Ray Massie resigns as MetraPark’s promoting supervisor | Neighborhood Information

His departure comes amid Yellowstone County’s modern initiatives to check out privatizing administration at MetraPark, a approach that has been fraught with aggravation, infighting and increasing bitterness.

For that purpose, instead than feeling a perception of reduction at his departure, Massie said he feels guilt realizing he’s leaving Metra team with small morale and an uncertain foreseeable future. 

“I really feel like I am on the subject of battle leaving them to deal with the bullets,” he said. 

Massie’s departure follows the exit of standard supervisor Invoice Dutcher, who retired at the conclude of the calendar year. 

Frustrations more than how greatest to find details on probably switching management at MetraPark to a personal firm have chafed the 3 commissioners for months. 

Past November, county commissioner Don Jones proposed discovering privatizing management at MetraPark in the course of a commissioners assembly, a move that caught several in the group off guard.

In the months because, Jones and commissioner Denis Pitman have sparred with fellow commissioner John Ostlund in excess of the very best way to to do it. Introducing pressure to the discussion are the results of the organizational evaluate, carried out by Tennessee-primarily based Venue Answers Group and launched last thirty day period, which found several regions in which MetraPark could make advancements.

Amongst other things, the report dinged MetraPark for lack of preventive maintenance and owning no plainly outlined and penned procedures and processes.

Massie, who’s 65, has been vocal about his opposition to privatization and he feels like it is produced him a goal of equally Jones and Pitman. He added that the way discussions about privatization have played out are a symptom of very poor management and that it truly is destroyed morale amongst staff at the Metra.

“They are killing morale and hurting people,” he reported. 

In November, Massie was approached by the leaders of a state reasonable in the Midwest inquiring if he’d be interested in encouraging run it. At very first he resisted, he said. But as the interactions among commissioners and personnel at the Metra deteriorated further more in the new yr, Massie took the supply. 

He declined to title the point out, indicating he’d wait around right until they make the announcement before he talked about his new occupation.