Lyndeborough welcomes new administrator

LYNDEBOROUGH – James Bingham, the town’s new administrator, brings a varied background to the job, which might make the understanding of a small town a little easier.

In the past, he has been a teacher, a director of retail marketing, and, most recently, the assistant town administrator in Goffstown, a post he held for more than five years.

His position in Lyndeborough became official Monday.

He has lived in Goffstown for about eight years, previously living in the Peterborough-Hancock area. He and his wife, Karen, have two grown daughters.

Bingham, 56, was born in Switzerland, where his father was studying medicine. “I was about 2 when my father finished school and transferred back to the States,” Bingham said. His father was later a doctor in the Army and the family lived in Alaska at one point when his father was stationed in Fairbanks.

Prior to accepting the assistant administrator job, Bingham was the director of retail marketing for Yankee Magazine. “I was hired for the 200th anniversary of the Old Farmers’

Almanac, and for their travel magazine,” he said, but learned that Yankee also owns Alaska Magazine. “I thought I’d be working here in rural New England, and found myself going back to Alaska.”

Prior to that he was in education, serving as director of the Manchester Schools to Careers Program. He had also taught in the Goffstown middle school for a while. “I wanted to teach language arts, but ended teaching math for most years. People looked at me and said, ‘You’re a man, you must teach math.’ Sort of reverse discrimination.”

But, he added, “I love writing. I can see the beauty of numbers. Studying budgets can help you understand,” he noted, referring to a major part of his new job.

“It’s interesting,” he noted, “coming here from the Manchester area. It was reminiscent of my time in Peterborough. I walked outside (recently) and smelled wood smoke. People here rely on wood.

“I see my role here is to review and streamline information and the decision-making process so the selectmen can concentrate on policy and leave the day-to-day management to the town office.

“Coming in from the outside, I’m a fresh pair of eyes and I don’t have the history,” although, that could be both good and bad, he said. “I’ll try to be as objective as I can.”