After tumultuous few years, new SAO in Norman Wells ready to get to work

After a tumultuous few years for Norman Wells' local government, the community has a new town manager.

Cathy Clarke will leave her post as manager of Haines Junction, Yukon, and become Norman Wells' senior administrative officer on March 1.

In 2018 a new council and mayor for Norman Wells was elected a year after the Northwest Territories government dissolved the council and placed the town under administration.

• After a year without, Norman Wells is getting a town council

For Clarke, Norman Wells' difficult recent history is exactly what draws her to the job.

"It's the kind of situation at this point in my life and my career that I actually really like," she said. "I've stepped into situations where ... it's at a point where we've had to grow the organization from a place where it has been broken."

Clarke pointed to her work as general manager of the Western University students' council, where when she started, "we were not sustainable and we were close to, at that point in time, broke."

Clarke stayed for eight years, according to university paper The Gazette. She said she helped bring the student organization back on track by taking a tough look at its contracts and business deals.

She then moved to Haines Junction, because she had "always wanted to live north of 60."

There, she found outdated bylaws and a frustrated staff.

"They had just gone union a couple years before that, and ... people do not go union unless there's a reason," she said. "That means there's dissatisfaction of some sort," she said.

Now, she said, "they are not dissatisfied. They're a very strong team."

"Our newest bylaw was [from] 1996. There was no asset management system in place ... it was ground up building when I first got here."

The mayor of Haines Junction, Thomas Eckervogt, told CBC that Clarke also helped the town "improve capacity" so that workers could support each other if someone was on leave.

Norman Wells mayor Frank Pope told CBC that Clarke's experience will help the town's "rookie team" on council to help make sure they're meeting the territorial government's rules and regulatory processes going forward.

"We're all in a learning mode," he said. "We're very lucky to have got her to come and work for us."