Hard working city employees are really starting to wonder what in the heck is going on with Rec and Parks' once-popular General Manager Jon Kirk Mukri.The word on the street: Mukri's top guy -Assistant Gen. Manager Kevin Regan - has the entire department either hating him, terrified of him, or believing he is a complete lunatic. From multiple detailed reports, Regan apparently abuses employees to the point that most of the professional and skilled ones who are forced to work under his tyranny can't wait for those 'Golden Handshakes'** from the Mayor to materialize so they can bail out.
Regan supposedly terrorizes less educated employees and makes educated, motivated employees hate coming to work. He bad-mouths his own department's employees to other departments, and to other employees. Every management action is rumored to be punitive. Employees are either set up to fail, or they have every ounce of initiative beaten out them by Regan's pico-managing* actions. A possibly over-promoted arborist, Regan doesn't seem to really know what he wants, so he makes it up as he goes along while his false-starts and declarations keep workers wondering if their job will even exist the next time they come in. A number have confided to this blog that they don't want to even be in the same room with Regan because they know he's going to beat them up, no matter how good a job they're doing.
(*pico is even smaller than micro - look it up.)
In short - AGM Kevin Regan is the perfect example of everything any good manager should avoid at all costs.Tellingly, Kevin Regan is also the epitome of old Recreation and Parks culture - exactly the culture Jon Kirk Mukri swore to eliminate when he left the General Services Department to head Recreation and Parks.
Unless Mukri gets control of the tyrant acting in his name, Mukri's tenure as General Manager will be forever linked with the largest loss of job knowledge that the Department -- and perhaps even the City -- will ever experience.
Rumor has it the Park Ranger Division will be the first large casualty, with 120 years of experience just waiting to jump on those retirement packages as soon as they're available. Similar losses for the exact same reason in the Forestry Division and Golf Division are right behind them.
What a sad legacy for Mukri to leave the children and people of Los Angeles with!
(**Golden Handshakes might be on hold as the City's entire budget process is collapsing even as we type this.)
