Mayor Greg McCune (centre) and other members of Enderby council provide words of encouragement to residents during the COVID-19 pandemic. (Facebook/City of Enderby)

By Pete McIntyre

Two month leave of absence

Local mayor ready to return after dealing with COVID-related burnout

Oct 20, 2021 | 5:00 AM

The COVID-19 pandemic has taken a toll on Enderby’s mayor.

Greg McCune didn’t get the virus, but he suffered COVID-related burnout that led to him stepping away from the mayor’s chair in the city of 3,000 residents, no longer able to keep up to the demands and feeling exhausted.

McCune, the mayor since 2014, took a leave of absence from the position for all of September and October, after working what he estimates was almost 600, 15-hour days, straight.

“I realized in the last 18 months, I had worked four years for an average person,” he told Vernon Matters.

McCune is not just the city’s mayor. He also runs a seven-day-a-week business in Enderby, Sutherland’s Bakery, which was short-staffed and busy over the summer, and the combination of the two jobs eventually pushed the 59-year-old to the brink.

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“I was basically getting here at 4:00 in the morning and leaving between 9 and 9:30 at night, and trying to do everything: the store, the people, the customers, the city, just trying to do it all, and it was just day after day. I thought if I could just get it [down] to 15 hours a day, I would be OK. I was actually delusional at that point,” McCune explained.

The mayor said one of the issues that was most difficult to deal with was calls from out-of-market media outlets, asking about Enderby’s low vaccination rate and other issues.

“I ended up pretty much exhausted. All the calls, day after day after day. I knew I was getting a little bit short. Basically I had a sit down with Tate [Bengtson, the city’s chief administrative officer]. We talked it over — we’ve got a great team at city hall — you can miss up to four meetings before council gets in a position where they can vote to replace you, but they were all super supportive. It just gave me a little bit of freedom.”

A call from a CBC reporter in August about an opioid overdose death in Enderby, was the final straw.

“I go to that call and tried to tell them I was too busy and that completely backfired. They just went ahead [with the story] and said my lack of a comment showed I didn’t care about the community, which wasn’t very fair I didnt think.”

McCune said some out-of-market media don’t even know where Enderby is, as evidenced by him getting three media calls and an email last week asking if he wanted to comment on the new restrictions in Northern B.C.

McCune will return to council meetings Nov. 1.

“The whole crew at the city was great. I got a nice welcome back package from my councillors last week that was quite touching and kind. I’m looking forward to be back.”

“During his leave, Mayor McCune was apprised of events and matters of interest affecting the city. Councillor [Brian] Schreiner served as acting mayor, while council, the management team, and staff continued to ensure that our responsibilities and duties were discharged,” said CAO Bengtson when asked to comment on McCune taking leave.

In addition to city staff, McCune praises Armstrong mayor Chris Pieper with helping him through his crisis.

“I had some very good conversations with Chris. He was the one who encouraged me to just take a break and not leave because he said you will realize that you’ll miss it. I would like to thank Chris a great deal for his conversations.”

McCune is not sure about seeking re-election to a third term a year from now, but he admits projects like a new swimming pool, highway improvements and the rail corridor, are “like your children” and he would like to see them move ahead with some funding

As for the city’s low vaccination rate (64 per cent with two doses as of Oct. 19), McCune puts some of that on outlying areas that are included in the city’s counts.

“I think very early on I predicted that if we could get to 70 per cent as a vaccination rate, with some natural immunity, I felt that was the best we could get, just based on knowing the people,” the mayor told Vernon Matters.

McCune said a goal of getting 100 per cent of the population vaccinated is unrealistic.

“Believe it or not, there’s just stubborn people out there, and they’ll just say ‘I don’t need to go here or go there,’ and they’ll try to prove that point.”