The director of the D.C. Department of Parks and Recreation has overhauled the agency’s upper management and fired two administrators since being confirmed this month, as he moves to motivate reform in the 800-employee operation.
After his appointment as acting director six monthsago, Clark Ray immediately noticed that “morale was at a very low level” in the $60 million agency, he said Thursday. After taking a “very hard look at a lot of the individuals inside my staff, who was performing and who wasn’t performing,” he made his moves last week – promoting seven people into administrative roles, creating new leadership slots to target specific sports programs, and firing an associate maintenance director as well as one of his directors of partnerships and grants.
“Why do you let people go?” Ray asked. “They weren’t performing to the level I thought they should have been.”
DPR is one of the District’s most troubled. On its fifth director in as many years, the agency has been slammed in audits for questionable hiring practices, frequently criticized for crumbling facilities and poorly-kept fields, and faulted for failing to have pools and other summer programs ready on time.
A prime example is the 3-year-old Sherwood Recreation Center on 10th Street Northeast, where basic repairs require an e-mail campaign and D.C. Council involvement, said Joseph Fengler, an H Street advisory neighborhood commissioner. Maintenance, Fengler said, is the ultimate barometer of an agency’s caliber.
“It takes an act of God to get them to keep the lights around the facility working, to keep the facility’s gates secure and to perform routine maintenance,” Fengler said.
Before joining Mayor Adrian Fenty‘s cabinet, Ray developed community sports facilities for the D.C. Sports and Entertainment Commission and led Fenty’s community relations office. DPR will “have to work very hard to raise the bar,” he said, and it starts with better facility maintenance.
Ray has won praise from Ward 5 Councilman Harry Thomas, chair of the parks committee, for being informative and responsive to community concerns, and for promoting from within the department, “which sends a good signal,” Thomas said Friday.
“I think Clark has really been just great coming out the box,” Thomas said.
