North Hempstead Town fills long-vacant highway superintendent job with veteran roads official

North Hempstead Town has hired a highway superintendent to replace its former chief, who left in 2019 after just four months in the position.

Harry Weed, 65, of Seaford, joined the town April 23 to head a department of about 100 employees and oversee the maintenance and repair of more than 280 miles of town roads. His annual salary is $150,828.

Noting the disruptions of the coronavirus pandemic, Weed said in a phone interview that his priority is to get town operations back to a "regular mode."

"We now have to play catchup on many, many things," he said. "There are so many different aspects that we need to get caught up on because our personnel here were very limited in what we did during that time."

Weed succeeds Richard Baker, who resigned abruptly in July 2019 — four months after taking the job. Baker, whose annual salary was $140,000, was brought in nearly three years after his predecessor, Thomas Tiernan, resigned in 2016 amid an internal overtime investigation.

As the town searched for Baker’s replacement, Kevin Cronin, then administrative assistant to Supervisor Judi Bosworth, became acting superintendent. His 2019 pay was $117,507, according to town payroll records.

Now that Weed has been hired, Cronin will retire, said town spokesman Gordon Tepper, though he didn’t provide a timeline.

Before joining the town, Weed was the superintendent of public works in the village of Rockville Centre from 2002 to 2015, according to his resume. Prior to that, he held the same position in Amityville village, where he was born and raised, in the 1990s and the village of Brightwaters in the 1980s. In these roles, he supervised road maintenance and snow removal.

After leaving his Rockville Centre job in 2015, Weed said he retired and took only part-time consulting work.

"After I retired, I missed this career and this life," he said. "… I had received a call from chief of staff Jeanine Dillon, who had asked me if I would consider coming out of retirement and doing this. After having a chat with her, we discussed it. I’m very happy to get involved again."