Treatment plant named after trustee
MEXICO – A lifelong Mexico resident was honored recently for 35 years of public service as a trustee of the Rumford-Mexico Sewerage District.
But, at Pat DeFilipp’s final meeting on the district’s Board of Trustees, they gave him more than just recognition, applause and a weighty plaque.
They named the district’s wastewater treatment plant off River Road in Mexico after DeFilipp, who said Thursday that he was stunned by the gesture.
“I knew they would give me something, a plaque probably, but to name the plant after me? I was so surprised,” DeFilipp said, sitting in a lawn chair on the porch of his Oxford Avenue home.
Family members and trustees successfully kept DeFilipp in the dark about the recognition event. He said he thought he was going to another trustees meeting until he saw his son there from Lewiston-Auburn, along with his daughter, all dressed up.
At the meeting, district Superintendent Greg Trundy read a lengthy statement detailing DeFilipp’s accomplishments.
“Citizen involvement is what makes our system of government work, and you are a wonderful example of the impact that an individual willing to help out can make,” Trundy said to DeFilipp.
DeFilipp was born in Rumford, graduated from Stephens High School and an Auburn business school, then got hired as an examiner with Maine’s taxation department. He retired more than 30 years later.
In early 1962, Trundy said DeFilipp represented Mexico on a sewer study committee that birthed the district.
“Pat was part of the group that decided that a joint effort for wastewater treatment was the best way for the River Valley to go, and formed a district,” Trundy said.
DeFilipp, a former trustee with the Mexico Sewer District, then became a trustee of the district, which held its first meeting on July 7, 1971.
As a trustee, DeFilipp participated in plans and decisions to hire engineers, design and locate the treatment plant, acquire land, get financing, hire staff and every other detail needed to make the plant a reality.
Years went by and the board’s focus shifted to operating the plant, which DeFilipp says is a pollution control facility, not a sewer treatment plant.
“Pat was integral in keeping things going smoothly,” Trundy said.
DeFilipp became board chairman in 1981 and held that office ever since, except for three years.
To meet the goal of cleaning up the Androscoggin River as economically as possible, it became the board’s responsibility to set policies, and ensure that it had the resources in personnel, equipment and finances.
That’s where DeFilipp’s money-management skills came in handy.
DeFilipp was very interested in the district’s finances.
During DeFilipp’s tenure, the district paid off its 40-year debt of about $1.5 million in about 30 years, and, annually set aside money into a capital replacement fund that now contains about $1 million, Trundy said.
“This wise financial management means that without any debt service, or the need to go back to the towns for funding routine equipment replacement, our budget for 2006 is actually $100,000 less than when Pat first became chairman,” Trundy added.
Not one to take all the credit, DeFilipp said Thursday, “I had a good bunch of trustees. They were all there for the good of the district, not for glory, or money or anything like that.”
So what’s next for the man who has a town bench and treatment plant named after him?
“I tell my daughter, now I just got to get the street named after me,” he said.
Comments are no longer available on this story