St. Pierre fills almost all of his staff positions

A boost in applications a week before the Dec. 26 deadline gave St. Charles Parish President-elect V.J. St. Pierre plenty of choices when it came to filling 11 of his top staff positions.

And with all those choices, St. Pierre was able to whittle down the applicants for eight of those jobs, leaving only three left to fill. St. Pierre says that he has already hired directors for public works, planning and zoning, community services, emergency preparedness, economic development and tourism, finance and waterworks. In addition, St. Pierre has also picked a grants officer.

He is still searching for a director of parks and recreation, a public information officer and an executive secretary. He will not release the names he has hired until all positions are filled, which should come sometime this week.

“People are going to be pleased with the staff we are putting together,” St. Pierre said. “They are all extremely qualified for their positions.”

The only name that has been released so far is Leon “Sonny” Vial as parish attorney.

St. Pierre says that he had only received 10 to 15 applications for all 11 positions two weeks ago, but a recent spike in applications occurred a week before the Dec. 26 deadline.

“We actually picked up 35 to 40 applications since the article ran in the paper,” St. Pierre said. “We got some pretty good resumes and the total ended up being close to 50.”

And not all of the applications were from serious candidates.

“They had some surprises,” St. Pierre said. “A lot of people came out of the woodwork.”

Besides filling his top staff jobs, St. Pierre has also been making sure everything will be ready to go when he takes office on Jan. 13.

“Every things going good,” St. Pierre said. “I’ve been meeting with the directors and making sure how we stand financially and with all the projects that are going on. Mr. (Albert) Laque has been very cooperative and has made his people available to me whenever I’ve needed them.”

Once in place, St. Pierre plans to focus on a couple of important issues that are facing the parish right now.

“I think we immediately have to look at millage renewal for the recreation department and that needs to get passed in February,” he said. “I also want to concentrate on the pumping station in Willowridge. We need to make sure that we go off and get more bids because Terry Authement has already found a lot of savings there.”

 

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