Yuma-Area WACOG Director Brian Babiars to Retire After Over 50 Years

Brian H. Babiars, executive director of the Western Arizona Council of Governments, announced plans to retire in 2026 after “over five decades of service starting in 1973,” The Yuma Sun reports. Babiars’ decision ends a career that began when he joined WACOG in 1973 and that WACOG now frames as a long dedication to the regional organization covering the Yuma area.

WACOG traces its mission to the era after Governor Jack Williams signed Executive Order 70-2 in 1970 to establish planning districts in Arizona, and the agency’s web materials use the phrase “Strengthening Communities Empowering People” to describe its ongoing work. The organization’s regional role includes planning and administering resources for community programs across the Yuma area, a responsibility the agency says it has carried since those founding years.

In a Director’s Message posted on the WACOG site, Babiars wrote, “Throughout these decades we have managed resources for community and social services programs.” He lists specific initiatives that have moved through WACOG’s portfolio: “anti-poverty initiatives from Community Action via the Economic Opportunity Act to Head Start’s early childhood education, programs from the Older Americans Act and more recently from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and the American Rescue Plan Act,” and adds that “we have prioritized serving those with greatest need.” Those named programs represent early childhood, elder services, and anti-poverty funding streams that intersect with public health and social safety-net needs in Yuma County.

The public record provided does not specify when Babiars first held the title executive director after joining WACOG in 1973, nor does it provide a specific month or day for his 2026 retirement. The supplied materials also include no statement about a successor or an interim leadership plan at WACOG, leaving transition details for the council and partner agencies in the Yuma area unresolved at this time.

Babiars closed his Director’s Message with a personal sign-off: “In gratitude, Brian H. Babiars, Executive Director.” His planned retirement in 2026 raises practical questions about continuity for programs WACOG administers in the Yuma area, including Head Start early childhood education and Older Americans Act services funded through federal acts like ARRA and the American Rescue Plan Act, and about who will steward those funding streams and partnerships going forward.