The treasurer's desk and the controller's desk: keepers of the purse

1899 – today

William M. Clark, the first long server: If the clerk kept the record, the treasurer kept the money, and Mishawaka's first treasurer kept it longer than any man kept any elective desk in the charter generation. William M. Clark is treasurer in Howard's roster of May 1899, and in 1900, and in 1902, and in 1904, and in November 1905 — five successive rosters, the whole span of Howard's lists, through three mayors (Fisher, Mix, Frank) and two changes of clerk. He is the first servant in this section whose tenure the record measures in administrations rather than in years, and he sets the pattern the section keeps finding: in Mishawaka the elective desks below the mayor turned over slowly, and the city's continuity sat in them.

The desks diverge and rejoin: The 1921 directory shows the charter frame intact: City Treasurer Willis L. Kimball, with the newer appointed desk beside the elected ones — City Controller Walter Michael, the clerk of 1905 translated, as the clerk's entry keeps him. By 1949 the purse desks stand: Treasurer Rene DeMeyer and Controller Richard F. Kleiser. By 1956 DeMeyer is treasurer still, and the controller is Joseph W. Snyder — the Fifth District councilman of the 1949 roll, moved from the legislative side of City Hall to its counting room, the only council-to-controller crossing the directories document and a small proof that the city's service was a career ladder inside one building. By 1963 the controller is Herbert D. Biddle, and the treasurer's separate desk is gone from the classified pages: its duties sit with the clerk-treasurer, Oscar Van De Putte, in the combined office the Government section records. When the combination was made no source read for either section dates; it stands in the Government section's gaps, with the session laws and ordinance books named to settle it.

The modern purse: The controller's course between Biddle in 1963 and the modern schedules is not carried in the sources read — the same run of financial reports that would fill the clerk's gap fills this one, officials schedule by officials schedule. The modern controller documented is Rebecca S. Maguire, City Controller in the officials schedule of the 2021 financial report, the appointed keeper of the purse in the second-class-city frame the modern government sits under: an elected clerk, an appointed controller, and the mayor between them — the frame Walter Michael's appointment in 1921 began, a century of the purse kept by a servant the voters did not choose and the record mostly does not name. The unnamed stretches are this desk's named gap, and they are most of its length.

Sources:

1. Timothy E. Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1907), vol. 1 — Treasurer William M. Clark in the rosters of 1899, 1900, 1902, 1904 and 1905.
2. R. L. Polk & Co., South Bend City Directory (1921), Mishawaka section — Treasurer Willis L. Kimball; Controller Walter Michael.
3. R. L. Polk & Co., directories of 1949, 1956 and 1963 — Treasurer Rene DeMeyer (1949, 1956); Controllers Richard F. Kleiser (1949), Joseph W. Snyder (1956), Herbert D. Biddle (1963); Councilman Joseph W. Snyder, Fifth District (1949).
4. City of Mishawaka, Annual Financial Report (2021), as carried in the Government section — City Controller Rebecca S. Maguire.