I didn't realize that the Advisory Committee consisted largely of Baxter heirs but thought it was a group of citizens with some interest and knowledge of the Park.
To exclude credible stakeholders under the guise of "confidentiality" is a mistake, I believe. There are ways to address this problem, "sanitizing" personal qualifications of applicants and soliciting idealized qualifications from such stakeholders for example. The mere appearance of political insider operation to the exclusion of the public would start the new director, no matter how noble the selection, off on the wrong foot.
"If we the public knew how to manage parks we wouldn't have to protect them from ourselves like we do." I would not be so optimistic that any group of three, especially one with such a public purpose as this one, knows best and the rest of the peons are irrelevant. I suspect, however, that the process is more open than the article suggests, at least I would hope that wisdom would prevail over bureaucratic convenience.
