Aside from electing a new mayor, DeKalb residents have another vote to cast on Tuesday: city clerk.

The names of the four candidates–Lynn Fazekas, Steve Kapitan, Leonard LeGrand and Liz Peerboom–will not appear on the ballot, as each are running as write-ins.

The duties of the city clerk are record keeping, keeper of the seal, revisions and distributions of the municipal code, business licensing and managing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. City clerk terms last four years; the role is part time and has an annual salary of $5,000.

Fazekas, the manager of citybarbs.com and an independent contractor and on-call office administrator for Edward Jones, believes the main role of the city clerk is accurately recording city council meetings and verification and keeping of documents.

Fazekas is confident in her FOIA experience.

“I’m very familiar with FOIA,” Fazekas said. “That is because I have run a local issues blog for about seven years. I use the Freedom of Information Act as a tool anywhere from six to 12 times a year.”

Fazekas said mistakes and one-sidedness from past city clerks sparked her interest in running in this election.

“I feel that the clerk’s office could very well have a watchdog role,” Fazekas said.

A serious injury led to her inability to go through the process of getting her name on the ballot, Fazekas said, and she didn’t make the decision to run until late January.

LeGrand, an office manager for student athlete academic support services at NIU, believes the fundamental role of the city clerk is record keeping and paperwork.

Although he doesn’t have experience with the FOIA, LeGrand is familiar with it.

“I’ve had some come across my desk, but there’s a department at NIU that handles them,” LeGrand said. “I haven’t done them specifically.”

LeGrand believes a city clerk position would be a good start for a career.

“Honestly, I didn’t think that anybody would be that interested in the job. I thought it was a good way for me to get into politics,” LeGrand said. “I thought it would be something to do, to give for the city, to kind of give back.”

LeGrand did not petition to get on the ballot.

“I didn’t consider even running until after I found out that no one was on the ballot,” LeGrand said.

Peerboom, the village clerk for Maple Park, believes the city clerk is a fundamental position within the city and acts as the keeper of the seal and keeping of all of the documents of city council.

Peerboom has FOIA experience as past deputy clerk for the city.

“…When I worked in the clerk’s office as a deputy clerk in DeKalb, I was in charge of doing the FOIAs, and now as clerk in Maple Park I am the FOIA officer,” Peerboom said.

Peerboom wants to use the position of city clerk to better the city.

“I care about the office of city clerk because it plays the unimportant roles, and because I know that I am the best candidate for the position,” Peerboom said. “In the last four years, there was a lot of problems with the clerk not getting some of the statutory duties done, and the staff had to do a lot of cleaning up after he resigned, and I just want to make sure that it doesn’t go back to that.”

Peerboom decided to run for city clerk when she found out no one was on the ballot.

“When I found out that there was no candidates at all, I was very concerned that it was just going to be anybody that was going to be appointed that didn’t have experience, so I registered as a write-in candidate,” Peerboom said. “When I saw that there were other candidates I realized that it was a good choice because none of those other people have the experience that I have.”

Kapitan, who was formerly DeKalb’s clerk, was unable to be reached for comment. Kapitan resigned from that position in February 2012.

Election Day is April 9.