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Lou Varela named Creston's town manager

Lou Varela has spent about six of her 20 months at Creston’s Town Hall in the town manager’s position. Now the job is hers...
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Creston Mayor Ron Toyota and chief administrative officer Lou Varela.

Lou Varela has spent about six of her 20 months at Creston’s Town Hall in the town manager’s position. Now the job is hers.

“Lou has the support of town council and of her management team,” Mayor Ron Toyota said on Monday. “I believe this is a good move in both the short and long term and one that brings added stability to a very strong town staff.”

Varela came to Creston as director of development services, replacing Albert Flootman. It was a job she had turned down two years earlier because her son was finishing high school on Vancouver Island and she didn’t want to uproot him.

A wide variety of experiences have helped her rise in municipal government. She started out as a summer student with the former regional district of Comox-Strathcona and spent eight years working with small communities including Quadra and Cortez Islands, helping local government with planning projects.

During that period she also earned a bachelor’s degree in anthropology and sociology. Later, she would earn a certificate urban design from Simon Fraser University.

“People thought it was an odd choice for my degree, but I come at planning with a hands-on perspective that puts people first,” she said.

Varela also worked in Cumberland as a planner for a couple of years.

“Cumberland had a really effective official community plan process, one that BC Business magazine described as ‘a model of participatory democracy’,” she said. “It involved a very high percentage of the population.

Private sector experience followed her years with local government. She joined an architectural planning firm, then eventually struck out on her own, teaming with partners to create two consulting businesses.

“Working in both the public and private sectors has provided me with the opportunity to see planning issues from all points of view,” she said.

Becoming a town manager (or chief administrative officer) wasn’t on Varela’s radar when she first came to Creston. She had been approached about whether she was interested in a temporary position, but applied, once again, for the director of development services job when she learned it was open. She served, in rotation with other managers, as the acting town manager whenever James Thackray was away. Then she became part of a four-person rotation that filled the town’s chief management roll after Thackray and the Town of Creston parted ways by mutual agreement.

“I’ve probably spent six or seven months as acting town manager, so it has been an easy transition,” she said. “But I still wouldn’t have wanted the job if I didn’t have the support of our senior managers.”

She describes herself as a people person and says her strength is the ability to communicate information.

“I’m looking forward to building on what being ‘open for business’ really means here in Creston,” she said. “We will continue to strive for consistency, fairness and timeliness. We are working to get all of our systems in place to make us business friendly, in a very transparent manner.”

Town staff members, she says, share the same dedication.

“This staff does a lot of ‘over and above’ that you wouldn’t find in a larger community,” she said.

“I have really come to love this community and it has been a great fit for me,” she said, adding that her appointment to the town manager’s position has a six-month comfort clause that calls for her and town council to evaluate their satisfaction with each other in January 2012.

“If we don’t feel like I’m the right person for the job, I will have the option of returning to my old position — I’m very excited about Creston’s future and I look forward to being part of it, helping to bring all of the stakeholders together to create the community we all want.”