The Pleasant Hill city clerk, accused of spending her time Tweeting during City Council meetings instead of keeping minutes, has resigned with a blistering e-mail in which she wishes the city good luck in finding a “schmuck” to take what she described as an awful job. 
 
 Kim Lehmkuhl had denied she was slacking off on the job and doing nothing but playing around on Twitter. Her critics simply don’t understand the medium, she said. 
 
 In an e-mail Monday to Mayor Tim Flaherty announcing her resignation, effective immediately, she wrote, “This has been an atrocious, incredibly depressing and mind-numbingly inane experience I would not wish on anyone. I wish the city the best of luck in finding some schmuck eager to transcribe every last misogynistic joke, self-indulgent anecdote and pathetic pandering attempt by council, and every tinfoil hat conspiracy theory, racist aside, and NIMBY asshattery from the lovely council meeting frequent flyers, without which, surely our democracy could not flourish.” 
 
 Lehmkul had been the subject of a recall effort after city officials said she had failed to provide minutes for up to a year. She later produced minutes for some of those meetings. 
 
 She had been known for Tweeting during council meetings, with posts that included personal observations. 
 
 Lehmkuhl took a job in Washington, D.C., with Working America, an affiliate of the AFL-CIO that represents non-union workers, according to her Twitter account. The Twitter account she had used as city clerk has been taken down. ||||| There is a lot of relief in Pleasant Hill after city clerk Kim Lehmkuhl resigned after accusations that she failed to do the most basic part of her job. She wrote a scathing resignation letter."I'm paraphrasing our former President Gerald Ford in saying 'Our long municipal nightmare is now over.' Our city clerk has resigned," Pleasant Hill Mayor Tim Flaherty said.City leaders say Monday was a good day for Pleasant Hill, now that Lehmkuhl resigned. Lehmkuhl was elected in 2012 and for most of her time in office failed to produce minutes of city council meetings.In her resignation letter, Lehmkuhl wrote, "This has been an atrocious, incredibly depressing, and mind-numbingly inane experience I would not wish on anyone.""It's been long awaited. The problem with our city clerk and her performance has just been a distraction to the city staff and to the city council focusing on our work of the policy-making body that we are," Flaherty said.It's unclear why Lehmkuhl failed to do her job. City leaders say they never got a straight answer. Lehmkuhl was, however, a prolific tweeter during council meetings. In an interview with ABC7 News in January, she defended her actions."I really take issue with the sort of idea that it's very easy to sort of contemporaneously record all of these minutes if I weren't screwing around on Twitter. Unfortunately, I think that's really a misunderstanding of the medium," said Lehmkuhl on January 8, 2014.City leaders say Lehmkuhl's resignation saves the city more than $20,000 for a recall. As for Lehmkuhl, ABC7 News was unable to get a hold of her, but in her resignation letter she says she's leaving Pleasant Hill for a job in Washington D.C. ||||| PLEASANT HILL -- City Clerk Kim Lehmkuhl, under fire for months for failing to produce meeting minutes for an entire year and the subject of a recall effort, resigned Monday. 
 
 Lehmkuhl, who was elected in 2012, emailed a brief but scathing resignation letter to Mayor Tim Flaherty, noting that she has accepted an undisclosed new job in Washington, D.C. 
 
 "This has been an atrocious, incredibly depressing and mind-numbingly inane experience I would not wish on anyone," Lehmkuhl wrote, adding that she wishes the city luck in finding a "schmuck" eager to transcribe the record of council meetings. 
 
 She went on to lambaste the council and members of the public for "misogynistic jokes," "racist asides" and "tinfoil hat" conspiracy theories uttered during meetings. 
 
 Pleasant Hill City Clerk Kimberly Lehmkuhl (Courtesy photo) 
 
 Although Lehmkuhl never produced any minutes during her first year in office, she was a prolific Twitter user who employed the social media platform to tweet updates during council proceedings. The posts under the account she used for official city clerk's business were often salted with personal opinions, a controversial practice that raised the ire of council members and the public. 
 
