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Tampa names Maryland county administrator new parks director

 
Greg Bayor, 69, will retire after serving more than five years.
Greg Bayor, 69, will retire after serving more than five years.
Published Aug. 10, 2017

TAMPA — Mayor Bob Buckhorn on Wednesday named a county executive from Frederick County in Maryland to run the parks department and oversee the debut of the city's biggest investment ever in West Tampa.

Paul Dial, currently the chief administrative officer for Frederick County, will succeed Greg Bayor, 69, who is retiring after nearly five and a half years as the city's director of parks and recreation.

At the top of Dial's to-do list will be the opening of Julian B. Lane Riverfront Park, 23 acres of athletic, recreational, boating and event facilities that are scheduled to be ready in March after an unprecedented $35.5 million redevelopment.

Dial, 60, was born and raised in West Virginia and graduated from Marshall University. In a 36-year career, he has directed parks departments in Princeton, W.Va.; Ocean Pines, Md.; and, for 19 years, in Frederick County, which has a population of about 245,000. For a little more than a year, he has worked as the county's chief administrative officer.

"Clearly, this is a guy who's used to running big departments with a lot of people and big responsibilities," Buckhorn said.

In Tampa, Dial will lead a department with a proposed budget of nearly $44 million next year, 445 employees and more than 3,500 acres of parkland with 170 parks, 23 community centers, 12 swimming pools and more than 60 miles of multipurpose trails. He is scheduled to start Sept. 11. He will be paid $143,728 annually and will serve as an interim director until he moves to Tampa and is confirmed by the City Council.

Buckhorn described Bayor's tenure as "a time of growth and activation" in which the city renovated 10 parks and five playgrounds, restored four pools, opened a 147-acre nature park and installed 36 new holes of disc golf.

Bayor also developed a $1 million partnership with the nonprofit Cal Ripken Sr. Foundation to create a synthetic turf youth baseball field at Springhill Park Community Center in Sulphur Springs. And he launched the city's Stay and Play summer youth recreation program, which was created to give inner-city students free recreation options after a string of deadly shootings in poor neighborhoods in 2015.

"He should be proud of his time here," Buckhorn said.