Middleboro High senior shows ‘there’s a future’ for municipal government

MIDDLEBORO — Thanks to the work of a Middleboro High School senior, the town’s departments have a better grasp on yearly expenses and the legal fees behind municipal projects.

Lekan Sotonwa, 18, who will attend Delaware State University as a Division I runner in the fall, spent the last three months of his senior year working as an unpaid intern at Town Hall as part of a high school course.

He plans to earn a bachelor’s degree in business administration, followed by a doctorate in law. He said he never would have realized that working at Town Hall was the perfect way to gain experience in both business and law if it weren’t for Middleboro’s internship coordinator, Tammy Miller. He needed to develop skills, and the town needed the help.

“The goal was to create a mutually beneficial relationship that gave him experience and helped the town get work done that we needed to get done,” said Assistant to the Town Manager Emily Surrette.

Though Middleboro has had college interns in the past, Sotonwa was the town’s first-ever high school intern.

His work included tallying legal costs associated with town projects, creating graphs to help departments keep track of their budgets each year, preparing materials for Town Meeting and updating the town’s rental policy.

“We tried to find projects that would fit what he was looking for,” said Middleboro Town Manager Jay McGrail.

Most importantly, Sotonwa took some of the workload off existing staff, which allowed them to focus on other projects, McGrail added. If regular staff had to take on those projects, “we wouldn’t have been able to give them the time he did,” said McGrail. “We were able to pick tasks and have him focus in depth on them. There’s huge value in that,” he noted, adding, “He did a really good job.”

Sotonwa has always been interested in business management, and his father’s law degree inspired him to consider pursuing a Ph.D. in law, he said. His goal is to become a chief operating officer — a position where specialization in business law would be useful.

He was surprised to find he could gain experience in both areas right down the road.

Making people — especially the younger generation — aware of the opportunities in municipal government is a real challenge, McGrail explained. “People don’t understand what we do.”

As a Middleboro High School student, Sotonwa felt he was in a unique position to exemplify how young people “can impact their community,” he said, noting that this opportunity is not just for “middle-aged professionals.”

One of the most eye-opening takeaways of the internship for Sotonwa was seeing the price tag attached to large municipal projects such as the rebuild of Middleboro High School.

“I got to see how much the community has to pay each year for it, which is a lot,” he said, nodding for emphasis.

He enjoyed being privy to all the projects that were voted down by the town, such as a proposal to build a casino — something he would never have known about had he not done the internship, he said.

The three-month stint also gave him an idea of how time-consuming it is to create the slides for the PowerPoint presentation shown at Town Meeting, he noted with a chuckle.

As for Town Hall, having a student like Sotonwa — who brought enthusiasm and excitement to the workplace — shows “there’s a future in municipal government,” said McGrail.

“We’d definitely be interested in having more high school interns,” stated Surrette.