KANNAPOLIS — That fellow pulling weeds at Baker’s Creek Park just might be Gary Mills.

Or residents might spot Mills firming up a flower bed or wandering around the cemetery by the YMCA, plotting grave sites.

“I take pride in the appearance of our parks,” said Mills, who was recently hired as Kannapolis’ parks and recreation director. “I’m very hands on, so folks are likely to see me out in the parks very often, fixing beds or pulling weeds.”

Mills is the first parks and recreation director in the history of the city, which incorporated in 1984. Kannapolis City Council approved $38,000 in this year’s budget to create the position.

Aside from weed pulling, Mills’ job includes ensuring that city parks run smoothly and overseeing the development of new ones. He’s also in charge of “beautification, gateways and cemeteries.”

That means all landscaped areas, more than 400 trees along city streets, city welcome signs and the cemetery. The cemetery, which once belonged to Cannon Mills, has never been mapped, and old records don’t help much.

He won’t to do it all himself. His department includes Loran Schulte, the parks supervisor and the only other full-time parks worker, and five part-time employees.

Mills is charged with building the city’s recreation department essentially from the ground up, and he likes it that way.

“I thrive on the challenge of building departments from scratch, because it is truly a challenge,” said Mills, who came from Cornelius, where he started that city’s parks and recreation department.

During his tenure there, the city passed a $3-million bond package, developed a parks master plan, built two new parks and was constructing a third when he left.

Before that, he directed a parks department in Ayden in Pitt County. And in Morrisville, he helped start a new department as facilities director.

A North Carolina State University honors graduate with a master’s degree in parks, recreation and tourism management, Mills holds national certifications in parks and recreation and playground safety inspection.

In 1999, the North Carolina Recreation and Parks Society named Mills its first Outstanding Young Professional of the Year. In 1998, he won the Outstanding Achievement Award for this region.

Kannapolis City Manager David Hales said Mills’ reputation among his peers impressed him.

“Time and time again, they said here is a unique individual,” Hales said. “We feel very fortunate to have Gary.”

Hales said a major goal is addressing facility needs. Mills will work with consultants and other parks directors on a countywide master plan called the “Livable Community Blueprint.”

The challenge, he sees, is convincing the City Council and citizens to believe in recreational priorities enough to pay for them and getting land to build parks in a fast-growing area.

“Ihope it’s not going to disappear at the rate it was in Cornelius,”he said. “Hopefully, we’ll have some vision ... open space is only going to come around once, and we need to retain it while we can.”

Mills sees opportunities as well, including getting Kannapolis residents excited about the future of parks and recreation in a city with one multi-use park, several open spaces and a couple of ballfields.

Cabarrus County is building a park on land leased from Kannapolis on Orphanage Road, and Mills said the city will submit a grant application this year — an application last year wasn’t approved — to develop a park on Bethpage Road.

And Mills, who likes walking trails and bike paths, said he already has some other ideas for recreation around the city, though he declined to say what they are now.

But citizens will have to come forward and speak out about the city’s recreation needs more than ever, to help set priorities. That will happen once people get used to the new department, he said.

One of his first tasks is to document the burial sites at the city-owned cemetery next to the Cannon Memorial YMCA on West C Street. An official plot map has never been done there, he said.

Mills is originally from Raleigh. His wife, Candice, is a Union County native, and they have a 2-year-old “daddy’s girl” named Ashley. The avid golfer said they live “a driver and a three wood away”from Kannapolis on N.C. 73.

In addition to golf, Mills said he loves tennis, though he doesn’t get to play much of either, and he describes himself as a NASCAR and “huge Wolfpack” fan.

His pet peeve is trash.

“I’m very much a stickler for trash,” he said. “I don’t like to see trash in a public park; that’s very much a turnoff.”

So, that fellow snatching up trash in Village Park, looking a little peeved, just might be Gary Mills.