Florida Agenda

WILTON MANORS — What began as a seemingly routine administrative disciplinary procedure has gained momentum—and, for some, symbolism—after the termination and subsequent reinstatement of a Wilton Manors city employee (who happens to be a long-time resident) in a process that was initiated by her supervisor (who happens to be part of the ‘new guard’ in city hall).

The actions leading up to the firing and rehiring of Melissa Cole, who serves in the city’s Community Services Development permitting office, apparently came to a head while Cole, who has worked for the city for eight years, was on vacation in 2012.

Since Heidi Shafran was hired in 2011 as Community Services Development Director, the widespread changes made in that department have been widely publicized.

Shafran has been tasked with reforming procedures and “tightening up” certain behaviors and performance that were tolerated under previous policies and policymakers.

One area of concern for Shafran—who declined to comment for this story, citing city policy, and refusing to discuss personnel issues pertaining to a subordinate—was the habit of some employees to take work home with them.  These actions were believed to violate Florida statutes concerning overtime and the handling of public records by government employees.

This practice was made apparent when Cole, while on vacation last year, was asked about the whereabouts of documentation related to city business.  Cole told Shafran, her supervisor, that the records in question were in her home. Cole was told that they needed to be boxed up, turned over to another department employee and returned to city hall, immediately.

Among the documents in Cole’s possession were items related to permit applications—some dating as far back as April 2012—that had not been processed, including checks in excess of $12,000 that had been written by entities requiring, in some cases immediate, official action.

An administrative procedure was initiated to terminate Cole, which included participation by the city’s office of human resources and the city manager, all of which signed off on the decision.

Cole appealed her termination to the city’s Civil Service Board (CSB), an official body that was established to respond to city employee grievances under a 1984 change to Wilton Manors’ city charter.

The five-member CSB reviewed Cole’s appeal, and ruled on January 7, in a four-to-one decision, that the evidence against her had not warranted her being terminated, and that she should be reinstated.

That decision did not sit well with a number of Wilton Manors residents, including Sal Torre, who ran for city commission in 2012 and who was present at the January 7 CSB hearing.

“I am concerned that this board overturned the decision of a manager of a city department,” Torre told the Agenda.

Torre expressed his concern to City Manager Joseph Gallegos in an email. “Having been present at the last meeting of the Civil Service Board on January, 2013,” he wrote, “I have many questions concerning the actions taken by this board and their stated function.”

For starters, Torre called into question the panel’s legitimacy. “I find it hard to believe that this board has the legal authority to override the decisions of a department head, the [city Human Resources] Department, and the City Manager concerning the termination of a city employee,” he argued.

Whether the CSB actually has such authority is not made clear on the city’s Website (wiltonmanors.com) which lists several municipal committees and boards, and provides thumbnail sketches for the responsibilities and function of each—with the exception of the Civil Service Board.

Ellen Feiler was appointed to the CSB in 2002. The lone dissenting vote in the panel’s decision to reinstate Cole, she told the Agenda that “the role of the CSB is to look at the evidence the city provided,” which in this case “determined whether or not an employee was correctly disciplined and terminated in a correct manner.”

Feiler, who works for the Florida Department of Health, said that she doesn’t personally know Melissa Cole or have anything against her, but that the decision concerning her termination should have been clear. “Simply put, I think that the evidence that was presented against her was sufficient to warrant the actions that were taken against her.”

Cole’s supporters—including members of the CSB who voted for her reinstatement—say that the evidence which allegedly made the case for Cole’s firing could only have been interpreted in the most negative light.

“Melissa went above and beyond by taking work home with her, and working during what was essentially a forced vacation,” says board member Ron Baum, who was appointed to the CSB in 1990 and serves as the panel’s chairman. “She volunteered to work on her own time.”

Baum said that the evidence presented to him and the other board members revealed a dedicated employee who was dealing with an interdepartmental personality conflict with her supervisor. “I honestly don’t think that it would have gotten as far as it did if there had not been an underlying friction between Heidi [Shafran] and Melissa.”

Feiler insists that the facts pointed to a pattern of behavior on Cole’s part, calling for drastic measures that were taken by her supervisor and followed according to the procedural letter.

“Some of these permit documents had been unprocessed for months,” Feiler said. “[Cole] never told her supervisor she needed help getting her work done without having to take it home. She never told a colleague she needed help. Her supervisor provided accurate documentation about what had been done over a period of time. Everything was done by the book. What more do you want?”

As well as opposing the panel’s decision to overrule the decision of city supervisors, Sal Torre says that the procedures and makeup of the current CSB are “a clear violation of the stated legal make-up of this city board.”

Torre says that there is a place in the business of the city for an advisory panel like the Civil Service Board, but that its mandate should be more clearly drawn from the residents’ elected officials.

“I can understand this board holding hearings and offering an opinion to the City Commission, where the final authority rests with a vote of the City Commission,” he told Gallegos.

