News

By Jane Smith
    
    She is part of the glue that holds Delray Beach together.
    After nearly 13 years as the city clerk, Chevelle Nubin is leaving to take a similar position with the village of Wellington.
    Nubin will make more money. The Wellington city clerk offers an hourly rate between $42.31 and $74.04. Even if Delray could match the salary, interim City Manager Neal de Jesus said it couldn’t compete with the nearness to her Greenacres family that the Wellington job provides.
    “This one is going to hurt,” Mayor Cary Glickstein said at the Jan. 24 City Commission meeting. In addition to describing her as part of the glue, he praised her professionalism and being neutral to personalities.
    “It’s about doing your job in the best way possible,” he said.
    Other commissioners echoed his compliments about Nubin’s professionalism and dedication to the city. Commissioner Mitch Katz described how she sat down with him before his election campaign to explain “from A to Z what needed to be done.”
    He also said that when City Commission meetings extended into the wee hours, just looking at Nubin’s smiling face gave him the ability to stay focused.
    Vice Mayor Jordana Jarjura said someone had sent a text that morning that said: “Heard Chevelle is leaving. Get out. Run.”
    Commissioner Shelly Petrolia said Nubin’s last day is Feb. 28. Nubin promised that the municipal elections work would be on autopilot so the deputy city clerk could finish it after she is gone, Petrolia said. “And I believe that,” she said. “Nubin is such an asset to our town that it’s crushing to lose her.”
    In addition to being the supervisor for municipal elections, the city clerk’s office maintains and retrieves official records for the city, prepares the agendas and transcribes the minutes of commission meetings, processes ordinances and resolutions for signing and generally allows citizens to participate in city government.
    At the end of the Jan. 24 commission meeting, De Jesus started his remarks by giving each commissioner a printout of public records requests for December.
    The 345 listed were unusually high for the size of Delray Beach, he said. Some were duplicate requests sent to five department heads, asking for the same records. Other requesters became aggressive when the records were not produced in a timely fashion.
    He wants the City Clerk’s office to be the central repository for records requests.
    The next day, the mayor said via email, “I suspect these frivolous requests did motivate one of our most capable employees and department heads to seek employment closer to home.”
    Nubin respectfully declined to be interviewed for this story.
   Active in the Florida Association of City Clerks, Nubin was sworn in as its president in June. She has earned the designations of certified municipal clerk in 2003 and master municipal clerk in 2011.
    If the city hadn’t switched its phone system on Jan. 20, callers to her city extension would be treated to a custom voice-mail greeting recorded by Nubin.
    “She thanked people for calling the All-America city of Delray Beach,” Petrolia said. “By the time you were asked to leave a message, you felt proud and smiled.”