Wheatland Lodge CAO retires

Justin Seward
Times Reporter

 

Former deputy reeve, Shirley Reinhardt, will be stepping down from her position as chief administrative officer with the Wheatland Lodge after a 22-year career, to spend more time with her family.
Reinhardt’s political career commenced in 1992, lasting 18 years at Wheatland County while overcoming many obstacles and responsibilities. During her time in office, she was present for high profile projects including the road paving for the secondary highways, the beginning of the Calgary Regional Partnership, and the area’s economic development.
“I like the county’s system and I like what was happening,” said Reinhardt, about her time in office.
“The starting of a regional partnership with Calgary and I guess it’s gone into ‘how are we going to have the town assist on their own?’ and I was vice-chair on that. I think the developments were big with 20-acre parcels and they wanted to come in and the economy changed to have smaller parcels. Where was a whole new plan of operation.”
She eventually got out of the smaller programs and expanded into the bigger ones like environmental farming plans and the delivery-of-water conversation, as well as planning and promoting.
There was also a time where Reinhardt took on the responsibilities of communicating with the government about the completion of road paving around the area.
Other highlights included being involved with the transition of moving the county offices from the old building, which is now the Golden Hills School Division No. 75 school board building, and the ambulance services.
“I was very instrumental in that with Rob Witty,” she said.
“I served on the ambulance re-delivery for the province. I got to go to Edmonton a lot on that. That was really good and if I had to pick (as a favourite highlight), it’d probably be the ambulance. That was a lot of work because we know we have a number one service in Alberta and we’re one of the forerunners, a lot of people looked how we did it.”
She added that Witty should be commended for being there since the beginning of the ambulance services in Strathmore and surrounding area.
According to Reinhardt, it was ‘frosting on the cake’ to move from the county to Wheatland Lodge because she is delighted to be able to help seniors have a better life.
“After 18 years, [I was] asked to be the CAO and to be able to work with people I have known for all my life and to help make their time here as good as I can do it,” said Reinhardt.
Ben Armstrong, who was the reeve during Reinhardt’s six years as deputy reeve, thinks that she was a really hard worker that really knew her facts about county issues.
“She was a teacher,” said Armstrong.
“We had a group of Russians and Germans over and they visited the county. They went through municipalities and how we operate it over in this country. One of the guys asked ‘What’s a deputy reeve do ?’ and I said ‘deputy reeve, that’s like Chester on Matt Dillon. The deputy reeve makes the sheriff look good’ and she did. She looked after the fine points, she knew names, protocol and she kept everybody honest.”
Armstrong added that if Reinhardt had an idea, the others would have to fight to voice their ideas. Fifty-three years ago, then wife and mother Reinhardt raised a family with her husband Alfred. Shortly after, she stumbled upon her second career, this time in politics, before taking on the CAO position for Wheatland Housing Management Board, which she calls her fourth career. Now coming full circle, after a fulfilling and successful working life, Reinhardt will return home to spend time with her nine grandchildren, children, and husband.