Montgomery splits top Parks and Planning job

Former federal official named as new parks director

Friday, Feb. 10, 2006

by Margie Hyslop

Staff Writer

Montgomery County’s park and planning commissioners named a new parks director Thursday and announced they would eliminate the joint park and planning director position.

Mary R. Bradford, who retired as associate director and chief financial officer of the National Park Service in 1997, takes over as parks director on Feb. 21. She will be paid about $135,000 a year.

Bradford will report directly to the commissioners (also known as the Planning Board), as does acting planning director Faroll Hamer.

‘‘We believe very strongly that creating the two departments again will allow all of us, both park and planning professionals, to work on their core missions,” Planning Board Chairman Derick P. Berlage told employees who gathered to meet Bradford Thursday morning at the agency’s Silver Spring headquarters.

Berlage said that about seven years ago, there had been two positions that were combined into the single parks and planning director’s job.

The move to a structure favored by many on the council is a good one, said Steven A. Silverman, chairman of the council’s Planning, Housing and Economic Development Committee.

‘‘I think it was clear to the council, as it was to the commissioners, that there’s a need for a full-time planning director whose sole responsibility is overseeing the planning process without the distraction of overseeing hundreds of parks employees,” said Silverman (D-At large) of Silver Spring.

Commissioners began discussing separating the departments before Charles R. Loehr left the park and planning director post in October, a few months after residents uncovered hundreds of height and setback violations at Clarksburg Town Center.

Bradford — who began her National Park Service career as a seasonal ranger in the 1970s — said she will spend her first days traveling through the county’s 32,600-acre park system, talking to employees about their concerns.

In addition to overseeing a $3.5 billion operating and capital budget at NPS, Bradford supervised three national training centers for rangers, interpreters, park police and maintenance workers.

‘‘I was quite happily retired when they made me this fine offer I couldn’t refuse,” Bradford told employees.

From 2002 to 2005, she was co-chairwoman of a task force that helped produce neighborhood revitalization plans for the Long Branch area. During that period, Bradford also ran Cardinal Strategies, a consultant on environment, health and education issues.

While she was deputy regional NPS director in Santa Fe, N.M., from 1992 to 1994, Bradford and her family maintained a residence in Silver Spring where she has lived for 25 years.