Cooper off to a good start
Delray Beach City Manager Don Cooper had been on the job barely a month before he had to lead a daylong discussion in mid-February of the city’s goals. To Mayor Cary Glickstein, Cooper’s performance validated the decision he made last November with commissioners Jordana Jarjura and Shelly Petrolia to hire Cooper.
“He really ran that meeting well,” Glickstein said in an interview. “What that tells me is that he assimilated a lot in a very short time.” This month, at a workshop, the commission “basically codified” those goals, Glickstein said. Among them are improvements to the city’s parking and public works systems.
As I found in my survey of commissioners, Glickstein’s, Jarjura’s and Petrolia’s assessments of Cooper as he nears four months on the job are very similar. They praise Cooper for getting to know the city’s needs so quickly. They also want the manager to quickly surround himself with enough good people that Cooper can devote more of his time to the biggest issues.
All three elected officials noted that Delray’s outward appearance masks the management problems they hired Cooper to fix. Glickstein compared Delray Beach to a finely restored “jalopy.” The outside looks great—Atlantic Avenue and surrounding areas, the public beach—but “look under the hood” when it comes to delivering services “and we’re not at the level where we need to be. He has seen what we need to do to get there.”
In terms of management, Petrolia said of Delray Beach, “We’re a broken-up, broken-down machine.” Problems started in the last years of David Harden’s long tenure that ended at the end of 2012. In 2013 and 2014, Delray operated under one city manager whom the commission had to force out and an interim.
Petrolia called Cooper’s work at the goal-setting “fantastic,” but she worries that Cooper “had a very limited understanding of what he was getting himself into.” She is concerned about an organizational chart that shows every key department reporting directly to Cooper. Like Glickstein, she wants Cooper to hire a second assistant city manager. “We’re not getting enough in the ‘Done’ box.”
And as Cooper deals with all the expected issues, Petrolia said, “Every time we turn around, we find something else.” Example: Developers have been able to write a check to the city in lieu of adding workforce housing to their market-rate units. At a recent meeting, no one seemed to know exactly where in city government all those checks have gone. The commission has asked Cooper to find out.
Jarjura is “pleased with the manager’s ability to quickly understand the issues we have,” and also praised his work at the goal-setting session. “Now it is time for him to focus on a strong support team—upper management, department heads and perhaps a retool of the organizational structure. It’s clear our issues are too big for one man to handle alone, and I would like to see us shift from reactionary governing to innovative, forward-thinking leadership.”
Mitch Katz joined the commissioner just a month ago, so he didn’t want to make any broad assessments. He did say, though, that Cooper seemed “a little overwhelmed.”
Yet Cooper also seems to be finding his way. He has made his first big hire. Tim Stillings will replace Dana Little as director of Planning and Zoning. Stillings holds that job in Wellington, where he also supervises the Building Department. Those are separate in Delray Beach, but Glickstein said the city might combine the two as part of management reorganization. Though Wellington is more of a suburban-style city than Delray, Glickstein said Stillings has experience in urban planning.
Petrolia noted that Cooper brought all the department heads to the goal-setting session. She, Glickstein and Jarjura have complained about a management structure of “silos,” in which where there’s not much communication from department to department and from departments to the manager and commission.
Another management failing especially has bugged Glickstein since last year’s Office of Inspector General report on former Manager Louie Chapman. The report found that Chapman had deceived the commission on a purchase of trash bins. After the report came out, it became clear that city employees’ understanding of purchasing policies differed from department to department.
Glickstein said Monday that Cooper is moving to create a separate office that will handle procurement and manage contracts—“as is the case in most private companies.” Such a system, he said, would be “far more efficient” than having a purchasing staff in every department, “which is just not working.”
On Wednesday, Cooper will be part of a commission workshop with the Community Redevelopment Agency. That will be his first public meeting with the CRA, which is part of the city but is separate from the commission and sometimes has its own ideas. His most important test will come next month, when Delray Beach switches trash haulers. Cooper went through such a switch when he was the manager in Port St. Lucie.
Cooper will need to keep sprinting for a while. It will he progress if by year’s end he can slow to a run.
MIA easement
The Delray Beach City Commission has made the right decision in seeking an outside legal opinion on the missing Atlantic Crossing easement, but the decision is risky.
To review, the first site plan for the mixed-use project west of Veterans Park contained Atlantic Court, which would provide access from the west off Federal Highway. The current plat also shows the road. In January 2014, the then-city commission approved a new site plan that does not show Atlantic Court.
The developers, citing a favorable court ruling in a lawsuit brought by neighbors of the project, contend that in approving the new site plan, the city abandoned Atlantic Court, as the city had—willingly and knowingly—abandoned Northeast Seventh Avenue and other alleys for the project. Critics, including a majority on the current commission, argue that the city did not knowingly and willingly give up Atlantic Court 15 months ago.
