KNIGHTDALE — When Town Manager Gary McConkey was nine years old, he stood on a busy street corner in his hometown of Oak Ridge, Tenn. and counted cars to see if the town needed a traffic light at the intersection.

It was all part of a civics project which included an interview with the town manager.

After that, there was no going back – McConkey never wanted to be anything else when he grew up. For 18 years, McConkey has held the top administrative position in Knightdale and next year will be his last. He announced on Friday he will retire as town manager May 1, 2010, ending a 33-year career in government.

“You can make a difference in people’s lives and in the history of a town,” he said. “It’s also a very diverse job. Towns do a lot of different things. There’s police, fire, rescue, parks and recreation, planning … all these different jobs and you get to be the manager. I thought it was a great thing to do.

It’s never been boring.”

McConkey has seen the transformation of Knightdale from a sleepy hamlet of 2,500 people to a growing town of 10,000.

To hear McConkey tell it, the seeds for part of that growth were planted when he was still Finance Director of the city of Cary. McConkey said construction of the Mingo Creek sewer from downtown to the Neuse River started it all. Without that, there wouldn’t have been Churchill, Mingo Creek, Parkside, Planter’s Walk and Princeton Manor subdivisions and the business development on the south side of Knightdale Boulevard.

Billy Wilder, who was mayor at the time, got property owners who would reap from the land’s development to pay the cost of the line that federal and state money didn’t cover, McConkey said. Enter McConkey who says a recipe for growth is water and sewer, good roads and good schools. Soon after he arrived, the town shut down its water and sewer system that McConkey said required constant testing and had gotten too expensive to run. The town bought water and treated its sewer from the city of Raleigh even before the merger of its system with the city in 2005.

From that merger, the town of Knightdale received $12 million in water and sewer projects from Raleigh, including the Beaver Dam sewer outfall which McConkey said will open up the north side of town for development once the economy shifts. It’s already 80 percent complete. The second project, the Poplar Creek sewer outfall, is still in the early stages. When finished, it will usher in development in southeast Knightdale, McConkey said.

“We also needed better roads,” said McConkey. “Before I-540, you couldn’t live in Knightdale and work in RTP,” he said. “We were too far from the airport and without the 64 bypass, it would take you 30 minutes to get to downtown Raleigh. 540 connected us to the rest of Wake County.” McConkey said he watched a council opposed to I-540 being constructed through Knightdale, wanting it to land in Wendell. He credits former Mayor Joe Bryan with the foresight to know what the interstate would mean for the town.

“Joe Bryan saw a bigger pictured and got involved with the Transportation Advisory Council (to N.C. DOT),” he said. “He also pushed for 264/64 for years. He’s responsible for it being here a lot sooner than otherwise. He can take a lot of credit for it. ” McConkey, himself, got involved in improving education in eastern Wake County. He was an original member of the East Wake Education Foundation and wrote its charter and bylaws.

The East Regional Library had its genesis in another McConkey idea. McConkey said he thought the county might commit to a library branch in Knightdale if the town offered the land. The town had a 12-acre parcel including the land on which Town Hall and the Public Safety Center now stand. McConkey recommended the town make that proposal. Then Mayor Carl Moore lobbied for it, he said.

A public safety center also was his proposal. When he was studying political science at East Tennessee State in Johnson City, Tenn. he watched a demonstration of the effectiveness of a public safety department and was sold, McConkey said. He saw how a public safety officer reached and put out a fire before a fire truck responded.

“You can get a higher level of service for less money,” he said. “That’s extremely unusual.”

Also during McConkey’s tenure, the bond referendum for the Knightdale High School park and the recreation center and gym at Forestville Road Elementary School were passed.

Always the computer tinkerer, McConkey said he needed a project to work on nights and weekends so he wouldn’t get bored. That’s how the town’s Web site got its start. Knightdale was the fourth town in North Carolina to have an Internet presence.

The town manager led the effort to convince Wendell and Zebulon to join Knightdale in forming East Wake TV, the region’s government access station. McConkey tracked how neighboring states were passing legislation to divide cable vision franchise tax revenues to towns with PEG, or public access channels, and knew it was a matter of time before the trend came to the Tar Heel state.

North Carolina eventually did pass a law, divvying up cable franchise fees and distributing them to towns with public access. And Channel 22 came into existence with three sources of revenue — Knightdale, Wendell and Zebulon.

“Its original purpose was to play council meetings,” said McConkey. “Now, we have seven regularly running shows in addition to that.” East Wake TV is one of the smallest public access channels in the Southeast.