Newville Borough Superintendent Fred Potzer told the borough council that he intended to retire in the spring after more than 28 years with the borough.
Although he said he didn’t have an exact date in mind, Potzer said the borough was working on a plan to address his replacement.
“I said to the council, if you can’t find someone, I’m not going to come out and leave you,” he said. “I’ll help and then I’ll help train whoever you choose.”
Potzer said he originally announced his intention to step down in 2018 during one of the board’s reorganization meetings. He spoke about it again in 2020, but ended up staying during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“This year I finally told them, I said, ‘Look, I’m going to go next year,'” he said. “When I leave, you know, I don’t have a deadline or anything like that, but that’s it.”
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Potzer’s work in local government began when he became chairman of the planning commission for his home town of Plymouth, outside Wilkes Barre, at the age of 18. Since then, he has spent 42 years in local government, more than half of them with the Borough of Newville. .
“I met a lot of people in that time, hundreds of people, at the state level, the county level, the local level, especially with the COG (Western Cumberland Council of Governments),” Potzer said. “I think you know, three people if I’ll never see them again, I’ll die happy, but I’ve met a lot of really good, really talented, really warm and caring people.”
Maddie Seiler is a reporter for The Sentinel and cumberlink.com covering Carlisle and Newville. You can contact her at [email protected] and follow her on Twitter at: @SeilerMadalyn