For 14 years, Myra Reiter has been the go-to woman for Sylvan Lake’s five summer villages.
When a grant application needed writing, a public meeting organized, a lake study overseen or questions answered on the myriad of details that go along with running a municipality, the chief administrative officer for the summer villages was the one who got the call.
Reiter has now decided to cut back on what was becoming an increasingly heavy workload to take a similar job, although on a smaller scale, as chief administrative officer for the Summer Village of Gull Lake.
“It’s wonderful. I do exactly what I love doing. I love summer villages, but now I only have one to do,” she said.
She’s actually been working her new three-days-a-week job for about a month. But to help with the transition at the summer villages office in Sylvan Lake she is still coming back for a couple of days a week and expects to be there until the late fall to help her replacement get settled.
“It would be pretty tough to do five summer villages starting from nothing.”
Looking back, Reiter feels one of her biggest achievements was sorting out the finances for the summer villages, which had little money to work with when she first started.
“My highlights are pretty well that I got the summer villages in a good financial position. I’m leaving them very well set that way.”
Her years on the job were never dull. Between all the new developments, annexations, new sewer systems and other offshoots of a lake that has become the destination of choice for growing numbers of Albertans, her calendar was always full.
In the summer, on top of weekday work she spent most Saturdays attending public events or summer village council meetings and she is now looking forward to a little more leisure time. As an added bonus, her new job is much closer to the home she shares with her husband Bob near the Wolf Creek Golf Resort south of Ponoka.
Her replacement has not yet been chosen. Applications for the position close on Oct. 17.
pcowley@www.reddeeradvocate.com