Vicki Beatty

CRANBERRY TWP — The township supervisors have said goodbye to their longtime solicitor Vicki Beatty, who has served the township for two decades during the largest growth in its history.

Beatty, a Pittsburgh-based attorney with Campbell Durrant Beatty Palombo & Miller, is retiring from practicing law on Dec. 31.

The supervisors lauded her work and professionalism Wednesday at her last township meeting.

Supervisor Dick Hadley thanked Beatty for her professional manner.

“You didn’t tell us always what we wanted to hear, but what we needed to hear,” he said.

“Vicki served the board of supervisors as the lead township solicitor for nearly 21 years. During that time the township went through very significant challenges to the community’s desire to plan for its future,” said township manager Jerry Andree.

“Those challenges included a barrage of legal challenges to our ability to manage the growth that the supervisors knew was coming,” he said.

“The township emerged from those battles stronger and more resilient than ever to maintain a strong emphasis on strategic planning and the implementation of plans that best served the interests of the residents.”

Russ Lucas of the same law firm will replace Beatty as solicitor.

Beatty said she wished more people would attend township meetings to see the positive actions the board does not only for the community, but for the benefit of the entire state.

“It has been a pleasure seeing smiling faces and people that genuinely want to do the right thing,” she said.

Beatty said she’s been able to do thousands of contracts, work with boards and authorities and argue cases in both state and federal court. But, she said, her proudest work was being able to serve Cranberry.

Her area of expertise is labor and employment law, civil rights litigation, municipal law/school law, administrative law and appellate law.

She graduated from Chatham College with a degree in political science and Russian in 1980 and got her law degree at the University of Pittsburgh in 1983.

Born and raised in Erie, she lives in Bradford Woods, Allegheny County, with her husband Ed.