MANSFIELD — Mark Abrams had to take out the trash on his first day as the city’s parks and recreation superintendent.
“I walked into the office building at South Park and there was literally trash piled from the floor to the ceiling,” the 52-year-old Abrams said.
“There was no phone. No computer. And no employees,” he said with a laugh.
It was 2014 and the Mansfield Parks Department was being brought back to life.
It came after the entire department was shuttered for five years by the state as the city battled through a state-ordered fiscal emergency.
The growing fiscal crisis, officially declared by the state in 2010, led to the stripping of many employees. It also meant the closing of a parks system that had once been the pride of the community.
It’s easier now for Abrams to look back and laugh at the situation a decade ago. Armed with an annual injection of roughly $750,000 from the PRIDE income tax, Abrams was tasked by then-Mayor Tim Theaker with relaunching a parks system. (The income tax had been approved by voters in November 2013.)
PRIDE is an acronym for parks and recreation, illumination (think street lights), demolition and emergency services (think police/fire). Parks receive 22 percent of those funds annually.
But as he prepares for his retirement to take effect Sept. 5, ending a 30-year total career with the city, it’s clear the outgoing parks chief is proud of what he helped to accomplish.
“I think what I’m most proud of is the fact we were able to bring (the parks system) back and now it’s a thriving, focal party of the city again,” said Abrams. He began his career with the city in 1995 by working five years in the former city jail and then as a 9-1-1 dispatcher before accepting the parks role.
New administration focused on parks
His decision to retire comes 20 months into Mayor Jodie Perry’s administration. She made revamping the city’s parks a priority in her campaign.
Perry brought in Louis Andres as her public works director, a man who spent four decades running parks of all shapes and sizes.
Intentionally or not, Andres turned up the heat on Abrams and his department. Expectations may not have changed, but the focus and intensity certainly did.
From the start, the new public works director stressed making small changes and improvements that would be readily noticed by people coming into the parks. Fresh paint. Trash removal. Cleaned-up playgrounds. Small things.
From small things came big improvements in many city parks, including the launch of the Sterkel Community Park for All, the public/private partnership that has improved Liberty Park and the ongoing improvements at Middle Park.
Abrams took some of that heat along the way, including a performance review by Andres in February that cited his improvements, but also pointed out a need for more consistency, communication, time management and follow through on assignments.
Some of those issues came to a head July 15. That’s when two city council members balked during a public meeting at paying a “then-and-now” certificate for improvements at a Liberty Park parking lot. The work was done before a purchase order was obtained in May.
Abrams said the private group involved in the project simply jumped the gun on the parking lot effort by hiring the contractor, calling it “a gap in communication.”
At-large councilman David Falquette, chair of the finance committee, said the parks department has had too many “then-and-now” requests — eight in the last five years.
“You’re the only department that has had a ‘then-and-now’ each year since 2021,” he told Abrams during the meeting. “Something needs to change. It’s a lot of then and nows. I just wanted to make sure you knew that I knew.”
A pre-disciplinary hearing was scheduled on July 22 regarding the matter, which would have been been his second written reprimand of the year, including an earlier “then-and-now” situation.
Abrams handed the city a one-paragraph retirement letter July 23. Andres acknowledged and accepted it the same day.
Abrams, Perry and Andres all said there was no pressure on the parks superintendent to step aside.
“I could have stayed,” Abrams said. “The choice was mine. I talked to my family, my wife. I always had a number in my head … 30 years is where I wanted to get to.
“It just seemed like the timing was right. But there was absolutely no pressure on me to leave at all,” he said.
Perry said it was Abrams’ choice.
“The timing, I understand why it looks like it does. I can’t tell you what went into his decision making. We absolutely appreciate his work and hitting 30 years in the public sector is a big deal. I think he was ready for a change, to be honest,” the mayor said.
“Mark really helped bring the parks back from closure and I really appreciate the work he has done over the years. I think this also gives us an opportunity to see where we want to go next with the parks,” Perry said.
‘I always wanted to check out the other side’
Abrams always liked going to the park. At one time, he had been a seasonal park worker. But he never imagined running them.
“It’s kind of funny. I was the president of AFSCME (Local 3088) so I had a lot going on. We had just come out of fiscal emergency. Dispatching is a high-stress job and I always kind of wanted to check out the other side,” he said.
“I had done the union side. I kind of wanted to see what the management side was like. The (parks) opportunity came along and Mayor Theaker was kind enough to let me do it,” Abrams said.
What was his first job as superintendent?
“Just getting a mower to run,” he said with a laugh. “During the fiscal emergency, while the parks department was closed, everybody kind of scavenged the (parks) equipment for parts. We had half a mower here … a half a mower there.
“Fortunately, we had a good maintenance man to put it all together and running by April to mow grass,” Abrams said.
Keeping the mowers running and buying playground equipment for one park or another each year was often all the parks budget would allow under the PRIDE funds. Funds were scraped together for children’s programming in the summer, led by Angel Singleton, who came aboard in 2018 as recreation coordinator.
But it was subsistence living during a time Theaker and others were focused on other areas of the city.
Perhaps one of his strangest tasks was being asked in 2021 to convince crows not to roost in Mansfield’s Central Park trees during the winter, a gathering that led to massive amounts of excrement throughout the park.
The work included things such as green laser lights and raucous recorded sounds of crows in distress.
The successful effort led Abrams to earn a new title for his business card, “The Pied Piper of Crows.”
The heightened public focus on the parks ratcheted up when Perry and Andres arrived.
Andres had a 40-year parks and recreation career, beginning in 1978 with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources as a park naturalist, and 22 years as the park manager at Malabar Farm State Park .
Andres knows parks and Perry made improving the parks system a high priority.
But Abrams said expectations for his role didn’t change under the new administration.
“I think the expectation was we have a job to do and you do your job,” he said. “What changed was (parks) became more of a focal point. It was something Mayor Perry said she was going to change and she has.
“Louis is an outstanding parks man. He has forgotten more about parks than I will ever know. I told him that. He was a great mentor and I learned a lot from him.
“The man is a wealth of knowledge when it comes to parks. That’s part of the reason it’s easier for me to walk away now because I know the parks are in good hands,” Abrams said.
The Madison High School graduate said he is proud of his tenure in the parks department.
“We went from something where before it was OK (for the state) to jettison it, close it down, to where now it’s a focal point in the city.
“I’ve always wanted the parks to be a focal point in the city and I think people understand that,” he said.
Abrams said he isn’t sure what comes next.
“I have a bird camera and a bird feeder in the backyard and I get to sit on the back porch for right now and watch the birds.
“But I will get into something,” he said with a smile. “I am only 52. I am not going to just sit around.”