She first visited Key West 40 years ago. Now this leader is the top manager at City Hall

Key West’s elected leaders didn’t have to look far to find their choice for a new city manager.

City commissioners handed City Hall’s top job to the interim city manager, Patti McLauchlin, a 40-year veteran employee and the first woman to take the helm.

“I’m committed to this community, my community,” McLauchlin said, after receiving the news at the June 15 commission meeting. “I brought my son here when he was a year old. He grew up in the school system here.”

McLauchlin, who had already planned to retire, agreed to serve as city manager for two years. She became the interim city manager in April, after Greg Veliz left the post for a job at the Florida Keys Aqueduct Authority.

Commissioners voted 6-0 to give the city manager job to McLauchlin and then gave her a standing ovation. They asked City Attorney Shawn Smith to bring a contract for the July meeting.

Commissioner Jimmy Weekley was absent June 15, but McLauchlin said she had spoken with him at length the night before.

McLauchlin currently makes an annual salary of $185,000, which Johnston insisted on when she was promoted to interim city manager.

“We need to increase her salary while she is interim city manager,” Johnston said in March. “We cannot leave her at $156,000.”

Asked if that salary will stay the same, McLauchlin said, “There’s a negotiation and I would expect that to change.”

Veliz, who was making $180,000 a year, left for a higher-paying job.

McLauchlin said if you compare the Key West city manager’s salary to other agencies, there’s quite a difference.

“It’s time to invest in our employees and that would include the city manager,” she said.

The elected leaders took turns praising McLauchlin.

“I know you’re going to lead this community in a moral, equitable way and I can’t tell you how proud I am of you,” Mayor Teri Johnston told her.

Johnston said there is “a new level of calm in the city of Key West.”

City Commissioner Greg Davila said, “I never liked the word ‘interim.”

“You think before you act,” Johnston told McLauchlin. “And you reach out to the community to ask for input before decisions are made. It all bodes very, very well for us.”

A native of North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, McLauchlin, 63, has been in Key West for 40 years. She landed in Key West after visiting the island for the first time, with her 1-year-old son Franklin, to see her sister.

“I never left,” McLauchlin said.

McLauchlin started with the city as a police dispatcher. She moved into the records department and in 2002 became the city’s Information Technology director.

In 2019, Veliz chose McLauchlin as assistant city manager. She was named interim city manager after he left.

“I knew I had two years to go at that point,” McLauchlin said in an interview last week. “I said, never say never. But I have grandchildren I want to go see. They’re very important to me.”

A day before the June 15 commission meeting, the selection committee tasked with searching for a new city manager met for the first time and recommended McLauchlin for the job.

The selection committee will continue looking to find someone to succeed McLauchlin. The plan is to have someone ready to start when she leaves City Hall in two years.

Key West, the ever-popular tourist destination and a small town dependent on those visitors, doesn’t lack pressing issues. Affordable housing and a workforce shortage are at the top of the list, McLauchlin said.

“The city’s employees are extremely important to me,” she said. “Keeping them. This should not be a revolving door. We live on a small island.”

She would also like to see improvements at the Edward B. Knight Pier and Indigenous Park and wants to see Mallory Square used beyond the nightly Sunset Celebration festival.

“I want to see our families enjoy Key West,” she said. “There are things we can do to have family time.”