ST. JOSEPH — William Wolf, Berrien County administrator since 2005, announced he will resign in 2020. The Berrien County Board of Commissioners will have until June 12, 2020, to find a new administrator for the new decade before Wolf’s official resignation.

The news broke at last Thursday’s board of commissioners meeting by Wolf himself. He stood up and read a short statement verbatim to the room.

Wolf, of Stevensville, said that Berrien County is “financially robust, innovative and has consistently provided high quality to service to the public,” made possible by the county’s employees daily work and their healthy relationships with their peers and managers.

The same could not be said of the relationship between the administrator and the board.

“At that time [in February], there existed at alignment of values and purpose between the board and me as your administrator that I can barely recognize today,” he told the nine commissioners, each representing a portion of Berrien County.

While the board makes executive decisions through votes on resolutions and laws, the administrator leads day-to-day operations, offering insights to the board from the county’s perspective.

In a follow-up, Wolf declined to explain the cause of the board’s diminishment of values.

“For right now, I wish to remain within the four corners of my resignation,” he wrote in an email, referring to the four corners of his printed announcement.

His announcement comes after a prosecutor declined to charge Commissioner Teri Freehling for corruption and a conflict of interest in September. Freehling’s late husband, Patrick, had allegedly rented machinery to a man contracted by the county for drain work but did not pay him, and Freehling did not recuse herself from votes regarding the contracting.

At a public meeting following the prosecutor’s decision not to charge Freehling, Wolf, speaking as a private citizen, called on the board to ask the Michigan attorney general to look into “alleged serial corruption among elected officials.” The board declined to do so.

Freehling represents Baroda city, Baroda Township, Bridgman, Lake Township and Oronoko Charter Township.

Wolf wrote that it will be up to Freehling and other commissioners he said whose collective values have diminished to find a new administrator with the best qualities.

The Berrien County native will leave his position as the government continues the functions of the day-to-day, such as election preparation, the annual, such as a new parks plan, and the once-in-a-lifetime, such as two-year pilot program of expanded public transportation.