Stonington ― After more than 8 years with the town, Barbara McKrell has resigned as director of public works.

In an email to town employees on Monday, First Selectman Danielle Chesebrough said McKrell had submitted her resignation in order to accept another, unspecified position, effective Nov. 10.

She called McKrell a “tremendous asset to our community,” and thanked her for her leadership and contributions to the town throughout her tenure, which began in February of 2014.

“She did so much that we didn’t want to name one or two things and leave out things. She really was just fantastic,” Chesebrough said Tuesday, adding that “five years from now we’re still going to be thanking her when working through budgets or different projects, because she really had that future vision.”

“One thing that always stands out to me is she implemented a way to basically, take the politics out of paving,” she said.

During her tenure, McKrell developed a tracking system for road maintenance, that is recalculated at the beginning of each paving season and uses data, analytics and resident reports to rank roads based on which ones need to take priority. This helps determine whether roads can be repaired or require replacement.

“She really helped move us to that next level in terms of organization and forward looking project management,” Chesebrough said.

McKrell also moved fields maintenance in-house, giving the town more control over how sports fields, playgrounds and town lawns are cared for, and created a method of tracking capital investments for items such as vehicles to anticipate maintenance costs and replacement, making the budget process easier.

Chesebrough said the town will post the job opening for a new public works director this week. In the meantime, she expressed confidence that Head of Highway and Facilities Tom Curioso and Town Engineer Chris Greenlaw will keep the department running smoothly.

“They’ll be kind of dividing and conquering, if you will,” she said.

McKrell could not be reached for comment Tuesday.