City of Palmer introduces new manager

PALMER — Joe Hannan describes his journey to Alaska as being “like a salmon swimming up the coast.”

He was raised in California — Los Angeles, to be exact — in an area that was then a farming community.

“It was called Dairy Land and Dairy Valley,” Hannan said, and it later became the city of Cerritos.

From there, he moved first up to Santa Barbara to go to school. Next he moved a little farther north to Sunnyvale, in Silicon Valley, where he worked in city administrative positions. He continued that city work in Oregon and then Washington, before finally settling even farther north in Alaska.

Well, he hasn’t made that move quite yet.

Hannan begins work as city manager of Palmer on May 14. He was in town last week to tour the city, meet local officials, and attend the annual Capital Projects Fair.

Though he likens himself to a salmon, most salmon don’t take a detour through Bosnia.

He was there with the Army — from which he eventually retired as a lieutenant colonel — working in civil affairs.

“I went out and set up governments,” he said.

In Bosnia, he helped that country set up its first election and also worked as press officer for Bill Clinton during the president’s visit there.

“This was just after the peace accords,” he said. “There was still fighting up in the hills with the Serbs.”

As he moved briskly through his resume, Hannan made a point of stopping along the way to point out where what he did in local government would be helpful to his new gig in Palmer.

In Redmond, Ore., where he was city manager:

“The city doubled in size three times over a 10-year period,” he said.

Certainly, Palmer and the Valley in general can sympathize with explosive growth, especially with issues like Hannan described, such as transitioning what had been a rural fire department into something more urban.

As city manager of Fife, Wash., Hannan said he worked in an agricultural community that had been transformed into a warehouse district for the Port of Tacoma. Farmers in Point MacKenzie are living out a similar scenario.

Lakewood, Wash., where he was economic development director, sat right outside the gates of Joint Base Lewis-McCord. Palmer, of course, is relatively close to another big, multi-faceted military installation, Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson.

Other interesting bits of Hannan’s biography include a stint interning for then-Gov. Ronald Reagan, and that his wife has a daughter in Anchorage who runs a business fostering entrepreneurship.

Actually, that marriage is another interesting tidbit, a new beginning to match his new beginning in Palmer. It’s been 12 years since his last divorce, Hannan said, and he’d mostly been married to his work, until meeting his wife on an online dating site. They dated for a long time before finally tying the knot.

“We’ve been married all of three weeks,” he said Thursday.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.