Adams County public works director resigns for new job

RITZVILLE — Adams County Engineer Scott Yaeger will serve as the interim public works director while county officials search for new one. Longtime public works director Todd O’Brien resigned to take a job with the state County Road Administration Board.

O’Brien said he has been employed by Adams County since a summer job in high school.

“It’s been an honor and a pleasure to do what I’ve done for the last 35 years,” O’Brien said.

Adams County Commissioner Jay Weise said the search is underway.

“We’re in the process of putting an announcement together and we’re hoping to have that out in the next week or so,” Weise said.

With O’Brien, Adams County had a public works director for a long time who was good at the job, Weise said. As a result, county commissioners have a set of expectations for his replacement.

“We could be lucky, or we could be looking for a while,” Weise said.

O’Brien said he will be the grants and special programs manager at CRAB, a job that’s new to the agency. The program involves grants to counties throughout the state for local access roads, which are roads that serve specific areas and are not maintained by the state. Counties do maintain them.

“This is a great opportunity for me to work at the state level on something I’m very familiar with,” O’Brien said.

He started working for the public works department while in high school, he said, and spent summers learning the job. He was hired as an engineering technician after graduating in 1990.

He worked his way throughout the department, doing everything from surveying to keeping track of necessary paperwork. He was made public works director in 2000, he said.

“I enjoy building things. I always have,” he said.

Over his 25 years as director, he’s supervised the construction of hundreds of miles of roads, he said, along with a couple of dozen bridges. The process of building and maintenance is as interesting to him as the final results, he said.

Maintaining and sometimes building roads is one job of the public works department, but not the only one. Public works crews maintain county buildings and vehicles, oversee solid waste, and, in Adams County’s case, are overseeing a grant to build sections of the county’s broadband network.

O’Brien said that while it’s difficult to leave a job after such a long time, he’s excited for the new opportunity.

“Everything just fell into place,’ he said.

    Todd O’Brien said county road maintenance is one, but only one, of the jobs of Adams County’s public works department.