Greene County Hires New Engineer

By Benjamin Cox on March 27, 2021 at 12:03pm

Greene County appears to have found its new county engineer after a special county board meeting this week. The Greene County Board had been left in limbo after long-time county engineer David Marth announced he would be resigning in December. Marth had been with the county for 22 years and decided to take a new job with Collinsville-based engineering company Volkert, Incorporated in January. Marth had remained in an oversight role through his new firm while the county sought a new candidate.

The county board had hired Greenfield-based Gruen Search Consultants back in December upon Marth’s announced resignation. The contract with Gruen said that the county would owe the search firm 25% of the first year’s salary of any candidate the county hired through their search. The county engineer base pay salary, according to records, would have been $100,000 – meaning that if the county had hired a Gruen candidate, they would have had to pay Gruen $25,000 for their services.

According to the Greene Prairie Press, last month, acting county highway engineer and secretary Diane Hendricks found a list service for the Illinois Society of Professional Engineers. The service cost the county $315 to sign up.

On March 17th, the county board called a special meeting to to interview potential candidate Nathan Bullard from Plano for the position, and after closed session decided to tender him a contract. Stipulations of the terms and salary of the contract have not officially been released. Bullard is expected to begin in his new position immediately.

Bullard has previous worked for the City of Plano as their Public Works Director and City Engineer for the past 2 ½ years, according to the City of Plano’s website. According to a WSPY News article, Bullard is originally from Texico, Illinois and was the assistant director of public works for the City of Mount Vernon.