Lahaie brings a wealth of experience to Westmount

Jacques Lahaie, whose appointment was confirmed by city council on Dec. 11, had acquired a broad range of experience with different-sized cities before arriving in Westmount.

He was with the City of Laval — the sprawling island suburb just north of Montreal — until retiring not long before accepting the position here.

His hiring by Westmount is on a contractual basis for the next three years. Lahaie has also worked for the Montreal-area suburbs of Pierrefonds, Greenfield Park and Repentigny, as well as the rural Quebec North Shore municipality of Port Cartier.

"He has experience in what I call the smaller city environment, but the expertise that you find typically in engineering in public works departments of the large cities," said Director General Bruce St. Louis. "So it was sort of the best of both worlds."

In Westmount, Lahaie's mandate could be considerably easier than his last job. In Laval, the budget for public works alone was $56 million, compared to Westmount where it is currently about $13 million.

In an interview with the Examiner, Lahaie — who comes across with the straightforwardness of someone used to solving logistics problems and maintaining machinery — said he was pleased with his new position.

"I'm happy to be here," he said. "The people are friendly. From what I could see from the meeting of the city council, it was pretty agreeable." With a slight laugh, he acknowledged that he is currently evaluating the work that lies ahead.

"You have three parts in Westmount," he said. "You have to take care of the public works, environment and engineering. So it's three domains that I had worked in."

Lahaie said that in the various cities he's served, he sometimes had overlapping responsibility for environment, public works and engineering. Because of Laval's size, he only handled public works, while in others the mandate was more complex because they were smaller cities.

He said he's already becoming aware of some of Westmount's distinctive public works needs. For example, snow removal operations begin almost as soon as there is accumulation on the streets — a policy which differs widely from the snow removal approach in many other Montreal-area communities.

"Because of the mountain itself, you have to be operational right from the beginning," explained Lahaie. In Laval, he added, they usually wait until a few inches of snow have accumulated before starting removal operations.