Kentville CAO to retire after 33 years of service to the town

BY KIRK STARRATT

kstarratt@kentvilleadvertiser.ca

NovaNewsNow.com

He was the town’s first recreation director before becoming chief administrative officer and the first CAO to receive the Award of Excellence from the Association of Municipal Administrators. However, on June 30, nearly 33 years to the day after be began working for the Town of Kentville, Bill Boyd will call it a day.

Boyd said he became the town’s first recreation director in 1975 before it became the Parks and Recreation Department. He was appointed CAO in 1994 and served in that position for the last 14 years.

He got to serve the town under five different mayors, including Wendell Phinney, Doreen Taylor, Art Pope, Gary Pearl and Dave Corkum.

Boyd said there were a number of committees responsible for various parks and recreation facilities when he became the first recreation director and it was challenging being the first person in that role.

“I had a unique opportunity being the first recreation director,” he said. “I could shape the department the way I wanted.”

One of his first tasks was to amalgamate the various committees under one department and it became the Parks and Recreation Department. A lot was accomplished, including building new facilities, upgrades to the pool and tennis courts at Memorial Park and the old fire hall was renovated into the Kentville New Horizons Club, the first of its kind in the area.

Town partnered with local business

Kentville became the first community in the province to acquire the former CP Rail bed to use for trail development. The town partnered with the local business community to develop the soccer fields at Memorial Park. Boyd said public-private partnerships were unheard of at the time, but they accomplished it in Kentville.

They brought a number of tournaments and special events to town, including two national baseball championships, two national slow-pitch championships and various hockey championships. Today, the town hosts numerous soccer tournaments.

“I like to think I had a major part in demonstrating that bringing in tournaments and special events is a great economic benefit to the community,” Boyd said. For example, the town ran slow-pitch tournaments for 25 years involving about 100 teams and this brought a lot of money into Kentville and surrounding communities. “We were the pioneers for that type of promotion.”

He said they were involved heavily in the development of a much-improved Apple Blossom Festival in the 1980s and 1990s, including bringing in big acts like the Rankin Family, Tom Cochrane, Blue Rodeo and Rita MacNeil.

However, Boyd said all of this took a team effort and wouldn’t have happened without the tremendous support of town council, lots of great volunteers and the community.

Being trained as a recreation professional, Boyd said there was a transition period to move from a single department to multi-department responsibility as CAO. However, he welcomed the opportunity to work with all town departments.

During his time as CAO, Boyd said a lot of work was done to improve the town’s water, sewer and road infrastructure. The purchase of the former CP Rail land was a drawn-out event involving lots of negotiations, but it was a huge accomplishment.

One very encouraging development was the installation of a new $5-million water system for the town, which opened up hundreds of acres to the south to potential development not possible before.

Strong working relationships

Boyd said the town has established a strong working partnership with neighbouring municipalities over the past decade that will allow the units to work cooperatively. This wasn’t the practice of the day when he came on board 33 years ago.

He said one of the most stressful times he recalls was the sale of the Kentville Electric Commission, including the downsizing of a number of staff members Boyd considered friends. “It was not a good period for me,” he said.

Another sad point was losing Mayor Gary Pearl in 2005 when Pearl was still in office. “He was mayor and a very good friend,” Boyd said.

He said he thinks the town is on a good course with commercial enterprise taking off and residential development booming. The future is very bright and Boyd said he hopes whoever follows him in the role of CAO could carry on and help continue the positive trends.

He said he has his health and wants to have more flexibility in life. Being CAO was a 24/7 job at times and he looks forward to spending time on hobbies, including hockey, golf, woodworking and working on his cottage. There will be household duties his wife will assign and he will probably continue to work in some capacity on a part-time basis.

Boyd said he became accustomed to a routine over the last 33 years and he will miss the people who work at town hall, including the staff and councillors. There isn’t a lot of turnover with the town and people become like a close-knit family.

“I’ll miss that,” he said, pointing out that working with the public has been very rewarding.