FARMINGTON – Farmington’s new town manager Erica LaCroix grew up in Mt Vernon, so her new position has been something of a homecoming.
“It’s been really neat being back somewhere that feels like home,” she said about returning to the Farmington area. “It’s almost like stepping into an old pair of slippers.” She spent quite a bit of time in Farmington as a child and still has family in the area.
“I’ve been gone long enough that people think I’m a flat-lander,” she said. She left Maine to go away to college at Michigan State University. “I had grand dreams of becoming a veterinarian,” she said. “Obviously it didn’t work out.”
After school, she went to work for a year and ended up staying in Michigan for 25 years. For most of that time, she worked for the city of Lansing in the Public Works department where she started at the bottom as a payroll clerk. What began as a temporary job turned into a career as she discovered her passion for Public Works. “I love my Tonka trucks and my snow, and that’s where I’m happy,” she said. She was once the author of a blog about recycling.
In the early 2000s, she went back to school to get a degree in Public Administration with a concentration in Public Works at Norwich University with the ambition of becoming a Public Works director some day. Instead, she ended up moving to Virginia and working as a Policy and Budget Analyst for the Virginia Department of Transportation. “I hated every minute of it,” she admitted. “It was just so removed from what I enjoy doing, which is being close to seeing the results of my work.”
Eventually, this desire led her to applying for the position of town manager for the town of Winslow. A friend, with whom she had worked with at Weathervane Restaurant in Waterville as a teenager, asked her to apply. “I finally applied just to shut him up” she said, sharing that she had no intention of taking the job. “Three months later, I was in Winslow as the new town manager.”
She was thankful for her well-rounded background in what she calls the three pillars of local government: public works, police and fire. A previous job she had working in administration for a sheriff’s department had taught her what she needed to know about how police departments operate and gave her the opportunity to work closely with a fire department as well.
“It gave me a good basis for understanding the job that had to be done,” LaCroix said. Even so, there was much for her to learn. She had no experience in other areas like code enforcement, tax collection, and municipal planning. “It was a big learning curve.”
“I think a lot of people have the idea that the bigger the municipality, the harder it is, but that’s wrong because the smaller the municipality the more hats you have to wear, so the more things you have to become job proficient at,” LaCroix explained. “We accomplished a lot in Winslow in the three years I was there. It’s a great town.”
A colleague pushed her to apply for the Farmington town manager opening: it seemed like a natural next step for her, being a college town and a service center.
“Instantly, I felt I had a connection with the selectboard,” LaCroix said. She reported that it has been a happy transition, despite the rough start of December’s flood occurring just days after she began her position: “Nothing like jumping right in with both feet.”
LaCroix spoke highly of the town’s reaction to the flood: “These people did a fantastic job. I can’t say enough about the work that was done by the boots-on-the-ground.”
It showed her that communication between the town and the public is incredibly important and something that Farmington can improve on. She mentioned her plans to create a social media presence for Farmington and explore a combination of communication avenues.
“I think Farmington has got a lot of great things already,” she said when asked what she hopes to accomplish in her position.“The first thing I really want to be doing is getting out into the community, meeting people, and engaging with people.”
She is planning to put together a series called Coffee with the Manager in conjunction with local businesses that would give the public an opportunity to ask questions and get to know her.
“I welcome feedback,” LaCroix said. She encourages any member of the public who wants to talk with her about anything to reach out and set up an appointment with her at the Town Office. She is more than happy to answer questions, whether that’s during a meeting in her office or at a local coffee shop.
