Firing of Key West Planning Director protested by commissioner, residents

Firing of Key West Planning Director protested by commissioner, residents

BY PRU SOWERS

KONK LIFE STAFF WRITER

A last-ditch effort to stop Key West City Manager Jim Scholl from firing planning director Thaddeus Cohen failed to find support from city commissioners at their March 7 meeting. As a result, Scholl’s decision to part ways with Cohen, who has been the city’s top planning official for the past two years, will take effect March 31.

Commissioner Clayton Lopez attempted to add a resolution to the meeting agenda asking Scholl to reconsider his termination of Cohen. But the last-minute add-on required a unanimous vote to be put on the agenda and the effort failed.

However, Lopez, who was Cohen’s chief supporter two years ago when he applied for the position, used his time during commissioner comments at the end of the meeting to urge Scholl to reconsider. Listing Cohen’s achievements over his tenure – which included, Lopez said, approval to create a bike/pedestrian master plan, creating a funding source for the affordable housing trust fund, and reviewing over 4,700 permits and applications to the department in the last fiscal year – Lopez said Cohen deserves another chance.

“I know that there have been some issues. Mr. Cohen is far from perfect,” Lopez said in a prepared statement. “The bottom line is that plans that have been on the shelf for years or that we have otherwise wanted to see, have been getting done!”

The city charter gives Scholl the authority to hire and fire most city staff without commissioner oversight. Scholl said that there were several reasons for his decision to fire Cohen, but the primary one was a disagreement between the two men over the planning process.

“Administratively, things were not being handled. It eroded confidence of us being able to provide the level of service we wanted,” Scholl said. “The day to day management elements were not compatible with what we wanted to accomplish.”

In addition to a perceived lack of customer service in the planning department office, Scholl said that Cohen’s preparation for planning board meetings was often not properly done. The most recent example of that was the Feb. 23 planning board meeting, where five agenda items had to be postponed because the department failed to issue required public notifications for proposed zoning changes. One of those agenda items was to increase density limits for a long-delayed proposed affordable housing project on College Road.

A lack of progress on affordable housing issues was also Commissioner Sam Kaufman’s complaint about Cohen’s performance. The city earlier passed a resolution calling for 100 percent of its allotted annual building permits, called BPAS units, to go towards affordable housing projects. But the wording of that resolution was rejected twice by the state Department of Economic Opportunity and the planning department was unable to rewrite it in time to achieve the commission’s objective this year.

“After we said we want 100 percent affordable housing in BPAS allocations and then there’s 36 percent that was actually allocated, that’s frustrating for me personally in not achieving the goal I thought we could achieve,” Kaufman said.

But Cohen had defenders, including 21 people who wrote letters of support in connection with Lopez’s failed resolution. Two of them showed up to speak at the March 7 meeting, Burney and Veronica Stafford, a married couple who live in Bahama Village. Mr. Stafford told how Cohen helped him find an easy way to submit information to satisfy local building permit officials during a renovation of their home.

“He [Cohen] took a burden off our shoulders,” he said.

Mrs. Stafford said that the things Cohen was being accused of were not severe offences such as stealing money. In addition, she lamented, Cohen was one of the only African Americans in middle management working for the city.

“Is it possible to give that gentleman another 30 to 60 days,” she said. “I want to ask you to give him a chance to see if we can resolve this.”

Lopez said after the meeting that the reason he so strongly supported hiring Cohen was because of his accomplishments in previous municipal positions, including assistant city manager in Pensacola. Cohen helped create a city waterfront park there in two years, larger than the one currently under construction in Key West that has taken 15 years to break ground. However, Lopez said he understands that the city charter gives the city manager the power to hire and fire.

“I can’t force it,” he said.

Efforts are currently underway to advertise the planning director position to potential candidates.

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