Daysland has a new Chief Administrative Officer (CAO), as Jody Quickstad started in the position on Thursday, Sept. 1.

One day earlier, the ATB Financial building, owned by the town, had been seriously damaged in a robbery, and Quickstad rose quickly to the call for action.

“It was unfortunate to start off my first week responding to something like this,” he says.

Quickstad most recently worked in Mannville, where he’d been the CAO for the past five years. Mannville has a population of 765, very similar to Daysland’s size.

Quickstad says he was raised in a small town, and grew up around the Armena and Viking areas. He says, “My father was a grain buyer, and that meant we moved around quite a bit.” But that makes him very familiar with small town living.

Quickstad says Mannville has an administration succession plan, and when he saw the vacancy in Daysland, he saw it as an opportunity for himself going forward.

He has a long history with municipal governments, starting with his family. He says when the family lived in Vermilion River County, his father worked for public works and his mother worked in the administration office. He even spent summers working for the county.

That brought an awareness of the work done by municipalities, and it was something that he says, “I’ve always found interesting and varied. There are always changing rules and regulations, although we are primarily guided by the Municipal Government Act.”

He’s really looking forward to holding his first Council meeting, meeting Daysland residents, and getting to know the region’s ins and outs.

“I’m looking forward to applying my years of experience to Daysland. Council and residents can expect a reasonable, very good response from me on the issues, and solid, defendable decisions.”

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Leslie Cholowsky
Editor