Longtime City employee Cheryl Joyner was named Director of Parks and Recreation for the City of Panama City Beach recently and assumed the duties of the job on September 1.
Joyner was previously Assistant Parks Director and was named Interim Director in June. She has worked in the department for 16 years and has worked her way up through the ranks.
“I was hired as the assistant supervisor at the community center,” she said. “They started giving me more and more responsibility and my job kept changing. Every position I worked in just kept developing into other positions.”
Part of Joyner’s strength in the position is the fact that she has held so many different jobs. She knows every facet of the operation – from summer camps and special events to sports leagues and the Aquatic Center. She is excited to see continued growth and development in the department’s programs, as a master plan for both Frank Brown and Aaron Bessant is currently in the works, as is a redesign of the facilities located adjacent to Russell-Fields City Pier.
“It is a great time to be in this position and I am excited to serve the community and our visitors,” she said. “Staff have come to me already with ideas about changes they’d like to see. We’re talking about adding movies in the park at Aaron Bessant and a Fall Festival in the future.”
Action being taken by the City Council will bring back blackout dates from Memorial Day to Labor Day at Aaron Bessant Park, so there will be no special events on the weekends. That allows the Summer Concert Series to move back to Thursday nights. The community has been asking for that change, she said.
The director is responsible for all activities at the two main parks, including special events, and oversees the operation of the Russell-Fields City Pier, the Lyndell Senior Center, three neighborhood parks and 55 public beach access points. Parks facilities are visited by more than 100,000 people each year, including those who take part in special events at City parks, enroll in City programs like water aerobics, and come to the City for sporting tournaments.
“Parks are a quality of life issue,” she said. “Parks and Recreation is vital to our community. We provide a safe place for active recreation for adults and children, and we are that place where our community’s kids are introduced to sports. We always want that to be a positive experience for everyone.”
Joyner knows that staffing remains a challenge at the park. There is a national labor shortage, but she has been able to depend on up to 85 seasonal workers during the busy summer months, in addition to 30 full-time workers and 13 part-time employees.
“The staff is one of the things that makes the park system so great,” she said. “Managing all the ballfields, the events, the rentals, the parties, the Aquatic Center, the trails – it can’t be done without our dedicated staff.”
Joyner is a hometown girl, having graduated Bay High School. She attended Gulf Coast State College and was previously the Director of Animal Operations at Gulf World. She and her husband, Drexel, have been married for nearly 23 years, and have two children, Madison, 22, and Zack, 18.
Original source can be found here.
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