NORTH HAVERHILL — The longtime Grafton County register of deeds whose tenure has been marked by acrimony with county commissioners and staff is facing a Democratic primary challenge from the sister of the assistant county administrator who promises if elected she will bring a “professional work environment” to the office.

Terri Grimes, of Thornton, N.H., and the sister of Assistant County Administrator Holly Burbank, is hoping to unseat Kelley Monahan, an Orford resident who has been register of deeds since 2011, when she herself unseated then-incumbent Register of Deeds Bill Sharp in a close primary.

The winner of Tuesday’s state primary will face Republican Daniel Werman, of Campton, N.H., in November’s general election. Werman has no primary challenger.

“I come from a public service family. I feel like it’s my duty,” said Grimes, daughter of Butch Burbank, Thorton’s Selectboard chairman and former police chief. “When you read the (County Commission) meeting minutes I realized the county is in trouble. The register of deeds office has issues.”

Monahan, 64, maintains she has been vilified because she has dared to call out what she sees as everything from shoddy maintenance to wasteful spending. She points to the record revenue her office has brought into the county and her work to push through sorely-needed technology innovations in the register’s office. She is seeking an eighth term in office.

One of those improvements, Monahan points out, avoided potential catastrophe last month when a lightening strike knocked out the county government’s IT system. The servers in the register’s office were spared, however, because Monahan said she had shifted the database where the office’s records are stored to an out-of-state contractor. 

“When I first took office, I recognized that it would require a lioness to be the gatekeeper for these records and I have not been wrong,” Monahan said during a candidate’s forum organized by Grafton County Democrats last week.

“I have held a mirror to peoples’ behavior, people who have never been held accountable for their actions. For this I have been met with lies, gaslighting and hostile behavior. I do not believe that local government should be run as a family business. The people of Grafton County deserve better,” she said.

 “I am determined to finish the work that I started and have the fortitude to finish the job,” she added.

Perhaps the most prosaic of county government functions, the register of deed’s office keeps records on the sale and purchase of real estate property, collecting in fiscal 2023 a total of $15.7 million in fees from filers which is redistributed to the state and county to fund operations and programs.

Under Monahan, the office has moved toward digitizing all records so they will be available to view online — an ongoing project helped in part by federal American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA, funds. The work has involved “repackaging” former volumes that had been torn apart to be microfilmed but then left in disarray when the project was mishandled under a prior register, according to Monahan.

She’s fiercely protective of her three-person staff who she says have had to work under difficult conditions — they were the only register’s office in the state unable to work remotely during the pandemic because of inadequate broadband in Grafton County. Monahan nonetheless opposes moving the operation into a contemplated new county courthouse complex.

The move, she said, would add at least another $1 million to the cost of the project — entailing a new vault for storing the register’s historic records — an extra cost she said that would burden taxpayers. 

Currently housed in the administrative building at the county government complex, Monahan believes moving the register’s office to the courthouse presents security risks.

“My staff will quit because we are not doing that,” Monahan said. “We are not lifting a pen.”

Grimes, 55, said she would bring “collegiality” between the register’s office and other parts of county government, an approach which she honed in her decades working in the high-stress environment of the health care sector.

Her three-decade career as a registered respiratory therapist has thrust her into clinical assignments around the country and world — she helped crew medical aid flights and worked for 18 years at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center where she rose to the level of supervisor — and has taught her how to work in fraught situations.

“You really don’t learn how to communicate until you have to onload and offload a patient on a plane in the Caribbean,” Grimes explained during the candidate's forum last week.

Grimes also cites the “business acumen” she developed as a sales manager for an Arizona respiratory medical device maker where she was responsible for overseas accounts, and as a safety officer for a medical facility.

Although she doesn’t yet know the “inner workings” behind running the register’s office, Grimes is confident her background enables her to quickly get up to speed.

“My recent career has been in management and so whether it’s in a health care company or the register of deed’s office I’m going to manage people in the same manner,” she said. “I can do paperwork. I’m super efficient. I can run an office and manage people in all fairness, transparency and humility.”

The skills acquired working in a hospital setting, Grimes believes, are “transferable to the register’s office “where you’re frequently dealing with people who are maybe frustrated about something or facing challenges in finding a document.”

Grimes also dismissed a question whether being the sister of the assistant county administrator — with whom Monahan acknowledges she has clashed — conflicts with her serving as register of deeds.

“We’ve been in the public arena so long that professionalism is everything to us,” Grimes said about growing up in Thornton, where her father has long served in public jobs. “It’s not a concern of mine in any way.” 

The one potential downside to the register’s job doesn’t phase Grimes: there is no direct route be tween Thornton where she lives and North Haverhill where the county government offices are located. Grimes estimates the commute would take anywhere from 40 to 50 minutes.

 “I drove an hour and 15 minutes to (DHMC) for 18 years, so, yeah, I’m not worried,” she said.

The register of deeds’ position pays about $70,000 a year.

Contact John Lippman at jlippman@vnews.com.