Plan to move commission meetings to 10 am fails

BY PRU SOWERS

KONK LIFE STAFF WRITER

 

An effort by Key West City Manager Jim Scholl to reduce the 14-hour workday he and various city officials sometimes have to put in on the days the city commission meets was kicked to the curb by commissioners on May 3.

Scholl had put a resolution on the agenda proposing to move the 6 pm regular start time for commission meetings to 10 am, beginning in October. But it was dead on arrival and Scholl withdrew the resolution rather than see it voted down.

Hoping “to relieve some of the long nights,” Scholl was uncharacteristically tongue-tied when asked by surprised commissioners why he wanted to change the meeting time to 10 am. Commissioner Billy Wardlow, a retiree, pointed out that three commissioners – Clayton Lopez, Jimmy Weekley and Sam Kaufman – hold down full-time day jobs. And Commissioner Margaret Romero, who puts in weekly hours at City Hall equivalent to a full-time job, said the move would dissuade people who can’t come to a day meeting from participating in the governmental process.

“We who got elected, and [City Hall staffers] who choose the jobs they have for the city, know what they got when they got into this,” she said.

Scholl pointed out that Key West is a three-shift community, with many people who work at night who cannot attend commission meetings now.

“No matter what government entity, whenever you have a meeting, if there are issues people are involved with, if they want to be there, they take time off or they communicate through letters or email,” Scholl said.

In addition to Scholl, assistant city managers Sarah Hannah-Spurlock and Greg Veliz, City Attorney Shawn Smith and City Clerk Cheri Smith are on the dais and participate in each meeting. Many department heads also frequently sit through hours of meeting dialogue before their agenda item comes up.

Several residents spoke against the proposal, including Tom Malone, who said that “many people” likely to attend a city commission meeting in the evening won’t have the opportunity to speak to commissioners if the meetings are held during the day. Rev. Randy Becker agreed and pointed out that moving the meetings to 10 am will change the type of people who run for office in Key West, assuming they need to be free during the day.

“That’s a wrong message,” Becker said, adding that the proposal was “sprung on the community.”

Page Haverty, another local resident, said that the city staffers who need to attend commission meetings to report on specific projects or proposals will be taken away from their regular jobs if they have to sit in commission meetings for hours during the day. And Mark Songer, speaking on behalf of the environmental group Last Stand, said that meetings are a “community event.”

“That doesn’t happen during the day,” he said.

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