Tracie Lloyd is a lifelong Canyon County resident. As a young teen in the late 1970s, she began typing reports for the coroner and assisting her mother with the newly formed county ambulance district, of which she was office manager.
Little did she know, the next time she would not be employed by Canyon County would be September 2024. At the beginning of that month, Lloyd will retire from her position as treasurer, which she has held for 27 years.
“I came in 1981 to the treasurer’s office,” she said. “I kept bugging Glenydine [Whiteley]. I think she just got tired of me pestering her, so she said, ‘I’ll hire you so you leave me alone.’”
Lloyd’s first full-time position with the county was as a tax clerk. She worked in the civil processing division, then in an accounting and bank reconciliation role. Treasurer Glenydine Whiteley, who hired her, retired a couple of years afterwards, and her chief deputy Zelda Nickel took over the mantle of treasurer.
“We were having [Nickel’s] victory party, I guess, and I turned to my dad and said, ‘I’m going to do that someday.’ It’s always been something that I had my mind set that I wanted to do,” Lloyd recalled. “I always loved public service, it’s just always been a passion of mine.”
In 1997, Nickel was elected as a county commissioner, and asked Lloyd if she would be interested in the soon-to-be-vacant treasurer job. Lloyd put her name forward to the central committee, and was appointed to fill the rest of Nickel’s term.
The changes that Lloyd oversaw in the treasurer’s office included implementing e-statements before even the state of Idaho did, and beefing up check fraud prevention protections with reverse positive pay.
“We’ve used technology to our advantage,” she said. “The office size of the staff has not increased. We share an employee between the assessor and the clerk and I.”
Lloyd was also instrumental in launching a continuing education regimen for county treasurers and their staff, initially through Boise State University and then through North Idaho College. The program began more than 23 years ago, and its annual conference offers between 10 and 20 hours of courses per session. In a typical year, it sees between 80 and 100 participants.
While Lloyd herself has completed more than 350 hours of continuing education, another participant was Sabrina Young, the treasurer of Washington County, located north of Caldwell along the Idaho/Oregon border.
“I was a newly elected treasurer in January of 2015, and having not worked in local government prior, I definitely appreciated the education program,” Young said. “[Lloyd] has been one of my mentors within the [Idaho] Association [of County Treasurers].”
Lloyd briefly submitted a resignation letter in 2008 — out of frustration with a software training update, she says — but it was not accepted, and she hasn’t looked back since.
“Maybe you could say I wasn’t employed for a weekend,” she said.
In a news release sent out this month, Canyon County pointed out that Lloyd was elected president of the Idaho Treasurer’s Association in 2019, and received the prestigious Mills-Adler Award from the Idaho Association of Counties for outstanding service.
In the release, Lloyd noted the significant growth she has witnessed in Canyon County since she was first hired in the treasurer’s office.
“In 1981, our total tax roll charge was right at $18 million for all taxing districts countywide. Now we’re at over $248 million,” she said. “Our total number of parcels was between 28,000 and 30,000, and now we’re at almost 110,000 parcels.”
In her retirement, Lloyd hopes to spend more time with her two dogs — terrier mix Oscar and golden retriever Barley — and her two grandsons, ages 6 and 14. She plans for the dogs to accompany her on the many cross-country road trips she would like to take.
“I love to write, so I’m hoping that I can do that. I used to love to draw, and I haven’t done that for a long time,” Lloyd said. “I’m hoping to tap into more of my creative side, too. I just want to express my sincere gratitude to the citizens of Canyon County for giving me this opportunity to serve them.”
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