ATTLEBORO — Mayor Cathleen DeSimone finished her first week on the job Friday, and she was pumped up.
“It flew by,” she said characterizing it as “good, busy and productive.”
DeSimone, the city’s 19th mayor, jumped right in and started working on the city’s fiscal year 2024 budget on Monday.
Help provided by City Auditor Deb Gould was important, she said.
DeSimone’s second project was to start the process of hiring a personnel director, a budget and administration director and a council on aging director.
“Those were my two priorities,” she said.
Acting Mayor Jay DiLisio was not allowed to hire personnel in his role as acting mayor.
Former personnel director Owen Bebeau and former budget director Jeremy Stull went with former mayor Paul Heroux to the Bristol County Sheriff’s Department.
Heroux was elected sheriff in November.
DiLisio, the city council president, filled in as acting mayor for about eight weeks.
DeSimone has formed “hiring committees” which she said will make it easier to select the most qualified person for each of the jobs she is trying to fill. The committees will give her different points of view from the people who have to work with the new hires most often, the mayor said.
She described the number of applications that have come in as “a pretty good turnout,” adding that some interviews have been scheduled.
“So we’ve got the budget process rolling and the hiring process rolling,” she said. “It’s huge. It’s all important.”
Those were her major goals for the week, but there are other day-to-day processes with which she had to get familiar.
“I’m getting up to speed on the daily flow of paperwork,” she said. “There are always people to be paid and papers to be signed.”
DeSimone said she’s grateful to be surrounded by experienced workers such as her administrative assistant Kathy Ilkowitz and others.
“I’m lucky to have a long-term and an extremely competent city staff,” she said. “Their historical knowledge is extremely important.”
She said her administrative position at Bridgewater State University has helped her acclimate to running a city.
DeSimone has taken an unpaid leave of absence from the university to work as mayor.
If she wins the fall election she will resign from the BSU job, she said.
In the meantime, it’s not all serious stuff.
DeSimone said she’s in the early stages of planning the city’s first annual Dog Walk.
It will be scheduled for one of the city’s parks in May or June.
“It’s important that people get outside and have fun,” she said, especially after the three years of the coronavirus pandemic.
George W. Rhodes can be reached at 508-236-0432.