NOTE: On Friday, January 25 and Saturday, January 25, Boom nightclub (2232 Wilton Dr., Wilton Manors) will hold its “Studio 54 Weekend,” from 9 p.m. to 3 a.m., a local tribute to the glamour, energy, and excitement of New York City’s original Studio 54 nightclub, which operated from 1977 to 1981 and helped provide a backdrop for the music and culture that would inform the popular image of the Disco Years, which dominated the pop music scene from roughly 1972 to 1979.

Sal DeFalco has watched a lot of friends die. But he’s also seen a lot of living – as a bartender in the heyday of Studio 54 in New York City.

“I went there opening night and I don’t think I ever left,” he remembers.

It was a place, he says, where class, social standing, and sexual orientation didn’t matter. It was a place where nobodies danced with celebrities.

“Disco Sally” [an elderly lawyer named Sally Lippman] was a crazy old lady,” DeFalco recalls. “She was dancing with Michael Jackson and she was nobody.”

It was a time, and a place, for pushing all boundaries, if they even were thought to exist.

“You could go on the balcony and smoke pot. You could go to the basement and do more. It was dirty and dingy but people went down there. That was the atmosphere.”

Drug use was even encouraged by the club. Studio 54’s dance floor was decorated with its iconic “Man in the Moon with a Spoon,” a less-than-sly nod to the use of cocaine.

“The DJ would let everyone do a bump of coke,” DeFalco explains.

Those who came couldn’t avoid drugs if they tried. Unbeknownst to guests, DeFalco says Studio 54 co-owner Steve Rubell used to put poppers in the air ducts. “It got you aroused, and you didn’t even know it.”

DeFalco says the club was created in a unique time and place. “It was a different time. I look at Studio 54 as to the 70s what Woodstock was to the 60s. This could never happen today. It would be shut down in a heart beat,” especially in the context of today’s smartphone technology and the preponderance of personal recording devices.

And celebrities certainly wouldn’t have been as open and uninhibited if they lived in a time where every move might make it onto the Internet.

Perhaps most importantly, 54 was a place where gays were not only accepted, but were also popular.

That was also the appeal, he says, for many straight celebrities, as well as movers and shakers. Mainstream society still looked at gays as unacceptable and even taboo, and celebrities and adventurous members of the straight community came to Studio 54 in part because they were attracted to what society deemed unacceptable.

“It was different. [Hanging out with gays] was chic. In every part of the arts, there were gay people.”

And DeFalco took full advantage of the swarm of celebrities.

“They called me a star f***er,” he admits.

His most memorable experience involves a week at Calvin Klein’s apartment, which was detailed in the 1994 book “Obsession: the Life and Times of Calvin Klein.” DeFalco claims that on one side of Klein’s bed could be found cocaine, while the other side sported quaaludes.

DeFalco also dated Liza Minella’s ex-husband, the late Peter Allen, and claims he was the inspiration for Allen’s Academy Award-winning song that was the theme from the 1981 film “Arthur.”

“I could also give you a Rock Hudson story, but I’m saving that one for my book,” he offers.

After years of drugs and consequence-free sex, the party ended at Studio 54 – or, says DeFalco, it changed dramatically. The advent of AIDS, along with the introduction of new drugs and new music, changed Studio 54.

“The 70s was simplicity. The 80s became more of an ‘awareness decade’ for me because I was losing a lot of my friends. Almost every other week someone died. It was like the dance floor opened up and swallowed everybody.”

The cultural atmosphere changed, too, and many of the same members of the straight community who had once embraced gays were now pushing them away.

“People were definitely afraid. Everyone pulled back because they were frightened [of AIDS]. I watched a whole community die because we didn’t know.”

In 1990, DeFalco left New York, to return only for the occasional visit. “I was tired of funerals,” he admits. “How I’m still breathing, still pouring I don’t know. I’m really blessed. I was lucky.”

These days, he bartends at various bars and nightclubs in Greater Fort Lauderdale and Wilton Manors, including Boom. Having left behind Studio 54 and the life that attended it, his needs are both more modest and more localized.

“The bar has become my stage,” says DeFalco with satisfaction.

WASHINGTON, DC — Proclaiming “Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law,” President Barack Obama was sworn in for a second term on Monday, declaring his allegiance and intent to promote a progressive policy agenda.

“We cannot mistake absolutism for principle, or substitute spectacle for politics, or treat name-calling as reasoned debate,” the President declared.

“If we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well,” Obama, 51, told the assembled estimated crowd of 600,000 that had gathered on the National Mall in front of the Capitol.

The President said that “our generation’s task” is to establish true “life and liberty” for every American. He also acknowledged the still-remaining deep divides in national politics.

“Being true to our founding documents does not require us to agree on every contour of life,” he offered. “It does not mean we all define liberty in exactly the same way or follow the same precise path to happiness.”

