After 17 years in the town offices, Antrim Town Administrator Donna Hanson plans to retire in December.
Hanson spent 10 years in the Town Clerk/Tax Collector office before stepping into the Town Administrator role in 2014, after her predecessor resigned.
“I wanted a new challenge, and I thought this would be it,” Hanson said. It did not disappoint: since she became Town Administrator, the town replaced five bridges. With two more in process, all but one of the town’s redlisted bridges will have been repaired during her tenure. Hanson also oversaw the town’s streetlight conversion to LEDs, which is saving a lot of energy costs, she said. The road project on Highland Avenue and Pleasant Street was maybe the most memorable project she oversaw, for its complexity, she said. “I love the job, I love dealing with finances,” she said.
For Hanson, one point of pride was keeping a stable tax rate through her tenure. “The town is in a great financial state,” she said. That, plus a competent staff, gives her hope that Antrim will easily transition to a new administrator. “I so have enjoyed working with the staff and department heads and I think I have some of the best,” she said.
A lot can happen to a town over 17 years: indeed, one of Hanson’s first projects was to design a website for the town. Since she herself moved to town from Massachusetts, Hanson said she’s noticed many more new arrivals to town, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, as new residents settled along Gregg Lake and Franklin Pierce Lake. Hanson plans to train her successor and officially retire in December, although she’s available to help where needed afterward, she said.
She and her husband, who recently retired, plan to stay in town. “We did look around, but decided that we weren’t going to find anything nicer than this area,” Hanson said. She plans to mark the end of her career with more golf time, and more time with her three daughters and four grandkids, all of whom live in the Northeast, she said.