By next summer, Boca Raton will have paid the city’s top two former administrators almost $600,000 to not work.
That’s the upshot from last week’s city council approval of a “separation agreement” with City Attorney Diana Frieser. Rather than retire as scheduled on Aug. 31, 2025, she will depart Oct. 31 with a $437,000 severance package.
Mayor Scott Singer’s original offer would have cost $548,000 to have Frieser gone Aug. 31 of this year.
How could this happen? We’ll never know.
That’s because the council rejected Councilman Andy Thomson’s proposal to have an outside lawyer examine the 2011 contract that allows Frieser’s generous payout. An identical contract allowed former City Manager Leif Ahnell to get $143,000 to leave at the end of last year rather than in March. That makes the combined buyout $580,000.
Under that contract, Frieser and Ahnell became almost impossible to fire. When the council approved it, a five-year timeline kicked in. Being fired or forced out would have paid either of them five years’ salary. That payout declined proportionally each month until June 2016.
At that point, the contract called for Frieser or Ahnell to get one year of salary and benefits. That’s why forcing out Frieser a year early would have cost $548,000—using a calculation that the council has not verified—and why the compromise departure date will cost three months’ less. Similarly, Ahnell got one-fourth of his salary and benefits for leaving three months ahead of his planned retirement.
One question is why the council wanted Frieser and Ahnell gone early. Ahnell’s agreement appeared on the Nov. 14, 2023 consent agenda. Then-Deputy City Manager George Brown said the deal was a way to ensure “a smooth transition” from Ahnell to Brown. Smooth it was. Also expensive.
As for Frieser, Mayor Scott Singer proposed her separation. Last week, Singer said he didn’t want to discuss “details” of why he did so. When I pressed for more, Singer responded in an email, “My comments from the dais from the last two meetings suffice.” In public, he spoke only of wanting a quicker “transition” than if Frieser had stayed until next year.
In an interview, Thomson offered possible “details.” He had talked to Frieser about practices by her office that “depart” from what other city attorneys told him. In Boca Raton, non-lawyers draft legal documents. The legal team often comes in late during review of development applications and other issues, leading to delays. Responsiveness can be slow.
“I didn’t see satisfactory progress,” Thomson said of Frieser since that June meeting. As noted, though, he didn’t want to move Frieser out until knowing more about that 2011 contract, which that council approved two days before a new state law prohibited such generous payouts.
Did Frieser draw up the contract? If so, at whose direction? Why did it include her and Ahnell? What about the timing?
All are intriguing questions. Councilman Marc Wigder acknowledged that he had been sympathetic to Thomson’s proposal. Eventually, though, “I thought it was best that we just move on.”
Yvette Drucker seemed especially irritated by discussion of something that “happened 20 years ago.” Actually, it was 13. At the end, she said that Frieser had been “treated very poorly.” Fran Nachlas said, “Scrutiny of the agreement is unfair.”
As Nachlas told me Monday, the 2011 council “didn’t raise any questions” about the agreement. True, but was that a good thing? Nachlas noted that a legal opinion at the time found nothing “improper” about the agreement. But does that mean the contract was good policy? Would Nachlas approve such a deal today? “I don’t want to get into hypotheticals.”
Finally, why the rush? I’ll offer a theory.
Singer sees major items looming for the city, among them what Wigder calls “potentially a billion-dollar project” with a private company for a new government campus around City Hall. Term limits will force Singer from office in March 2026.
Boca Raton has a weak-mayor system. Singer can’t change the manager and attorney on his own. To move quickly on those projects, however, he wanted a new team. When the city hires Frieser’s replacement, he will have it, even if costs $580,000.
That’s just a theory. But it’s plausible, and given the lack of answers from the council, it will have to do for now.
Report card for local schools
Delray Beach city commissioners recently fretted about the state of the city’s public schools. New information may give them reason for optimism.
Last week, the Florida Department of Education released county and school grades for the 2023-2024 academic year. The overall headline was that Palm Beach County received an A—its normal grade for years—after dropping to a B in 2022-2023.
But there also was good news for Delray Beach. Only one school got a C—Carver Middle, the city’s only traditional public middle school.
Atlantic High, however, went from a C to a B. Plumosa School of the Arts rose to an A from a C. Pine Grove and Orchard View elementary schools also rose from C to B. Banyan Creek Elementary retained its B grade. Morikami Park Elementary, which is just outside the city limits, kept its A.
In Boca Raton, the status quo generally prevailed, which is mostly good news. Only two of the city’s traditional public schools got lower than an A—Boca Raton and J.C. Mitchell elementaries. They remained at B. Those schools draw a disproportionate number of students who are from less-affluent families and whose first language may not be English.
Notably, Boca Raton Middle—one of the county’s largest—raised its grade from B to A. Olympic Heights High School, which is just outside Boca Raton but draws from within the city, also improved from B to A.
Delray to increase involvement with school board
State grades don’t always reflect a school’s quality. They tend to be higher where parents are more involved and can afford extra, outside work.
Still, the grades carry great symbolic importance. Boca Raton touts them when recruiting companies. Delray Beach has fretted about them as the city tries to draw more middle-class families along with corporations.
Though Delray Beach commissioners recently threw out ideas, local governments have little to no direct impact on public education. That’s the purview of the school district. But political jawboning can help.
Under Frank Barbieri, the school board member who represents Boca Raton, the city got two rebuilt, expanded elementary schools—Addison Mizner and Verde—from the county’s sales-tax surcharge. Those projects eased crowding throughout the city. Tougher address checks to find boundary jumpers did the same for Boca Raton High School.
Because two school board members, Edwin Ferguson and Erica Whitfield, represent Delray Beach, each has other constituencies to worry about. As a result, the city is trying to increase its involvement.
Last week, the city commission approved on first reading an ordinance that would decrease the education board from 13 members to seven. The measure also would require each member to be a parent or faculty member from a school in the city. Advising the board is Education Coordinator Janai Bowens.
Under the current setup, City Manager Terrence Moore said, it’s been hard sometimes to get a quorum at meetings. The goal is to make the board “more flexible,” Moore said, and to make the city more of a “contributing partner” with the district. The city made a similar change to the police advisory board.
How is Boca’s Brightline investment paying off?
New information continues to second-guess Boca Raton’s $10 million investment in its Brightline station.
Quoting the company’s latest figures, the South Florida Sun Sentinel reported that most Brightline passengers now travel between South Florida and Orlando. The company stated earlier this summer that its long-term focus is on long-haul travel.
At the same time, Brightline is de-emphasizing commuter travel (the company recently did away with its monthly commuter packages) within this region, meaning the stations in Boca Raton, West Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale, Aventura and Miami. When the Boca Raton City Council approved that $10 million, the justification was that the station would bring people to the city.
Instead, Brightline officials are promoting deals with cruise lines to bring tourists from the Orlando area to Port Everglades and Port Miami. A station in Brevard County, which the company envisions, would allow travel between the theme parks and Port Canaveral, which has surpassed Port Everglades in cruise passenger traffic.
Boca Raton officials had talked of creating a new development district around the Brightline station as part of that City Hall plan. In fact, with Tri-Rail now offering direct trains to Miami, the Tri-Rail station at Yamato Road is the only affordable commuter option. Council members should consider Brightline’s new focus as they hire a consultant to design that new downtown campus.
