Wheat Ridge residents will decide the future of the city’s elected clerk and treasurer positions in the 2025 election.

The Wheat Ridge City Council — along with Deputy City Manager Allison Scheck and City Attorney Gerald Dahl — discussed the possible elimination of the city’s two positions on Monday evening during a study session.

The council unanimously decided to place the decision to erase the two positions on the city’s 2025 ballot.

The option was initially discussed in 2023, Scheck said Monday night, but the “sudden and tragic” passing of the elected city clerk, Stephen Kirkpatrick, in February brought the idea to the forefront. 

Scheck and Dahl raised the idea that the clerk and treasurer positions should no longer be elected by the public. If passed, the clerk position would become a professional hired by the city manager. The treasurer position would be dissolved entirely, with duties being overseen by the city’s finance division under the deputy city manager.

The current elected treasurer, Chris Miller, would serve his entire term until November 2027, barring earlier vacancy.

As of now, both the clerk and treasurer are part-time positions that receive a $29,000 salary from the city. Neither position oversees staff, as of 2024. 

The clerk’s roles include managing municipal elections, certifying all resolutions and ordinances passed by the City Council, responding to public and media requests and acting as a records custodian, according to the city.

The treasurer, on the other hand, acts as the custodian for the public’s money, investing in policies approved by the council, overseeing business license programs and collecting and dispersing funds.

Dahl said that it is hard to have continuity and a status quo in the clerk position because elected clerks are not formally trained, with the potential to be able to hire a full-time position outside of the city being more beneficial to the productivity of the role.

“This isn’t a reflection of Mr. Miller or Mr. Kirkpatrick,” Korey Stites, a council member, said. “They had been doing a phenomenal job.”

“It’s always been a little weird to have someone that’s running in elections also monitoring our elections,” he added of the clerk position, which would theoretically be up for reelection at the time of overseeing the election. “It has created some issues, frankly, in the past for candidates.”

Stites went on to address the idea of citizens losing out on the say of voting in the positions of power, saying that the positions are not public facing and do not speak at all council meetings and study sessions, making it hard for voters to actually hold them accountable.

“You don’t know what they’re doing on a daily basis,” he said. “I don’t think that we want something as important as our city’s finances going to somebody who’s the most popular person, or somebody who’s a better campaigner. We want it to go to the most qualified person. We might find more qualified people who don’t live within the bounds of the city of Wheat Ridge.”

“We’re fortunate, while I’ve been here, that we’ve had good representation in these offices,” Rachel Hultin, a ccouncil member, said. “However, it’s not hard to imagine that the most popular person could win without the type of competence that our increasingly complicated financial situation (requires) and the increased need for trust in our elections.”

Of the 273 Colorado municipalities, only five still have an elected city clerk. Those include Denver, Idaho Springs, Walsenburg, Victor and Wheat Ridge, according to the city.

Wheat Ridge is the only municipality with an elected treasurer.