The town recently hired a new chief building planner who will soon become the chief building official (CBO) here.
Near the end of July, Cody Vangel took on the position and is excited to be working the new role.
“I found it was a very intriguing position, because I’ve always been interested in residential construction,” he explained.
Vangel works under Travis Rob, who’s currently the town’s interim chief building officer (CBO), while he competes his final certifications for the role.
He is still transitioning into his duties but will soon be reviewing building permit applications, conducting building permit inspections, and municipal planning.
“I’ll be looking at land use for the municipality and what makes sense moving forward in relation to our official plan and bylaws,” he noted.
When town residents begin building without a permit, Vangel said part of his job will be to address those situations.
“If you do see someone that’s building without a permit, you want to try and work with them and say, ‘Come on in, what’s your project entail? Do you need a permit? Do you know if you need a permit?’ And then work from there,” he remarked.
“You don’t want to just go in and leave a bad taste,” Vangel added. “It’s a small town so you really have to work with the people.”
Vangel has a civil engineering degree from Lakehead University. He formerly worked at New Gold as a construction co-ordinator and did inspection work on highway projects for TBT Engineering.
He’s excited for the change of pace that the new position, as chief building planner and official will offer.
“Coming from a primarily a heavy civil construction background, and going into the municipal realm of it, there is a lot of different systems,” Vangel noted.
“You work with committees and council and that so I think learning those processes is going to be big and I’m currently taking a course on municipal planning as well just to become more familiar with the processes.”
One of Vangel’s hopes while working with he town is to achieve his professional engineering license.
He also hopes to work with the municipality and people of Fort Frances to see what they would like done with certain parts of the town.
“Just try to make our land uses the most effective we can to allow Fort Frances to continue to grow,” Vangel enthused.
“The tough thing is we are pretty small area-wise; it’s tough. You can’t just expand outwards your town limits so you have to really work with what you have.”
Vangel is quite familiar with the town, having moved back and fourth from Thunder Bay to Fort Frances several times throughout his life.
“I played sports growing up here, went to J.W Walker school, and went to Fort High for two years,” he noted.
Vangel said he’s really looking forward to overcoming new challenges with his new position and serving the town.
“It’s definitely it’s been a big change from what I’m use to, but I’m liking it a lot, it’s just very interesting, and I’m really looking forward to the years to come,” he lauded.
