On the job for just over two week, Rossland’s new corporate officer (CO) and chief administrative officer (CAO) Bryan Teasdale may still have some catching up to do when it comes to managing the City of Rossland, but fortunately he has a wealth of experience in municipal management.
Teasdale’s previous position was as the CAO, CO, improving officer and financial officer of the Village of Montrose. Originally from Ontario, he has a Bachelor of Arts in geography and environmentalism from McMaster University, a Bachelor of Technology in environmental engineering from BCIT, and has taken local government, emergency management and leadership courses. He started with the City of Coquitlam in 2004 in engineering and public works, and moved to the Kootenays when his wife got a job in Trail. He briefly worked in the private sector before being hired in Montrose for three years. He then worked for the Regional District of Kootenay Boundary (RDKB) for six and a half years, before returning to Montrose for a little over a year. He currently lives with his family in Fruitvale.
Rossland News: How has the new job been so far?
Bryan Teasdale: It’s been busy. There’s a lot of stuff going on in Rossland, so it’s exciting. We’ve got the Washington St. project going [and] the Miners’ Hall. The museum got the grant from the Canada 150, so they’re trying to upgrade; that is good. There’s been some staff changes here on the senior side of things, so I’ve definitely been involved with hiring our new manager of finance who’s coming. … We have to review everything and take a look at what’s been going on here. There’s been a lot of great work, so I don’t really plan on changing anything, but definitely just need to get up to speed on stuff and hope that we can kind of add value to projects moving forward.
So far, what seem to be Rossland’s biggest challenges?
There’s a lot of stuff going on, and all municipalities are busy. Rossland is definitely extremely busy right now, so the staff resourcing — I can see just outside looking in and now being here, and it’s a concern everywhere — but I see it as being a concern just for this year because we are so busy with the Washington St. project and the senior level transition on the staffing. So we’ll do our best to kind of move projects forward and there will be a couple of smaller things — hopefully we’ll be able to get everything done — but I can see there are a couple of things that might fall off the side of the desk that we need to kind of make sure we catch before they fall to the ground. So that would be the challenges here, because it is a transition just like anywhere when you start a new job or where you have a serious turnover in staff. I mean the staff here has been awesome and they do a good job, and everyone has their role to play. I just need to catch up to those guys.
What are you most excited about working on in Rossland?
Well there’s tons of potential in Rossland, right? I mean there’s tons of potential in the whole area. There’s a lot going on and just to kind of get the experience working with Tourism Rossland, working with the museum and working with the different societies and volunteer groups to try to have a collaborative approach to helping move the city forward is super awesome. We’re definitely looking at regional stuff in the next little while and I obviously worked at the regional district, so I have a good relationship with all the staff down at the regional district. So just trying to bring more of a regional context to the area is going to be awesome and that’s going to be super exciting to see too.