Meet Dana Jones, the Basin Recreation District’s new director, who has now been on the job for several weeks.
Jones came from California, where she spent most of her 28-year career working for the state’s parks department.
“I started out as a Park Ranger,” she said, “And I kind of moved up and jumped around the state, working everything from a museum director, to running a motorcycle park, to beaches and mountains and redwoods. Kinda accumulated that career in headquarters in Sacramento. And I decided at that point in time that being in a building and being in headquarters just wasn’t my forte and it was time to retire.”
After some years traveling, she decided she missed the work and was drawn back as a consultant for a recreation district in California before taking the job in the Snyderville Basin.
Jones started her job with the Basin Recreation District in mid-December. She said her priority for now is getting to know the community and the people.
Before Jones was hired, the interim Director was Melissa O’Brien, who now is going back to her former position of Planning and Legal Affairs Manager for the District.
Despite the difficulties of the COVID-19 pandemic in the last 9 months, she said that the staff remained busy.
“We launched a parking enforcement program on the Trailside,” she said. “We did a Mindbody transition, so a whole new software on the recreation and fieldhouse side and the marketing side. We did budgets, we went through a budget season. We passed a Strategic Action Plan. They really stepped up these last six months. They could’ve just skated along for six months. And I think people would have understood that, with Covid, and with an interim director. And that’s not at all what happened.”
O’Brien added that the Basin Fieldhouse is offering both live and virtual classes. They’re also grooming trails in preparation for more snow.
