The city of Key West has had to outsource its planning department — at least temporarily — due to staffing shortages in one of the city’s busiest departments.
City Manager Patti McLauchlin has hired the Corradino Group, a national, but Florida-based, company that provides urban planning, engineering and environmental consulting services to government agencies.
The company has done previous work for the city and will now handle much of the day-to-day planning responsibilities, including site reviews, staff reports and interpretations of the city’s development laws to determine whether a construction project is feasible.
“They’ll primarily be doing things virtually unless we pay them extra to come down here, but they’ll handle our development reviews for the time being,” McLauchlin said.
“They can also handle any changes we need to make to our Comprehensive Plan, which guides all development in Key West,” said planning director Katie Halloran, who remains in the city’s in-house department.
McLauchlin said she hopes the Corradino contract for day-to-day planning services will be temporary, just until the city approves its new salary schedule and hopefully recruits new planning professionals to City Hall.
“That department is one of the toughest with regard to turnover, recruitment and retention,” McLauchlin said.
The Evergreen consulting company that recently completed a salary study for the city acknowledged the difficulties in recruiting young planning professionals for those jobs. Jeff Ling, CEO of Evergreen, told the city commissioners that some municipalities have started offering signing bonuses for those hard-to-fill positions.
Halloran plans to provide the city’s appointed planning board with a report about the Corradino Group’s new role at next month’s planning board meeting.
In the past, the group has worked as consultants on specific projects, and will still be consulted on initiatives such as the city’s regulation of recreational rental vehicles, and the redevelopment of Peary Court, where developers want to add 48 units.
“Some would be new builds and some would be created by splitting existing two-bedroom units into one-bedroom units,” McLauchlin said.
According to the city’s website, the planning department “works with the community to craft policy documents, such as the adopted Comprehensive Plan, that guide future actions. We also work to create regulations to implement policy directives through the adopted Land Development Regulations (LDRs). On a day-to-day basis, our staff meets with the public to help interpret regulations, explain development approval processes, and discuss specific projects.”
