Park Manager Blames Reassignment On Politics

Riverfront Park manager Hal McGlathery is being forced to take a different job - a move he claims is payback for his outspoken opposition to the Pacific Science Center proposal.

“If I’d been supportive of the science center, there’s no doubt in my mind I’d still be there,” said McGlathery, who takes over the Parks Department’s recreation division Wednesday after 15 years at Riverfront.

“I feel it’s unjust. I can’t accept the fact that it’s not related to what I had for my personal view.”

Ange Taylor - who took over as parks director in April - disputes McGlathery’s claim, saying the reassignment is part of a larger departmental reorganization that shifts several top employees to different jobs.

“Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Absolutely not,” Taylor said when asked if McGlathery’s job move was political fallout from the failed science center proposal. “It has nothing to do with the science center.”

Voters last year narrowly defeated a plan to put the science center in the park’s Pavilion.

Passion ran high on both sides of the science center debate. The Park Board unanimously supported plans for the center, saying it would be the Pavilion’s savior. After the failed vote, one disgruntled member suggested tearing down the Pavilion.

McGlathery said he never talked against the proposal while he was working. Off the job, he did voice concerns that Riverfront employees might lose their jobs and that the center might cost more than expected.

“I didn’t give up my citizenship to do this job. I did support the (opposition group) financially,” he said.

McGlathery said he thinks the measure’s defeat caused hard feelings among Park Board members, who convinced Taylor to move him out of the park.

Taylor “said I’d burned too many bridges,” McGlathery said.

“Would this have happened had the science center controversy not come up? No,” said Steve Corker, a public relations consultant who led the fight against the science center’s move into the Pavilion.

“It’s sour grapes on the Park Board’s part,” said a senior parks employee who asked to remain anonymous because he feared he, too, would be reassigned. “They didn’t like his answers, so they’re putting him in a place with a lower profile.”

Park Board member Dennis Hession is adamant the board played no part in Taylor’s reorganization plan.

“I wouldn’t deny that there were some concerns about the way (McGlathery) handled some things … but we had nothing to do with any of this stuff,” Hession said.

“(Taylor) didn’t come to us and say, ‘I’m going to move some people around.”’ Board president Carol Barber agreed.

“That’s not an area the Park Board has any dealings with,” Barber said, adding that McGlathery sometimes scorned Park Board policies. “It was flagrant.”

Taylor said his first task as director involved an assessment of the department’s strengths and weaknesses. He found several weak areas, such as maintenance, budgets and goal-setting. He noted the science center issue “divided the community.”

He also found that the department’s four divisions - maintenance, recreation, golf and Riverfront - weren’t working together, “particularly Riverfront,” he said.

McGlathery “basically ran his own thing, set his own vision, wouldn’t listen to the Park Board,” Taylor said.

Moving people every five or six years keeps them fresh, he said.

Under Taylor’s reorganization, McGlathery and Judy Quinlivan, the current recreation director, will switch jobs. Maintenance Director Taylor Bresser and Golf Director Mike Stone will keep control of those areas, but smaller duties will be shifted.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo