After less than a year on the job, Town Manager Bob Warner has pretty much seen it all.

“It really has been an eventful year,” said Warner, who was hired by the town council in November 2007 to keep Hagerstown’s basic services running smoothly. “We had a big ice storm in early March, floods in early June, we had the big Model T event in July (which was a challenge for different reasons), and just last week we had hurricane-like winds knocking out power.

“We’ve been busy, no doubt about it.”

As supervisor of the town’s utility crews, Warner is the man responsible for managing the eight-person team that provides the town’s residents with critical services such as electricity, water and sewer service, street repair, and snow and leaf removal.

Town Manager, Bob Warner
That role presents obvious challenges – in part because the work is often dictated, not by Warner, but by Mother Nature. For example, Warner says: “I started last November. You would’ve thought leaf removal wouldn’t have been a problem, that most of the leaves would be gone by then,” Warner said. “But we wound up picking up leaves all the way into January – so you just never know.”

The reactive aspect of his work – hauling away leaves, clearing snow-covered roadways, restoring electric power after outages, etc. – is important to Warner. “I really do like helping people, and that part of the job lets me do that,” he said. But the job also encompasses a proactive role that is just as meaningful.

“The other side of the job is keeping the infrastructure of the town upgraded and improving the town’s image and future prospects. It’s planning and foresight as well as maintenance and repair,” he said. “My background is in engineering, so I’ve always enjoyed that.”

In fact, it was his penchant for planning that attracted Warner to the job in the first place. After a 25-year career as a structural engineer with firms in Connersville, Richmond, Lynn (and even a yearlong stint with a company in Pittsburgh, Pa.), Warner decided to take on the role of town manager.

“I’d been on the planning commission for about 10 years, and as an engineer, I really liked that work,” Warner recalled. “I like looking forward, trying to prepare for the future of the town. So when the job came open, I just decided to go for it.”

Except for that one year in Pennsylvania, Warner and his wife Lisa (a nurse for the Nettle Creek Schools) have lived in Hagerstown since 1982 and raised three sons here. With deep ties to the community, Warner’s decision to serve the town full-time was no real surprise.

When asked about his hopes for Hagerstown’s future, Warner cited ideas both bold and conservative – again, no surprise, given his engineer’s penchant for combining creativity with down-to-earth practicality.

“Well, we’re working now to develop a sustainable, ‘green’ office park near I-70, and that’s exciting,” Warner said. “It’s got me thinking that I’d like us to try some more environmentally friendly ideas – maybe some kind of wind-power option. I know those kinds of things are extremely costly right now, but it’s certainly something I’m interested in looking at.”

The key, he said, is to take a balanced approach – a concept he also applies when considering business and commercial ideas for the area: balancing the need for economic development with an ongoing desire to preserve the town’s quality of life.

“Hagerstown is a quiet, quaint community, and we certainly want to hang on to that,” he said. “But at the same time, we need to make sure that we keep employment going and bring more jobs to the area.”