BABBITT- In a move that caught many by surprise, Babbitt’s clerk-treasurer, Kathy Vraa, submitted a letter of resignation with 30-days notice. Vraa, who submitted her resignation on Aug. 17, took on the position full-time last May. The Babbitt City Council held a special meeting on Thursday, Aug. 24, where it accepted Vraa’s resignation and voted to post for a new clerk-treasurer.
At that same meeting, the council also voted down a motion by Mayor Duane Lossing to form a committee “to look into interim help, job descriptions, and resumés to make recommendation to the council for the best fit replacement and description of duties.” The motion failed on a 1-4 vote, with the council members all opposing the mayor.
Babbitt has not had an easy time keeping top city officials in recent months, starting with the tragic death of its deputy clerk-treasurer, Debbie Marinaro, in May 2022. At the time, the city’s clerk-treasurer, Cathy Hoheisel, was scheduled to retire over that summer. To address the situation, Vraa was promoted from administrative assistant at city hall to clerk-treasurer, to overlap with Hoheisel’s last few months. The city then hired a new administrative assistant and deputy clerk-treasurer. Babbitt also gave Hoheisel a contract to train city hall staff. Hoheisel gave 30-days-notice at the Aug. 15 city council meeting to end that contract.
As Hoheisel pointed out in a recent letter to the New Babbitt Weekly News, the turnover in the clerk-treasurer positions took the collective experience of Babbitt’s city hall staff from 62 years to four years.