MARBLEHEAD — Town Administrator John McGinn has announced his retirement.
McGinn, 63, will be stepping down on June 30, at the conclusion of his contract with the town. The Board of Selectmen hired him as town administrator in November 2014. Prior to his current position, he worked as the town’s finance director for about a decade.
“I really enjoy the position that I’m in and I really love working with the town of Marblehead, but I’ve sort of reached the point in my life, that at the end of next June, I will have been in various state or local positions for 41 years,” McGinn said. “As they say, it’s time.”
McGinn, a Peabody resident, started his career in state government. He worked as budget director for Tom Birmingham, former president of the state Senate, and worked in finance roles at three different state agencies.
He served on the Peabody School Committee for four years and then on the City Council for 12 years. He became finance director for the city of Somerville in Jan. 2003 before seeing an advertisement for the same position in Marblehead — he was hired in November 2004 for the latter.
McGinn said the final six months as town administrator will be busy. He said all of the town’s collective bargaining agreements are due to be renegotiated and his focus will also be on getting ready for Town Meeting, which is scheduled for next May, and the FY19 budget process.
McGinn said one of the reasons he made his announcement this past week was to get the search process started for the next town administrator. He said he plans on helping the selectmen with that process.
The selectmen met to discuss the search process this week and the plan is to advertise the position after the new year. A screening committee will go through the applicants to find somebody who is the right fit for the town, McGinn said.
Judith Jacobi, a member of the Board of Selectmen, said she doesn’t even want to think about McGinn not being the town administrator anymore, but that the board is in the middle of getting a search committee together to find his successor.
Jacobi described McGinn as “incredibly competent,” but someone who also has a “fabulous sense of humor,” which she said took the edge off of a lot of problems that were faced.
“He’s wonderful,” Jacobi said. “It’s going to be an incredible loss for us … He’s as close to indispensable as you can get. He’s a real first-class guy. One of the things I like about him is when problems arise, he tries to solve them without embarrassing anybody. He has a knack for treating people with respect.”
Jacobi said the selectmen hired McGinn as town administrator because they knew how competent he was as finance director and because he knew the town so well.
“We just felt he would be a perfect fit and he was,” she said.
