Caileen Simonds was appointed interim health director by the Board of Health last week.
Reminder Publishing submitted photo
SOUTHWICK — The Board of Health appointed Caileen Simonds as interim health director to fill the position that opened after former director Tom Hibert left on Oct. 31 for another opportunity.
“I want to do what’s best for Southwick. I really truly care about this town and the residents,” Simonds said when she and board members Terry Putnam and Tricia Sedelow were discussing having Simonds serve as the interim director until the position is filled.
Simonds has been serving as the Shared Services Coordinator for the health department since June of 2024, which is a public health position that shares resources and services between different towns that often need expertise in areas they don’t have personnel for. As a result, she was able to step in and provide the services a health director provides.
“The whole point of the shared service agreement is to kind of to pick up when things like this happen,” she said during the meeting. “So, as a shared service coordinator, I’ve been helping as much as I can without being appointed thus far.”
She said she had been dealing with some nuisance complaints since Hibert left and coordinating the renewals of food permits for restaurants in town.
“That was the really big thing last week,” she said.
She told Putnam and Sedelow that while she didn’t have all the qualifications, yet, that are expected of a health director, Hibert had been a great mentor to prepare her.
“I worked with Tom [Hibert] extensively over the course of the last year and a half [and] he has really been a mentor to me when it came to inspections,” she said, adding that she accompanied Hibert on all his food and housing inspection and “taught me a lot about septic [systems].
With that experience, she has all the credentials needed for housing and food inspections, has a food safety certification from ServSafe, and has a certified pool operator license.
“So, for the interim position, I feel very comfortable doing all the housing [inspections], nuisance complaints and the food permitting system,” she said.
Simonds said she does all the budgeting for the shared service grant that pays her and works closely with the two public health nurses. And while getting that experience, she got to know the town.
“I’ve gotten to know the residents quite well, which has been a privilege because it’s a really unique community of people that I feel very lucky to know,” she said.
While she earned a bachelor’s degree in public health and an master’s degree in public health from UMass Amherst, there are two certifications she still needs; a soil evaluator certification, which gives her the training when performing percolation tests to determine how quickly soils absorb water.
Unfortunately, she said, the soil evaluator certification class doesn’t start until July, which she said was a “huge bummer.”
Because she can perform perc approvals until certified, the board voted during its meeting last week to retain Hibert and former Southwick Health Director Tom Fitzgerald on a per diem basis as health agents to perform the inspections Simonds can’t.
She’s also going for her certification as a sanitarian, which is an environmental health professional who works to protect public health by ensuring compliance with sanitation and safety regulations in various settings, such as food service, water systems and workplaces.
She plans on sitting for the test in January and will spend weekends until then studying.
“I want an extra month of studying because the test is quite expensive and I want to pass it on the first try if I can,” she said to Putnam and Sedelow.
Sedelow and Putnam enthusiastically endorsed her as the interim director.
“I think she’s very well prepared, had the educational background to do it and everything I’ve heard from her sounds fantastic and she’s already found an area that needs to be worked on, so I think she’s on top of it,” Sedelow said.
“I’m impressed that you already have goals,” Putnam said to Simonds. “As far as the interim position, I’m impressed that you’ve taken it upon yourself to look for the soil class that you want to make sure that you are [certified] and you’ve had the incentive to learn the process while Tom was here and are willing to take it on.”
Despite being appointed, Simonds said she wanted the position advertised externally.
“I urge you guys to post externally because if you get a candidate who has their sanitarian [certification], has the soil evaluator [certification] and everything is perfect, I would love to work with them. I would love to continue doing inspections and working as a shared service coordinator in Southwick,” she said, adding, “I’m fully OK with this being interim.”
