You knew somebody from the Mayor's staff would wear the white hat and save the day for beleaguered Parks staff

Here Rich Riebeling comes to save the day:

The board approved a plan that will layoff off five Parks workers, while also asking Metro Council for an emergency appropriation of $850,000. More workers could face layoffs in the near future, as the Board will decide in the coming weeks how to cut $200,000 from its recreational and cultural wellness programs.

Most of the cuts approved by the Board are administrative and lead to no layoffs or service reductions to the public. In fact the plan, presented by Metro Finance Director Rich Riebeling, one of Dean’s top aides, will lead to no service reductions at parks facilities.

A parks board member kindly sent me the details on staff cuts as well as some rather cryptic references to line item cuts that make me wonder how programming at the community level will be affected. It's great to hear that park-level staffers are not going to lose their jobs, but are the patrons of our parks going to lose community center hours and programming options because of this schedule of budget cuts?



It's only fair to ask, did the Mayor's office put this much effort into convention center budget line item cuts when MDHA allowed the intangible public relations budget to run hundreds of thousands of dollars overbudget?