Haverhill
Lacaillade, 57, who has also been serving as interim town manager since March, said she had doubts about whether she would be selected from an initial pool of 19 candidates for the post.
“I was nervous,” she said. “I know I was a good candidate for the job but I don’t have a degree.”
Ultimately, she said, Selectboard Chairman Wayne Fortier visited her home on May 4 to tell her that the town planned to offer her a contract.
Lacaillade replaces Glenn English, who had served in the position since it was first created in 1995.
English had a contract of $69,000 for a 40-hour workweek; Lacaillade said the salary of her contract has not yet been finalized, but that there was agreement her contract will include pay for a workweek of 45 hours.
Because the town staff only consists of two full-timers and a part-timer, operating over the last few months without English has made it difficult to take on new initiatives for the town, Lacaillade said.
“Because I was covering both my old job and new job, it didn’t allow for a lot beyond the never-ending tasks,” she said.
Lacaillade’s new position will begin on July 1; that’s when she also hopes to bring the staff back up to full strength by hiring someone to fill the finance officer position she is leaving behind.
Once the town is at full staffing, Lacaillade said she hopes to delve more deeply into a series of issues affecting area residents.
Haverhill has no zoning laws, she said, so she is exploring how the town can use state statutes to address a few of its hazardous and dilapidated buildings.
Another major piece of town business will be figuring out what to do with the town’s recyclable materials. A longstanding agreement with Newbury is ending, because that town is affected by Vermont’s new universal recycling laws.
“Newbury can’t take ours anymore, so I have to get some alternatives together for the board,” she said.
She’ll also be overseeing her first new major road project on Clark Pond Road, and be grappling with a perennial problem at the A. P. Hill Community Pool in Haverhill, which has continued to leak despite multiple repair efforts over the last few years.
Lacaillade said she doesn’t see much of a difference in personal style between herself and English, who she described as always keeping his door open to the public, and having high standards for the staff to be knowledgeable about issues.
Lacaillade, who grew up in Randolph, bought a home in Haverhill in 2009.
“Even though it can sometimes be a fractured community, I think there’s a true desire on the part of the community to make it a place people want to live,” she said. “I hear people say there’s nothing to do in this town. If they look in the papers, you’ll see there’s never weekend that there’s not something to do – church suppers, or music jams, or something else.”
Matt Hongoltz-Hetling can be reached at mhonghet@vnews.com or 603-727-3211.