BY MILES and NICOLE LAYTON
Town Council discussed the appointment of Normand St-Pierre last Friday, May 16, at the “new” Town Office.
The official vote on St-Pierre’s appointment will occur at Council’s monthly meeting at 6 p.m., Friday, May 23, at Tangier Combined School.
If appointed, St-Pierre would fill the seat vacated by Sharon Haynie in April. Remember those gold stars you got for memorizing lines of Scripture during Bible School — well, give Haynie a gold star for serving Town Council with distinction.
Town Council’s agenda for Friday’s meeting will be posted later this week.
Back to St-Pierre – my wife and I caught up with him for an interview on a sunny Sunday.
“Folks asked me to be on the council. I said ‘maybe’ but I guess that means ‘yes’. I thought, ‘what did I get myself into’ but I have time and I’m ready to serve.”
St-Pierre grew up in Canada and migrated legally to the United States to attend college.
“I grew up near Quebec City. I left for the United States when I was 23 years old. I spoke about five words of English – that was rough for a few months,” he said. “Then after that, I got the chance to travel quite a bit around the world for work: teaching and conducting research. I’ve lived in New Zealand, Australia and Brazil and visited about 50 countries.”
St-Pierre worked as an agricultural sciences professor at Ohio State University for many years before retiring to a second career at Perdue Farms.
Back to Town Council – St-Pierre has a lot of good ideas.
“Once we solve this financial problem that we have, which we will, after that, I’d like to start looking at some economic development on the island. There’s more than just tourism. The way tourism operates right now is basically from Memorial Day until a couple of weeks after Labor Day. Well, that creates some revenue here, but it doesn’t create jobs that a family can live on. And, working on the water, being a waterman, it may work for a few people, but a lot of people don’t realize the amount of money that it takes to start and run that kind of business.”
St-Pierre continued, “If you’re not a waterman, there’s no other way to make a decent living here. But if you’re in Crisfield and you’re a waterman and fishing is not that good, there are jobs around so you can have some alternate employment. Here, you don’t.”
One idea St-Pierre has is to utilize Tangier’s experienced boat mechanics and craftsmen to repair boats.
St-Pierre said that by creating a place to repair boats, it could be an industry that offers high-paying year-round jobs.
“Boat repairs can be really expensive. And here you have some people, like James Parks. He’s a great mechanic for diesel engines. He can take it with an old engine and make it sing. And other people are really skilled with fiberglass and things. Maybe we could rejuvenate the yard here, kinda spruce it up. Maybe we can get some grants to do that. And that would be work for twelve months of the year. There’s always work there. People who have boats are always repairing them.”
Praising Tangier’s medical clinic, St-Pierre suggested creating an environment that supports assisted living for senior citizens.
“I’m not talking about the kind of assisted living that requires pretty intensive care, but the people that just need a little bit of help,” he said. “We can refurbish some houses. You bring them their meals. You help them clean the place and those kinds of things – that again is twelve months of the year.”
St-Pierre continued, “Well, when you go to the mainland and just, again, like the boat repair thing, assisted living, it’s the same thing, the very minimum that they’re going to charge is $5,000 a month. And so why not bring $5,000 here to Tangier!? I know it can be done.”
And then there’s this idea – a very good one – St-Pierre contends that unless you’ve lived on Tangier long enough to know who has what skills, you don’t know. And he’s right—presently, we need some work done on our house, but we don’t know who can do it. Perhaps a lot of people are like this.
Thus, St-Pierre and I are going to build a local “Yellow Pages” for Tangier’s website that says who can do this or that, who can fix lawnmowers, who can clean, who knows plumbing or how to repair electric.
Last note: St-Pierre said he found Tangier by chance, loves it and realizes the Island’s value—he can’t wait to serve on the Council.
“Very often you are in the right place, at the right time, but you don’t know it!”
Tangier Island, Virginia 