WESTFIELD — City Clerk Karen Fanion will retire at the end of June as the most senior employee in City Hall, just shy of 40 years since she was hired in September 1982. Even longtime custodian Tommy Curran, who retired earlier this spring, was hired a few months after her.

Fanion said she started her career young. After graduating from St. Mary’s High School in 1980, she enrolled in Bay Path Junior College, where she received an associate’s degree in business before applying to work at Westfield City Hall. She later went back to classes at night at Westfield State University, when her children were in kindergarten and second grade, to earn a bachelor’s degree in business administration.

City Clerk Patrick Dowd hired her in 1982.

“He was an amazing person. He was on the [City] Council for years, then became city clerk in 1978-79, and was clerk until 1998 when I came in. He retired at 77,” Fanion said.

“He knew everything about everything. He was a great guy,” she added.
Fanion has worked under a total of eight mayors and three acting mayors since she started working for the city, spanning from Michael O’Connell to Michael McCabe. Asked who was her favorite, she laughed. “I would never answer that publicly. They all had good points (and bad points),” she said.

June 16 was her last meeting taking the minutes for the City Council. Fanion said it’s a part of her.

“I’ve been clerk since 1998, and been in the department for almost 40 years,” she said. The job posting for the next city clerk went up this week.

Part of her job has been overseeing elections. “I’m certainly going to come back and help with elections. If they have any questions, I’ll answer the phone,” she said, noting that Sept. 6 is the next election.

“I’ll be back at the end of August, so I won’t be gone long. I’m going to help with the testing of the equipment,” she said, adding, “We’ve had the equipment for a few years now — got it in 2019. We didn’t want to use it the first time for a presidential election, and that was a great decision. Everyone is very familiar with it, thank goodness,” she said.

Fanion said she will be a warden helping with early voting, like any other election worker would do.

Looking back at the biggest challenges during her tenure, Fanion didn’t have to look very far.

She said the COVID-19 years were crazy, with five elections in one year including special elections, starting with the presidential primary on March 3 of 2020 and the special election primary to fill Don Humason’s seat in the Senate, which was a dual election.

She said the actual election for that Senate seat was on May 19, right in the middle of the COVID-19 state of emergency. She said the city conducted the whole election at Westfield Middle School, with only one polling place.

“That was crazy, but it worked extremely well,” Fanion said.

COVID-19 also impacted the Sept 1 regular state primary which had early voting for the first time, along with early voting for the Nov. 4 presidential election, so two rounds of early voting.

“We had thousands,” she said.

“That was crazy — to have done all those elections during such hard times and such unknowns. Everything worked out pretty good; everyone did a good job. We did 100 extra hours during those elections,” Fanion said.

Also making the cut as memorable were some of the election recounts. She said the most difficult was when they hand-counted a close election in 2015 between at-large councilors John J. Beltrandi III and Steve Dondley.

“That was a hard recount because it was an at-large recount, and we had to recount all of the ballots by hand at Westfield Middle School — that was an all-day event. It started at 8 a.m. and went through the afternoon. That was the hardest recount,” she said, adding that ultimately Dondley won, and the recount upheld the vote.

She also looks back on the whole renovation of City Hall, when the offices moved to the Westwood building on North Elm Street for six months.

“We conducted business on the fourth floor of the Westwood. It worked well. It’s just amazing how you can adapt to circumstances, and adapt quickly. We had to pack up our entire office and move over there,” she said.

Fanion looks back proudly on the City Hall vault restoration and preservation of historical documents, including vital records, marriages, births and deaths that was done under Mayor Daniel Knapik’s administration.

“Now our vault is climate controlled. That was a great project. A lot of the historical documents are in archival sleeves and are being preserved. Everything is metal — no wood. It was nice to see that go through,” she said.
“That’s probably my legacy, the vault. All those records are going to be preserved,” Fanion said.