Women of the Year honoree Barbara Sanderson at last month's Galveston Women's Conference gala
City of Galveston photo
Chron.
By Chris Gray
Barbara Sanderson knew something was up when Gina Spagnola, head of the Galveston Regional Chamber of Commerce, showed up at her office one day last month with flowers. Spagnola had been mysterious on the phone, and had already had to reschedule their meeting once due to an office-wide illness.
But the chamber and Sanderson's Department of Parks, Recreation, and Community Outreach work together frequently, on all manner of projects, so on this day Sanderson was legitimately shocked — not just that the chamber had named her one of its 2023 Women of the Year, but that her staff had likewise been in the dark.
“I, of course, accused my staff of knowing, but they knew nothing,” Sanderson said one afternoon last week in her plant-crowded office at the McGuire-Dent Recreation Center. “They were as shocked as me.”
Perhaps they shouldn’t have been.
“Barbara oversees quite a few staff members and has a really good relationship with all of them,” said city of Galveston public information officer Marissa Barnett, whose office was folded into Sanderson's in 2018.
“It was just her birthday last week, and everyone was eager to participate and contribute toward it,” Barnett added. “She has a really good relationship with each staff member, and you can tell that across the department.”
Once her kids were old enough for school, the BOI (that's born on the island, to mainlanders) Sanderson began working in customer service in the city’s water department. She transferred over to the parks department to become office manager, and has since held the positions of superintendent, director, and, as of 2018, executive director. By her count, today she supervises around 70 full- and part-time employees, though the department is currently hiring for several additional positions.
Its footprint on the island is considerable: Sanderson likes to say her maintenance staff “probably touch every blade of grass in Galveston that's not owned by someone” — the Broadway esplanade, cemeteries, playgrounds, ballfields, and one of the department’s most recent wins: a $6 million upgrade to the 26-acre soccer complex on 7 Mile Road.
And besides 11 parks and more than a dozen sports fields, the department also manages three dog parks and splash pads apiece, the Lasker Park community pool, Pocket Parks 1 and 2 on West Beach, and three buildings: McGuire-Dent in Menard Park near the Seawall; the Wright-Cuney Recreation Center, located in the park of the same name off 41st Street; and the Historic Galveston Water & Electric Light Community Center on 30th Street.
Until 2010, the old pump station built in 1904 was the nation’s oldest functioning municipal waterworks plant. After extensive renovations prompted by Hurricane Ike, it recently reopened as a venue for weddings, private parties, and other events.
“It’s become a real popular place,” Sanderson said. “It has beautiful big windows; everything’s gorgeous about it.”
Any Galveston resident is welcome to use either of the island's rec centers for a nominal $30 annual fee, or $5 per day; youth and seniors pay nothing, as do veterans and those currently serving in the military. Many activities are youth-only between 3 and 6 p.m., a cornerstone of the department’s after-school outreach. Other offerings include a computer lab, painting classes, arts and crafts, two-step lessons, bingo, racquetball, basketball, yoga, Zumba, and aerobic kickboxing.
Out of all of those, though, “pickleball is a very strong activity for all ages, I’m not kidding you,” Sanderson says. “If I had to pick the top, I would think it's pickleball.”
To keep the feedback flowing and the idea pipeline well-stocked, Sanderson also serves as a liaison to community organizations like the NAACP, LULAC, and the Kiwanis and Rotary clubs. (“I have lots of full days,” she laughed.) Often she has to coordinate closely with organizations such as the Park Board of Trustees and the nonprofit Better Parks for Galveston, co-sponsor of next Saturday’s “Pumpkin Plunge” at Lasker pool.
And then there’s the department’s staff, many of whom were delighted to see Sanderson receive the chamber’s award at last month’s Galveston Women’s Conference.
“We had a good crowd there; all of them had fun,” Sanderson said. “They kept thanking me for the table. I said, ‘You need to thank our boss.’ And they said, ‘Oh, no. If you wouldn't have won, we might not be here.’”
And if the idea of a group of municipal employees gathering to salute their boss at a white-tablecloth dinner sounds like something straight out of a certain NBC sitcom from a decade or so ago — trust her, Sanderson is used to fielding questions about “Parks and Recreation.” She thinks the show is “cute,” but admits she finds Amy Poehler’s lead character to be a bit of a “dingbat.”
Still, some similarities are too strong to ignore.
“I think that there's probably some reality to some of it, because you never know what story you're going to hear when you come to work in the morning,” Sanderson said. “You just don’t ever count on it being the same day every day. It's going to be something different.”