Town council is holding a special in-camera meeting on Friday, Feb. 28 at 1 p.m. to talk about its next steps.

The meeting comes in the wake of the resignation of CAO Dave Devana.

Since his sudden departure, Mayor Jeff Genung has been helming the ship.

"My focus now is on my job. My role is to deliver on the needs of the community, and to bring council together to have them continue to represent the community and bring all of their projects to fruition."

He says council was surprised to receive the resignation letter after Feb. 24 meeting of town council.

"All of council was taken aback by the resignation letter that we received Monday, but we're going to move forward. We've just got to put our heads down and get back to work."

"He didn't give us a lot of details, other than that he was looking to get out of the public service life and move into possibly the private sector."

Devana replaced retiring CAO Julian Decocq in October 2017. He came to the town from the Municipality of North Cowichan, B.C., where he served for over seven years before departing in March 2017.

He recently made sweeping changes to the town structure. The revised organizational structure reduced the senior management team from six to four. It eliminated the deputy CAO and senior manager of Community Services positions.

Devana was a strong proponent of developing Cochrane's tech industry and of fostering partnerships with the private sector and community organizations.