One of the great pleasures of living in Truro, especially for year-rounders, is getting to know some of the town’s 220 or so employees.
Have a question about the status of your application for a building permit? You won’t deal with a faceless bureaucrat; you’ll talk with the building department’s administrative assistant Arozana Davis, “Zana” to her friends, which includes virtually any one she meets.
Signing up for a pass at Highland Links? The man behind the counter will probably be Jim Knowles, the town’s Golf Course Manager and resident PGA pro, who can always find the time to sympathize with you about your game.
Town employees tend to stay for the long haul, with both DPW head Paul Morris and Town Clerk Cindy Slade able to boast of of starting back in 1978. But this month brought five new faces to the town workforce: one in the library, two in the DPW, one in the Recreation Department, and one on the police force.
If you see them introduce yourself -- you may make a new friend.
“I’ve always wanted to be a librarian, even in elementary school,” remembers Courtney Francis, the newly hired library assistant. “The librarians I’ve seen always seemed helpful, friendly, and sociable. And I worked in my college library, and had a terrific time.”
Courtney’s first library job was at a small branch in Hyannis, right after graduation from Framingham State College. So Truro represents a positive career step. She still lives in Eastham, where she was born and raised, so the Truro job means a shorter commute. Plus she likes “the vibe” in the Truro library, she says. “It’s larger than where I worked before, with more people coming in every day. And it’s a great space, with lots of little corners where you can just sit and read for as long as you like.”
Most of her working time is spent at the front desk, helping library patrons find whatever they need. “It’s customer service, and I’ve had a lot of experience with that.” She started working in the deli at the Eastham superrette in high school, and still works there part time. “You get a lot more smiles here than behind a deli counter, though. People come into the library happy, and they leave happy.”
Among Courtney’s special interests is young adult reading, helping turn teenagers into lifelong readers with books they’ll find hard to put down. Two particular favorites: The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster, and Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransome Riggs.
Courtney expects to build a career in library work, and hopes to begin work towards a degree in library service through online courses. But wherever her career might take her, she expects to stay on the Outer Cape.
“I’m strictly a small town kind of person,” she explains. “Besides, my family is here.”
Service to the town is nothing new to Chris Lucy, hired this December as a machine operator for the town’s DPW. From 1999 to 2002 he served on the town’s planning board, followed by nine years as an outspoken member of the Board of Selectmen.
“I miss the Board sometimes -- but not often,” he admits. “And I felt comfortable walking away because I had fulfilled most of my goals.”
For Chris, who came to the Cape in 1986 after graduating from Norwich University, living in Truro was a way to capture the feeling of community he knew as a boy. “Truro was exactly the way Topsfield used to be, “ he remembers. “It was a close community, centered around family and friends, where everybody knew everybody.
Married to wife Amy, a Provincetown native, the two built their Truro home in ’91, and started to raise a family, which now includes daughter Nora, 11, and son Ethan, 8.
The biggest change he’s seen since then is how much of the town has been developed over the last 20 years. “I drive up and down the town roads, and where I used to go rabbit hunting there are homes, and where I used to go deer hunting there are homes.
“It’s not like the town is over developed, though. There has been a lot of building, but it is summer houses, and doesn’t effect the town year round. “
For several years, Lucy had his own business, concentrating on tree work, earth moving, and home owner services. “I liked the work,” he says, “but it wasn’t very consistent, and it didn’t have much long term potential.” So he joined the DPW this fall.
“I love the job. I work with great guys in this great town. And every day at 7 am I know what I’ll be doing, and every 2 weeks I know there will be a pay check in the bank.
“My wife thinks I’m my crazy. Every morning I go to work whistling.
“It’s another way for me to give something back to the town, too. There are skills I have, things I can do, and now I have a chance to do them.”
Assistant transfer station attendant and DPW truck driver Julius Smith first came to the Outer Cape here for a summer job, working at Clem and Ursis on an H2B visa. But like so many who chose to make the Outer Cape their home, it was the landscape and the lifestyle that convinced him to leave Jamaica for a new life here.
