New administrator takes to the streets to meet residents

Theresa Booms was walking up and down Main Street in West Concord last week, stopping into businesses and greeting people she passed on the street.
The new West Concord City Administrator was spending time during her first week on the job getting to know the people in the community.
Boom was officially hired by the West Concord City Council at its June meeting to succeed Kay Hanson, who resigned the administrator position last spring. The former Brownsdale city clerk/treasurer began her new duties last week.
“I am excited,” she said about her new job, saying that she was looking for a new challenge and the West Concord position would provide that opportunity.
Booms grew up in nearby Hayfield, she said, but her career took her to Florida for a number of years before bringing her back to the area to raise her family.
After graduating from high school, she said, she moved to Florida to attend a travel school. She worked as a flight attendant at a local Florida airline, she said, before moving to Braniff Airways, again as a flight attendant.
When that airline declared bankruptcy and closed, she said, she began working for the Orlando Magic. The team has its own airplane and hangar, she said, and for five years she was one of the team’s flight attendants.
By then, she said, she had a family and she and her husband decided they would rather raise the children and have them go to school in Minnesota so the family moved back to the area. After moving back to Minnesota, she said, she was a stay-at-home-mom and later worked part-time at several offices in the Brownsdale area.
Her career in the public sector, she said, began in 2003 when she was approached to seek the Red Rock Township clerk position. Her father, she said, had been on the Vernon Township Board as a supervisor so she was familiar with the duties and responsibilities of serving on a town boar