At a special meeting of Town Council last night Fort Frances Town Council passed a bylaw appointing Marcel Michaels as the new CAO for the Town of Fort Frances.
Michaels comes to Fort Frances from the town of Consort, Alta., where he has been the CAO for the last year. Previous to that Michaels was the Mayor of the town of Hinton, Alta., from 2017-2023 and had served on council there since 2013.
While currently living in Alberta, Michaels was born and raised in Hamilton, Ontario. He completed a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science at McMaster University.
After the vote to pass the bylaw Mayor Andrew Hallikas commended the search team and HR Manager Alyssha Derksen for their diligence in the search, which took over a year.
“Initially we tried to find a CAO ourselves and literally had hundreds of applicants and sifted through them,” Hallikas said. “At one point we actually found a suitable applicant and made that person an offer but that person had a better offer and withdrew. At that time we decided to go with some search professionals and they’ve done a really good job for us.”
The search committee sorted through the candidates submitted by the recruiting company.
“Our search committee ended up winnowing the product of the professionals down to three candidates and they were all excellent candidates,” the mayor said. “The search committee wasn’t really able to decide amongst them so they decided to bring them all in for a special meeting of council, so the whole council interviewed all three of the candidates and again I have to say they were excellent candidates, any one of them would have been a good CAO. Council picked the one that they thought was the best fit, and we’re all very excited to have Marcel Michaels join us.”
Michaels will start in Fort Frances as of May 28, 2024, with his family to join him after the school year ends.
Until that date Interim CAO Travis Rob will maintain that position. Hallikas commended Rob for his work over the course of the search process.
“Travis Rob has done an amazing job for us,” Hallikas said. “He stepped up when council really needed him and showed a lot of leadership, intelligence and initiative. We kept renewing him as the process dragged out and we can’t thank Interim CAO Travis Rob enough.”
