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East Bay Regional Park District General Manager Sabrina Landreth stepped down this week and her deputy Max Korten has been installed as acting general manager, the district announced following a special board meeting Saturday morning.
Landreth’s sudden departure came two days after her performance was the subject of a closed-session evaluation during the Board of Directors’ regular meeting – which lasted more than seven hours overall and included pushback on multiple proposals from the general manager in open session.
“The Board of Directors is incredibly thankful for Ms. Landreth’s service and her numerous substantial contributions to the operations of the Park District,” Board President John Mercurio said in the district’s news release just before noon Saturday.
EBRPD declined to release Landreth’s resignation letter without a formal public records request, which the Pleasanton Weekly is pursuing.
Landreth revealed her side of the story in a press release of her own Sunday morning, alleging the board “constructively terminated” her by asking her to take actions that would violate the law and harm her reputation. She said she is mulling legal action against her now-former employer.
“The Board was demanding that I compromise my integrity and values. I would not do that,” she said, without providing specifics on the circumstances. “I stand by my values and my reputation as a professional administrator for the past twenty-five years.”
Formerly city administrator in Oakland and city manager in Emeryville, Landreth was hired by EBRPD in March 2021 to become the 10th permanent general manager in district history – and the first woman to ever hold the position overseeing the largest regional park system in the U.S.
In its three-paragraph news release late Saturday morning, district officials praised Landreth for “coming into the position during the pandemic and immediately working tirelessly to improve the Regional Parks, make key acquisitions including Pt. Molate in Richmond, and ensure parks are accessible and welcoming to all members of the community. Under Landreth, the Park District modernized and strengthened the agency’s leadership infrastructure, assembling talent across all Divisions to ensure the agency is well positioned for a bright future.”
But tensions ebbed and flowed during the five-hour public portion of the board’s regular meeting Tuesday (Nov. 4) in Oakland.
The tone of the two-hour-plus closed session earlier that day remains known only to those officials in the room – Landreth’s performance evaluation and a conference on labor negotiations were the two agendized items. Mercurio, a Concord resident whose Ward 6 includes the San Ramon Valley, later told the public audience there were no announcements out of closed session.
Landreth was present for the full public session, which started out with three EBRPD employees speaking during open comment to criticize the district’s return-to-work policy and advocate for telework flexibility.
Two of Landreth’s proposals on the consent agenda – items deemed routine and typically approved with little-to-no fanfare – were separated for individual discussion and received pushback from multiple directors.
The board ultimately approved in split votes, with either abstentions or outright oppositions, the general manager’s requests to hire San Leandro city clerk Kelly B. Clancy as EBRPD’s new clerk of the board and to approve of the district creating a new board services program supervisor position.
The directors and staff then launched into a three-hour conversation about the district’s budget and capital improvement program proposals for 2026. At the end of the workshop, Ward 2 Director Lynda Deschambault still felt like another extra session was needed, urging her colleagues to create a new meeting this month to focus on the CIP outlook.
“You have three more meetings coming up,” Landreth responded to the board. “So if you have additional questions, please send them our way and we have offered up, made ourselves available, to do meetings with anybody that would like them.”
Also in her comments toward the end of the meeting, Landreth said, “I just wanted to go ahead and say thank you to all the staff today. This was a tremendous amount of work that went in to all of these staff reports, all of these presentations, all of the analysis, all of the questions. Incredible amount of work, and I just really want to say thank you to everybody.”
Landreth resigned as general manager two days later, Thursday (Nov. 6).
In her statement issued Sunday morning by Singer Associates Public Relations, Landreth said she “could not perform my job under a Board of Directors which was not exercising appropriate governance and operates without adequate checks and balances”.
The press release claimed EBRPD elected directors “demanded she take actions – which she refused – that would have violated open government and personnel laws, and harmed her professional and personal reputation”. Specifics were not shared about the allegations, but Landreth vowed she was seeking legal counsel and considering legal action against the district.
“I am proud of my accomplishments during my EBRPD tenure,” Landreth added. “There were many projects I had started and am disappointed not to complete because my time was cut short by the Board.”
After the resignation, the directors called a special meeting for 8:30 a.m. Saturday, at which they appointed Korten as acting general manager. “Next steps on the hiring process are yet to be determined,” the district said in its news release.
Korten joined EBRPD in October 2024 as deputy general manager after working the previous 10 years at Marin County Parks, including nearly eight years as director and general manager. An East Bay resident, Korten also had prior professional experience with the Conservation Corps North Bay, Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service.
He is now tasked with being the stopgap leader for EBRPD, which manages 73 parks, 55 miles of shoreline and more than 1,330 miles of trails in Alameda and Contra Costa counties, and has its own police and fire departments. Notable district properties in the Tri-Valley include Pleasanton Ridge, Shadow Cliffs, Las Trampas and Del Valle regional parks and the Iron Horse Regional Trail.
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