Lisa Long to retire June 24 after 28 years serving City of Belleville

Belleville Clerk/Treasurer Lisa Long will retire on June 24 after more than 28 years serving the city of Belleville.
She plans to join her husband Mark at the business he runs with their son Aaron on Ecorse Road in Ypsilanti – Long’s Automotive. She’ll be in the office.
Long was born in St. Joseph Mercy Hospital and lived just over the line from Sumpter in Carleton. Her father was killed in a car accident six months before she was born and she was raised by her great aunt and uncle on a small farm.
They moved to Milan when she was in the fourth grade. She graduated from Milan High School in 1984. She went to Ross Business Institute in Monroe, getting certified as a word processing secretary. The only other choice was law secretary and that didn’t appeal to her.
The first and last resume she ever used was submitted to the Belleville Police Department which was advertising for part-time help.
She said Belleville Clerk/Treasurer Agnes Frisch interviewed her and she was called in to be hired.
“I didn’t even ask how much they paid,” she said, adding she was so happy to have a job she told them she’d right be in to begin.
Frisch was known for running a tight ship and, “She was so strict, I was scared of her,” Long said.
After Frisch left to fight her cancer, she and Long became close friends.
Long started work Oct. 7, 1987 as a part-time clerk-typist I under Police Chief Willard Dockter. She became full time as an account clerk in July 1989 and began helping Frisch with the elections. On Nov. 17, 2008, she was named city clerk/treasurer.
She recalled the present City Manager Diana Kollmeyer was hired as city clerk/administrative assistant to City Manager Steve Walters in 1999 or 2000. So from 2000 to 2008, Long worked no elections.
Her favorite part of her job with the city began in the early 1990s when Frisch was on sick leave. City Manager Jeff Przygocki called her in and said Frisch wanted her to do the Hillside Cemetery work. She accepted the assignment.
Long said whatever she is doing, when a funeral home calls with a requested burial, she drops everything else and tends to it.
Some people need to purchase plots and if the DPS doesn’t have time, she goes to show them what’s available.
“It’s a top priority,” she said. “I drop what I’m doing and go to the cemetery.”
She said when someone buys a grave, she issues deeds. They take foundation orders for headstones twice a year. She makes sure they have the correct locations.
If people aren’t sure about a location, she checks out the information in different books. There’s a really old book that goes back to the 1900s that shows ownerships and burials. She checks that and other Section books and when a grave is used, she writes in the names in the old book, the Section book and puts in the computerized information.
“I don’t rely on the computer, but go back to the books,” she said. “I follow the ways it has been done in the past, because it works.”
She said if there’s a problem, it would end up on the city manager’s shoulders.
Long said there currently are about 275 graves available at Hillside, including full graves, cremation graves, and baby graves.
Currently, the city is putting together a meeting of the Civil Service Commission to interview the five people who applied for her clerk/treasurer position.
The second-biggest part of her job has been elections, which also is very time-consuming. She marks all the deadline requirements on a calendar for each election, because there are so many. She said absentee ballots have to be sent overseas 45 days before an election.
There are about 400 permanent absentee voters in the city and mailings go out to them six to eight weeks before an election with applications for ballots. About 30-40 days before an election she mails the ballots. Usually she gets 250 of the 400 ballot applications returned.
On Election Day, she is in at 6 a.m. and stays until 10 p.m. or midnight, depending on how things go. It’s usually about 17 hours, she said.
She has to transmit the election results to the county and Associated Press also wants the numbers in a special way. She gives the results to the police officers to take to the Wayne County Clerk’s Office
“The next day, I take off,” she said. So, before she leaves on election night, she puts everything away and leaves the results to be posted.
She does not have any help for her election duties, so her husband and mother-in-law have come in, on occasion, to help out on certain elections.
Long recalls when she started work at the police department she had a 10-month-old child, Jeremy, who now is 29.
Her cousin introduced her to Mark Long. Lisa was at her cousin’s house and her cousin’s car wasn’t working, so she called Mark Long to fix it. When Mark arrived and went to the car, it started right up. He accuses them of setting up the meeting.
But they found that Lisa and Mark were born the very same day — June 3, 1966 — at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital and probably were in the hospital nursery together.
The two married, with Mark bringing his daughter Lindsay, now 27, and Joshuah, now 25, from a previous marriage. The two had Leah, now 22, and Aaron, now 20, and the two are still at home. Aaron attends Washtenaw Community College working for a degree as an auto mechanic.