Changes are coming to the Vashon Park District, including the retirement next year of Executive Director Elaine Ott-Rocheford.

Ott-Rocheford officially announced her retirement at the Park District’s early October board meeting. She’ll leave her position on May 5 next year.

“It’s kind of a new, surreal phase of my time here,” said Ott-Rocheford, who has been the agency’s executive director since February of 2013.

She’s delaying her retirement until then because there are several big tasks ahead for the agency that Ott-Rocheford wants to see through, and for which to be available as she helps her successor come into the role.

Those include the district’s 2025 budget process; seeing through the grant application process for the Tramp Harbor Dock rebuild, “which has been just a grueling process,” she said; and the agency’s current three-year audit.

She said she also wanted to give the board plenty of time to plan for, interview and select her successor. And leaving in early 2025 means the new person will be operating in the early part of the district’s 2024-2029 comprehensive plan.

“This seemed like a good time … to just tidy up the package and hand it off without too much stress or turmoil for the new person,” Ott-Rocheford said.

Ott-Rocheford has been organized, positive and upbeat, and will leave “big shoes to fill,” Park District Board Chair Sarah George said.

“Elaine is so good at finding grants and resources to get things done,” George said. “I’m always amazed at how she is able to move all fronts forward at the same time. She’s always pressing forward.”

And George remarked that Ott-Rocheford has been a listener and collaborator in a community that is not afraid to question its leaders.

“It’s not a small thing … to be managing a huge resource for the island that a lot of people have very strong opinions about — and they should, they own it,” George said.

The challenge moving forward, George said, “is figuring out everything that’s inside Elaine’s brain” and helping prepare the new executive director for success.

Park District Board Treasurer Bob McMahon called Ott-Rocheford “an excellent administrator,” great on money matters and loved by her staff.

“She’s saved islanders a lot of money,” he said. “We haven’t gone for bonds or anything that would increase property taxes.”

With a laugh, he joked that while he hopes she enjoys her retirement, he wasn’t expecting it: “I’m very old, so everybody seems very young to me, and [she] seemed far too young to even think about retiring.”

The board is leaning strongly toward hiring a recruiting firm to bring in Ott-Rocheford’s replacement, but no decisions have been made yet. George said a recruiter will make sure the district has professional expertise in selecting its next leader, a decision of monumental importance.

“My recollection is that some of the leadership at the Park District hasn’t always been great — we do not care to duplicate that,” George said.

A special meeting the evening of Tuesday, Nov. 5 was set to see the board pare down its options for recruiting firms. George encouraged islanders to keep an eye out for the job posting and to encourage anyone who would be a good fit to apply for the job.

As for Ott-Rocheford, she plans to leave the island with her family for Gig Harbor to live closer to her grandchildren and friends who live in the area. She even has her eye on running for a commissioner position on a park board in that area.

She said she’s loved her job and time working on Vashon, and leaves the role with “some sweet sadness.”

As a fixture of the arts scene on the island, she won’t be leaving Vashon behind entirely. She’ll continue performing in her band Alchemy.

“I still have a lot of ties to the island,” Ott-Rocheford said. “I sing with the band out here. So I’m going to be out here quite a bit.”

Arlette Moody is Ott-Rocheford’s bandmate in island band Alchemy. The two started singing together in The Curvettes before forming Alchemy with musician Rick Doussett several years ago. The band also features Chris O’Brien on keys and Stephen Buffington on drums.

In the band, Ott-Rocheford is “a super positive person to work with,” Moody said: “There’s no ego … at all. She’s always upbeat, kind, present, reliable. A really wonderful person to work with.”

And Moody said she was “dumbfounded” upon learning how many hoops Ott-Rocheford jumped through to raise money for the Park District’s long-term project to rebuild the Tramp Harbor Dock.

After more than a decade leading the organization, Ott-Rocheford said she’s proud of leading a team that has earned clean state audits and brought the district into financial stability. She also took pride in developing the district’s internal maintenance and recreation plans.

“It’s just been a real honor to be part of a team that I think (has) restored our sense of trust and respect within the community, in terms of our financial health and our stewardship of taxpayer resources,” she said.

So too, Ott-Rocheford said, has the district been successful in its VES field project, Agren Park field and Ober Park playground restorations, upgrades to facilities at Point Robinson and Fern Cove, installing the BARC skate bowl and making upgrades to the island’s pool infrastructure, plus the installation of the pool dome.

She said she’s proud of developing financial forecasting tools for the district and for, under her leadership, the district’s grant awards, which have saved more than $1.3 million in capital improvement projects.

And she pointed to efforts four years ago, alongside Vashon’s state legislators, to rewrite state tax law to allow park and recreation districts to collect tax revenue from a pool of funds called the “50 cent gap,” which she said “saved the district from severe financial hardship.”

The bill expires at the end of 2026, she said, but the Park District “should be fine, from all indications” when it returns to the regular taxing structure in 2027.

Ott-Rocheford has “basically been the glue that stuck the place together for a long time,” Park District board member Keith Prior said. And board member Hans Van Ducen said he’s been “very impressed” with her work.

“She took over in more chaotic circumstances … and her legacy is she really put the park district on strong and steady footing,” he said.

That work is reflected in the public’s positive response to district levies and the district’s state audits during her tenure, which have “shined,” Van Ducen said.

Robin Miller, the Park District’s facility scheduling coordinator, has worked with the district since 2001 and has been on staff through all of Ott-Rocheford’s tenure.

Of the several executive directors she’s worked with in that time, Miller said, Ott-Rocheford has been her favorite — “an excellent administrator” and a hard worker who is thoughtful and honest.

“We all look up to her because she’s such a good boss,” Miller said. “She empowers us as staff to be our best.”

Like an air traffic controller, Miller’s job is to schedule all the groups that want to use Park resources and make sure they don’t collide with each other.

Ott-Rocheford has given her the space to make calls and the grace to make mistakes in that role, Miller said.

“We’re all going to miss her a lot,” Miller said. “She’s going to be a hard act to follow.”

Ahead for the Park District are efforts to install pickleball courts, clear the view at Inspiration Point, install shade sails at Ober Park, renovate the indoor space at the BARC and rebuild the Tramp Harbor Dock — some of those projects will receive help from the newly-revitalized Vashon Park District Foundation.

The Beachcomber will address those efforts in another article this month.