Retiring Norway Town Manager Dennis Lajoie, left, stands Wednesday with Bradley Plante in the lobby of the Norway Town Office. Lajoie’s official last day is Sunday, after which Plante will become interim town manager. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal
NORWAY — After working nearly 30 years for Community Concepts, the last five as the CEO of its finance corporation, Dennis Lajoie needed a change.
He had reported to a five-member board, he had worked with human resources, financial development and grant writing, but he wondered if those skills could transfer out of the nonprofit sphere.
When he read that David Holt was stepping down after 28 years as Norway town manager, Lajoie decided to apply, admitting that he really didn’t know all that it entailed.
Dennis Lajoie stands outside the Norway Town Office on Wednesday where he has served as town manager for the past six years. He will retire Sunday. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal
Lajoie was no slam-dunk to get the job. Select Board Chairman Russell Newcomb, who has served on the board for more than 20 years, was part of the hiring committee.
“It was a little risky getting someone who didn’t have municipal experience, but he had managed a nonprofit that had a lot more folks than we had,” Newcomb said. “It seemed like his managerial style was very personable. He had a lot of backup here in town, because when we hired him, he had a lot of folks that had been on hand for a lot of years.”
In hindsight, there was nothing risky about the choice.
Lajoie is retiring this weekend after nearly six years as town manager, and his fingerprints are everywhere.
Downtown Norway continues to grow and is widely praised. It was recognized by Down East magazine as one of the 10 best small-town downtowns in Maine. He helped steer the new town garage project to completion, which he considers one of his top accomplishments.
His partnership with the Maine Department of Transportation has led to the proposed Main Street transformation project that would improve Main Street, slow traffic and improve parking.
And for the past 18 months, Lajoie has had to hire the next generation of town leaders following the resignation of nearly every department head, delaying his own retirement for four months.
“I can’t say enough about Dennis,” retired Fire Chief Dennis Yates said about Lajoie. “He’s been super for the town of Norway.
“He’s a really good people person,” Newcomb said. “He was able to get all the departments to work together. There are so many things that work together. That was really great about Dennis, his ability to find the best in the workers that we have.”
Lajoie, 62, was born and raised in Cranston, Rhode Island. He joined the U.S. Army in 1979 and served as a military police officer in Washington, D.C. He left the military in 1982 and moved to Maine, where his sister lived. He got a job as a part-time police officer in Paris and also worked full time for Community Concepts as a contractor doing weatherization.
He left to work for Norway for two years helping to administer a $1 million federal grant from the Community Development Block Grant program.
He returned to Community Concepts and remained there for 27 years working in a variety of roles, including director of housing, director of real estate development before starting the organization’s finance corporation where he served as CEO.
Named town manager in 2017, Lajoie said he wondered at first if he was right for the job.
“That first summer I would walk around the building saying, ‘What the heck am I doing?'” he said. “The numbers are the numbers, but I had to learn a whole new language. It took a while to learn all of the various language, and there is no book to follow. The good thing was the staff was here for a long time. There was a good working relationship, and I asked a lot of questions.”
“The first year was my learning year,” he added. “The town didn’t have any major issues to resolve. My background was in development and project management so the highway garage and all of the other things fit into what I knew. We had good people here, a clean audit. There was nothing to overcome.”
“With Dennis, he doesn’t try to run the departments,” Yates said. “When he does budgets and stuff, he tries to keep everything on an even keel. We don’t have great big highs and great big lows. He’s a financial wizard, and I don’t say that lightheartedly.”
Running the town during the pandemic was difficult, but the Town Office never closed, he said. The town installed a walk-up window to conduct town business with its residents, keeping the staff and public safe.
While retiring, he will still be working for the town for the next year or so as project manager for the ongoing Town Office upgrades. Phase 1 includes the expansion of the safe, a new garage, phone wiring and updating compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Much of that work is already completed.
Phase 2 will include new offices for the Police Department and a new community space at the Municipal Complex. The project recently received $850,000 in congressional funding.
He and his wife are planning to head west this fall to celebrate their 20th wedding anniversary and visit his two sisters in California, whom he hasn’t visited in 20 years. After that, he may consider serving as a consultant in some capacity.
“My goal here was to just come in and try to have a no-drama town, try to keep moving forward, getting some projects in place to make the town a better place and doing it in a financial conservative manner,” Lajoie said.
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