Buck stops in Machias for new town manager

MACHIAS – Betsy Fitzgerald’s desk has two things on it already, in addition to the paperwork that goes with being an incoming town manager.

She has flowers, a welcome-to-Machias gift from the staff at the town office. And she has an engraved mounted motto – “The buck stops here” – that was a going-away gift from colleagues in Vassalboro.

Fitzgerald was grinning Tuesday morning, her second day in her new position. She started Friday after working into the evening Thursday at her old position of code enforcement officer for Vassalboro.

“The buck stops here!” she said by way of introduction. “That’s how I am.”

The motto originates with President Harry S. Truman, who happens to be a personal hero for Fitzgerald, a high school history and government teacher for 35 years.

“As far as I’m concerned, Harry S. Truman sits at the right side of God,” she said. “He had a no-nonsense approach and so do I.”

Fitzgerald, 57, replaces Christine Therrien as town manager. Therrien was in Machias for four years before taking the town manager’s position in Madawaska in May.

Rep. Eddie DuGay, D-Cherryfield, filled in since May as the interim town manager, working on an hourly rate.

Fitzgerald was selected from among nine applicants and five finalists for the position. She will receive $41,000 per year.

“We were very impressed with her, and from the start she was our No. 1 candidate,” said Aubrey “Skip” Carter, the town’s first selectman. “She is probably the person we need for Machias at this point. And she’s a hometown girl.”

Fitzgerald grew up in Machiasport and graduated from Washington Academy in 1966 and the University of Maine at Machias in 1970. Two years of teaching were followed by 33 years teaching at Erskine Academy, Maine’s second-largest public-private school in South China, near Augusta.

She retired in 2005 and turned to code enforcement work.

“I was not unhappy teaching, but I had done everything that I could do,” she said of her career change. “I went into code enforcement, and that has been interesting, too.”

Recently she worked as code enforcement officer in two central Maine towns – Vassalboro, population 4,100 and Benton, population 2,300.

With approval from the Machias selectmen, she will be going back to Vassalboro each Saturday until that town fills her old position – “because I know that code enforcement officers are hard to find.”

She prepared for her new field by getting a master’s degree in public policy through the Muskie School of Public Service at the University of Southern Maine in 1990. She has completed all but her dissertation toward a doctoral degree – same field, same school.

She has returned Down East regularly through the years – her sister, Susan West, lives here. She said the chance to be town manager in Machias “just presented itself,” and her application led to two interviews.

“I had been thinking that eventually I would return to Washington County, just not this soon,” she said.

She spent Friday touring the town with Warren Gay, another Machias selectmen.

From now on, she said, as she gets to know the town and its issues in a new light, her job will be “to listen.”