Rob Brown Brooks Bulletin
The City of Brooks’ former municipal intern is finding the Chief Administrative Officer’s position with the Village of Warner to be a rewarding one, something that his time with the City of Brooks prepared him for. Travais Anderson was part of the 2005 municipal intern program with the City of Brooks.
The field of municipal administration was made available to Anderson after he accepted the position with the CAO intern program that brought him to Brooks in 2005.
Alberta’s Municipal Affairs Municipal Internship program is intended to equip recent post secondary graduates with administration experience and a solid overview of municipal affairs and inner workings.
He worked with all departments of the city including engineering, parks and recreation, public works, finance and a variety of other activities that municipalities provide that have a direct impact on taxpayers. The idea is to get a comprehensive, overall understanding of what it takes to run a municipality. Anderson says his time in Brooks was an important one.
“Working with the City of Brooks gave me first hand experience with the departments,” he said this week.
Anderson says he has a special affinity for protective services, and joined the Brooks Fire Department in 2005.
The provincial program was originally created in 1980 and was run successfully until 1993.
After a ten year break, the program was relaunched with a more structured plan and guide to help interns and host municipalities get as much out of the partnership as possible.
“The program is expanding, that’s for certain. It has grown from four interns to 15 in 2006,” he said.
Brooks is once again one of the communities that will be benefiting from the municipal intern program.
Anderson said his time in Brooks prepared him very well for the duties and issues of the CAO position in Warner.
“I didn’t have to deal with the issues in Brooks, but I was certainly exposed to them,” he said.
In Warner, Anderson said the CAO has more direct contact with the people of the community-simply by virtue of the fact that Warner is a smaller community than Brooks.
“The issues are the same, trying to reduce costs, but being able to get as much as you can covered in a yearly budget,” he said.
Anderson finds himself in Warner with similar issues to the ones experienced in Brooks.
“The big issue here right now is regional water and our arena,” he said.
Anderson underlines the fact that the City of Brooks position prepared him and made him ready to make the jump to Warner to become the community’s Chief Administrative Officer.
“It was a great experience in Brooks. I had a blast and a great time.”