.
Meanwhile, Fryer, 47, who has a background working in childcare centers in Bristol, Conn., and her husband moved to Vermont last winter to be near their children who attend Killington Mountain School. Their son is a senior and their daughter is a sophomore at the school while their oldest adult son stayed in Connecticut, where he serves as a firefighter and works for the town.
Fryer was appointed to the clerk position by the Select Board and she plans to run for election at Town Meeting next march.
“It just intrigued me knowing that I could learn so much about the new place that I was calling home,” she said.
Vermont has long been a special place for Fryer. She and her husband got married in Plymouth 10 years ago. She said the part-time clerk position fit what she was looking for.
The clerk/treasurer is tasked with recording birth and death certificates and marriage licenses. They are the face of the town, which doesn’t have a municipal manager.
Her husband is relocating his landscape company to Pittsfield.
This will be a change for the town.
Haskins lives next door to the town office. Nobody ever ran against Haskins, who was re-elected by residents every three years.
“I grew to really like working with the town,” she said. “I liked being part of the community and doing things for the community.”
Though sad to be leaving, she said the town is in a good place for somebody new. She had confidence in Fryer.
“I think she’s going to be a good fit for the town,” Haskins said.
