Delray Beach City Manager Don Cooper is resigning.
In a three-line letter Sunday to Mayor Cary Glickstein and the city commission, Cooper said he would leave at the end of the year “due to family medical demands which will interfere with the proper performance of my duties.”
Cooper’s wife has been ill for some time. Glickstein and commissioners Jordana Jarjura and Shelly Petrolia knew that when they hired Cooper in November 2014, but until now Cooper had been able to balance family and professional demands. One must assume that, sadly, there recently came a tipping point. “Family comes first,” Glickstein told me Monday.
Losing a manager for any reason never is easy, but the timing would have been much worse six months ago. Delray Beach now has completed negotiations on public safety pensions and new leases with Old School Square and Arts Garage, and the city’s new special events policy is in place. Cooper has outlined the 12-year capital improvement plan, and the Community Redevelopment Agency is supplying money for the first year. Serious work on next year’s budget won’t start until spring. The commission likely will approve an agreement tonight for a law firm to fill the role of city attorney.
Glickstein would prefer that the commission name one of the two assistant city managers – Francine Ramaglia and Dale Sugerman – to replace Cooper on an interim basis until after the March election. Al Jacquet is resigning this month to join the Florida House, and the commission will appoint someone to fill out the four months of his term. Glickstein has a point. The most important decision of any commission is the hiring of a manager. A permanent commission should do that.
I’ll have more on this in my Thursday post.
More about the Wildflower property
There is no shortage of developments in Boca Raton about the Wildflower property and the related waterfront ordinance on the Nov. 8 ballot.
We begin with the interview former council member Peter Baronoff just did with BocaWatch Publisher Al Zucaro on the group’s website. Zucaro says Baronoff was on the council when the city bought the Wildflower site. That is false. Baronoff resigned from the council, citing his then-wife’s health, in November 2008. The council approved the $7.5 million purchase 13 months later.
Baronoff further claims in the interview that the council intended to use the land for a park. He and Zucaro mutually agree that the current council has changed direction by seeking to lease the land for a restaurant.
Yet discussions about use of the site took place in 2010 and 2011, long after Baronoff had left the council. Zucaro nevertheless touted Baronoff’s “institutional knowledge” on the subject, asking about “the general mood of the council” regarding the property.
When I asked Zucaro about the misrepresentation on Friday, he said the comment about Baronoff being present at the relevant time was “a slip of the tongue.” In the comments section accompanying the interview, Zucaro wrote a correction, acknowledging that Baronoff had not been on the council but claiming that he “participated in deliberations leading up to the purchase.”
But since Baronoff wasn’t there, his comments have no credibility. There also is no record of any serious “deliberations” during Baronoff’s time on the council. Baronoff was on the council in 2006, when the council made purchase of the Wildflower a priority at goal-setting and asked City Manager Leif Ahnell to inquire and seek appraisals. According to city records, however, nothing serious happened until well after Baronoff left.
More pertinent to the interview, Baronoff was gone when the council sought public input and ultimately decided to seek bids for a restaurant. Yet Zucaro praises the “perspective” Baronoff brings to the issue. Based on the record, it’s the perspective of an outsider. Here is what actually happened.
Purchase of the Wildflower property, for $7.5 million, in December 2009 started all sorts of discussion. Mark Boykin, a pastor who once ran unsuccessfully for mayor, immediately speculated that the city had bought the land for a gambling casino.
Given the recession, nothing much else happened until mid-2011. With a proposal from a Tennessee company for a restaurant, the city sought comment from residents and businesses. Some responses favored a restaurant. Others favored a park. Still other residents wanted the city to sell the land for residential development and boost the tax rolls. The city was facing a budget deficit.
In October 2011, however, the council chose the restaurant option. Because parking would take up much of the site, council members hoped to buy adjoining property, ideally to the north. That didn’t work out, though Councilman Anthony Majhess suggested a referendum on a bond issue to provide the money.
The key point regarding Baronoff’s assertion, though, is that nothing in the record indicates that the city council then or now ignored overwhelming support for a park. That view is supported by Susan Whelchel — who was mayor at the time – Susan Haynie – the current mayor who then was on the council – and Councilman Mike Mullaugh, who was appointed to Baronoff’s seat and then won two full terms.
Haynie called Baronoff’s comments “misleading at best.” She recalled the council hoping for “a park with a restaurant or a restaurant in a park-like setting,” and that Majhess presented a concept with three small restaurants. Mullaugh correctly recalled proposing a more open-air restaurant like Guanabanas in Jupiter, which also is on the water. But Guanabana’s has had noise issues, and the council worried about such a restaurant becoming a nuisance for neighbors. So the council returned to the idea of what Mullaugh calls “a traditional restaurant.”
