Geauga Park District Executive Director gets vote of no confidence

Tom Curtin has found himself without the job of heading the Geauga Park District.

In a split vote during a specially called park board meeting today (Thursday, Nov. 21) Curtin's contract was not renewed as the agency's executive director.

Voting not to renew Curtin's contract were park board commissioners Nick Fischbach and Michael Petruzello while Jim Patterson dissented.

Fischbach and Petruzello are appointees of Geauga County Probate-Juvenile Judge Tom Grendell while Patterson is a hold-over appointment from the late judge Chip Henry.

In a short and terse release on what can only be called a vote of no confidence of Curtin, the parks system's three commissioners agreed to allow him to remain on paid administrative leave for the remainder of this year.

Curtin had been the director for the agency for 14 years and following a lengthy stint as a Lake Metroparks' recreational supervisor.

However, Curtin did not have the backing of a number of Geauga County's most conservative residents.

Likewise during Curtin's tenure the agency had periodically been in the gun sights of some Geauga County's more conservative activists who believed the parks system had been buying too much property and is also insensitive to residents' and tax-payers' interests.

For several years Curtin had been a thorn in the side of the arch-conservative Geauga County Constitutional Committee and vice-verse.

Here is a post on the Council's web site, directed at the park district in general as well as Curtin specifically:

"I don't know about you, but I have a real problem with 'Tulip' Tom Curtin and others from the Geauga Park District making the kind of money they do for protecting petunias and searching for woolybears.   “They provide us with no critical services but the Sheriff Dept. does, and the difference in salaries between these people in the Park District and the Sheriff is so lopsided it is disgusting. “Robert Urban, chief ranger for the Park District, makes over $75,000.00....more than our Sheriff.... and has a cake job....and probably doesn't have anywhere near the training the Sheriff has! “The Geauga Park District sucks.”

Appointed as the parks system's interim executive director is John Oros, currently the parks system's operations director.

- Jeffrey L. Frischkorn
JFrischk@Ameritech.net