A former city of Alachua planner said in a public letter that internal and external pressure led to his resignation from the city in February, when three of the city’s four planners resigned within two weeks.
The letter comes after the City Commission initially decided to inquire as to why the planners left but then reversed course two weeks later, on Feb. 24 and voted not to look into the matter.
In the letter, Justin Tabor, who worked as a city planner for 17 years, outlined an outsized influence from former City Manager Adam Boukari and pressures placed on the city’s planning staff to ensure developments were recommended for approval, especially two large developments that met with Alachua County scrutiny.
The letter comes a month before city elections that impact incumbents Mayor Gib Coerper and Commissioner Ed Potts.
Tabor said the planning department dealt with Boukari’s influence since he left the role of city manager in 2021, with City Manager Mike DaRoza taking his place.
“In my opinion, it appears that former City Manager Adam Boukari never relinquished control of the City Manager’s position and has been essentially co-managing the City with Mr. DaRoza, while representing developers’ interests in a private capacity,” Tabor said.
Tabor also pointed to DaRoza placing pressure on the professional planners to recommend approval of the Tara April and Tara Phoenicia projects earlier this year. Tabor said that pressure is what pushed him to resign.
Those projects, located at Mill Creek Sink, were slated for a final hearing before Alachua County approached the city with concerns. The city of Alachua delayed that hearing to reconsider the projects, and Tabor said DeRoza told planners to place the developments on a Feb. 11, 2025, agenda.
“In my opinion, based on my first-hand experiences, the direction City Manager DaRoza gave to Planning staff to schedule these two applications for public hearings despite Planning staff’s concerns was orchestrated by former City Manager Adam Boukari to fulfill the needs or desires of Mr. Boukari’s private clients.”
Tabor said in the letter that this moment in early 2025 was when he knew he was being asked to put developer needs ahead of the citizens.
Attorney Jeff Childers, attorney for the Tara projects, told Mainstreet in December that the city already had the information presented by the county. He said the city had no reason to delay the hearings.
In a letter between Childers and David Theriaque, an outside attorney hired by the city, Childers requested the projects, already approved on a preliminary vote, be placed back on a meeting in keeping with a state guideline of 180 days.
Theriaque said he questioned whether the state guideline applies given the delays the developer had caused. Even if the guideline is applied, he said the state statutes don’t provide a “procedural recourse” if a city extends beyond the 180-day deadline.
“While [Florida Statutes] sets forth this 180-day provision, it is silent, however, as to the ramifications when a municipality fails to take the required action within 180 days,” Theriaque said in a letter to Childers.
Tabor said the planner had concerns with how the two Tara projects interrelated and the cave system underneath.
He also mentioned DaRoza working around planners’ recommendations for a solar installation at the wastewater treatment plant. Tabor said the city manager’s interpretation didn’t line up with that of planners.
The Alachua City Commission voted on Feb. 10 to look into why three of their four planners left, directing the city attorney to bring back recommendations for outside attorneys to conduct interviews and look at why the planners left.
“And I am very, very upset, and I really would like to find out more about why… We can’t just sit here and pretend it didn’t happen; it happened,” Commissioner Shirley Green Brown said at the meeting.
On Feb. 24, City Attorney Marian Rush brought back a recommendation and, given the desire to move quickly, negotiated a price point with the outside attorney. But commissioners balked at the idea of an “investigation” into the planners’ exit and a prepared contract.
Commissioners Ed Potts and Brown supported moving forward. Potts made the motion to hire the outside attorney for an investigation. After concern about a full investigation, he scaled the motion to have the outside attorney conduct exit interviews with the planners.
However, the other commissioner dissented, and the motion failed 2-3. That vote ended an official inquiry into why the planners left.
“If three city employees of similar expertise and seniority left in three different departments in our city, I would be concerned,” Potts said. “Three of four in one department: I think we’re burying our heads in the sand if we don’t want more information about how that happened and whether or not we can do something better as a city.”
Tabor’s letter followed two weeks after the vote. He said he had looked forward to sharing his reasons with the city when learning about the potential outside inquiry. Without that opportunity, he said he decided to write the letter.
“To say this reversal was shocking, disappointing, and discouraging to me is an understatement,” Tabor said. “As a result of this reversal I have not been afforded an opportunity to provide any feedback regarding my resignation.”
According to Tabor, one other planner was not given the opportunity of an exit interview. He added that “false statements” made by developers at the Feb. 24 meeting also prompted him to speak up.
He said the planners, with 17 years, 17 and a half years and 9 years of experience with the city, had done their job.
“You must ask yourself this: If we were not adequately doing our jobs, why do our performance evaluations not reflect poor performance?” Tabor questioned. “Staff throughout the organization know our character and know that we upheld the best interests of the City in every action we took.”
Coerper and Potts both declined to comment on the letter.
Potts pointed back to the Feb. 24 meeting and said he stands by his public statements at the time.
Jacob Fletcher, a candidate running for Potts’ seat, commented on Tabor’s letter on Thursday.
He said the city deserves leadership that prioritizes citizens over backroom deals.
“Mayor Gib Coerper, the longest-serving official in our city, had both the experience and the responsibility to prevent this,” Fletcher said. “Instead, we must now ask: has our leadership been working for the residents—or for the developers who stand to benefit?”
Fletcher added that regardless of the April elections, trust must be restored, and the people of Alachua must demand a “full, independent, and impartial investigation.”
Alachua County has closely monitored the Tara projects mentioned in depth in the Tabor letter. The Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) even allocated $1 million toward tracking and potentially litigating the projects.
BOCC Commissioner Ken Cornell commented Friday on the situation.
“I trust the City’s elected officials will get to the bottom of these allegations,” Cornell said.
A perennial Florida story. Read John D McDonald’s “A Flash of Green”.
This story is so irrelevant. A consultant influenced a City to do what exactly? No development was even considered or passed. The same planner complaining now works for a private firm to do exactly the same thing he is accusing someone else of doing.
Irrelevant? It seems you’re trying to redirect from the subject of the article to attack the whistleblower. What are you trying to hide?
How about the county spending that $1 million dollars to fixing the dilapidated roads next to this community. They rather spend it on attorneys than fixing the roads.
Citizens have a basic constitutional right to develop private property. Govt can’t throw down special regulations targeted at specific parcels to block that. If the govt didn’t buy it themselves to set aside, first.
But govt wants and needs tax revenues and property owners can’t keep paying high taxes forever. Something has to give.
Have your taxes been going down from all this rampant development? I think not. And yes planners are there to approve or disapproved development projects. Building over Rochelle Cave system obviously is a good reason to disapprove in this case. Actually, if the whole thing fell into a sink hole, that would be fine with me.
While a property owner has a right to develop their property they should also bear the full costs of that development. Instead, they often expect the public to shoulder the costs of providing infrastructure capacity to facilitate their private profits. When runoff contaminates your drinking water, is that developer going to pay to clean it up or are the taxpayers? If having only one exit creates dangerous traffic congestion is the developer going to pay for a better intersection? If you are just passing thru, going from High Springs to Gainesville, is that developer compensating you for having to fight more traffic? The point is that supposedly private action doesn’t take place in a vacuum..
I thought this is what property taxes are for. You improve the property. The taxes go up. Taxes pay for the infrastructure. I’ve been reading story after story and the only smoke is the city planners quitting. I have yet to hear one detail about why these developments were bad, etc… Maybe that is on purpose maybe not. I don’t know. But I see lots of uninformed opinions on all this.
Good reporting, Seth. Thank you.