WILTON — The Wilton Board of Selectpersons welcomed Jordan Schanck as their new director for the Parks and Recreation Department at their Select Board meeting on Tuesday, Feb. 20. Schanck appeared at the meeting with former director Frank Donald, who announced his official retirement in November.

A Wilton native, Schanck is no stranger to the parks and rec department, having worked part time in the department for several years after graduating from Mt. Blue High School in 2009. Schanck earned a degree from the University of Maine at Farmington in 2015 and began training as an arborist.

After completing his training, Schanck left Wilton to pursue work in Lisbon. He started working as a park maintenance supervisor in 2019, but soon was promoted to assistant parks and recreation director and town arborist.

Schanck would stay at Lisbon in his role for three years before he moved on to Pineland Farms in New Gloucester, which he said was an opportunity to start working with kids again.

“They found an opening for me,” Schanck shared with the Livermore Falls Advertiser in a phone interview, “and they helped create a position for myself making new programs and helping build on the programs they already had, advancing the flow of work that was being done, and just helping bring things to the newer generation.”

Schanck and Donald kept in touch during all this time, and when Donald announced his retirement, Schanck knew about it right away.

“Frank will make the joke that I was like a buzzard waiting for him to retire,” Schanck said.

Schanck has always kept his eye on this position, stating that he believes the program has a lot of potential to keep growing on what Donald built for the program in his 30 years of service as director.

“There’s stability for this department to do countless opportunities for not only the kids in this community, but for other communities around [Wilton],” Schanck said.

One of the first things that Schanck wants to try to expand is baseball, by bringing it into the three to four year old range.

“I really want to be able to build on the feeder program,” he said. “We’ve always had good numbers for a small town, we’ve always been able to collect from the outer communities and kind of keep our numbers up, but I really would like to be able to build on not only our numbers, but our community involvement and getting parents involved and having coaches that are trained in the set techniques that we’re kind of trying to develop all the way up to the high school level.”

Donald stated at the Select Board meeting on Tuesday that he wished him all the best with that.

“God bless him,” Donald said. “I’ve been pretty staunch about sticking with five year old for all of our sports. Any younger than that, in my mind, you’re babysitting a bat.”

In other business at the meeting, Donald stated the ice rink in Kineowatha Park had a few weeks in it at best before temperatures proved too warm to keep it intact.

The Wilton Select Board voted to accept a proposal for work to be done on the tennis court in Kineowatha Park in 2025. Town Manager Maria Greeley stated that funds for the project would be drawn from the Bjorn account.

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