By CRAIG FREILICH

CANTON – St. Lawrence County is closing in on hiring a new chief for the Public Health Department and could announce a new director as soon as a month from now.

County Administrator Karen St. Hilaire said she and a committee interviewed two finalists Wednesday night – “both excellent candidates,” she said – and will be “double-checking references and we’ll see if the board can agree on who they want.”

The county had been served by an interim director after director Dr. Susan Hathaway retired in 2013 after serving since 2009.

“We had need of someone them with a public health background and experience to be interim director,” St. Hilaire said, and they found Lorraine Kourofsky, who had been director in Franklin County, but who was “not really looking to get back in,” but she was persuaded to serve for a year here. “She even extended it a few months” as St. Lawrence County’s search for a new permanent director continued. “So now we’ve been without a director for a few months.”

The selection of a new director is taking “longer than we hoped,” St. Hilaire said. “There are pretty strong guidelines and requirements” laid down by the state for a public health director. The candidates must have a master’s degree in public health or a doctorate in a related field, she said, “and there are two or three levels of state approval” before a new director can be appointed.

In the meantime the county’s Director of Human Resources Christopher Boulio has been administering the Public Health Department while unit supervisors do “a very good job” of keeping things running, St. Hilaire said.