The Park Board has a new employee:
The Springfield-Greene County Park Board recently appointed Josiah Modes as its Figure Skating Director for the Jordan Valley Ice Park, 635 E. Trafficway.
Modes has a long history in ice skating, including a competitive career placing at the 1998 U.S. National Championship in pairs. His professional career includes more than 11 years performing in shows at Busch Gardens in Tampa, Fla., touring with Disney on Ice throughout Japan and Southeast Asia. He also performed in Germany with his wife Yulia Sudakova, who is an instructor at Jordan Valley Ice Park, for two years as a principal pair team.
Modes’ teaching career includes simultaneously running the skating programs for the Skating Club of Maine and the Auburn Parks and Recreation Department, before moving to Springfield with his wife in 2007.
Now, you may be asking yourself “wait…wasn’t there a hiring freeze?” Yeah, I asked the same thing. So did Jim Lee. So I contacted the city and this was my response:
The hiring freeze only affects General Fund positions. That position isn’t paid from G.F. revenue. It’s quite likely depending on how things shake out that Parks could be laying off or not hiring people in those G.F. programs that might be cut, but still be hiring other people for programs funded out of designated revenues.
That makes sense although one could ask why the Park Board hasn’t frozen their hiring as well knowing cuts are coming down the line and it could save the jobs of other park board employees.
Although it seems odd, this makes sense because it’s the Springfield- Greene County Park Department.
As the name suggests, the Dpt. includes the city and the county. So it gets funding from those sources and a number of grants…
Apparently the funding monies are kept separate and so apparently are the things those monies pay for.
We asked the same question about a different issue within the department last week.
Keep up the good work Jason!
Joe
Still would like to know the salary.