Former Oakland administrator to head East Bay Regional Park District
She will be the park district’s first female general manager
Former Oakland City Administrator Sabrina Landreth will become the East Bay Regional Park District’s first female general manager.
The park district board made the announcement after its vote to appoint her Tuesday. Landreth will be the 10th general manager of the park district, taking over from former General Manager Robert Doyle, who retired in December after 10 years in that job and a total of 47 years with the district.
“Our board is thrilled to have Sabrina join our organization,” said Dee Rosario, president of district’s board of directors, in a statement. “She has all the right elements of urban public sector leadership experience and especially understands the diversity of the East Bay communities we serve.”
Landreth most recently was the city administrator for Oakland from 2015 to early 2020. She announced in December 2019 that she was stepping down from that position in early 2020, but her stated reasons for leaving at the time were vague.
During her last year in Oakland, Landreth had clashed with some council members over budget discussions, and her office was sharply criticized for its handling of homeless encampments, including an unofficial proposal to allow police to cite unhoused people living on sidewalks and in parks.
Before becoming Oakland’s city administrator, Landreth was the city manager for Emeryville and had been a deputy city administrator and budget director in Oakland for years.
“I am honored to be appointed by the board as the district’s next general manager,” she said of the new job in a park district news release. “I look forward to continuing to build upon the great work the district does to improve the quality of life for our East Bay community, while adhering to its social and environmental responsibilities.”
The East Bay Regional Park District has grown dramatically in the past decade.
Under Doyle’s leadership, it nearly doubled in acreage and the number of parks and trails.
That includes closing gaps in the Bay Trail — a trail around the San Francisco Bay that the park district and other public entities continue to fill in. And three former military bases closed in the 1990s are approved for redevelopment in the future, with publicly accessible regional parklands, the park district said in December.
It’s the largest regional park system in the nation, according to the park district. In total, it includes 73 parks, 55 miles of shoreline and more 1,300 miles of trails. It also has its own fire and police departments.
Recently, the district caught heat when it was revealed its employees were shooting feral cats living at the Martin Luther King Jr. Regional Shoreline, a sensitive ecological area with hundreds of bird species. The district agreed to work with groups to trap and relocate the cats.
The land managed by the district, which stretches over Contra Costa and Alameda counties, gets more than 25 million visits per year.