Longtime TCA Chief Hits the End of the Road

William Woollett once said he would never retire.

But after nearly a decade as head of Orange County’s toll road agencies, and more than 40 years in public service, Woollett has decided to slow down.

Today, on his 70th birthday, Woollett presides over his final Transportation Corridor Agencies board meeting. He will vacate the chief executive’s office in late January, turning over the helm to a successor who will named at the meeting today.

The decision to leave the agencies he came to in 1989, when toll roads in the county were still far from being a reality, comes two years after the death of his wife, Diane, whom he still sometimes speaks of in the present tense.

“We were closer than a partnership,” he said. “We were two parts of a heartbeat.”

Losing her after 40 years of marriage, he said, was the hardest thing he has ever experienced, and it has made him reconsider the speed with which he has led his life.

“It’s time to do something different,” he said. “It’s time that when I drive from here to Colorado, I don’t just go 70 miles per hour the whole way. I need to stop to see what’s between here and there.”

Woollett’s exit from the public arena will mark the first time he has not had a prominent official role in Orange County since he came to Irvine as the first city manager in the early 1970s, a job he held 17 years.

In nearly three decades, he has become a major force in politics and policy in the county, the person many politicians turn to when making important decisions. And in building those relationships, Woollett also learned how to get jobs done, even when they required cooperation from many interest groups, his friends and associates said.

When he took the toll road job, no road plans were drawn up and no financing had been secured.

Woollett leaves with 41 miles of toll roads in operation that cost more than $1.7 billion to construct.

Still unbuilt are the 16 miles of the Foothill South leg, projected to cost $644 million and still tied up in litigation over environmental issues. Early next year, 10 additional miles of the Eastern Toll Road will open.

Getting the roads built hasn’t been easy, and Woollett hasn’t always made friends.

Often described as one of the highest-paid public officials in the county, Woollett, who earns about $142,000 a year, even now bristles at criticism of the job his agency has done. Some questioned why his compensation and the pay of others who work for him has risen over the years, even as toll road projects fell behind schedule and traffic on the San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor lagged 40% behind projections.

But Woollett said he has had to develop a tough skin.

“It’s just part of doing a public job,” he said.

He said he is proud that visitors from all over the nation and world come to see how the Transportation Corridor Agencies does business because of the unique public-private partnership that has gotten the road projects built.

And he said the reward has been working with the toll road agencies employees.

The man who personally delivers the paychecks every two weeks, a sort of Army-style “roll call” as he likes to say, will miss the 47 employees, many of whom he credits with helping him following his wife’s death.

“The biggest pleasure in my career has been the people I work with,” he said.

But for Woollett, who joined the Army paratroopers during the Korean War to confront his fear of heights, forward motion is everything.

Irvine City Manager Paul Brady, who like many other public officials considers Woollett his mentor, said Woollett’s tenacity is his trademark.

“Every day, you have to get up and figure out how to move that boulder another half an inch,” said Brady of the work to build the toll roads. “You can’t be impatient.”

Some critics of the toll roads, especially those active in the environmental community, said they find little to admire in Woollett’s determination to get the roads built.

“You can’t like the environment and do the job he has done over the years,” said Pete DeSimone of the National Audubon Society, a fierce opponent of the toll roads.

Woollett, who remains proud of establishing open space in Irvine while city manager, said he is a strong supporter of the environment, despite the hits he has taken over the years.

Woollett says he will not miss the battles with environmentalists, which have proved one of the biggest hurdles in building the road system that planners originally hoped to have finished by the mid-1990s.

Even though he is leaving, Woollett said he would like to remain active in some way with the agency.

His next goal is to take art classes to see if he has any of the same artistic talent of his draftsman father and his younger brother.

“I’ve never had the time before to find out if I could do it,” he said.

He also has plans for his next career as an “executive coach” contracting with businesses to provide direction and motivation.

“I’ll do whatever they need,” he said.

While others say he will be difficult to replace, Woollett says he has confidence his successor will get the job finished.

“The important thing is for that person to do it his way,” Woollett said.

The new leader of the agencies will take over Woollett’s corner office, which is still decorated with western-style art and a drawing of the Hoover Dam his father sketched. On a coffee table sits the Dr. Suess book, “You’re Only Old Once.’

“Seventy years of age is a good time to make a change again,” Woollett said.