Charlie Yard and Katherine Pilbin join staff

By Lloyd Garrison

Charlie Yard and Katherine Pilbin are determined to boost ad revenues, despite the weak economy.

Norfolk Now has added two new volunteers to help reverse a drop in ad
revenues due to a soft economy.

Katherine Pilbin and Charlie Yard, who runs Ledgey Knoll Construction,
have replaced Heidi Dunavant, who chose to resign as ad manager. Yard
will handle all ad queries and seek new clients, and Pilbin will keep the
books and oversee billing.
“Separating the two functions should increase efficiency all around,” says
Pilbin, a RN who evaluates insurance and Medicare assessments at Geer
Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Canaan.
Rising prices have affected many advertisers, and the housing slump has led
to a dip in the number and size of ads taken out by real estate firms. Norfolk
Now depends on ad revenue for covering much of the costs of publication.
Both Yard and Pilbin are determined to boost revenue, and Yard anticipates
that his work as a contractor will be a plus in recruiting new business. “I do
construction all over Litchfield County,” he says, “and I am in contact with
many area merchants on a regular basis.”
The two decided to join Norfolk Now after Bob Bumcrot made an appeal for
a new ad manager at the March meeting of the Norfolk Lions Club. Both
Yard and Pilbin are Lions club members, and Yard is the club’s vice-
president.
When the two volunteered their services, the paper’s executive editors
decided that each brought special attributes to the job and they would make a
good team.
Yard is already heavily committed to volunteerism in Norfolk. In addition to
being an officer of the Lions club, he and his wife, Tara, form an emergency
medical response team with the Norfolk ambulance. Yard is a certified
ambulance driver and his wife is a trained emergency medical technician.
They are on call every Thursday night and every other Friday.
This is Katherine Pilbin’s first venture as a community volunteer since
joining the Lions club. In addition to serving at Geer, she helps out with the
bookkeeping of DSP Enterprise, her husband David’s landscaping business.
She is also a certified tax collector and works as a part-time assistant to
Eleanore LaForge, the town’s tax collector.