Jim Varno

I absolutely love working here but there is no retirement and the pay is not on par with where I want to be at this point of my career. While I was at Boquet Valley CSD my head bus driver worked here at Meadowmount during the summer. When the positioned opened up for the Facilities DIrector they asked me if I would help them select a new person for the job. I met with them 3 or 4 different times explaining to them the type of person they needed.

They have always had a person who they paid very little and would write down everything that was wrong and then call a contractor to fix it. I explained to them that if they hired a guy that could do all of the work and paid him good they would save money over the course of the year and get a lot more done in the process. After our meetings were done and they were confident they had found the right person for the job they informed me that I was the guy. I had no intentions of leaving the school and this never crossed my mind while we were having discussions. There new director was very determined to get me and made a lot of promises and here I am.

Meadowmount is a private music school which is only open for 7 weeks in the summer. We get around 180 kids from all over the world to come here. We have 50 buildings on campus that I maintain all year. During the summer I have anywhere from 15-20 workers that I am in charge of. In the three years that I have been here we have only had to hire out three jobs and that was because it required extensive excavation work and we would not have time ourselves to do it. Besides that we now do everything in house.

Boquet Valley is the result of Westport Central School and Elizabethtown Central School merging together. The school operates out of both buildings and I was in charge of all maintenance, janitorial and transportation staff. The school buildings were 9 miles apart from each other and I would alternate between buildings. This was a tough job at times simply because the two schools did not like each other to begin with. Neither one really wanted to merge with the other and each school wanted to do things their way. I enjoyed my time there and most of the people were great. The superintendent, Josh Meyer, was fantastic. I got along with him really well.

I worked for my father in his contracting business from 1991-2002 before going on my own in 2002. I have been in this line of work my whole life. While working for myself I literally did everything. Performing the estimates, writing the quotes, doing all phases of construction and my taxes at the end of the year.

I did mostly renovation work including new kitchens, bathrooms, electrical, plumbing, new flooring, sheetrock, taping and painting, garages, decks, etc,. I learned a lot about the business during this 25+ year span of working for my father and myself. Being called out on holidays to help someone without heat or frozen pipes in the middle of the night. A lot of people have no idea what it is like working for yourself. They all think you are your own boss so you can take time off whenever you want. I believe working for yourself can be very rewarding but it can also be very stressful. You definitely learn a lot about yourself. I would probably still be doing it if the job at Boquet Valley didn't present itself to me.