In less than two weeks Jasper will officially have a new Chief Administrative Officer, and for Mark Fercho it’s been a long time coming.
The BC native will take over for Peter Waterworth, when the departing CAO leaves at the end of the month.
Fercho is the current CAO for the district of Mackenzie, British Columbia. However, he began his career as a park warden for BC Parks.
He grew up close to the mountains in the Kootenays, where his family operated a guide business. Guiding in the summer and operating logging equipment in the winter, he said he got tired of taking from the land.
“I found myself in a place where I didn’t want to take from the resources, I wanted to protect them,” he said.
He put himself through school to be a wildlife conservation officer, and while most of his peers left for big companies, he turned to BC Parks.
There, he worked as a park warden for a stint, before becoming an area supervisor. Over the years with BC Parks he crisscrossed the Rocky Mountains, spending “hundreds of hours” flying over them in helicopters, and walking through their forests.
A decade into his job with BC Parks, Fercho felt like he needed a change, so he quit and took a park supervisor job in Prince George, where he again found his responsibilities rapidly multiplying.
Three years ago he took the CAO position in Mackenzie, a job he said he still loves. He said that he had felt kind of lost in Prince George, away from the mountains, and Mackenzie gave him some reprieve.
But it wasn’t Jasper.
Fercho remembered that when he learned about the job here, he couldn’t ignore it. His wife Melinda had a dream to one day live in Jasper, and his combination of experience seemed tailor made for the position.
“I really enjoyed growing up in the mountains in Southeast BC. It gave me an appreciation and love for mountains and nature. I would like my kids to grow up in Jasper and learn the same love for hiking in the mountains and the spectacular outdoors, in a world-class mountain park environment,” he wrote in an email.
“Jasper brings me back home into the mountains,” he said. “It’s kind of like a call home, I guess.”
And while he still has to worry about winding down his life in Mackenzie and finding a home in Jasper, Fercho is already looking at how he can help the town.
He is already considering issues such as the long-term financial sustainability of the community, the town’s infrastructure and the intricacies of land use, planning and development. He was careful, however, to stress that his main priority is to first get a feel for the town, and what council expects of him, before diving too eagerly into anything.
“It’s going go be a great challenge, we’re looking forward to it - [but] until I get there and find out what’s going on - and where council wants me to go - it’s hard for me to say what I’m going to do with anything.”
Council plans to officially swear Fercho in at its next regular meeting July 15. The new CAO and his family will arrive in Jasper by the end of August. Mayor Richard Ireland expressed his excitement at Fercho’s immanent arrival, saying council was “confident that he will make an excellent fit” with both the municipal government and the community as a whole.
Trevor Nichols
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