Hopkinsville Parks and Recreation Superintendent Tab Brockman has been named the Kentucky League of Cities’ 2022 City Employee of the Year, Hopkinsville officials announced in a press release.
“Tab Brockman is a real visionary and a consummate professional, who has raised the bar for all within the Parks and Recreation industry,” Mayor Wendell Lynch said in the release.
City Administrator Troy Body added, ““KLC is revealing to the Commonwealth what we in Hopkinsville already know: Tab Brockman is the standard in Kentucky in the field of Parks and Recreation. We couldn’t be more proud.”
Brockman will be recognized at KLC’s annual conference, which is slated Sept. 20 through 23 in Owensboro. He will receive a $1,000 award to grant to a favorite charity. It will benefit United Way of the Pennyrile.
The award serves to recognize “an exceptional city employee who performs at a distinguished level to improve [their] local government and community,” the release states.
The city hired Brockman in September 2015 with an aim to get the community ready for the solar eclipse of 2017, which resulted in more than 100,000 visitors in Hopkinsville and Christian County. Then-mayor Carter Hendricks said Brockman was chosen because the city wanted an innovator who could develop new recreational initiatives.
Under Brockman’s leadership, the recreation office established Summer Salute to replace the decades-old Little River Days, and switched the Christmas parade to a nighttime event.
Brockman previously led Parks and Recreation for Murray-Calloway County. He is the third Hopkinsville employee to receive KLC’s Employee of the Year award in recent years. Then-fire chief Freddy Montgomery received the award in 2015. Police Chief Clayton Sumner was the 2018 recipient.
Jennifer P. Brown is co-founder, publisher and editor of Hoptown Chronicle. You can reach her at editor@hoptownchronicle.org. Brown was a reporter and editor at the Kentucky New Era, where she worked for 30 years. She is a co-chair of the national advisory board to the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, governing board past president for the Kentucky Historical Society, and co-founder of the Kentucky Open Government Coalition. She serves on the Hopkinsville History Foundation's board.
