Forward Township welcomed a new leader last month.

Tom Hartwig, who previously worked with the township while part of the engineering firm Malcolm Pirnie/Arcadis, was hired as its first township manager in June after being approved at a June 14 board of supervisors meeting.

“I’m very familiar with the township, and their employees, and the board of supervisors, and their technical advisers (and) the engineering firm,” Hartwig said. “This was sort of a coming home for me.”

Hartwig’s responsibilities will entail overseeing the administration and public works end of the township with a focus on the budget and financial planning for improvements, he said.

Born in Center Township, Hartwig lives with his wife in Franklin Park in Allegheny County. He is a 1970 graduate of Butler Area High School and a 1974 graduate of the University of Notre Dame, and says he’s excited to return to Forward to work with people he has known “for almost 35 years.”

Before becoming Forward’s manager, Hartwig spent the last year and a half as manager in Clinton Township. Before that, he was a consulting engineer, working for 29 years with the engineering firm Killam Associates and 19 years with Malcom Pirnie/Arcadis until he retired in 2021.

As manager, Hartwig hopes to look into funding for stormwater and road projects through grants and through the Butler County infrastructure bank.

He plans to reinstitute a township resident newsletter and to focus on the “challenge” of keeping the township “as rural and agricultural as possible, while still being able to accommodate the growth that we’re seeing here with subdivisions and land development,” he said.

That same balancing challenge is also voiced, he added, in Forward Township’s ongoing process of putting together an update to the township’s comprehensive plan, an undertaking that began last year, in 2021.

Forward’s planning commission will have a public hearing in August to go over the most recent revision of the comprehensive plan, Hartwig said, after which point the document can be passed to the board of supervisors for later approval.

“For the comprehensive plan that will eventually be adopted, the township board of supervisors felt that it was important to have somebody on board to oversee the financial aspects of the township, capital planning, budget monitoring and control, pursuit of grant money for public works projects, and implementing the recommendations that are presented in the Comprehensive Plan,” he said. “This (update) predates my time here, but I personally prepared the (previous) comprehensive plan, done about a dozen years ago.”