Original story contributions to County Times
LEONARDTOWN, Md. — It’s one of those jobs that when you wake up in the morning, you never know what to expect. This summer, Laschelle McKay is celebrating 25 years as town administrator of Leonardtown.
“I never know. I can’t plan my day, whatever fire needs to be put out. I love working with customers, working with developers, working on projects, and I just never know what the next five minutes is going to be. We never say it’s going to be a slow day. But it’s still fun.”
Twenty-five years ago, then-Mayor, the late Chipper Norris, lured McKay away from her position as manager of the Hollywood branch of First National Bank of St. Mary’s.
McKay grew up in Kingwood, West Virginia, and got into banking there as a loan officer, a skill that she transferred locally when her family moved here.
McKay said, “When I left the bank, the president of the bank at the time told me that I would be back in less than a year, that I would hate it. And 25 years later, I love it. Somebody asks me every day when I’m going to retire, but I still have a lot I want to do. I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s four years ago, but so far I’ve still been able to keep on working and I hope to stay involved for a long time to come.”
When did the light come on that this was, in fact, going to be a long-term gig for her? She said, “I probably thought he was right the first few months, but I really fell in love with the work right away, and it was just something different every other minute, and I just enjoyed it so much right from the beginning. Of course, I get overwhelmed sometimes and get stressed out, but I never say I want to quit. I never feel like I made a mistake. I feel like I’m where I’m meant to be.”
She added, “This is where you can really make a difference in government.”
At the time she joined the town, Mayor Norris was an appraiser for her bank. He said, “I really think with your bank branch manager experience, you would be great for the job, your personality would be a good fit.”
He took her on a tour. “I liked the idea of something new. I liked the managerial side of my job, and banking was just getting more regulated and I just really wasn’t happy with what I was doing. So, I wanted to try something new. And Mayor Norris had told me that they had a project they were thinking about doing, a museum there, and Tudor Farm was getting ready to develop back then. And here we’re 25 years later and it’s really just getting ready to develop, but there just seemed to be a lot of exciting things going on, and it was a good opportunity.”
But she added, “And then quickly I found out all the other things that he didn’t tell me about. Like the wastewater treatment plant.”
She knew nothing about wastewater treatment plants, and it turned out to be one of the biggest parts of her job.
She learned by “being in meetings, being put on the spot? I just found very quickly that you had to make decisions and learn really quickly. And the administrator had already left, so there wasn’t someone (for advice), so I asked a lot of questions of the long-time treasurer at the time. Then I just tried to learn on my own.”
“I’ve been through two upgrades of the wastewater plant and now we are finishing up an expansion that will give us capacity for growth.”
With the upgrade, she said, “We’re able to continue developing and growing. We’ve been the fastest-growing municipality for probably about 15 years, actually. Fastest growing percentage-wise in Maryland. And we’re St. Mary’s only municipality,” and thus a designated growth area.
When she joined Leonardtown, the town hall was in the former post office (now the location of Good Earth). The town had just moved there from historic Tudor Hall. It is now in a building on Washington Street near the square, which had been part of the old First National Bank of St. Mary’s branch.
Her biggest accomplishment as administrator? “I didn’t even know that Leonardtown was a waterfront community until I came here. And so, it was in private ownership and was not in very good shape. And now it’s a thriving public park with a lot of additional potential. We have slips down there now. We have just tons of activities going on and people walking up and down all day.”
She added, “The steamships came in down there in the 1920s. It was always a central feature of the town, and so it’s nice to have it back into public use again. And when you have homecomings or proms, you’ll see lines of kids down there getting their picture taken at sunset. There’s a playground down there now, so kids love playing on the playground. It’s just a very active, usable public park.”
The town has a dream of creating a restaurant there since Leonardtown Wharf burned down decades ago.
McKay said, “We have a design now of a food hall and we have someone interested in that. So, we’re working with them to see if we can bring that to a reality as part of our new waterfront plan. It’s a beautiful building and it would have different types of food that families could choose from or visitors could choose from. So, we’re hoping to make that a reality. We just last year purchased an additional parcel of land to make some additional parking down there.”
As to the long-dormant development of Tudor Farm, she said, “It is now moving forward. The private developer owns part of the 400 acres, and the town owns 240 of the acres. So, we want to expand the waterfront we own out to the winery, which is about two and a half miles of waterfront. And then, the private developer would be building houses and some multifamily. We also have in the plans for a smaller hotel/conference center on our property.”
She noted, “The private developer that owns it now has sat on it for probably 15 years waiting for the right time. And he’s now done his traffic study and has been meeting with us with his updated plan. And it’s actually started to make significant investment in the planning. I know that it’s just about ready to be submitted to start through the process.”
McKay observed, “Over the years I’ve seen a lot of people come and go, and sometimes I’ll be in meetings, and I’ll have the historical knowledge that maybe State Highway didn’t know that this something has already been done on Route 5. And I’m like, yeah, we did that years ago, and then they go find it. We don’t have to do that again. So, it’s kind of nice to have all that historical knowledge.”
The state is mired in a fiscal challenge. McKay said, “There may not be as much grant funding available. We have had extremely good success getting millions of dollars in grants since I’ve been here. We have proven ourselves to the state that we spend the money as we said we were going to. We do the reporting on time. And so, we have been very successful with grants, and I know that there’s just not quite as much available these days.”
Her biggest challenge over the years? “You have to be an expert in all subjects. With the county administrator, they have department heads that get the information, but they don’t have to run the whole department. Here, we don’t have department heads. It’s a very small organization. We still have less than 20 employees, and we’ve doubled in size since I’ve been here. So, I have to really know what’s going on in all areas, what the needs are for the future and how to handle growth and make sure that our citizens are getting the best care that we can give.
“I have a great, talented, long-term staff. That’s very helpful. And I think, as a team, I’ve been very lucky. I’ve only had two mayors in my whole 25 years — Mayor Burris and Mayor Norris — and many wonderful, supportive Town Council members that have all worked together. And so, it’s been consistency — consistency of the staff, consistency of the direction we’re going in and everybody working together as a team. It’s not just one person that has made us successful — the businesses, the relationship we have with the business association and all the businesses. It’s just really been a team effort.”
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Super nice lady