Schrey: ‘The amendment file was totally hidden from me’

Rick Outzen

9 years ago

Elizabeth Schrey was the Planning Services staffer that presented the exception request for Manna’s proposed warehouse to the Planning Board. She told Inweekly that she wasn’t aware of the Future Land Use Map issue until after the Jan. planning board meeting and Veronica Fountain brought it to her attention.

“I didn’t know Manna was against code when I presented it to the Planning Board,” she told Inweekly. “I only found out afterwards when Ms. Fountain emailed the entire office asking for a copy of the Future Land Use amendment.”

That amendment was passed by the Pensacola City Council in 2011. It changed the zoning of the property on Hayne Street to Medium Density Residential.

“Until then (after receiving Fountain’s email), I had been totally unaware of it,” said Schrey, who went to work as city planner in December 2012. “The amendment file was totally hidden from me.”

She said that after receiving Fountain’s email, she questioned the Planning Services Administrator Sherry Morris.

“She told me to tell Council that the comp plan just didn’t apply,” she told Inweekly. “I would never have presented it to the Planning Board like I did if I had known about the amendment.”

According to Schrey, who lost her job to a “restructuring” in February 2015, Morris and Helen Gibson, the city’s Chief of Neighborhoods, did the Future Land Use amendment.

“Helen sat in that Planning Board meeting (in January), along with others from the 7th floor, and knowingly watched me misrepresent the legality to the Planning Board,” said Schrey. “I didn’t learn ’til later that Helen had been a part of in the Future Land Use amendment. She was part of the team that helped get it originally out to the neighbors.”

She added, “It’s sick honestly. Helen and Sherry applauded me for how I handled that meeting….little did I know the real reason why they were all so interested in how it went.”