NEWRY — After more than 17 years at the Town Office, and over a decade as the town administrator, Loretta Powers is leaving her post at the end of the year.

The lifelong Newry resident and her husband, Ed, decided recently to relocate to Florida. They sold their house last month and closed on their new home in South Daytona on the same day.

Powers began working as the deputy town clerk in 1998, and took over her current position six years later after longtime Town Clerk Sylvia Gray retired.

The daughter of John and Nancy Wight of Newry, she attended the Raymond C. Foster School, in the same building that now houses the town’s municipal offices. She graduated from Telstar Regional High School in Bethel in 1980.

“I always thought I was going to grow up and move out of town, but it didn’t happen,” she said.

Prior to working at the Town Office, she was employed at Prim’s Pharmacy in Bethel.

When she began working for the town, the schedule of four 10-hour days allowed her to keep her position at Preb’s. For a while, when her daughter was in college, she did both jobs.

One of the best things about the job has been the people, both those she works with and those who come to the Town Office to transact business, she said.

“I’ve always been a people person,” she said.

The short commute from home has also been a plus, and the changing nature of the work has kept it interesting, she said.

“It’s different every day,” Powers said. “You never know what you’ll come across, whether it’s a pothole, a fire, or chasing the neighbor’s cows out of the road.”

In the course of her tenure, as the town and Sunday River ski resort have grown, making more work for the staff, technology upgrades have helped the job go more smoothly.

The typewriters, though, are still on hand.

“We’re probably one of the last town offices that still uses them, but when the computer system goes down, we still have to hand-type (documents),” Powers said.

Three full-time employees — the town administrator, deputy clerk/treasurer, and code enforcement officer — and a part-time assistant clerk staff the Town Office.

Powers said the office is busy most of the time, but the pace picks up even more during the budget season, in preparation for the annual town meeting in March, and when real estate taxes are due.

Tax bills go out at the end of July, once the school district budget has been adopted, and are due at the end of September.

The town has only about 350 year-round residents, but its many second homes and, especially the quarter-share units at Sunday River’s Grand Summit and Jordan hotels, mean that the staff sends out about 3,500 tax bills each year.

“We print, fold, and mail all the tax bills in-house,” Powers said, rather than using a mailing service. “The next person may not want to do that.”

She said the only negative aspect of the job has been occasional unwarranted scrutiny and criticism, something she doesn’t believe would exist if everyone understood that Town Office records are always open to the public and all taxpayers are treated fairly.

“If anyone wants to see the books at any time, all they have to do is ask,” she said. “We don’t make the rules here; we follow them.”

Powers said her husband’s suggestion that they relocate to Florida surprised her at first, especially since their home in Newry is a log cabin he built, and he has worked for the Maine Department of Transportation for 25 years.

Both of her grown children and her three grandchildren live in Newry, and her husband’s grandchildren live in Massachusetts. She will miss being near the grandkids, she said, but expects they will travel to Florida often to visit.

She said they both expect to look for full-time work once they are settled in South Daytona.

She doesn’t know yet what kind of work she will do, but said she has been checking out jobs online in advance of their planned move in early January.

“We’re not retiring,” she said, adding, “I wish!”

She said a lot of people have suggested that the change in lifestyle will be so drastic that she may not like it. She’s regarding the move as a new adventure, and knows there will be some aspects of Florida life that will take some getting used to.

For one thing, she said, “I’m going to have neighbors. I’ve never had neighbors before.” In Maine, the Powerses have always enjoyed hunting, fishing and spending time outdoors.

“We can still do all of that in Florida, just without having to clear snow,” she said. “We wanted to do this now, while we’re still young and healthy enough to enjoy it.”

“If we find out we don’t like it, we can always come back,” she said.

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