Joel EngelhardtWhile two new members declined, a third voted yes to form a majority to oust Rob Cole before he completed his first year on the job.
It didn’t take long for the newly seated Town Council in Juno Beach to launch itself into controversy.
With the support of one newly elected member, the Town Council fired Town Manager Rob Cole at the end of a three-hour meeting Wednesday night.
Council Member Diana Davis made a motion during the council comments portion of the meeting, when the meeting room, packed at the start of the night, had just one person left in the audience.
Council Member DD Halpern seconded the motion. Davis and Halpern had moved last year to fire Cole, who started in April 2025, but the board’s other three members did not go along.
This time, new member Scott Shaw voted yes. The other two new board members, Mayor Dave Santilli and Max Fraser, declined to join the majority.
While the majority did not cite the reasons for their votes, the two newcomers explained their opposition.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea to terminate the town manager,” Santilli said. “I think we’re a council with 60% new members. And having continuity in the town manager role for now is advantageous to the town. I think it’s the wrong thing to do.”
Fraser agreed. “There’s been a lot of consternation and turmoil in the past couple of years here. I don’t think it would be a wise decision to make this happen right now. I think we need to see how we can all work together and move the town forward in a positive manner. And I don’t think this sets the tone for that especially during the very first Town Council meeting for three new members.”
The Riviera Beach City Council on March 18 entertained firing its city manager, Jonathan Evans, also without advancing the proposal on the agenda, but agreed to place the issue on an upcoming agenda rather than act without notice.
The Juno council appointed Town Clerk Caitlin Copeland-Rodriguez to fill the manager’s role temporarily. At the suggestion of town attorney Gemma Torcivia, council members agreed to seek a veteran manager or consultant to take over until a new manager can be hired.
Cole, paid $195,000, didn’t last a year.
He had the same result at his most recent job in Islamorada, which hired him in March 2024 and let him go in January. Before that he served as village manager in Scarsdale, N.Y., for two years after six years as a deputy manager. From 2010 to 2015, he worked as assistant village manager in Oak Park, Ill., where he got his start in government in 1996.
Shaw casts deciding vote
The meeting began with warm words about unity from the slate of three candidates who won two-thirds of the vote in the town of about 4,000. The council has been divided for years over pressure from developers, debates over decorum and technical matters of the zoning code.
One speaker during public comment, Jim Lyons, who served on the council for 27 years, addressed the new board to buttress his support for the town manager.
Lyons said he attended all the candidate forums leading up to the March 10 election and found it “encouraging to hear that all six candidates support the town manager.”
“Mr. Cole,” he added, “will definitely be an asset with his knowledge and counsel to our newly elected mayor and council members.”
Shaw, whose vote proved pivotal to firing Cole and who had been openly critical of the town manager, said in an interview he didn’t recall taking any stance on the manager at a candidate forum.
In the past year, Shaw and Cole clashed as Shaw opposed construction of a large house behind his home, eventually taking the issue to court. Cole rejected the future council member’s concerns about the actions of town zoning officials and offered his interpretation of town code despite contrary legal opinions, Shaw said in an interview.
Shaw said he heard from residents both pro and con during the campaign and found Santilli and Fraser’s comments to be reasonable but made the decision to fire Cole nonetheless.
“I had been negative about him for about a year so when the opportunity came up I decided to go ahead and do it,” Shaw said.
Cole criticized council members in newsletter
Davis did not answer questions about why she made the move Wednesday night.
She responded to a phone call Thursday with an email stating that the council “determined it was in the best interest of the town to make a change in administrative leadership to ensure alignment with council direction.”
Halpern, who made the motion last fall to fire Cole, cited his personal demeanor and unprofessional behavior toward council members, consultants and the public.
Both she and Shaw pointed to comments Cole made in his emailed newsletter, which he called “The Facts.”
In October, Cole took on Davis in his newsletter, saying a newsletter she distributed relied on a “false and misleading narrative to support a personal attack on my professional integrity.”
“The subject newsletter — propaganda masquerading as factual information — is the latest in a rather desperate series of schoolyard bully tactics seeking to inappropriately influence or control my professional roles, responsibilities and legal obligations,” Cole wrote.
He also criticized Halpern in the same issue of The Facts, writing that a comment she made during a council meeting about the Planning and Zoning Board “is below my standards for respect and fails to recognize the simple fact that (her) direction (to the board) can’t be ethically or legally executed.”
In an August email to a town consultant, Cole wrote: “Since your scope of services has not been completed, yes, you should stop embarrassing yourself and stop seeking payment for work not completed. You were directed not to complete the work because of the numerous procedural failures in crafting it and the abysmal quality of the draft work product itself.”
In June, Cole clashed with Davis after she met with the town’s finance director.
In an email to the full council, Cole said Davis’ “recent behaviors may be perceived as coercive,” and accused her of “seeking to further undermine my professional reputation” and taking a position that “wreaks of a retaliatory measure intended to punish me for not sufficiently supporting her individual policy views.”
In her written response, Davis said the meeting with the finance director was not about Cole.
“I was surprised that a routine financial inquiry could be interpreted as manipulative, coercive or threatening,” she wrote.
John Callaghan, who served on the council from 2005 to 2014 and was appointed to fill a vacancy on the board in December 2024, was on the council when it hired Cole in March 2025.
Callaghan with then-Mayor Peggy Wheeler and Marianne Hosta supported Cole when he faced firing last year. Callaghan and Wheeler did not run in the March election and Hosta lost to Shaw.
Callaghan decried the council’s decision to fire Cole.
“It’s a horrible decision. He’s the best manager we’ve had,” he said. “The guy’s sharp as a tack.”
Watch the meeting at the 3-hour, 18-minute, 40-second mark of the video here.
Joel is a founder, reporter and editor at Stet News. His award-winning newspaper career spanned more than 40 years, including 28 years at The Palm Beach Post, which he left in 2020. Joel lives with his wife in Palm Beach Gardens. He volunteers on the board of NAMI Palm Beach County and the Palm Beach Gardens Historical Society.
