ZEELAND, MI (WHTC-AM/FM) – The new year brings a new Utilities Manager with the Zeeland Board of Public Works.
On January 21st, Bill Cook retires after eight years at that position, and after what the utility board chairwoman Linda Boerman called “an extensive national search,” the panel “unanimously” tabbed Andrew Boatright to be the BPW’s operational leader. With over 35 years of experience, primarily in the public power sector, Boatright comes east from Independence, Missouri, where he had been the acting director of that city’s Power and Light before abruptly resigning last June.
According to the Kansas City Star, Boatright stepped down two days “after publicly denouncing a City Council decision to cut several jobs at the city-owned utility, a surprise economy move that one former councilman called both ‘low class’ and ‘a late-night massacre’ … Boatright … was addressing the council as a private citizen rather than as a city employee.”
Before his stint in Missouri, Boatright was Electric Utility Manager in the Columbus, Ohio suburb of Westerville, and was on the American Public Power Association Board of Directors, serving as its chairman for 2016-17.
