The City of League City recognized Katrina Beecher for receiving the 2017 Recreation Professional of the Year for the Texas Recreation & Park Society East Region Award during City Council meeting on Jan. 26.
The award was originally presented to Beecher, who is a recreation specialist for the city, during the East Region TRAP’s annual conference Jan. 12.
Katrina is a model public servant who tirelessly serves our community,” said Interim City Manager John Baumgartner. “Our goal is to provide outstanding customer service while enhancing the lives of our residents and its programs and initiatives like this that enables us to meet those goals. We are very fortunate to have Katrina on our team and appreciate everything she does for our community.”
Families throughout League City continuously benefit from Beecher’s passion, excellence and commitment to providing recreational opportunities for all to enjoy. Her efforts have led to the addition of three seasonal holiday camps, year-round homeschool physical education, a monthly kids night at Hometown Heroes Park, school day-out programs, fencing, and a variety of special needs programming.
She has also supported the city’s youth baseball and softball programs; increased enrollment in summer camp; added outdoor education programming at the Dr. Ned and Fay Dudney Nature Center; secured volunteers for a new bird watching program.
Beecher’s initiatives also generated an additional $75,000 in revenue for Parks Recreation which enables the department to provide additional opportunities to residents.
“Honestly, I’m humbled and honored to have received this award,” said Beecher. “For me, the greatest reward though is having an opportunity to combine my passion with serving this community and seeing how our programs enhance the lives of our residents.”
She is one a handful recreation specialists in the State of Texas to hold the Certified Parks and Recreation Professional, Master Naturalist and Leave No Trace certifications.
The Texas Recreation and Park Society is a nonprofit educational and professional organization founded to advance the profession of parks, recreation, and leisure services in Texas. The organization is broken into five regions. League City lies within the East Region consisting of 50 cities and counties from the greater Houston and East Texas region.
League City has selected Gabriel Menendez of Tallahassee, Fla., to serve as the new director of its Public Works Department. He began work Aug. 8.
