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Community Engagement: serves as a broker for partnerships between civic and non­profit groups;
gives $100,000 a year to non­profits in the community; $1M investment with hundreds of volunteers
for food banks, meals on wheels, and other programs; engages neighborhoods on parks projects;
engaged the community on the strategic plan update; extensive social media work to keep residents
update; did a parks make life better campaign and used the pictures in marketing materials.
5. Tell me about the riskiest or most difficult management decision you have made in recent years.
What was your thought process that led you to move forward? Would you do anything differently
today?
In December parks and facilities manager retired; had an analyst that worked closely with that
manager, worked on projects, grants, and playground improvements; the hard decision was that she
was interested in moving in to the manager role, but she did not have any experience working on the
parks maintenance side; she was eager to serve in an acting role; was also considering reorganizing, so
in the meantime needed someone acting in the role; took the risk and gave the analyst the
opportunity to be in the acting role; has been actin since January and it has been working well; as a
woman working with all male parks crews, she has been embraced, there is a lot of respect and she
has implemented efficiencies; staff already had a relationship with her so there wasn't hesitancy in
having her step in to the acting role; communication is the key to moving through transitions like this;
the supervisor that reports to the manager position has been groomed to be the parks and facilities
supervisor, he is the day to day liaison between the staff and her
6. Please describe your experience in coordinating, tracking and reporting out on the implementation
of organizational goals, objectives, policies and procedures.
Meets with her management team monthly and discusses projects; budget is aligned with goals and
objectives; Council identifies goals and objectives, the master plan, and then leave some space for
unanticipated projects that can be from public demand; pickleball group recently formed, it is a
growing sport amongst seniors in Sonoma County, there aren't that many courts; been sharing tennis
courts; the groups have organized and fundraised to create dedicated courts, as a result of their
enthusiasm and willing to fundraise it is now a higher priority project; Quarterly presentation to the
parks and rec commission; lots of communication with the Town Manager and Council; keep the
community abreast of the projects, advertise and invite and recognize staff and contractors; there is a
whole checklist of how to promote projects, how to involve the community and each one differs
depending on the project; tying goals and objectives into personnel reviews.
7. Please describe a project in which you played a major role in creating pathways for improvement for
those in your community.
Dog park expansion project; community wanted a new dog park but she thought the one they had
should be fixed; they wanted more shade, a place for the dogs to run; did a call out on social media;
eventually became a 501C3, they worked with various businesses to get donations; they were able to
double the size of the new dog park and the new half is under trees so there is natural shade, new
cement pad, a bulletin board donated by the eagle scouts, b/c of the significant amount of money
raised they requested to name the park after one of the committee members who passed; had a huge
ribbon cutting and invited all the dog businesses and had a festival; looking at adding new dog parks
8. Please describe your experience in evaluating technology and operational procedure utilized in a
City department and your approach to implementing change, if needed.
Involves the staff; have a Town wide social media team, there are members from all departments,
they work together as a group to ensure what is best for the Town is what is communicated; they
oversee how, how often, what it looks like; the look and the feel represents the Town's mission and
vision; it is a marketing and technology strategy in terms of efficiency; access has to be closely
monitored; they have a publicity checklist for her department that is based on what has been effective
and what the desired outcomes are; they just updated the recreation software recently, they looked at
pricing vs. The need and ensured that it would interface with Finance; networked with other
communities to find out what was working for them and looked at failures; Sonoma County is known
for being green and environmentally conscientious; low flush toilets, green buildings, irrigating with
recycled water; looking at programming to get to zero waste; have solar panels on the gym; Town is
looking at floating solar panels; looking at the smart train and how to utilize that; community looks to
the Town to be a leader; between IT and our staff technology is something that is constantly looked at
9. Please describe the roles in which you have had a relationship elected officials, and what your role
was in those examples. Can you provide an example of when you have had to research a regulatory
item and present your findings to the Council, Board, or Mayor?
Banning glycosphate project; Sonoma County has an activist group to help cities eliminate the use of
Round­Up; the item has come up several times; the first time, they asked to provide signs so parks
attendees can know the area was sprayed; then it was to research the best practices, City of Irvine is a
leader in this area; they looked at what was and wasn't working; presented the information to Council,
effective September, no longer using non­organic pesticides or herbicides; looking at mulching and
using different kinds of plants; report out to Council on what is working; no­pre­emergent that is
organic which is a challenge; looking at communication b/c there will be more and higher weeds as
they work through all of this. have to do the proper education as part of the effort
Communication, Collaboration, and Personnel Management
10. This position will interact with managers throughout the City as well as partner organizations and
individuals in the community. How do you evaluate whether your department is providing a good
level of customer service? What do you feel are some of the challenges to achieving a high level of
customer service?
Want to evaluate prices and looking at cost recovery rates; when evaluating customer services want
to deliver what the communities want and there is programming the community doesn't know they
want but will utilize; have to be tuned in with what the community wants in terms of facilities and
new classes, etc. They get community input when they put the master plan together and there is a 15
year implementation; doing pilot programs to get a sense of how the community will respond;
keeping up with the trends coming from state and national levels; incoming president for district 1 is
in her agency so their employees are very involved; evaluations are key in knowing how it is going;
looking at how to use the new registration software for the feedback; also Facebook for customer
participation through the voting option; have a virtual suggestion box on the website, they can
complain or praise; use commissions in various ways to solicit the public for input; challenge around
Hispanic outreach, 40% Hispanic community, right now just have titles of programs translated,
looking at getting tri­lingual materials; have a mobile recreation program bringing recreation to parks
that are in the lower income areas; relationship with food banks helps get the information out.
Closing
11. Is there anything else you would like to add?
Is Sacramento using Glycosphate or do they have an energy efficiency programs, couldn't get a sense
for that in the materials and website
With respect to her background and experience, it is youth focused; when she was in LA focused on
overseeing the youth and parks programming; very familiar with inner city programming and working