Sonoma County taps Bert Whitaker as new parks director

Bert Whitaker, who started his career with Sonoma County Regional Parks as a seasonal lifeguard at Healdsburg’s Veterans Memorial Beach in 1995, will become the new director of the sprawling parks system.

He replaces Caryl Hart, who steps down this month.

“I’m thrilled,” said Whitaker, 43, whose selection was announced Monday. He will earn $144,000 annually.

A collegiate swimmer who grew up in Dallas, he learned of the lifeguard job from a Sonoma County classmate while he was a student at Northern Arizona University more than 25 years ago.

The choice of a new director comes at a pivotal moment for the regional parks system, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year after a period of phenomenal growth. Many challenges lie ahead, including how to manage and pay for existing services while bringing new parklands into the fold.

Whitaker cited getting Tolay Creek Regional Park near Petaluma fully opened to the public among his priorities. Another is the likelihood of the county going back to voters to ask that another sales tax measure be passed that would support parks.

“We are on track and looking very seriously at June 2018,” Whitaker said of the tax measure.

Measure J, a half-cent sales tax measure proposal, went down to defeat in November.

In tapping Whitaker for the job, the county opted for stability and experience. Hart, whom he replaces, came to the position in 2010 with an outsider’s perspective as a parks advocate and rare name cachet for a bureaucrat. Hart is the wife of Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart.

Sonoma County Supervisor Shirlee Zane, the board’s chairwoman, said Hart was the right person for those times.

“That was coming out of the recession and we needed somebody like that,” Zane said. “We took a risk with her, and it was a really good investment. I think now that we have done some more expansion, it’s time to have somebody that is capable of managing some of what we built, or I should say, what Caryl built.”

Both Zane and Hart made the case that it would be a mistake to think of Whitaker as an entrenched bureaucrat, however.

Whitaker said he was notified Friday, following his interview with county supervisors, that he had landed the job. He said he was one of four finalists, including two from inside the department. He becomes the fifth director to run the agency since its debut 50 years ago with the dedication of a county park at Doran Beach in Bodega Bay.

County spokeswoman Rebecca Wachsberg declined to identify the other candidates, citing the confidentiality of the recruitment process.

Today, Sonoma County Regional Parks spans more than 11,000 acres. About 25,000 county residents hold annual membership passes to the park system, which has 56 parks, trails and beaches.

Following his stint as a summer lifeguard, Whitaker ran the department’s aquatics program from 1999 to 2007. He left Sonoma County to administer a large outdoor education program and an industrial waste consulting business in the Pacific Northwest before returning in 2009 and taking the job of parks manager.

County officials credit Whitaker with opening parks at Taylor Mountain south of Santa Rosa and North Sonoma Mountain near Glen Ellen, the Laguna de Santa Rosa Trail near Sebastopol and other new parkland. He’s also been an advocate of modernizing the parks systems, including the installation of automated pay stations.

Whitaker also coordinated the county’s interim management of Trione-Annadel State Park in 2012 when the park and dozens more across the state were threatened with closure due to a state funding crisis.

His challenge now includes opening park lands that have been promised to county voters. In 2006, voters renewed funding for the Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District with a provision that 10 percent of district revenues be used for “initial public access” on lands transferred to park agencies.

But nearly 4,000 acres owned by the district remain virtually off-limits to the public.

County officials touted Measure J as a way to help fund park expansion. It was defeated by just over 1,000 votes out of nearly 70,000 cast.

Whitaker declined Monday to describe the scope of the tax measure under consideration by county officials.

Measure J applied only to voters in unincorporated areas. Officials are weighing whether to expand that to include all voters living in Sonoma County and to seek a lesser tax amount, in part to stay within the limits of a statewide cap on local sales taxes.

You can reach Staff Writer Derek Moore at 707-521-5336 or derek.moore@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @deadlinederek.