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Castlegar says farewell to CAO John Malcolm

After nine years on the job, Castlegar’s CAO is retiring.
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John Malcolm is retiring as CAO for the City of Castlegar. (Submitted)

After nine years with the city, Castlegar’s CAO John Malcolm is retiring and passing the torch on to Chris Barlow, who is the city’s director of transportation and civic works.

The city council meeting held on Sept. 18 was Malcolm’s last meeting and along with some cake, mayor and council shared some memories and well wishes.

“I certainly have appreciated your nine years,” said Mayor Lawrence Chernoff, “your dedication to the job, but also the dedication to the community.”

“We have lost a great leader in our CAO, but we are picking up another one,” said Chernoff in reference to Barlow.

Coun. Deb McIntosh said, “What you did for us is immense — you opened up Castlegar to show its true beauty. We didn’t know where to go with it, and you coming in from the outside saw something that we hadn’t seen and you gave us the courage to move forward with it.”

Coun. Florio Vassilikakis spoke to the many improvements the city has seen in recent years.

“The transformation … how much [Castlegar] has changed … just speaks to your leadership ability to make things happen, because a council can say that they want to do something, but it doesn’t necessarily happen unless there is some management in behind, doing the work and leading the team. Castlegar has become the jewel of the West Kootenays for sure,” Vassilikakis said.

“As a professional working with this … Council .. it has been a lot of fun,” responded Malcolm. “Because basically the council of today and the previous [council] has been open-minded, looking to do the best for the community.

At the council meeting and again in a subsequent Castlegar News interview, Malcolm was quick to emphasize that he can not take the credit by himself.

“We have had a great staff here,” said Malcolm. “All of the accomplishments that get talked about are a part of a team effort.”

“It is always a team thing — it is never one person’s accomplishments,” he said.

When asked about what he sees as important accomplishments, Malcolm ranks moving the city forward into a more green, sustainable footprint at the top of the list.

Malcolm credits having a standing green committee at the council level as one of the main things that helped to make that vision happen. He listed things like doing the city’s energy retrofit, working with CBT on a number of green initiatives, and the work Chris Barlow did with sustainable water and bringing in climate change data into the city’s analysis of its flood system among the green accomplishments, as well as solar crosswalk lights and the pedestrian and cycling paths.

One major accomplishment that has cities all over Canada following suit was the switch to computer-controlled LED street lights, something that had not been done across an entire city before.

When FortisBC community and aboriginal relations manager Blair Weston was at that same city council meeting, he acknowledged Malcolm had been a worthy opponent and partner.

“Mr. Malcolm and FortisBC have not always seen eye to eye on a lot of things, but he has pushed us to do some very innovative things in the City of Castlegar,” said Weston. “Like the LED dimming system … it was something at FortisBC, that we said we didn’t think it could be done — and it was something that got done.”

“You have been way more innovative and open-minded than a lot of power companies that I have dealt with,” replied Malcolm.

“They didn’t have a rate structure for it, they had to go through BC Utilities, it wasn’t easy for them,” explained Malcolm. “So it is a credit to them that we could get it done.”

Another highlight for Malcolm was the planning process undertaken in 2010, which led to the Millennium Park planning process and eventually to the development of the Millennium Ponds, tennis courts, volleyball courts, dog park and other improvements that have come forward at the park.

The success of Sculpturewalk also makes Malcolm’s list.

As for projects still in the development phase that Malcolm hopes will continue to move forward — a waterfront plan and a new visitor centre, art gallery and chamber of commerce development.

“Having public access to the river is the right thing … for the benefit of the public,” said Malcolm.

He believes the visitor centre and art gallery are “very important things for the city to move forward,” citing that a lot of new investors come to the city first as tourists.

“If you are trying to increase the economic development within Castlegar and the area then you should have something reflective of your interests,” said Malcolm. “The art gallery/chamber is a really nice marriage, it is a really nice synergy of the creative, cultural side with the business side.”

Both those projects will be among the stacks of paperwork that the new CAO Chris Barlow will be wading through as he gets acquainted with the job over the next few months.



Betsy Kline

About the Author: Betsy Kline

After spending several years as a freelance writer for the Castlegar News, Betsy joined the editorial staff as a reporter in March of 2015. In 2020, she moved into the editor's position.
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