Trish Shinkle, who recorded town history for 20 years, has retired

There aren’t many people, if any, who have been to more Longboat Key Town Commission meetings than Trish Shinkle.

She started as Longboat Key Town Clerk in June 2006, taking meticulous records of every meeting since. Mayor Debra Williams described the Clerk’s Office as “the doorway to local government.” Shinkle and her office’s staff recorded votes of commission members, prepared and shared agendas, fulfilled public records requests and posted public notices.

As the make up of town commission has changed around her, Shinkle sat at the base of the dais doing the unglamorous paperwork necessary at each meeting.

“It’s one of those jobs you don’t talk about, but without her, things would have gotten screwed up quickly,” said Town Commissioner BJ Bishop.

The records she kept will allow future residents and historians a glimpse into decisions made by the town government from June 2006 to June 2026, but the knowledge that lives in her head from that firsthand record-keeping experience will be hard to replace.

“If we asked if something was on the ballot in 2014, she could just recall it off the top of her head,” Town Manager Howard Tipton said. “She was very encyclopedic in that way. She was very well organized. She could always put her hands on whatever information we requested, and could do it usually in seconds it seemed like.”

She had a front row seat to some of the most consequential decisions the Town Commission has made. Recently, the discussion around changing the name of the town’s main road was a contentious issue with vast feedback from the public. Shinkle and her team cataloged and organized the hundreds of emails that poured in on the subject.

But neither the potential renaming of Gulf of Mexico Drive nor the approval of the St. Regis nor sign code amendments were the most contentious topics that came before the commission in her time, as Shinkle remembers. That honor belongs to the proposed expansion of the Longboat Key Club in 2010. There was so much public interest that meetings had to be moved down the road to the Temple Beth Israel synagogue to accommodate the influx of people.

“That was a big production because you had to take all the recording equipment and the cameras and all the commission goodies that we have to do,” Shinkle said as she sat in her office for the last time Tuesday afternoon. “It was basically moving this office down there is what it was.”

Shinkle, a Bradenton native, worked for 13 years as a clerk with Sarasota County before coming to Longboat Key. She said doing so was a great decision.

“I really didn’t know a lot about Longboat Key,” Shinkle said. “The people are so involved and interested in their community. At the county level, it’s so big that they don’t get involved with their commissioners and their staff members. But here everybody is very friendly, very appreciative of the work that the staff does, and you’re on a first-name basis with a lot of the citizens.”

The biggest misconception people have about Longboat Key is about the people, Shinkle said.

“Everybody thinks that you have to have a certain amount of wealth to be welcome on Longboat Key, but that’s not the case at all,” she said. “The people, the citizens, the commissioners, they are all so very down to earth. They enjoy their community and they’re proud of their community.”

As Shinkle steps away for retirement, she says the town is in good hands.

“This commission that we have now, and that’s inclusive of the former Mayor Ken Schneier, they’re the most cohesive that I’ve worked with in the last 20 years,” Shinkle said. “When I came, they battled amongst themselves and it slowly got to a point where those interested in serving the public came forward and took over and actually served the public. The administrative team that (Tipton) has put together is also the best that I’ve worked with in the last 20 years.”

After Shinkle’s last day Tuesday, she continued to pack her bags for a trip to Alaska.

Celine Kidwell has been hired as the next town clerk, with a tentative start date of July 20.