GOSHEN – New Town Administrator Michael Lapinski is no novice to the job, nor is he a newcomer to the area.
The Northampton native comes with more than 18 years of experience in local government, having previously served in communities in Massachusetts, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
“My aim of being a public official, a public servant so to speak, is to help people – to be helpful,” Lapinski said last week from his Town Hall office, where he is settling in after accepting the position in March.
“Making sure everything is done efficiently and effectively, and being responsive to peoples requests – letting people hang out here if they need something, or getting back to them,” are among his priorities, he said. “That’s why I’m in this field, is to meet people, do community building – kind of make their community a better place to live.”
Lapinski’s previous posts have included the position of township manager and assistant township manager in Upper Gwynedd Township, Pennsylvania, and working in municipal government in Princeton, New Jersey. He carries experience in municipal operations, budgeting, infrastructure projects, land use and community development.
Lapinski holds a master’s degree in public administration from Villanova University and a bachelor of arts in criminal justice from Stonehill College.
The Select Board picked Lapinski from a pool of about a dozen candidates. His annual salary is $77,126.
“We are very fortunate to have found someone with Michael’s skills and extensive experience, and he impressed us with his strong sense of community service and interest in working in a small community,” said Select Board Chair Peri Hall. “Michael genuinely enjoys working with people, and he has already become a great asset to the town. We are delighted that he has joined our community team.”
Bucks County, Pennsylvania was Lapinski’s most recent home, which he said has a similarity to Goshen with rural character. However, Pennsylvania is more flat, and the hills of western Massachusetts have him looking up.
“There’s some hills, but it’s not like here,” he said.
“I live in Deerfield now, and it’s really just a beautiful landscape, and when I drive around I think this was such a great place to grow up – Look Park in the summers and doing camps up there, and we would be able to walk anywhere. It was just a great community,” said Lapinski.
He grew up in the Florence section of Northampton with five siblings.
Being interviewed by the Gazette sparked “fond” childhood memories of delivering the paper. His route would take him from Fox Farms Road to Strawberry Hill, then to Chestnut Street, and up Bridge Road in Northampton.
“I inherited it from my older brother, he inherited it from my older sister, she inherited it from her older sister, and we all were the paper people,” he said. “I look at those days very fondly.”
Well, fondly except for memories of delivering papers on Wednesdays.
“Wednesdays were the day when they put all the circulars in, and so it was full of advertising for all the supermarket coupons and all those things in one day, so people had them for the weekend coming up to shop with,” he recalled. “We didn’t like it because the paper bag was so heavy, and I walked. I didn’t have a bike or anything,” he reminisced.
Samuel Gelinas can be reached at sgelinas@gazettenet.com.
