 - The City of Riverton recognized retiring Operations Division Manager Dan Adcock this week, thanking him for the work he has done for the Public Works Department during his time with the city.){kind=link}
(Riverton, WY) – The City of Riverton recognized retiring Operations Division Manager Dan Adcock this week, thanking him for the work he has done for the Public Works Department during his time with the city.
“He’s been a vital part of our team, (and) I still don’t know what I’m going to do without him,” Public Works Director Brendan Thoman said during a Riverton City Council meeting Tuesday. “We’re going to miss him for sure.”
Thoman described Adcock as “a man of true character, a man of true grit, (and) a man of true determination,” with the “will to help” the residents of the City of Riverton – including Thoman, who said Adcock came to his aid one winter about three years ago when a water main broke in front of Thoman’s house.
The break left water “running down the street” on a night when temperatures were expected to fall to 30 degrees below zero, Thoman recalled.
“Being the utility division manager at the time … I had sent my crew out to take a look at it, and they throttled down the water, (so) I thought we’d be okay,” he said.
But later that evening, Thoman saw that the situation had gotten worse, with the water now “backing up” and interacting with the snow on the ground to create “a dam in the street.”
At that point, Thoman said he called the public works director, who recommended asking Adcock for help.
So Thoman contacted Adcock, explained the situation, and suggested Adcock come over to assess the situation in the morning, since it was already past 6 p.m., and temperatures were falling quickly.
About 20 minutes later, however, Thoman said he “heard equipment running out in the street.”
“Dan had gone from his house, gone to the yard, grabbed a new loader the city had at the time, and was in front of the street pushing all the snow down the road along with the ice, along with the water,” Thoman said. “And then he stayed there for three more hours (and) cleared that snow. And it got to almost 50 below that night.”
Adcock had a positive impact on the city’s overall snow removal plan too, Mayor Tim Hancock said this week, recalling that Adcock “recommended some changes that we adopted.”
“I think that was very helpful and made it so that we are more efficient (and) more able to address the issues as they arose,” Hancock said. “So it doesn’t surprise me at all that Mr. Thoman would be saying you’d be out there actually running a plow and everything when there was a need. You certainly were not someone that I ever felt like just would sit in an office and let everybody else do all the work. (You were) there with the team. … leading by example.”
Adcock said his goal as Operations Division Manager was to “improve the Public Works Department” so it could more efficiently and effectively “take care of the residents of the City of Riverton.”
“And I think we did that,” he said. “I think we made a lot of good changes, and I think it’s going to continue that way. (So) it’s all been worthwhile.”