Beeville’s code enforcement officer put in her last day on the job Friday.

Kathleen Echevarria was scheduled to start a new job with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice in the near future.

“I’ve been in Beeville about two years,” said the 2006 graduate of Texas A&M University at Kingsville.

Since taking the job as an assistant litter abatement official at the end of 2006, Echevarria worked 450 cases, 25 of which ended up in Municipal Court. She said Municipal Court Judge Joe Salinas has sent two of the defendants to jail after they refused to pay fines he levied.

Echevarria organized the highly successful Spring Clean held by the city in April 2008. She also was instrumental in organizing the city’s plastic bag study committee and has served as a consultant to that organization.

She said the committee seems poised to recommend the eventual ban on plastic bags being used by businesses within the city limits.

“I appreciate everybody working so hard, Allied Waste, city crews and the volunteers,” Echevarria said of the Spring Clean effort. “I just hope everybody keeps it going.”

“It seemed that people wanted to change their whole attitude about how they wanted to live,” she said of the effort. “It made me feel really good. It still does.”

“She did very well,” said her department supervisor, Building Inspector and Compliance Official Lanny Holland.

“I think one of the biggest advantages was that she didn’t know anybody here,” he said. That kept the politics out of the way she did her job.

“I think the city lost a great asset,” Holland commented. Now, his job will be to find someone who can take her place with the same level of unbiased competence.

Holland said at least 20 people have picked up applications for the position and he already has gotten a number of them back on his desk.