 All five council members and several residents had called on Lehmkuhl to step down as the saga over the missing minutes dragged on for months. But Lehmkuhl defiantly refused and downplayed both the seriousness of her failure to do her job and the recall effort. 
 
 Lehmkuhl could not be reached for comment Monday, and there was only brief acknowledgment of her departure during Monday night's City Council meeting. 
 
 "I'm very happy to hear that the City Clerk has resigned," said Councilman Jack Weir before giving plaudits to members of the recall team. "Thank you very much for all the effort you put into this. I think it made a difference." 
 
 Mayor Flaherty prefaced the announcement of the resignation by saying, "To paraphrase Gerald Ford, our long municipal nightmare is over." 
 
 Flaherty was the last council member to call publicly for Lehmkuhl's resignation, which he did at the May 12 meeting. Although he encouraged her to step down privately, Flaherty said he was concerned about having an undue influence on the public's opinion of the situation. 
 
 "For me the final straw was when I was informed that the county clerk had a workshop for all city clerks for the upcoming (November) election," he said earlier. "She did not show up for the county clerk's workshop nor did she even respond to the invitation." 
 
 The city sent two staffers in Lehmkuhl's place for the May 8 workshop, and that was how they learned she didn't attend, he added. 
 
 The council will have 60 days to either appoint a replacement for Lehmkuhl or call a special election, according to City Manager June Catalano. 
 
 Whether the Lehmkuhl era could have lasting repercussions remains to be seen. 
 
 In March, the council agreed to place a measure on the November ballot asking whether the city clerk's position should be changed from an elected to an appointed office. If voters approve making the position appointed, a staff member who answers to the city manager will assume the clerk's duties. The election will cost Pleasant Hill about $19,000. 
 
 A group of residents in February launched an effort to recall Lehmkuhl. If it had qualified for the November ballot, the election would have cost Pleasant Hill an estimated $23,712, according to the Contra Costa County Elections Division. But even though Lehmkuhl's resignation makes the recall a moot point, Pleasant Hill did have to spend some money on it. 
 
 The council in March agreed to pay a former employee $80 per hour to manage the recall process, because Lehmkuhl -- who was the city's elections official -- could not oversee her own recall. 
 
 Lisa P. White covers Concord and Pleasant Hill. Contact her at 925-943-8011. Follow her at Twitter.com/lisa_p_white.
– The resignation of a Northern California town's city clerk generally wouldn't garner much in the way of press, but the drama surrounding Kim Lehmkuhl's exit from her Pleasant Hill post is just a wee bit outside the norm. Lehmkuhl was elected to the position in 2012, but things have since grown frosty between the city official and the town, with the Contra Costa Times reporting that the 34-year-old was accused of taking no minutes during city council meetings in her entire first year, and instead tweeting her way through them—under a city account, and in a very opinionated way, the city charged. Some residents called for her to step down (she refused, and the San Francisco Chronicle notes that she did later produce minutes for some meetings), and the council in March announced a November ballot item would seek to change the position to an appointed one, reports the AP. The moves, as it turns out, were unnecessary: Lehmkuhl quit on Monday, in fiery fashion, to take a job in Washington, DC. In an email to the mayor and city manager, she wrote that "this has been an atrocious, incredibly depressing, and mind-numbingly inane experience I would not wish on anyone. I wish the City the best of luck in finding some schmuck eager to transcribe every last misogynistic joke, self-indulgent anecdote, and pathetic pandering attempt by Council." She also wished the city manager "best of luck with your imminent unfunded pensions scandal, that is going to be a rough one." But Lehmkuhl wasn't the only one with blistering words. Said Pleasant Hill Mayor Tim Flaherty at Monday night's council meeting, per ABC7, "I'm paraphrasing our former President Gerald Ford in saying 'Our long municipal nightmare is now over.' Our city clerk has resigned." Her city-related Twitter account is no more as well.