Red Bike's Jason Barron to take top job with Cincinnati Parks

The founder of Cincinnati’s Red Bike will be the next director of Cincinnati Parks.

Jason Barron, 43, accepted the position Tuesday afternoon. Earlier in the day, members of the Board of Park Commissioners voted 5-0 to offer him the position over seven other applicants they interviewed since June 2.

Barron’s start date and salary are yet to be determined.

A veteran of Mark Mallory’s mayoral staff, Barron acknowledged he lacks direct experience with Cincinnati parks.

“The parks department has a ton of great people with decades of experience,” he said. “What I see as the role of the parks director is someone to come in and support all the great work of those dedicated individuals ... and provide the support that's going to make their jobs easier and the parks even better.”

When he created Red Bike in 2013, he said, “I really didn’t know a lot about bikes.”

“I was upfront when I interviewed for this (parks) job that I’m not the master of parks. But I think I can come in and provide direction and leadership,” he said.

Mallory staffer for eight years

A 2000 graduate of Ohio University, where he earned a bachelor of arts in political science, Barron worked for Mallory from 2003 to 2013. He started as a legislative aide when Mallory served as an Ohio state senator, then joined his mayoral campaign staff. He served as communications director for the mayor’s office from 2005 to 2010 and director of public affairs from 2010 to 2013.

He grew up in Vandalia, Ohio, a suburb of Dayton, and graduated from Vandalia-Butler High School.

Barron has served as executive director of Red Bike since its creation. The service now has 60 stations and 600 bikes, with more coming this summer.

In the last nine years, he’s raised more than $9 million to support the non-profit and supervised a staff of 10 to 15 people with an annual budget of $700,000.

As Cincinnati Parks director, Barron will direct a $27 million annual budget and 250 part- and full-time employees. He’ll oversee 5,000-plus acres of city parkland and more than 100 different park facilities.

Barron will take over for Steve Pacella, the deputy director of the Cincinnati Recreation Commission who signed on as interim parks director at the start of June.

Pacella took over from John E. Neyer, who served in the same role the prior six months.

Cincinnati Parks lost its last permanent director in December, the third person in the job since 2017. Given that void, the park board has taken on more strategic planning than typical.

From suits to boots

Park Board search committee members selected Barron from a field of strong candidates – both the eight who landed interviews and another 20 or 30 they spoke with informally, said Molly North, the committee’s chair.

The new director will need to work with officials from the city, the Cincinnati Parks Foundation and parks staff, North said, and be “as comfortable in a suit as they are in a pair of boots.”

Board members credited parks staff for staying the course. Despite changing leadership, Cincinnati Parks in May landed at No. 4, up from No. 8 last year, on the Trust for Public Land’s annual list of best parks in the 100 largest U.S. cities.

“They have stepped up and filled in the gap,” said Linda Lee Thomas, vice president of the board.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Who is Jason Barron, newly named director for Cincinnati Parks?