Mll Creek officials exchange firery emails

CANFIELD

Tensions between Mill Creek MetroParks leaders, which have simmered at recent board meetings, erupted in an email exchange shared with The Vindicator.

A strongly worded message from board member Tom Shipka to Executive Director Aaron Young elicited this sharp response from Young on Friday: “I have done nothing to warrant the level of disrespect and insult that I have been shown from individuals who have been appointed to lead a park district of which they have never been to a respective Board Meeting until after their appointment and whom also have only attempted an elementary and remedial review of the available facts and information that have gotten us to this point.”

“We all need to have a very frank conversation about the lack of professionalism that is being shown to myself as an individual,” Young wrote in an email sent to MetroParks board members, Mahoning County Probate Judge Robert N. Rusu Jr., several park employees and Vindicator Editor Todd Franko.

Young went on to note his attempts “to turn around a MetroPark system that has had 15 years of mismanagement, insufficient leadership and funding.”

Young’s ire was raised by a Thursday night email in which Shipka, appointed to the board last month, ordered him to immediately make improvements to the Volney Rogers Field area.

“I was appalled,” Shipka said of the facility’s condition. “The tennis courts have cracks along all of them, the white lines haven’t been painted in years, and the fences haven’t been painted in years. ... I want this situation changed right now!”

Shipka added this postscript: “I don’t want to hear about budgetary issues. Do it NOW, dammit!”

Read more about the situation in Saturday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.