Department:

Parks Recreation & Natural Resources

Start Here. Grow Here. Stay Here.

Join a dedicated team of land managers committed to protecting, preserving, restoring, interpreting, and maintaining Sarasota County's natural area parks. This professional role involves coordinating activities that ensure safe park use and enhance visitor experiences. Key responsibilities include overseeing facility operations, maintenance, and reservations; managing habitat restoration through prescribed fire, invasive species control, and species monitoring; recruiting, training, and coordinating volunteers; organizing special events and environmental education programs; supporting nature-based recreation initiatives; and managing contracts and agreements.

The pay starts at $56,139.20 and benefits begin within 60 days of hire! Apply today and take the first step towards a lasting career, helping us to maintain our beautiful natural areas, parks, and trails.

About the Position

Primary sites include Urfer Family Park, Celery Fields, and Rothenbach Park, with other parks as assigned. Job Responsibilities include, but are not limited to, the following...
 

Park management and oversight

• Regularly review assigned facilities and amenities ensuring safe and enjoyable experiences for park patrons.
• Supervise and schedule one staff.
• Timely response to Internal Standards Inspections with ticket requests for needed maintenance and repair including ground and facilities.
• Natural areas management including restoration and maintenance planning, invasive vegetation treatment and exotic/feral animal control measures.
• Knowledge of and participation in prescribed burning, fire mitigation planning and promotion of benefits of prescribed fire in educational programming.
• Review and ensure contract/agreement compliance and maintain positive partnerships.
• Apply for grants and ensure current grant requirements are being met, writing scopes of work and executing contractual projects.
• Prepare and implement park management plans, meeting division and department deadlines, ensuring archaeological and cultural resource protection.
• Actively promote environmental standards for protection of species and habitats consistent with the Environment Chapter of the Comprehensive Plan.

Customer Service

• Improve customer experiences and visitor services.
• Produce promotional information (flyers, brochures and maps) for parks activities and programs.
• Provide appropriate responses to complaints, inquiries or requests for service through written correspondence, calls or meetings.
• Coordinate facility reservations and rentals through RecTrac system and staff.
• Process partnership possibilities and applications.
• Coordinate and outreach to other Sarasota County work units for joint projects.
• Actively participate in staff project meetings and discussions.

Volunteer management

• Recruitment, coordination and/or training, for both single-day events or ongoing program needs.
• Volunteer meeting attendance; assisting with planning, development and implementation of volunteer events and programs.
• Review, vet, register, and track volunteers/hours in Volgistics system.
• Encourage and participate in joint projects with community partners, like Friends of Sarasota County Parks (FOSCP) chapters.

Programming

• Plan, develop, and/or implement customer focused, nature-based programs and outdoor recreation opportunities throughout the park system.
• Assist with program marketing; ensuring that programs and events are listed, posted and promoted in the Parks Guide, Parks Online, email blasts and social media (through coordinators), County calendars, and RecTrac system.
• Create partnership opportunities for programming.

Other duties as assigned by Supervisor and/or Manager, such as completion of periodic, special or financial reports, related to facility usage.

About the Schedule

Work Hours:

• Full-Time, 40 hours per week.
• Tuesday - Saturday, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
• On rare occasions, work schedules may vary due to split shifts, rotations, on-call, emergencies, etc.

About You

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university in one of the biological or physical sciences, Environmental Engineering, or a related field -AND- three (3) years of related professional experience.