January 2025 Spotlight Professional
Tim Barker, Director of Parks and Recreation for the City of Bremerton
Describe the scope of your position in parks and recreation.
I am the Director of Parks and Recreation for the City of Bremerton and oversee the management, operations and development of our park and recreation system.
How long have you been with your present agency?
I started working for the City of Bremerton in October of 2024
What did you do before your previous role? (Background experience and previous careers)
I have worked in the field of Parks and Recreation for 25 years and was previously in Lewiston, Idaho as their Director for 14 years and the Assistant Director for the 3 years prior to that. Before moving to Idaho, I was in Oregon and worked for the cities of Wilsonville and Portland for a total of 8 years as a Coordinator and Supervisor.
How have you participated in WRPA?
Since being new to the organization as a member, I am excited to have recently started up our membership and for myself and 7 of my staff to be able to network with and learn from other professionals in the field. I have been involved in state agencies previously on their board of directors and served in leadership roles for special interest sections and look forward to that opportunity in Washington! I have started to join in on the monthly Director calls and am excited to learn about and become involved in related industry legislation.
What inspires you about the parks and recreation field?
What inspires me most is to see our community and visitors take advantage of the opportunities that we provide for them and to sit back and watch the excitement they have when utilizing new parks and facilities. It makes all the hard work behind the scenes so worth it!
What is one creative solution you and your team have applied to a professional challenge?
In this challenging time to find seasonal and part-time labor, in my previous position I partnered with the state to provide labor for our cemetery and special projects through an inmate program. The cost per inmate was a fraction of the cost of hiring employees and we had the ability to request for an inmate to be removed and replaced or the entire crew if they were not performing to our expectations. The inmates were those that were wanting to develop job skills and would be out and in the work force soon after and we were fortunate enough to hire some onto our staff once they were released as both seasonal and eventually full-time staff members.
Considering what you’ve learned throughout your career, what advice would you share with someone starting out in the parks and recreation field?
A piece of advice that I would share would be to find a mentor, whether within your agency or another within the state. Utilize their knowledge to help set your own professional goals, become more involved at the state level or to just have a supportive sounding board for your ideas or to resolve frustrations you encounter.
What is one of your favorite moments as a parks and recreation professional? What was your job title?
One of my favorite moments as a professional has been to serve as a Lead for agency accreditation through NRPA and CAPRA (Commission for Accreditation of Parks and Recreation Agencies) for the past 10 years. The process of reviewing an agency’s self-assessment against the CAPRA standards, to soak in the information that they are providing, and to borrow/steal those best practice ideas and implement them into my own agency has been both rewarding in helping an agency towards accreditation and in assisting in the growth of my own agency. The people that I have been paired up with to form the review team, have continued to be resources for my own personal growth and that of my agency.
|
