McGury working to bolster Naperville Park District’s culture
Naperville Park District Executive Director Ray McGury recently signed a three-year contract extension that will take him through at least 2015.
A longtime police officer and former Bolingbrook police chief, McGury joined the district in 2008 as a newcomer to the parks and recreation business and helped navigate it out of some difficult times.
In the second installment of our two-part series, McGury outlines some of his goals for the district and some of its accomplishments under his watch.
Q. What goals have you set for the district?
A. What I can tell you is I will create a culture here, better than it was before, of accountability, pride and ownership. And I will take those values, besides the core values and mission we have, and drive those out into the community and let staff take risks.
Not risks in the sense that we’re going to get people hurt or blow a bunch of money, but I mean a perfect example of a risk is the concession stand we have at Centennial Beach. We got a lot of pushback from people in the community saying, “You don’t know what you’re doing. You shouldn’t be in the food business. You should contract that out.”
We have contracted that out and they did a phenomenal job for us. We felt like our margins would be better. We took a risk and it paid off. Did we make a gazillion dollars? No. But we beat the margins we would have otherwise had in place.
So things like that are creating that culture to allow people to work without fear of getting in trouble. We all make mistakes.
My bigger job is with the board and working with them to develop them into a policy group that ultimately is going to respect one another and work together. We don’t need 7-0 votes on everything. The nice thing is we can have a 5-2 vote and the two dissenters move on. While you’re mindful of the tax dollars, you’ve also got to be mindful of the process and respect the process that’s been set in place.
Q. What have you learned so far?
A. I don’t think I came in here with a magic wand or a heavy hand or an edict. I didn’t take my firearm out and slap it on the desk and say this is how it’s going to go. I’m the conduit between staff and the board, but ultimately I focus a lot of my time on getting the board the information they need. The one thing I’ve learned is don’t surprise the board. If there’s an issue in the community, don’t try to damp it out yourself.
Q. In your view, what does the park district provide to a city like Naperville?
A. I’ve always been a physical fitness guy, but you don’t have to run a marathon or do a powerlifting competition. But if you walk your dog three times a week on one of our trails, you’re accomplishing something and you’re detaching yourself from the stresses of this life.
As a park district, we offer womb to tomb opportunities for young people through seniors. Now, are we perfect at that? Absolutely not. There’s probably other communities out there that do things better that we learn from. But we add a lot of value to Naperville for the tax dollars that you spend.
Q. What will your legacy be at the Naperville Park District?
A. This has been very rewarding for me. I’ve been asked if I would go back and be police chief; I would never say never, only because I have to feed my family.
If the board came to me and said, “Ray, we appreciate your service, but we’re going in a different direction,” I have no control over that. It’s the rule of four. Four votes tell me to pack my bags and go, so I do everything I can to not have that happen, and it’s easy for me because I love what I do. The minute I stop loving what I do is the day I’ve written my death sentence.
I should probably leave before somebody tells me to leave.
My legacy here will be that this board will eventually be comfortable enough with me for me to be able to come to them and say, “I think you have a pool of very talented candidates here to take over as executive director.” That’s my job here, to create future leaders. My job is not self-survival.
Q. All or most of the progress you’ve made has been with primarily the same staff that was here during those troubled years. How does that happen?
A. If you go back to when Naperville was in the headlines occasionally for some things going on … it was never a function of staff. It was a function of the dynamics between the executive director and the board. This staff was firing on all cylinders, but I think, for a while there, they were in flux and just treading water. They were trying to continue providing services to the community, but there was uncertainty about moving forward on projects.
Mindy Munn was the interim director and had the monumental task of doing this job plus being the finance director, and so no one would expect her to advance different projects.
Things that we got done this year are a lot of things that have been planned for many years and we’re just now playing catch up and getting these things done that maybe could have been done five years ago.
This year will be a leaner year for us from a capital projects standpoint. We’re going to propose to do some great things, but not nearly as big as some of this past year’s projects.
Q. Is there an indoor recreation center in the district’s future?
A. I would say that it still comes up occasionally as far as indoor space. One of our challenges coming up will be the Barn (a small and aging indoor recreation facility). We have to make a decision to level the Barn and do something else similar in the community.
I don’t ever envision a 100,000-square-foot rec center. Here’s the problem. You still have that north of 75th vs. south of 75th. The “two Napervilles” mentality of people who live on the south is they hate driving all the way up north and vice versa. So if you were to put a huge rec center down at Frontier Park (on 95th Street in South Naperville), first of all, it’s made for a rec center. But while it makes perfect sense to put it there, will the community support it? And where is the need?
The need we can show currently is that if we didn’t have the relationship with (Naperville Unit District) 203 and (Indian Prairie Unit District) 204, we’d be screwed. And it’s reciprocal.
I’m not at liberty to talk about it yet, but there are some plans to partner with another entity to do something in town, but that has not been finalized yet. But it would be a very small-scale project to replace the Barn. What’s very attractive about that is that it helps several groups of people. It’s a phenomenal project. If we can make it work, it is exactly what people across this country in government should be doing.
This community is very, very generous. All they want to know is why you’re doing what you’re doing. Show them a need. Don’t show them it’s cool.
Q. What are you most proud of at this point in your park district career?
A. The recent national accreditation speaks to the organization. The accreditation put us up against national standards and we smoked them 144 to 144. We didn’t miss one. Is that because of Ray McGury? Absolutely not. It’s because of the staff and the people who do their jobs. All I do is direct the band.
I want to leave here someday, walk out of here for the last time, get in my car, look back at this place and be able to say the Naperville Park District is in a better position than when I took it over. And it’s not because of Ray McGury. It’s because of what Ray McGury brought to the table as far as leadership and management.