Park district

Exactly.

And she is the new executive director of the Pekin Park District, the first female director in the park's almost 125 year history.

So, Abby, welcome.

Thank you so much.

Now, Carthage, Missouri, where you're from.

Yes.

The way the unit of government or the city of Carthage is, the construct is the park district is really kind of a park system that's a municipal park.

And people need to understand there's a difference because you are... answering not to the voters and your separate park commissioners as you do here in Pekin, but actually to the city council that, you know, had to answer a number of different things in different ways.

I was also very fortunate that I have interacted with a lot of professionals over the years, primarily through my work with the Academy, the NRPA, and the Revenue Management School.

So I had a real good understanding of how park districts in Illinois work.

And then the interaction that I had also in Virginia, there was also special park districts, Nova Parks, Paul Gilbert's agency, Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority, that functions as a special district.

So I love my experience working for a municipality, but I truly love working for a park district where a board has a singular mission and the decisions are easy.

It's not about sacrificing the playground project because you need to buy a new fire truck.

wonder what it's like on the other side, right? It seems very attractive, you know, between

parks and recreation.

It's funny because when I, when, when Tom was first talking and I was like, okay, are you talking about kind of like what Mike said, maybe parts of the world? Like I have some respect for the Colorado agencies and the Illinois agencies, but I, because I think it's so much more like city management in some ways, I, And because I don't want to be a city manager, I have no desire to work in those Illinois Park Districts.

Maybe potentially swapping that for the Amtrak maintenance site and just how, you know, many Bridgeport residents and Armour Square residents, they've been sort of uniting on this issue and pushing back.

Well, while you're in the hot seat, Matt, the Chicago Park District is giving the 18-mile lakefront trail a glow up this fall.

So what can people expect?

Yeah, so the Park District began repairs near 63rd Street Beach, and then it's kind of working its way up toward Foster Avenue Beach.

Block Club Chicago's got this great story.

Basically, the work includes asphalt patching, seal coating.

There was this viral video where people were arguing over, I just, one example, you know, where's the bike lane? Where is...

The pedestrian lanes.

Happy Wednesday.

Clay Gerhard, the Executive Director of the Decatur Park District Inn Studios, will introduce you to another of our great and fantastic doctors with Tanya Andrix from DMH next.

Buyers & Company, WSOY, 1340 AM, 103.3 FM, streaming live at nowdecatur.com.

We've got wrestlers coming to the show today.

We talked about it here a couple of weeks ago.

What's been just sort of your interaction, your board, people, whatever in general?

I think the Park District Board and myself especially, I just feel totally humbled by Howard's generosity.

He came to the show at the Devon this summer and – We had a discussion about how...

i own the paper and i run it and i still don't know what i'm talking about yes yes which is pretty standard but first introduce yourself yes

so yeah so i'm scott myers executive director of the miami county park district and you know the and we are on the ballot uh on tuesday yep and a lot of folks have already voted early um but uh including a lot of our staff and my friends and family and stuff that's good I haven't yet.

I've always been sort of a traditionalist.

I like to like voting day.

And I will tell you,

ours is long because we had to explain it.

But also, you know, and we also have a lot of, we also, you know, people sometimes also, Greg, are confused about what is, what's the Miami County Park District? Right.

you know what do you oversee yeah so what is so sometimes they think oh the miami county park district well then you're over all the parks in miami county well no we're a conservation-based organization we have 15 parks and you have nothing to do with

But we've tried to keep it an intimate experience.

We want to thank our partners over at the Park District for, you know, the food and drink.

And there's just a couple of rules to that.

You get a free ticket.