Sullivan steps down as Biloxi Public Works director

Richard Sullivan, whose department helped restore city utilities and clear streets in the tumultuous days after Hurricane Katrina, notified Mayor A.J. Holloway this morning that he planned to leave his position as Public Works director to pursue other opportunities.

His tenure with the city officially ends Dec. 21.

Richard Sullivan

Sullivan, 60, had been named Public Works director in July 2002, after serving for 10 years as manager of ECO Resources, which was the city’s water contractor at the time. He was the city’s utility superintendent in the Public Works Department from 1983 to 1991, when Biloxi privatized its municipal water and sewer functions.

As Public Works director, Sullivan oversaw a pre-Katrina operating budget of more than $16 million, with an annual capital projects budget that averaged $16 million a year.

In the immediate aftermath of Katrina, Sullivan’s department cleared major thoroughfares for emergency workers and spent weeks capping leaking waterlines buried in debris where homes once stood.

Today, the city’s Public Works Department is helping coordinate the $355 million in post-Katrina infrastructure repairs, and has overseen millions more in construction and repairs of new and existing municipal facilities.

“I am very thankful to Richard for o the job that he has done for Biloxi,” Holloway said. “I certainly wish him and his family well in the future.”

Before joining the city in ‘83, Sullivan was a foreman with Brown & Root in Pascagoula and a general foreman with Pullman-Kellogg, a contractor at the Shell Oil refinery in New Orleans.

The mayor plans to advertise for qualified candidates and fill the Public Works position in the next several weeks.