BOWDEN — Town of Bowden Mayor Robb Stuart says new chief administrative officer Arno Glover is a natural to take over from former CAO Rudy Friesen.
Friesen resigned July 5 to take a job as CAO of Brazeau County.
The next day, Glover, formerly the town’s legislative and municipal services officer, was promoted to CAO.
He has worked full-time for the Town of Bowden for seven years.
Once they received the news, town council held a special meeting to deal with Friesen’s departure.
During an interview with the Albertan, Stuart said council discussed a couple of options, including hiring a head hunter to scan the field for possible replacements.
But in the end, the choice seemed obvious.
“The main thing with Arno was he's been here for so many years now and he now has all that knowledge first-hand,” Stuart said.
And like Glover himself, Stuart noted the Town has several major projects already lined up, so time was of the essence to have someone in place.
Besides, Glover was familiar with all that was planned.
One of the biggest projects scheduled is an effort to flush and examine by camera the state of about 10 per cent of Bowden’s sewer lines; largely in the oldest part of town.
Stuart said many of those lines are at least 40 years old.
“We did under Highway 2A last year,” Stuart said. “We had to replace probably 100 metres of it, which was a big project, but it had been there for probably 50 years.”
If Glover had not been promoted to the post, “he would have had to inform whoever the new guy was, and that would have probably taken three months," said Stuart.
“His attention to detail is phenomenal,” he said, adding Glover did a meticulous job when it came to the town’s bylaws.
Friesen was the town’s CAO for almost exactly two years. Before that, he held the same position in Cremona.
Stuart said his departure was “kind of unexpected, but that's what happens nowadays.”
“I did get a quote from a head hunter and he said that he’s swamped (with) the CAO's or turning over. They're being cherry picked by bigger communities.
Stuart said the head hunter told him that most CAOs are now staying in their jobs for two to four years before moving on to bigger population centres.
“The CAOs, usually most of them now, are lasting two to four years, where it used to be 20,” he said.
Stuart guessed that the turnover this time marked about the seventh new CAO during his 20 years on council.
Meanwhile, Stuart is pleased that 19 kilometres of Highway 2A from the north end of Bowden to the south end of Olds was repaved last month.
But he was a bit surprised that it was done.
“It's not in that bad of shape,” he said during an interview with the Albertan. "That's why I was a little surprised.”
Stuart thought Alberta Transportation and Economic Corridors might take advantage of the opportunity to make the shoulders a little wider, but he can live with it as it is.
Stuart was grateful for the fact that, as promised, employees stopped working on the project during the annual Bowden Daze Rodeo, held July 12-14.
“Now if they could just get transportation to fix the town of Olds lights,” he said. “I had to stop at all five of them the other day when I came through.”