Baronoff did not correct Zucaro when he stated that Baronoff had been present for the Wildflower purchase. Nor did Zucaro post a similar correction for his interview with Councilman Jeremy Rodgers, during which Zucaro said Baronoff “was there” for the purchase and said Baronoff had stated “unequivocally” that the current council was going against the wishes of the public.
I left two voicemails seeking comment from Baronoff, who sounds in the interview like someone who wants to run for office. Against Haynie? “I have no idea,” Haynie said. Baronoff did not call back.
In the Baronoff interview, Zucaro accused the Greater Boca Raton Chamber of Commerce and others of trying to “rewrite history” on the Wildflower by claiming that the original intent was to use the land for a park. Based on what we are hearing from people who actually were there and the public record, however, any rewriting is coming from Al Zucaro and Peter Baronoff.
BocaWatch PAC hits mailboxes
In other news, a mailer from Zucaro’s political action committee — BocaWatch PAC — hit selected mailboxes over the weekend. The mailer, in support of the waterfront ordinance that is designed to prevent use of the Wildflower site for a restaurant, said rejecting the ordinance would mean “developing our waterfront,” and shows a high-rise condo. In fact, there is no threat today or ever of such development on the city-owned waterfront land to which the ordinance would apply.
But who really paid for the mailer?
On Oct. 24, BocaWatch PAC received $10,000 from another PAC called Taxpayers in Action, which is based in Tampa. The committee’s record shows an expenditure on Oct. 21 of nearly $50,000 to Public Concepts, a West Palm Beach political consulting firm, for direct mail services.
In August, Public Concepts was the conduit for a $10,000 donation to BocaWatch PAC from yet another PAC called Protect Florida Families. That money financed a BocaWatch mailer on behalf of Greater Boca Raton Beach & Park District incumbents Dennis Frisch and Earl Starkoff in their primary election.
Taxpayers in Action and Protect Florida Families get most of their money from special-interest groups that have business before the Legislature. As with the beach and park district mailer and Protect Florida Families, why does a group like Taxpayers in Action that never has been involved in Boca Raton politics suddenly care about a waterfront ordinance in Boca Raton?
iPic agreement finally on agenda
The long-awaited agreements for the iPic project are on the agenda for tonight’s meeting of the Delray Beach City Commission.
These are not the standard agreements between a developer and the city. They are among the city, iPic and the Community Redevelopment Agency, which owns the site, between Northeast Fourth Avenue and Northeast Fifth Avenue south of Atlantic Avenue. The CRA assembled the site from the former homes of the library and the chamber of commerce. For the CRA to approve iPic’s purchase of the land, the city must approve the agreements. If the commission does so, the sale would close on Jan. 31.
The main issue is the parking garage for the project. Since the project, known as Fourth and Fifth Delray, would displace public street parking, iPic would have to provide 90 spaces for the public and ensure that the public could get to them easily.
IPic also would have to retain public access to the current spaces until construction started. If iPic did not complete the garage within three years of buying the property, the company would owe the city $3.15 million in payments for the lost spaces. Actual construction might take only half as long, but the timeframe allows for “Act of God” delays – such as hurricanes – and the city likely stretched the date out to avoid any drawn-out arguments.
Another key issue has been iPic’s promise to move its headquarters from Boca Raton to Fourth and Fifth Delray. That presence, plus added downtown office space and the complementary amenity of a movie theater, helped to sell the commission majority on the project.
Under the agreement, iPic would move to Fourth and Fifth Delray within 180 days of obtaining the certificate of occupancy. The company would use at least 20,000 square feet of office space – roughly half the total – and agree to keep the headquarters there for at least five years.
Other issues include public use of the project’s terrace and return to the city of a 16-foot alley is the project isn’t built. The staff recommends that the commission approve all three agreements on the agenda. One still would expect a long discussion before any favorable vote.
Mizner 200 goes before Boca Community Appearance Board
After a delay caused by Hurricane Matthew, the Mizner 200 condo project goes before the Boca Raton Community Appearance Board on Tuesday and the Planning and Zoning Board on Thursday. Mizner 200 would replace the Mizner on the Green rental complex on Mizner Boulevard across from Royal Palm Place.
A Boca Raton businessman and civic patron has died. Anthony Comparato started Compson Development, which his sons now run. Mr. Comparato served on the boards of Boca Raton Regional Hospital and Florida Atlantic and Lynn universities, among others.
Cooper is a warrior, and it’s extremely unfortunate Delray Beach lost somebody who actually did what his job title entailed. I expect both assistant city managers to leave for another municipality, as they have constantly over the years. Of course, Franken-Glickstein, who does nothing but make indeterminate statements and bad calls HAS to go. To retain its quality of life and charm over overdeveloped modernist nightmares, Delray needs new and committed talent, or proven successes like Nelson ‘Woodie’ McDuffie back.