Mike Koziol has served as interim CAO for Cypress County throughout the search for a permanent one, and now that he is leaving he is heaping praise on both council and the municipality as a whole.--NEWS FILE PHOTO
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With a new permanent chief administrator announced, interim CAO Mike Koziol is reflecting on his time with Cypress County as he takes care of a few final items.
Overall, Koziol remarked that Cypress County was one of the best municipalities he’s ever filled the role for.
“So often you’ll find there’s discord within the council, or you’ll find that you’ve got a lot of things that need fixing within the administration. I didn’t find that here,” said Koziol. “We have a very good council and very good administration, so a lot of it was just keeping things rolling through the budget time.”
He explained that another aspect he was pleased to see was a lack of cliques or voting blocks, which he says often form in other municipalities and make it difficult for members of the smaller group to get any ideas or plans through. However, while this council didn’t necessarily vote unanimously on each issue, Cypress does not suffer from this problem.
During his time at the county, Koziol was largely doing the work to prepare the budget, as well as much of the end-of-year catchup which helps ensure that outstanding reports or requests for information are prepared so council can start the new year strong.
“I’m used to in this role preparing an issues list so that the incoming CAO can read through it and know what they need to pay attention to and what’s due,” said Koziol. “Luckily, there aren’t a huge number of issues that Al (Hoggan) is going to have to deal with.”
Koziol has also been hard at work on the county’s asset management system, and is pleased to say they made significant progress during his time with the municipality.
One thing he found particularly of note during his final meeting and following the budget, how oriented toward the future council was, something he personally finds reassuring for residents.
“It was interesting, the way the budget meeting wrapped up last week. Council talked at the very end about the future, 10 years and beyond, if and when the oil and gas runs out, what they can do to prepare for the change in their income stream,” said Koziol. “I think they’ve got some good ideas and it’s now going to be up to them to sort of formulate them and create policies for administration to act on.”
With his time as interim CAO coming to a close, Koziol will be returning to his retirement in St. Albert with a sense of accomplishment, but eagerly awaiting the call for where he’s needed next.
