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Bridge commission manager resigns
Posted By COREY LAROCQUE REVIEW STAFF WRITER
Tom Garlock, the general manager of the Niagara Falls Bridge Commission, left the organization’s top job Monday. The commission is calling it a retirement, but the 56-year-old manager’s abrupt departure took effect at the end of the day Monday and there’s no one immediately replacing him as manager.
“Tom retired from the commission yesterday,” Janice Thomson, the chairwoman of the eight-member commission said Tuesday.
“There will be a regular search to replace him as a general manager. In the interim, we have a very strong staff,” said Thomson, who is the head of the Niagara-on-the-Lake Chamber of Commerce. Thomson would not elaborate on the change because it’s a personnel matter.
Garlock could not be reached for comment Tuesday, despite a call to what is believed to be his home in Lockport, N. Y.
Garlock became manager of the bridge commission in November 2000, less than a year before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the U. S. radically
changed the way cross-border traffic is managed. Garlock also oversaw construction work at the Queenston-Lewiston bridge aimed at expanding its capacity and making traffic flow more smoothly.
He took the bridge commission job after working at the New York State Assembly and for the state’s electricity market operator for about 20 years.
The Niagara Falls Bridge Commission is the joint Canadian-American company that owns the Rainbow, Whirlpool and Queenston-Lewiston bridges over the Niagara River. The government of Ontario and the state of New York each appoint four members to the commission. There’s a vacancy among the New York commissioners after Diane Vitello stepped down when she was named a judge.
Approximately seven million automobiles and 453,000 transports crossed the three bridges in the commission’s 2006- 07 fiscal year, according to its annual report. The commission collected $35 million in revenue, more than half from tolls paid by drivers crossing the bridges.
Article ID# 1125924
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