Nathalie Muller, town hall secretary in four small communes in Gers, handles a variety of administrative tasks for a salary of 1,700 euros. She juggles civil status records, teachers' pay, and neighbor disputes, moving from one town hall to another by car. 'My car is my second office,' she says.
Nathalie Muller, 38, works as town hall secretary in four communes in Gers: Sansan (102 residents), Durban (160), Traversères (72), and Ornézan (260). In a region of grain fields and second homes, she spends half a day each week in Sansan, in a modest 1980s building that also houses the village hall.
In her Sansan office, fitted with two screens, a stapler, a letter scale, and a printer, she starts the day by opening curtains, turning on the heat, and checking emails. She relays Météo France alerts on bad weather and a prefecture order banning traffic in forest areas. In her left-handed script, she logs weekend messages in a notebook: a subsidy request for a school trip, a TVA compensation notice, a summons to the intercommunal electrification syndicate assembly, and an announcement of software changes at the departmental fire and rescue center.
The next day, she holds office hours in Ornézan, then drives to Durban and Traversères in her white Renault Clio. A call from the Auch area's urban planning service reports a deadline overrun on a farmer's building permit; she will need to explain restarting the process with an architect and the Cerfa form.
Sansan's mayor, Jacques Sonilhac, 72, a former carpenter, values her support: 'Since she's here, I'm practically on vacation. All these treasury reports, procedures, and files are too heavy for me. And there are many things I don't know how to do.'