In less than two hours Tuesday, Kara Franker, the new CEO of the Monroe County Tourist Development Council, ditched 43 years of Bubbas-and-friends policies and practices and replaced them with 21st-century organizational approaches for transparency and accountability — all while surgically defusing the we-love-Andy-Newman land mine. The new TDC has arrived.
Board members, many of whom are virtual lifers with the TDC, had a bit of that deer-in-the-headlights look, but they gamely tucked into Franker’s presentation and recommendations with, if not gusto, at least a recognition that it’s long past time to drag the TDC and its multi-million-dollar operations out of its lazy, inbred cronyism that morphed into public distrust and criminal indictments.
Franker started her new position on Sept. 9 and made her first public appearance eight days later at the TDC meeting at the Harvey Government Center in Key West. Just the fact that we could watch the meeting via Zoom was a step forward. In the past, TDC meetings too often resembled cozy, whispered chats with soft thunks as board members rubber-stamped whatever was in front of them. You had to be in the room to get a sense of what was happening, and even then it was tough to figure out who was saying what.
Just two slides into her presentation Franker upended four decades of TDC’s primary focus of bringing more “heads in beds” and replaced it with Destination Stewardship, a four-pronged approach that makes Keys residents, the environmental ecosystems and our quality of life the foundation for future marketing and tourism development.
“Destination promotion is for the benefit and well-being of every person in the community,” she said. “It is an essential investment to develop opportunities and build a quality of life that benefits the people of the destination.
“Who is the TDC customer?” she asked. “It’s the residents of the community. A destination organization’s customers must include its residents. Our families, our friends, our neighbors. Our community.”
Franker has already pulled back the TDC’s proposed 2025 marketing plan that had been sent to the Monroe County Board of County Commissioners. That plan was geared toward the usual more-tourists-are-better, and she will replace it with strategies that drive Destination Stewardship. New marketing in 2025 will focus on economic prosperity, environmental preservation and ecological balance, social well-being and protection and respect for culture and heritage, the four components of the Destination Stewardship approach.
New TDC CEO recognizes expertise of NewmanPR staff
But it is Franker’s delicate navigation of NewmanPR, the TDC’s longtime public relations and marketing vendor, that gives insights into her leadership skills. On Tuesday the TDC board voted to recommend that the BOCC terminate its $700,000 contract with NewmanPR. Assuming the BOCC does so at its October meeting, NewmanPR and its owner, Andy Newman, will no longer work for the TDC.
Newman faces 28 criminal counts of perjury and making false official statements after extensive audits of TDC operations, including charges that he used a fictitious company to make additional payments to himself.
Newman and his company would no longer work for the TDC. But the staff of NewmanPR could. Franker told the TDC board she has had conversations with Newman about bringing some of his staff and contracted workers “in-house.”
It’s a smart, sophisticated move because it preserves the staff’s expertise and its community and organizational memory while decisively severing ties with the problematic Mr. Newman.
Franker’s debut as the TDC’s CEO gets a round of applause from me, as it should from any resident long weary of the more-is-better, over-tourism drumbeat of the past 20 years. The mission and strategies she outlined this week bring order, sanity and professionalism to the TDC. They bluntly identify the problems, ranging from limited financial accountability to staff policies that are laughable in today’s world (like women-only “maternity” leave and religious holidays — for only one religion). But for every problem she identified, she offered, and in some cases has already put in place, solutions.
Franker will face headwinds, not the least of which will be our Keys penchant for slowing changes down to island time and our sometimes obstinate reluctance to trust outsiders and newfangled ways of doing things. There’s going to be a whole bunch of grumbling about how we just don’t do things that way in the Keys. (Just ask former Key West City Manager Al Childress, who lost his job in part because he ruffled too many Conch feathers.)
But after months of rampant TDC dysfunction, years of lackluster leadership and decades of more-is-better marketing, Kara Franker in two hours made me believe there’s a sane path forward.
(Full disclosure: While I do not know Franker, we do have a mutual friendly acquaintance. Shortly after Franker was hired here, my acquaintance, a tourism development expert in Illinois, texted me to say he’d be happy to connect us, which he did this week after her TDC debut. His take on Franker? “She’s well respected, wicked smart and has a strong moral compass. A bit of a rabble-rouser with good ideas. Not afraid to shake up the status quo.” Sounds like just what we need.)
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Thank you, Linda. For this insightful report. She sounds like a great new influence and someone who can start fixing ing giant TDC mess. I hope she rides future storms of Conchdom!!! On a personal note, I’m sorry Teri who was the best mayor of my 48 years in KW, who actually accomplished needed infrastructure, is not there.