Board views on termination of director

Green said the close vote to terminate him after nine years on the job “raised a lot of eyebrows” in the parks district.

Lesich said, “This was a decision of more than six months of analyzing productivity; expectations of Scott as a leader, not only in our community but also within our personnel; and the lack of following policy, written policy.”

She would not specify which policies were not followed, and said the productivity concerned the construction of the new 50-meter pool. “At each meeting we were told, ‘Don’t worry about it, we’re on schedule.’ Each meeting. On schedule. On schedule. Then it comes to March, April, May, we’re not on schedule,” she said.

Dollarhide said, “I voted not to cancel his contract because he has done a great job for the parks district for years on end without any blemishes on his record whatsoever.” He saw a district assessment by Interim Director Karl Cozad as a critique. “And I wanted to give Scott the opportunity to make the improvements that were uncovered in this critique…. I felt he had earned the right to fix things.”

Dollarhide said he was “shocked” by the assessment.

“Anytime your dirty laundry is laid out in front of you, it’s not pleasant.”

Dollarhide felt Green was particularly strong on budgeting. Green brought the district out of the red his first year on the job in 2005 and kept it in the black.

Dollarhide added, “As a district we need to make sure that all of our policies and procedures are correct and in place for all of the different types of revenue coming in and going out. And we were working on internal policies and procedures during this whole time frame.”

Dray said it was an “extremely, extremely difficult” decision.

He would not give specifics for the reasons behind his vote, saying discussion was held in executive session.

“I took all of the information that was given to me and kind of listened to Mr. Green’s statements that evening, and kind of looked at the past year that I’ve been on the board and based my decision on those reasonings,” Dray said.

Whalen and Denney declined to comment.

Several letters to the editor have supported Green and raised questions of why he was let go. Green told the Chronicle earlier he had a long list of supporters in the community and had been responsible for more than $1 million in improvements to the district.