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Portland Parks & Recreation has hired a Portland landscape architect and former city employee to oversee planned maintenance projects funded through a $68 million bond measure approved by voters last fall.

Mary Anne Cassin, who most recently was a principal with the Portland-based landscape architecture firm PLACE, will serve as the bond program manager. She will manage a team of city staffers tasked with coordinating the spending of the bond money on major maintenance at playgrounds, pools, trails and Pioneer Courthouse Square.

City officials plan to hire in the coming months four project managers, a public involvement specialist and an administrative assistant to help implement bond-funded projects. Once the city sells the bonds in late June or early July, preliminary planning and design can begin on repairs and upgrades to park and recreation facilities throughout Portland.

The bond program manager position isn’t the first Cassin has held with the city. She worked for 22 years as a landscape architect for Portland Parks & Recreation, from 1984 to 2005. After leaving the city, she worked briefly for the Vancouver Parks & Recreation Department and then spent seven years as parks planning and development manager at Metro before joining PLACE.