“I loved it from the start,” Julius remembers. “It’s a quiet and beautiful place filled with fun people. I like the fishing, the boating, the beaches ... and I get to do those things regularly, at least in the summer.”
After Clem and Ursis, Julius went to Parker Driving School for his class A commercial truck drivers license, fulfilling a boyhood dream. But he gave up life on the road last year to spend more time with his new wife, Rosemary, daughter of a long-time Provincetown fishing family, and took a job with Noons before being hired to work at the transfer station .
“Mostly I help out with the recycling, although I’ve also started doing some of the computer work.” Julius says. “ It’s not crazy busy this time of year, and I can learn what I need to know for when it is.”
For newly hired Racine Oxtoby, her job as a counselor with the Recreation Department was a homecoming of sorts. Born and raised in Truro, the daughter of Ken and Jane Oxtoby, she remembers the good times she had at Truro Rec in the summers of her own childhood.
“I look back at it a lot,” she says. “I had a lot of fun there and wanted to be part of it now.”
This isn’t Racine’s first gig with the Rec Department, though. Enrolled at Connecticut College over the last four years, she worked with Rec each summer. Then this fall -- with graduation behind her and graduate school ahead -- she took on the job as counselor of Rec’s popular Pamet After School program.
Pamet After School offers much more than conventional day care. Open to Truro Central School boys and girls from kindergarden through sixth grade it aims to provide curriculum enrichment and learning opportunities along with games in the multi-purpose room or out at Puma Park.
Homework comes first for everyone, with students’ work checked by the counselor. Then each student is expected to complete a minimum of twenty minutes of reading. Only when the schoolwork and reading are done can they move on on to the program’s projects, like the house gingerbread house they built before Christmas, or the playwriting class that Racine taught during the summer. There’s always physical activity, too, like dodge ball in the gym, or relay races
“We have to do something to help them burn off all their energy,” Racine says, laughing.
Racine seems to have energy to burn herself. Besides her part time job with the Rec Department, she works for the Provincetown Monument, doing grant research and managing the online store, and is housesitting for a friend of the family, and filling what time remains with rehearsals for the upcoming Orleans’ Academy’s performance of “Fiddler on the Roof.”
There was never much doubt what career path 24 year old Mark Sklute would follow. His Dad was the Police Lieutenant in their home town of Shrewsbury, and his Uncle was a Sergeant on the force in West Boylston. “So I grew up around law enforcement,” Mark remembers, “and always wanted to serve.”
Mark started working in the field early. Enrolled in 2007 in the criminal justice program at Westfield State, he looked for Massachusetts towns that made part time special summer appointments, then wrote to all of them, looking for a summer job. The first offer came from Wellfleet, where he would work for the next four summers. Hired full-time by Wellfleet after graduation, he moved to the Truro Department last July.
Like all new hires, his first requirement was to pass the training program at one of the Commonwealth’s police academies. Enrolled in late July, Mark graduated on December 16, when his proud Dad pinned him with his newly earned badge.
There was no time to rest, however. Within days he began the eight week field training program recently instituted by Chief Takakjian. For four weeks he will work with Officer Carrie DeAngleo, followed by four weeks with Sergeant Craig Danziger, time spent learning the town’s roads and landmarks and the department’s policies and procedures.
Today Mark lives in a house in Harwich, a 35 minute commute to work. His neighbors include his four closest high school friends, all of whom worked as special officers on the Cape in the summer, and all of whom are still in law enforcement. He’ll have a roommate this summer, too, his younger brother, who will by following Mark’s path and working as a special officer in Wellfleet.
Mark relishes the opportunity he’s been given to join Truro’s finest. “My Dad talked with me about what I needed to do as a police officer. ‘Be the best employee they’ve got,’ he told me. ‘Show up early, stay late, and always give 100%.’"
“That’s how my Dad lived and worked through his entire career, and that’s what I’m aiming for in my career, too.”
Sincerely,
Curtis Hartman
Chair, Board of Selectmen
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