Vallejo City Clerk Dawn Abrahamson quietly keeps democracy running

VALLEJO – For the last 13 years, Vallejo’s City Clerk Dawn G. Abrahamson has kept a steady hand on the wheel of Vallejo’s city government. Other top city officials have come and gone around her as the city has faced scandals, controversy and distrust from city residents. 

Now Abrahamson will lead an organization of her peers. Abrahamson was installed last month as president elect of  the International Institute of Municipal Clerks (IIMC), an organization of more than 15,000 fellow clerks from around the world, and will take office as president next year. The organization, founded in 1947, promotes education and training, professional development, certification, and mutual assistance of its members. This nomination is the latest honor in Abrahamson’s illustrious career in municipal government. 

Clerks have an often invisible but vital role in the functioning of city government. They administer democratic processes such as elections, provide access to city records, and work to ensure transparency in legislative actions, such as by the City Council.

It’s not an easy job in a city like Vallejo. Abrahamson joined Vallejo just after the city’s bankruptcy and has worked with nine different city managers during her tenure. A poll ahead of the 2022 election found that only 14% of city residents have a favorable view of the city government, down from 34% in 2018, as it has been besieged by scandal, particularly in the Police Department.

Throughout all that, Abrahamson has been unwavering in her commitment to keeping public business running as smoothly as possible.

“It takes a special type of person to be in Vallejo,” Abrahamson said in an interview. “It needs to be somebody that wants to truly help the community whether you agree or disagree with them. I can't get involved in the politics. I have to stay neutral and treat everyone the same.”

Abrahamson was 18 years old and studying business in college when she got a part-time job with the police department in Pinole. Six months later, she started filling in for the city manager’s secretary and assisting the human resources director. Once she graduated, she moved to the Planning and Public Works department in Martinez. 

After a short stint in a private company, Abrahamson realized that she loved working in government and reached out to the clerk in Pinole to see if she needed help. Pinole hired Abrahamson as a human resources analyst. When the deputy city clerk retired, Abrahamson filled in, and when the city clerk became ill, she took over those duties on top of her HR position. 

One day Pinole’s city manager, seeing how overworked Abrahamson was, offered to hire another staff member and asked which role she wanted to keep. “I asked him to hire someone to do HR,” Abrahamson said. “I fell in love with being a city clerk. I found that it was my niche.”

Abrahamson was officially appointed deputy city clerk of Pinole in 1994. She then studied to become a Certified Municipal Clerk and got her Master Municipal Clerk certification. 

Parallel to her job, she got involved with the City Clerk’s Association of California, serving in numerous committees. From 1998 to 2008 she was a board member. She went on to various leadership roles, including president and legislative director. 

Abrahamson also sought to advance her career. “I wanted to be a department head with staff,” she explained, “so I moved on to the city of Pleasanton, where I had a staff of three in the clerk's office and I oversaw central services.” She later was clerk in the much larger city of Fremont before taking her current position in Vallejo in 2011. “I wanted to be closer to home,” said Abrahamson, who lives in Pinole, “but I also wanted to make a difference in the community.”

Along the way she got numerous awards and recognitions, but the most dear to her heart is the Pat Hammers Spirit Award, which she received in 2017 in recognition of her devotion to promoting the advancement and personal growth of clerks and the profession. “Pat Hammers was the elected clerk of Cathedral City,” Abrahamson said. “She was like me, an advocate for clerks getting their education and their certification. We shared the same kind of passion for the profession.”

Abrahamson has reached the top of her field in spite of personal challenges. She lost much of her hearing when she was young and today is legally deaf in her left ear and has profound hearing loss in her right. “When I take the hearing aid off, I'm pretty much deaf,” she said, “but that has never stopped me. In fact, I think it’s pushed me a little harder to prove to myself that just because I can’t hear, it doesn’t mean I can't be successful.”

The role of the city clerk is widely misunderstood, according to Abrahamson. “Most people don’t know what a city clerk does,” she said. “They think I’m a basic clerk that transcribes files, but it's so much more.”  

Abrahamson likes to explain her job as part of a triangle which safeguards democracy by balancing policy, product, and process. 

At the top of the triangle is the City Council, which establishes the vision and direction for the community’s future by setting policy. On one side is the city manager, who provides the product in the form of services to the taxpayers, such as police, firefighters and road maintenance. And on the other side is the city clerk, who ensures that the decision-making process is transparent, complies with the law, and is properly recorded. 

“Transparency is a really big thing for this community,” Abrahamson said, pointing out that Vallejo receives a very high volume of public records requests. “The average has been over a thousand per year,” she said.

Abrahamson’s favorite part of the job is overseeing the local elections process. This year Vallejo will have three district council seats and the mayoral seat on the ballot in November. 

“People don't understand the process to become a councilmember or the mayor,” Abrahamson said. “They think it's just like a Boards and Commission member, where I hand them an application and they fill it out, and it’s a lot more than that.”  

On Thursday Abrahamson will hold a pre-nomination candidate forum at the John F. Kennedy Library for anyone interested in running for office. She will offer a high level view of the way the city functions, talk about what it means to be elected and explain the process from start to finish. Then she will work on the candidates handbook. 

Being a city clerk requires a certain temperament and specific skills. “Organization is key,” Abrahamson said. “Staying up on legislation when it changes, because it directly affects the work that I do. The clerk needs to be someone that is very composed, has a presence, and is very competent. You have to have high ethical values and be compassionate.”

The job requires adhering to the statutes and meeting important deadlines with absolute rigor. “I have to have a packet published 72 hours before a regular meeting, and this community wants to see things even earlier,” Abrahamson said, “so I am constantly asking, ‘Where is this? Where’s that? I need this now.’ I call myself a gentle nag. It’s part of being a city clerk.”

As much as Abrahamson loves her job, it’s not without challenges. The biggest one is not having enough staff to do the things she wants and needs to do. She has only one full time and one part time staff member, and even though she says it’s the best staff she’s ever had, it’s not enough. “I think if you were to ask that question of any department head here, that might be one of the answers you would get,” she said. “People aren’t choosing to work for local government as a career anymore, and I'm not sure why.”

Another challenge has been staff turnover, as the city has been facing a staff shortage across all departments for the last few years.  But even as other city positions have turned over repeatedly in her tenure, Abrahamson plans to stay as clerk in Vallejo until she retires five or six years from now. She loves working in this city. 

“Vallejo is unique in a number of ways,” she explained. “It’s very diverse, and there’s something new every day. When I worked for Pleasanton, some of the calls we got were what I would describe as ‘not in my backyard’ kind of complaint. Here people really need help.”

Most of the calls her office receives are not for city clerk’s business, they are from people who don’t know who to contact or are not receiving any answers. Her office can funnel them to the right person.

And with all the challenges facing this community, Abrahamson’s biggest wish for Vallejo is healing. “There's a lot of hurt and a lot of anger in the community,” she said. “It’s going to take a combination of city staff and the community to come together and try to work in a positive direction.”