An upcoming report on Starkville Parks and Recreation will compare the department’s policies to standards set by the National Recreation and Park Association in an attempt to give aldermen a guidepost for managing it in the future, advisory board members said Thursday.
The document, which was previously scheduled to be presented to aldermen by the end of June, is expected to be finalized early next month after unforeseen scheduling conflicts prevented the Starkville Parks Advisory Board from meeting in recent weeks.
Four SPAB members — former Alderman Sumner Davis, former SPR Director Matthew Rye and former Starkville Park Commission members Dorothy Isaac and Betty Robinson — picked up discussions Thursday and focused talks on the department’s accountability, or lack thereof, in the past.
The group took many issues within the park system to task, from the failure to address work orders to the former autonomous board’s inability to set and execute basic policies.
Aldermen approved a takeover of SPC earlier this year after financial issues plagued the entity. The death knell came when Parks fell $60,000 short of its previous fiscal year budget and could not meet payroll, retirement and bill payments without a bailout.
The reason SPC suffered financially, Isaac said, is because the group’s leader would adjust figures after the board’s budgetary work sessions.
“We came in one day and we would do the budget,” she said in response to Rye’s question about how the former board prepared its financial documents. “When we came back (to approve the budget), it was nothing like what we planned it to be.”
“Who changed it?” Rye asked.
“The commander in chief. When it came back it was, ‘We didn’t say that,'” Isaac continued. “I’m only one person, but I’m going to say whatever my spirit is. It was jeopardizing the business part, because when we came back this (document) was not what we said.”
Former SPC Chairman Dan Moreland resigned his post at the end of 2014.
Accountability issues were present throughout the park system’s chain of command, Isaac said. In many cases, workers would not complete maintenance orders, so SPC members themselves and other volunteers would have to attend minor projects, including stocking restrooms with toiletries.
The commission’s few attempts to review employees’ job performances ended with “everybody … blaming everybody else” for failures, she said.
Last week, Davis said the report would transition from a document making a list of recommended changes to one that provides administrative suggestions as the board of aldermen will now control Parks, much like SPC previously did.
The department’s fate lies with how aldermen want to approach managing the system, he said, not a list of fixes produced by a board that met a few times this spring and summer.
Carl Smith covers Starkville and Oktibbeha County for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter @StarkDispatch
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