NEWBURYPORT — After almost three years as Mayor Sean Reardon’s right-hand man, Chief of Staff Andrew Levine is leaving City Hall next month to become the town administrator for Hatfield.
“I’m going to miss it here,” Levine said. “I love working with Mayor Reardon and it’s going to be hard to find a better person to work for. We have a great team here. I’m excited to see where the city goes next because it’s a great place to be.”
Reardon was sworn into office in early January 2022.
Levine started in the city on Jan. 26 of that year, just one day before a large snowstorm blew through the area.
“I spent my first day figuring out how to post snow updates on the city’s website and everything else,” he said. “So, it’s been busy from the first day.”
Late last year, the 35-year-old became a father for the first time. Levine said his family has been looking for the right place to settle down with western Massachusetts becoming the place to be.
“They’ve got a great board over in Hatfield and it’s a small town with some really interesting challenges,” he said. “They still have water, sewer, infrastructure challenges they’ll be facing. They will need some of my experience here to help guide them in those processes.”
Before joining Reardon’s staff, the Lowell resident spent eight months as director of administrative services for Billerica. His last day with the city will be Nov. 8.
In an email Tuesday morning, Reardon informed city employees of the move.
He told The Daily News it’s a bittersweet moment for him.
“I knew when I hired Andrew just how impressive his resume was and that I’d be lucky to get two years out of him,” he said. “Here we are, almost three years in. So I definitely feel like I beat the spread on this one.”
A chief of staff job, according to Reardon, is often a stepping stone toward bigger and better things. But the mayor added that he is very happy for Levine and his family.
“He jumped on with a mayor who was doing the job for the first time and I thought we made a great team,” Reardon said. “We really accomplished a lot in these past two-plus years. I’m happy for him that he found an opportunity he’s excited about and we’ll go from there.”
Ward 2 City Councilor Jennie Donahue said she was “very excited” to hear Levine’s news.
“Being a town administrator is like being mayor for a town,” she said. “Andrew was very involved in everything that went on in the administration and he will leave big shoes to fill. He cared quite a bit for the community here. Folks in Hatfield I think will be in good hands.”
Levine, according to Reardon, has played a key role in many of the city’s largest projects over the past 2½ years, including the reorganization of the Parks Department into a division of the Department of Public Services.
Levine said he was particularly proud of his work on the administration’s $6 million rolling streets and sidewalk improvement plan
“That’s been one of the more visible signs of something the mayor cared deeply about making happen. That was a lot of work but I feel good about that,” he said. “We have also done a lot of work around communications I feel good about. Our website looks fresh and clean. It’s become a good source of information for people.”
Reardon said Levine has also helped advance potential affordable housing initiatives at the former Brown School on Milk Street, the 5-acre Waterfront West property (located between Michael’s Harborside restaurant and the Tuscan Sea Grill Restaurant & Bar), as well as in the old Port Plaza Kmart property on Low Street.
The mayor praised his chief of staff for helping to negotiate union contracts and updating the employee handbook, along with moving the city’s diversity, equity and inclusion efforts forward.
“It’s been great to be a part of all of these different initiatives we’ve been working on,” Levine said. “The mayor had an ambitious agenda and I’ve been happy to be a big part of that from the start.”
Levine said being a resource for city employees was another endeavor that filled him with pride.
“We’ve got a great team at City Hall,” he said. “Just being able to help people with big and small projects alike is a great thing to be a part of.”
Levine has been earning roughly $102,000 annually.
Reardon said he hoped to advertise for a new chief of staff by Tuesday afternoon. The mayor added that he is looking for someone with a much different specific skill set than Levine’s when searching for his replacement.
“This is something I’m not going to rush, by any means,” he said. “Newburyport is a wonderful community to work in. We have a lot of great things that are going on. I’m sure this is going to be a job that plenty of people are going to be interested in.”
When asked what advice he would give his successor, Levine said getting to know the community is key.
“Try to be as good as you can at listening to what people are looking for,” he said. “Try to help the mayor and others prioritize what the things we need to be approaching are. There’s a lot of things going on here at the same time. So, it’s OK to start off slow and I’m sure you’ll do great.”
Levine’s career path is similar to his predecessor’s.
In July 2021, former Mayor Donna Holaday’s last chief of staff, Matthew Coogan, left Newburyport to become town administrator in Boxford. Holaday had only five months left in her term when Coogan said goodbye to the city. She did not fill his position but, instead, had her executive assistant, Donna Musumeci, serve as a chief of staff until her term as mayor ended in early 2022.
Coogan had been with the city since October 2018 when he replaced Paul O’Brien, who served as chief administrative officer from April 2017 to August 2018.
Prior to O’Brien, Patricia Moore served as chief administrative officer from April 2016 to April 2017.
Staff writer Jim Sullivan covers Newburyport for The Daily News. He can be reached via email at jsullivan@newburyportnews.com or by phone at 978-961-3145. Follow him on Twitter @ndnsully.