But in reality in Chicago, anyway, it was an extension to City Hall. The mayor would appoint the commissioners with the approval of the City Council. And so these were all friends of the mayors and the bureaucratic overlay was comparable to what it would be at city, same at the district. And one had to learn to work through and around this bureaucracy to reach certain goals. Budgetary issues were real, civil service constraints for personnel were real. I was limited in ways that I could do something special or good for a solid, wonderful employee, as I could for a sad sack, a poor employee. Once they had civil service status and they had a union situation for the keeper personnel, there wasn’t much maneuvering room I had to make the good guy feel better and the bad guy feel worse. And they were all guys at the time I took over at Lincoln Park, it was an all male operation because the Park District personnel thing said, “Live in Chicago, 21 years of age, and be a male.” And it was years later that the women finally stepped up to the plate, and demanded equal time, and started to move into the personnel operation at Lincoln Park.
