Marana names Wayne Barnett Parks and Recreation Director | News

Wayne Barnett is a man who knows what he’s doing but he has his worries, too. As Marana’s new Parks and Recreation director, he has four decades of experience behind him. Still, there is something that keeps him up at night,

“We have people on the clock at 5 o’clock in the morning and we have people still on the clock at 10:30 at night and so there’s always the potential for something to go wrong,” he said. “A really big consideration is the swimming pool. Safety is our number one charge.”

It’s not a job he ever expected to have.

“Honestly, I never wanted to be director, never really wanted to be a deputy director,” Barnett said. “I’d had a long career with the city of Tucson and was done with it.”

However, he had worked with and respected the former parks and rec director Jim Conroy and that made the position attractive. Evidently, Town Manager Terry Rozema saw something in Barnett, too, and asked him to move into the director’s office when Barnett’s boss retired.

“During Wayne’s tenure with the town, his experience and expertise have truly helped shape the department’s future and the future of parks and recreation for our community,” he said.

Barnett was appointed to the director position in October but he is no stranger to Marana Parks and Rec. For one, he is a Certified Parks and Recreation Executive (CPRE) and a former president of the Arizona Parks and Recreation Association. Before Jim Conroy retired, Barnett was deputy director of Marana’s Parks and Rec.

The 60-year-old began his parks and rec career when, as a high school junior in Sierra Vista, Barnett was recruited to coach youth basketball. He came to Tucson to attend the University of Arizona, worked for a time in Austin, Texas, and then made his way back to the Old Pueblo, which he calls home.

What really drives Barnett in this job, what really is at the foundation of what he does is actually the town’s philosophy: excellence in service.

“I really lean on the town’s mission statement, which is to provide five-star service for a thriving community,” he said. “Using that as a baseline that really helps as we look at what we do for the community.”

When considering a new program or project, Barnett asks himself: “Does this help us advance the mission to provide that service?” One of the pluses of the job is that the Marana community is eager to participate in whatever is planned. In particular, he said, people here like outdoor activities. For example, Little League is huge in Marana, which then points to one of the gaps in services that Barnett sees and which he and his staff of 76 full-time and 100 to 150 part-time is working on.

“We know that we need more facilities to be able to support them,” he said. “Those facilities cost a lot of money and so as we work toward providing more facilities, the way that we can provide that five-star service is to do the best that we can to maintain the current facilities.”

Barnett pays a lot of attention to the town’s 10-year master plan so a couple of issues he heard from the community was there needs to be more indoor recreation space and year-round swimming. The Marana Aquatic and Recreation Center (MARC), which opened in May of 2025, answered a lot of those needs.

“We have that now with the gymnasium,” he said. “We’ve got three separate basketball courts so we can have basketball on one court, volleyball on one court and pickleball on another court.”

These days, Marana is five years into the town’s master plan and so Barnett and his team are once again looking at what direction they should go in.

“We’ve accomplished a lot of initiatives from that master plan with the MARC being the really big one,” he said. “Now we’re going to go back out to the community and ask where do we go from here? We know there are gaps in facilities. We know there are gaps in programming. What is it that we want, that you want to see from your Parks and Rec Department?”

Besides the obvious Parks and Rec jobs, the department also oversees the crew that keeps up the landscapes in the town’s right-of-ways, 100-plus miles of street, the medians and all of the landscapes. They also maintain the on-and-off-ramps.

“We’ve got a crew of lead maintenance associates who get out there; when you see trash on on-and-off ramps, this is the crew that takes care of those things,” Barnett said.

They have three certified arborists and on staff and are looking to add two more

“We want to make sure that we’re maintaining our tree canopy and our tree inventory,” Barnett said. 

Barnett said they are looking for fitness instructors if anyone is interested.

As he goes forward in the job, one thing Barnett is sure of: he has a great team. He is the boss but…

“I’m their teammate and I’m in that leadership position and I take it very seriously but it really is a team effort because we’ve got so many experts in this department in their specific area, so many talented, smart people and I would be a fool not to listen to them and work with them to make things happen,” he said.