“Progress does not compel us to settle centuries-long debates about the role of government for all time, but it does require us to act in our time,” added Obama, who took the oath of office for a second time on Monday, after fulfilling his constitutionally-mandated requirement that he be sworn in by noon on January 20.

After that first swearing in ceremony, the President trumpeted the shift in America towards a more progressive outlook, and said of those who stand for antiquated ideas that “the ground has shifted beneath them, that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply.”

The president took his second inaugural oath on January 21, which this year also commemorated the day Americans honor the late civil rights leader Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

To mark the day and the occasion, Obama’s oath was administered by Chief Justice John Roberts while the President’s hand was placed on two Bibles: one that belonged to Dr. King and another formerly owned by President Abraham Lincoln.

To drive home his support for LGBT rights, the President selected as his inaugural poet openly-gay Cuban-American Richard Blanco, who was born in Cuba and raised in Miami, graduating with a master’s degree in Fine Arts from Florida International University.

Blanco, 44, delivered a 550 word poem entitled “One Today,” in which he described everyday American life as something greater than the sum of its parts, invoking images such as “silver trucks heavy with oil or paper—bricks or milk, teeming over highways alongside us, on our way to clean tables, read ledgers, or save lives.”

PEMBROKE PINES — Two Pembroke Pines men have been arrested for several counts of sexual assault of a minor and failing to reveal their HIV status after allegedly providing drugs to a 16 year old boy, and engaging in unprotected sex, at the same time failing to reveal that one or both of them is HIV positive.

Darrell Allen Evans, 40, and Huy Kien Trinh, 32, are alleged to have met the teenager through the adult social networking app Grindr. The online encounter led to sexually explicit charged text messages and resulted in the boy meeting the men at their Pembroke Pines home on December 12, 2012.

According to court records, the teen met the men and began engaging in fondling and foreplay in the men’s hot tub. After they took the boy to their bedroom, he was given poppers, which the police report says prompted “a relaxed euphoric feeling” in the teen. They are accused of telling him that they are HIV negative, which a redacted statement from the defendants may contradict.

On December 17, the teen helped police by texting messages to Evans and Trinh and talking with them on the phone. In these texts, Evans acknowledged in detail sexual acts in which they engaged. Trinh is alleged to have admitted that “the youngest guy he had sex with was 17.”

Prosecutors are still deciding whether the actions of the men warrant additional attempted murder charges.

“Heavens knows how many victims we may have out there,” said Broward Assistant State Attorney Eric Linder at a January 11 hearing. He told Broward County Judge Ian Richards that the men “regularly meet other males and engage in unprotected sex without notifying them that they are HIV positive.”

Richards set the bond for Evans at $410,000 and for Trinh, $420,000, and ordered both men to avoid accessing the Internet, to stop associating with minors, and to cease engaging in sex with anyone.

Although Richards did not charge either man with attempted murder, he told them “I do consider you a threat to the community.”

FORT LAUDERDALE — Former Fort Lauderdale Vice Mayor Dean Trantalis is heading for a runoff in March for the city’s District 2 Commission seat, in a race that will pit him against another former City Commissioner, Charlotte Rodstrom, who had given up the seat to run unsuccessfully for Broward County Commission.

Trantalis and Rodstrom finished ahead of Chuck Black and Lester Zalewski in a special election that drew fewer than 2,500 voters.

The road to the runoff between Rodstrom and Trantalis began when the latter, an LGBT rights advocate and attorney with a practice based in Wilton Manors, left the District 2 seat after serving a single term from 2003 to 2006.

Rodstrom succeeded Trantalis as District 2 commissioner, and won two additional terms, the last one in January 2012.  Weeks later, she announced that she would run for the Broward County Commission seat being vacated by her term-limited husband, former Broward Mayor John Rodstrom, a move that drew sharp criticism and accusations of careerism.

Because of Florida’s resign-to-run law, passed in 1970, Rodstrom was required to give up her city commission seat in November, having already lost the race county commission seat in August.

In Tuesday’s matchup, the results with all precincts reporting showed Rodstrom with 1,154 votes (47 percent) and Trantalis with 1,026 votes (42 percent). Black in third and Zalewski in fourth place, respectively, garnered a total of 291 votes, or 12 percent combined.

Because no candidate netted a required 50 percent of the vote-plus-one, the runoff between Trantalis and Rodstrom will be held on March 12.

“The results from yesterday have shown that we can win this race,” Trantalis told the Agenda.

He also blamed lackluster media coverage of the District 2 race for apathy at the polls. “The lack of attention given to the election by the gay press is reflected in the poor turnout of LGBT voters. We should be ashamed of ourselves for being so complacent.

“At a time when our rights are continually being challenged, our failure to support candidates in high profile positions will only lead to our personal defeat,” Trantalis added. “We seemed obsessed with national figures and their personal lives and personal tastes. A lot of good that will do us. We cannot let down our guard in our struggle for equal rights. Our success lies right here at home.”