The Cariboo Regional District (CRD) has appointed a new Chief Administrative Officer (CAO), John MacLean, by welcoming back a former corporate officer to a stronger management role.
MacLean took over his new job on Oct. 2, and will replace longtime CAO Janis Bell when she retires later this year.
The CRD’s new head of administration was the CAO for the Kootenay Boundary Regional District, based in Trail since 2005.
This isn’t his first stint with the CRD. Prior to taking the Kootenay Boundary Region District job, MacLean was the CRD’s corporate office for five years.
“When the Cariboo position came open, it was an opportunity to work for a really great organization and for some really great people. We got very lucky when they asked me to come aboard.”
Sweetening the pot was a chance to return to the Cariboo for him and his wife, a registered nurse who will follow shortly when her own job status has been settled, he explained.
MacLean will be working out of the CRD corporate headquarters in Williams Lake, but he says communities from one end to the other in the regional district can expect to see him out and about.
He is keen to visit as many of them as he can to learn more about the individual strengths and the needs of each of them.
The community is still recovering from the wildfires of 2017, MacLean said, so this is where a lot of his care and attention will be focused.
“We are going to spend the time and the resources that are required to do whatever we can for the community.
“That’s going to be the primary focus … to work with staff, the community and the stakeholders to ensure the services the CRD is supplying are efficient and effective in what the community needs.”
MacLean says his focus will also involve meeting and travelling with some of the CRD directors and staff to all the central and outlying communities he had never needed to before, in his former role.
CRD chair Al Richmond said the board is pleased to welcome their new CAO in this expanded and important role, after MacLean’s 12-year absence from their head office.
“We are looking forward to working with John [MacLean], and looking forward to new opportunities and maybe [some] new ways of doing things. I think he brings to us a steady hand and an understanding of regional districts and their operation.”