Abele Is Paying New Parks Director $140,000 To Spin Off, Privatize Parks

On Thursday, Milwaukee County Executive Emperor Chris Walker Romney Abele  announced that he was hiring John Dargle to be the new Parks Director.

At the time, I noted something that was conspicuous by its absence - no one was talking about how much Dargle was getting paid.  I felt it important to know, since Abele is getting the county sued for paying women less for doing the same job as their male predecessors.

So I sent a Open Records Request to Abele's office asking for Dargle's salary.

Abele's passive aggressive spokesman, failed TV reporter Brendan Conway, sent back the following email on Friday:

In case the gentle reader has difficulty making it out, here it is again:

Charles,*

In response to your request, Mr. Dargle will be paid $140,000.

Brendan Conway
Communications Director
Office of County Executive Chris Abele
Phone:  414.278.5281
Cell: 414.394.7710

According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Data on Demand, Sue Black, Dargle's predecessor, made $126,990 in 2011:

Click to embiggen

Dargle is getting paid more than $13,000 more than Black did doing the same job and having the same credentials.  The only difference is that Dargle is a man and Black is a woman.

Update: Per this MJS article, Abele gave Black another raise just before he fired her, putting her salary after many years of service at about the same level as Dargle's starting pay.

I don't know about you, gentle reader, but I am starting to see a real pattern here.

Then again, it might not be just gender involved with the fact that Abele is paying Dargle so much money.  It could be that Dargle comes from a Parks Authority, meaning that they had spun the parks off into a quasi-privatized agency already.  And spinning off the parks into such an entity has long been one of Abele's and GMC's many goals.

If your thinking that this might be no big deal, look at how well it worked out for New York City:

When New York began relying on public-private parks partnerships following the fiscal crisis of the seventies, the idea was that private philanthropic groups would pick up the slack. And they did. Groups like the Central Park Conservancy, the Prospect Park Alliance, and the Bryant Park Corporation rose to respond to that crisis. But the city’s newest parks, paid for and operated largely by nonpublic dollars, are girded tightly by their private patrons.

The High Line was invented as a park by Friends of the High Line, which raised $44 million in donations and helped select the design. Celebrity endorsements (Edward Norton, Diane Von Furstenberg), caps on visitor attendance, adjacent real-estate development, and a dense police presence compared to other parks have all contributed to the appearance of something less than fully public. Elsewhere, the Parks Department has met with a local interest group called Coalition for a Better Washington Square Park, which offered to hire its own security and maintenance forces for the newly renovated green. Parks turned them down but did “discuss the designs of the next phase of renovation.” And in order to build the $350 million Brooklyn Bridge Park, the Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corporation, a public agency, is using the private developers of luxury condos like One Brooklyn Bridge Park to pay for the maintenance of its public front yard (never mind what’ll happen if the condos don’t sell).

Expect more of the same. “What’s happening on a basic level is that the city does not feel that parks are its responsibility anymore,” says Geoffrey Croft, president of NYC Park Advocates. “But every community deserves to have healthy parks, not just ones that have wealthy benefactors.”

[...]

But more and more private control — you can purchase time in a “public” basketball court for a fashion show, as happened in May with designer Joseph Abboud in Greenwich Village, or pay to park a branded exhibition in Central Park, as Chanel did last fall — has become the norm. The question is how much more that means. “While privatization has brought some very good management techniques, like at Bryant Park, the nice thing about it so far is that we don’t have ‘Exxon Bryant Park,’ ” says Christian DiPalermo, the executive director of New Yorkers for Parks. Well, not yet.

So yes, it's very conceivable that we will be paying for the parks twice - once through our taxes and again as a user's fee.

That's how Abele defines efficiency.

*Do you suppose he calls Abele Charles or just Chuck? Oh, and this immaturity is what is passing for leadership in Abele's administration. Explains a lot, doesn't it?

Abele Cannot Even Announce New Parks Director Without Flubbing The Job

Milwaukee County Executive Emperor Chris Walker Romney Abele has Abele announced his new Parks Director, John Dargle.  The announcement comes more than nine months after fired the award-winning and very popular Sue Black.  Abele has yet to offer a rationale for the sudden dismissal of Black.

But true to the nature of Abele's reign, this move is surrounded by questions and controversy.

Dargle is supposed to come with quite the resume, including winning the "Gold Medal" for Excellence in Park and Recreation Management.  It should be noted that Black won the same honor in 2009.  It should also be noted that the award was  awarded based on a video and an essay written by one of then County Executive Scott Walker's aides.

At the time of her firing, Abele's administration was dismissive of Black's achievement.  It is more than a bit ironic that this is now one of their bragging points for the incoming nominee.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel points out another article which reports that Dargle suddenly departed his old job two months ago "to pursue other personal interests."  It would be nice to know what those interests were, since just two months later, he is taking the job in Milwaukee.  The taxpayers have a right to know that their money is being invested in someone who will be on the job for more than a few months - like most of Abele's staffers.

And speaking of pay, there has been no mention in Abele's press release or any of the news articles on what Dargle's salary will be.  This is important as well to make sure that he is being fair in his pay scales.  We can't afford any more lawsuits due to Abele's discriminatory practices.

(I have sent an open records request regarding Dargle's salary to Abele's office, but have yet to receive even an acknowledgement of it's receipt.  What are they doing? I get better response from my county supervisor, that's for sure.)

The formal announcement is being held at Kosciuszko Park, which is in Supervisor Peggy Romo West's district, but  Abele didn't bother to invite her, despite all of the time and hard work she has dedicated to the park.  It is not known if the snub is due to his disrespect for the Board or his misogyny.

I also wonder if Dargle is aware that Abele is planning on spinning off the parks into its own quasi-public/private district.  That might not mean long for Dargle's career with Milwaukee County.

Also interesting is that Abele apologist Dan Cody was involved in the choosing of Dargle, at least per Cody's bragging.  Odd thing is, Cody did not mention this in his press release as president of the Park People.  This raises the question of whether Cody was involved as a representative of the Park People or on some other level.

Nor has this been the first time that Abele and Cody have blurred their lines.  It has been reported that Cody was lobbying for the Usurpation Bill, but Cody is not listed as a lobbyist per the state records.  On who's behalf was he lobbying?

With the upcoming shifting of power into the county executive's hands, it would be nice to have one that can do the job with transparency and efficiency.  Abele is failing horribly in both of those areas.