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Buffalo Grove’s deputy clerk reflects on 25 years at Village Hall
The Buffalo Grove Village Board stands and applauds Monday night as Village President Jeff Braiman hands deputy village clerk Jane Olson a proclamation celebrating her career. Olson will retire at the end of the month. | Ronnie Wachter~Sun-Times Media
Updated: February 11, 2013 8:01AM
BUFFALO GROVE — Though the Village Board was in a hurry to honor her, they are not in a hurry to see her go.
Trustees approved a proclamation to thank deputy village clerk Jane Olson for her nearly 26 years of service to Buffalo Grove. Olson is set to retire at the end of the month, and because of the board’s meeting schedule, trustees honored her weeks in advance of her last day.
“I have another month,” Olson said Feb. 5, her first day back at work after her retirement party.
Q: Why retire now?
A: There are a lot of reasons, and I just decided this is the right time. I need to see my grandchildren more; I need to relax more; I need to do some traveling.
Q: Where do you hope to go?
A: We will stay here for a while, and then I have one daughter in Wisconsin and one in Iowa. I have two small grandchildren, and I want to see them. There are places in the United States that we haven’t seen. The first will be San Diego.
Q: The clerk’s office has a wide variety of duties, what have you been up to for the past 25-plus years?
A: We do a lot of the legislative paperwork, all the election stuff. We’re in Lake and Cook counties, so we do everything twice. The (Freedom of Information Act), we get a lot of those (requests) these days.
Q: What are some of the odd Freedom of Information Act requests you get?
A: Oh dear... I get about one a day. We have a database that everything is kept in. There’s lots of building and zoning. They ask for blueprints, if they’re in a flood plain, lots of plat of survey, hydraulic design calculations. They ask for election results, they ask for plans and development. I don’t know if there’s any one that’s strange. The biggest ones are about development.
Q: This sounds terribly boring.
A: It’s not boring at all. I do all the business licenses, all the liquor licenses, all the smaller ones. I have lots of contacts with the people of the village, so it’s something new every day. It’s quite interesting.
Q: Most of Buffalo Grove’s business owners received their license from you. How does it feel when you drive past a business that your office handed out the license for, and you either see the storefront empty, or you see it flourishing?
A: Oh, sure. There was a liquor license, and the owner was really hopeful. I knew them quite well. They had to move, because they had gotten too big. They moved to a different village. It’s just nice to talk to them again, and remember what we had gone through. You did something to help them. But, it is a pain to go past a store that was there a couple months ago, and it’s not there this time. Where did they go?
Q: On Monday night, the trustees stood and applauded as you received your proclamation. How did that feel?
A: I felt very honored. I’m going to be very sad to see people that I work with not be a part of my life anymore. I was honored. Working with the village clerk, we have become quite a team. She has taught me a lot.
