Washington Pavilion

Did Darrin Smith lose a power struggle at the Pavilion?

l3wis May 16, 2017 2Comments

As we know, the Pavilion made some leadership changes this week;

Smith this month created and filled two new executive positions – a chief operating officer and a chief financial officer. Longtime Pavilion staffers John Seitz and Jane Hathaway, formerly the director of patron services and finance, respectively, started in their new roles May 11.

Smith said much of his first year focused on evaluating the Washington Pavilion’s operations while looking for ways to improve efficiency. Giving the pair of established staffers more authority to make decisions in his absence will streamline operations and allow Smith to spend more of his time fundraising, which should result in more revenues to support patron offerings.

What is even more glaring is that long time Operations VP, Jon Loos got to keep his job, now he is called ‘Director of Facility Services‘. So does he get to keep his current salary while doing less since Seitz is taking over those duties? Why keep Loos?

Remember Loos and Hathaway have been there since the inception of the Pavilion. Was there some disagreements with Smith’s leadership? Did the Board of Trustees step in? Many may not know, but the Board of Trustees are really who are in charge at the Pavilion. Are these changes in affect to let Smith to stick around until Huether leaves office?

It just seems very peculiar that in the short period of time Smith has been CEO he is already getting his leadership duties cut. Knowing Smith as long as I have, I can only speculate it wasn’t his idea. So what really happened?

Changes at the Pavilion

l3wis May 15, 2017 1Comments

Not even sure what this even means;

Smith this month created and filled two new executive positions – a chief operating officer and a chief financial officer. Longtime Pavilion staffers John Seitz and Jane Hathaway, formerly the director of patron services and finance, respectively, started in their new roles May 11.

So my question is what is the difference between the Chief Operating Officer and Jon Loos’ position, VP of Operations? Darrin says these are two NEW positions, but why would the CEO & President need a COO and a VPO?

So will somebody be leaving quietly in the night?

UPDATE: The Pavilion’s strange job posting for the VAC Director

l3wis April 24, 2017 1Comments

UPDATE: The job posting has REAPPEARED.

The job posting and job description was created on April 4, as you can see above (DOC:VAC Director April 2017) but the Pavilion didn’t post it to their employment page until today, for a short period of time that is, then poof it was gone. Even though it still exists on the interwebs, for now.

There is some legal hoops an organization like the Pavilion has to jump through when posting a job to the public, apparently for a couple of hours is OK.

So why wouldn’t they have posted the job longer then a few hours? Could be a glitch in the website, but my guess is that a candidate was already picked before the job was posted to the public. I guess we will have to wait and see if the new director (if they picked someone already) has any ‘connections’ to the board or other dignitaries in Sioux Falls. If not, then they need to have a long talk with their webmaster.