Antrim town administrator Bill Prokop resigns
Antrim Town Administrator Bill Prokop surprised selectmen at the end of their Monday night meeting with a letter of resignation. He will begin working for the City of Keene on Sept. 11 as the Director of Human Resources.
“I have totally, totally enjoyed this job here. I have not been looking for a job. This is a great community to work in,” Prokop said of Antrim. “An opportunity came to me in a city that is growing and has a great management team, and a lot of plans for the future.”
Although he has “mixed feelings” about leaving his town administrator post in Antrim, he does admit to feeling “euphoric” about the opportunity, which also affords him a significant salary increase.
“It’s bittersweet, but I’m leaving on a positive note, and I want it to be a smooth and orderly transition, and I know that feeling goes both ways,” he pointed out.
Prokop says the town has decided to run their own ads and all their own interviews, rather than pay for an agency, such as the Local Government Center to search for candidates. The town of Hillsborough paid the Local Government Center $5,000 for their services when it was looking for a new town administrator. Prokop will also take part in the interviewing process.
Prokop has lived in Antrim for 15 years. He moved here with his family and manufacturing business from Connecticut. One of his sons now runs the business, which is Dahle USA, in Peterborough.
He has been the town administrator for five-and-a-half years, and was a selectmen in town for two years before that.
“I’ve developed a lot of positive relationships. And I’ll continue to be involved in the community,” he said, adding that he isn’t planning on moving out of town. “Leaving something you know for something you don’t know is always a bit of an uncomfortable feeling.”
He said the job in Keene was something someone encouraged him to look into.
“Now I’m going to learn about city management, which again is different,” he said of his new responsibilities.
As far as his accomplishments in Antrim, he attributes the progress the town has made through the years he has been involved with its government to how well the people in town work with each other.
“I don’t think that I personally did anything. I think the community, the different departments, and the selectmen all work well together, in concert in the same direction,” he explained. “The assessed value of the town was around $95 million when I started and today it is $285 million. Antrim has grown. The community supported everything. Look at the improvements down town, the recreational facilities, the library. I think just the real positive community spirit that exists in Antrim is one of the things that makes for everybody working together in a common cause.”
Although Prokop does attribute some of the increase in the town’s assessment to the increase in real estate values over the years, the town has grown in residences as well. And as far as community spirit and how well the town thinks its management is acting, he pointed out the uncommonly short length of last March’s town meeting, which only lasted about 70 minutes.
“So I have to say that the people were satisfied with what town management and the board of selectmen were doing,” he observed.
One important accomplishment he sees the town has made is positioning itself “in the state’s bridge program so that Antrim is getting all of its red-listed bridges repaired over the next five years.”
The state’s program pays for 80 percent of repairs. So far, bridges on Summer Street and White Bridge Point have been repaired. Currently the North Main Street Bridge is closed for repairs. Next will be the Antrim-Bennington Bridge and then the Northbranch bridge.
One thing Bill Prokop wants the next administrator to know, is that “this is a great town to work for. In my case, I worked with three or four different boards of selectmen. Everybody has been supportive. We have a staff in place that is well established and department heads that really cooperate with each other. And that’s what the new administrator should facilitate into the future.”