Three Price County Municipalities Lost Their Clerk or Treasurer in 15 Months. The Fourth Is Still Learning.

Last updated: August 2, 2026 | By Price County Fun Editorial Team, Phillips, Wisconsin

The minutes tell the story one resignation at a time. Kennan’s clerk walked in July. Georgetown’s treasurer retired in March. Catawba searched for a clerk through the spring. Knox sent its new clerk to bootcamp with no documented explanation of who he replaced. Three municipalities with confirmed departures, and one quiet transition that left no paper trail.
Small-town clerks and treasurers in Wisconsin do the unglamorous work that keeps government functioning. They run elections, issue licenses, maintain records, collect taxes, and file the reports that keep the state happy. The pay is low. The liability is real. And when someone leaves, the institutional knowledge goes with them.

What Happens When the Clerk Walks

On July 13, 2026, the Kennan Town Board held a special meeting with one item at the top: accepting Clerk Lynn Redfall’s resignation, effective July 15.
The board approved it unanimously. They also approved a transition agreement allowing Redfall to help train her replacement at $50 per hour, the same arrangement she had previously used when helping the Town of Flambeau. The board then went into closed session to interview candidates.
Four days later, on July 17, the board held another special meeting. They came back into open session and voted to offer Deanna Doxtator the clerk position at $9,000 per year, paid monthly, with $100 per month for office rent and mileage at the IRS rate.
The entire process, from resignation to replacement, took four days. That speed is possible because Kennan had already converted the clerk position from elected to appointed, part of a broader trend across Price County towns. An elected vacancy would have required a special election or appointment until the next cycle.

Georgetown: Six Months from Resignation to Laptop

Becky Kempen submitted her resignation as Georgetown’s treasurer at the conclusion of the March 10, 2026 board meeting. The board wished her a happy retirement and accepted the motion.
That same night, the town held a Special Meeting of the Electorate to convert the treasurer position from elected to appointed. The vote was 6-0. The conversion was not a surprise; the board had been discussing tax collection fees and treasurer’s duties for months, and Georgetown was one of four towns moving to replace elected officials with appointed ones.
The board advertised the position in The Review for two weeks, with resumes due by May 10. By the April 21 annual meeting, the board reported it would be “reviewing applications, interviewing, and hiring a treasurer in the near future.” The treasurer’s job description was reviewed at the May 12 meeting, where the board set the annual pay rate at $3,600.
Susan Ihlenfeld got the job. She was sworn in at the June 9 meeting, where the board also signed a letter to Citizens State Bank requesting Ihlenfeld be added to both the general and tax checking accounts. At the July 21 meeting, the board signed additional bank account papers, approved a treasurer’s bond of about $100 through Rural Mutual Insurance, and authorized the purchase of a laptop for her use. They settled on a 14-inch HP, pending a check of Best Buy options.
The previous treasurer, Kempen, had served as an elected official.

Catawba: A Slower Transition

Catawba’s clerk transition took longer. By April 2025, the board noted that “Beth will be Clerk for another month until new clerk is found.” The May 13, 2025 agenda listed “New Clerk” as an agenda item, and that night the board appointed Marissa Raab to the position, ending the search.
Catawba has also been exploring converting positions from elected to appointed, with board members discussing “how quickly we could change this process if we needed to” at their June 16, 2026 meeting.

Knox: Sending the New Clerk to School

Knox Town Clerk Jason Kivela did not inherit a smooth transition. The Knox minutes from May 2025 show him attending a Department of Revenue webinar about ARPA Obligations filings and planning to attend a “New Clerk Bootcamp” run by the Wisconsin Towns Association in La Crosse on June 19.
By the July 14 meeting, Kivela reported that the bootcamp covered material he already knew, which the board took as a good sign. He got leads on accounting software. The minutes do not say who he replaced or how the vacancy arose. Someone new was learning the ropes, and the town’s records say nothing about the handoff.
Knox also switched its community center internet from Brightspeed to Spectrum in October 2025, a decision Kivela handled as part of the clerk’s duties. The town saved about $26 per month on the switch.

Why Anyone Should Care

Wisconsin town clerks and treasurers are responsible for election administration. They certify ballots, train poll workers, maintain voter registration lists, and file the reports that keep elections running. When these positions turn over frequently, the risk of errors increases.
The pay scale tells its own story. Kennan’s new clerk earns $9,000 per year. Georgetown’s new treasurer earns $3,600. These are part-time positions with full-time legal responsibilities. A clerk who makes a mistake on an election filing can trigger state investigations. A treasurer who mismanages funds can create audit findings that haunt the town for years.
The Wisconsin Towns Association runs training programs, but institutional knowledge, knowing which culvert needs replacing, which resident has a recurring zoning question, which vendor has the best gravel prices, only comes with time. When clerks leave, that knowledge walks out the door.
Price County has seen this at the county level too. The 8-month gap after DA Matthew McElroy’s resignation left 47 cases stalled. The Hastings resignation exposed how one supervisor’s departure could surface allegations of financial mismanagement. At the town level, the stakes are smaller but the pattern is the same: when the person who knows the system leaves, the system gets tested.

The Appointed-vs-Elected Question

Three of the municipalities in this story, Kennan, Georgetown, and Catawba, have either converted or are exploring converting these positions from elected to appointed. The Town of Hill already did this in 2024.
The shift from elected to appointed solves the immediate problem: when someone quits, the board hires a replacement instead of waiting for an election. But it changes who the clerk answers to. An elected clerk answers to voters. An appointed clerk answers to the board that hired them.
We covered this structural shift in July, but the human side deserves attention. The people taking these jobs, Deanna Doxtator in Kennan, Sue Ihlenfeld in Georgetown, Jason Kivela in Knox, are walking into positions where one mistake can trigger a state investigation and the training budget is whatever the town board approves at a monthly meeting.

Running the August Primary With New Staff

The August 11 primary will be the first election for Kennan’s new clerk, Deanna Doxtator. Georgetown’s new treasurer, Sue Ihlenfeld, will not be running the election, but the transition adds to the administrative churn in a year when every Price County race is contested. Running a partisan primary with a contested sheriff’s race is not a gentle introduction to the job. Mistakes at the polling place, wrong ballots, missed registrations, unclear instructions, erode public trust in a way that takes years to rebuild.
If you live in a Price County town and have dealt with a clerk transition, good or bad, we want to hear about it. The records these offices keep are public. The people who keep them deserve attention too.

Sources

Kennan Town special meeting minutes, July 13 and July 17, 2026
Georgetown Town meeting minutes, March 10, April 14, April 21, May 12, June 9, and July 21, 2026
Catawba Town meeting minutes, April 15 and May 13, 2025; June 16, 2026
Knox Town meeting minutes, May 12, June 16, July 14, and November 10, 2025
Wisconsin Towns Association