City Attorney Noel Pfeffer was not with the city at that time. Neither was City Manager Don Cooper. The agenda for that January 2014 meeting refers to the site plan but not to abandonment of Atlantic Court. So at its May 5 meeting the commission will hire a land-use lawyer to render an opinion.
“We need an expert in the field,” said Commissioner Mitch Katz, who suggested the idea. Commissioner Jordana Jarjura agrees, as long as the review doesn’t last long. She raises a good point.
Despite continuing public anger over Atlantic Crossing in general and the road in particular—critics say that the developers duped the city in order to change to a more profitable design—Delray Beach must resolve the Atlantic Court issue soon or face a lawsuit from the developers, who are moving ahead with demolition. The Planning & Zoning Board last week gave preliminary approval to a new plat without Atlantic Court. As Jarjura said, “It’s time to bring finality to this divisive project.”
If the lawyer believes that the city has a good case, the opinion could bring about a compromise on Atlantic Court—put it back in the plan—that the developers could offer themselves if they want to improve public perception of the project. If, however, the lawyer believes that the 2014 site plan approval covered Atlantic Court, the city “wouldn’t be left with a lot of other options,” Katz said.
Petrolia would like to hire a lawyer from the same firm that in 2013 concluded that Delray Beach could sue to avoid its trash contract. That opinion led to a rebidding of the contract, and savings in the millions. Since the firm once brought good news, Petrolia’s theory is this: “Who better to deliver bad news, if that’s what the ruling is, to people who are ready to lynch somebody?”
Same sex marriage on the docket
The U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments today regarding the constitutionality of state bans on same-sex marriages. The lead case is from Ohio, and it has been consolidated with three others from Kentucky, Michigan and Tennessee. They make up the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, which in November ruled that trial court judges wrongly struck down marriage bans in those states. The plaintiffs have appealed. Other appeals courts have ruled that the bans are unconstitutional.
In Florida, judges at the federal and state level – including one in Palm Beach County—also have ruled that this state’s ban is unconstitutional. Opinion among legal analysts is divided on how the court might rule. One option is that the justices could say that same-sex marriage is a matter for state courts, after which the two cases from Miami-Dade and Monroe counties that the 3rdDistrict Court of Appeal consolidated would be up for review by the Florida Supreme Court.
Interestingly, according to the Pew Research Center, opinion also remains divided among Americans as to why people are gay or lesbian. In the center’s most recent poll, 42 percent of respondents said being homosexual is “just how someone chooses to live,” while 41 percent of respondents said people are “born gay or lesbian.” Yet that’s a big change from the late 1970s, when almost 60 percent said homosexual was a matter of choice while about 15 percent said people were born gay or lesbian.
Boca traffic woes
There’s never a shortage of traffic issues in Boca Raton. One of the most persistent is the intersection of Northeast Fifth Avenue and Palmetto Park Road.
At Monday’s city council workshop, Mayor Susan Haynie said the intersection poses the biggest traffic challenge in the city—now. That’s without construction of Palmetto Promenade and its nearly 400 apartments just to the west. That’s without the Houston’s restaurant the city hopes will occupy the Wildflower site across Fifth Avenue to the east.
A resident presented his own ideas to the council on Monday. Among those ideas was removing the traffic light —backups can be long after the bridge over the Intracoastal Waterway has closed—and rerouting westbound drivers headed for Federal Highway. Beginning in June or July, a consultant will conduct a three-month study that also will produce recommendations.
Council members asked Boca Raton Traffic Engineer Doug Hess about the resident’s suggestions. His hesitation and body language suggested reluctance. Hess noted that rerouting traffic means potentially annoying other people. He acknowledged, however, that Boca Raton had four-laned nearby Mizner Boulevard to avoid widening Federal Highway, and that the “volume never developed.” Mizner thus might be able to take more cars.
Haynie reminded Hess and everyone else that the Camino Real Bridge will be closed for nine months next year for improvements. The traffic study will be complete in early fall. So might a lease with the company that wants to operate the Houston’s. The need for a solution at Fifth and Palmetto is developing quickly.
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You can email Randy Schultz at randy@bocamag.com
For more City Watch blogs, click here.About the Author
Randy Schultz was born in Hartford, Conn., and graduated from the University of Tennessee in 1974. He has lived in South Florida since then, and in Boca Raton since 1985. Schultz spent nearly 40 years in daily journalism at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, most recently as editorial page editor at the Post. His wife, Shelley, is director of The Learning Network at Pine Crest School. His son, an attorney, and daughter-in-law and three grandchildren also live in Boca Raton. His daughter is a veterinarian who lives in Baltimore.
