ORLANDO, Fla. – Orlando City Council District 5 candidate Shaniqua Rose touts her experience working as a city employee when campaigning. That very experience is leading to new questions about Rose’s employment.
Records obtained by News 6 show the city moved to fire Rose in 2019, listing multiple violations.
As part of one violation, the city said Rose was not using the proper procedure to deal with issues in the Parramore community and was insubordinate when told to stop.
Rose was the top vote-getter in the May 21 special election to fill the vacancy left when Commissioner Regina Hill was arrested on elderly exploitation charges and subsequently suspended.
Rose led the seven-candidate field with 24.8% of the vote. She and former State Rep. Travaris McCurdy, who got 23.29% of the vote, will now face each other in a runoff election set for Tuesday, June 18.
From 2013 to 2019, Rose worked in two departments within the city of Orlando, the last being with the Community Redevelopment Agency.
“That was my day-to-day job within the CRA, working on different problems and coming up with solutions for the community,” Rose told News 6 in an interview Friday.
Application concerns
A termination memorandum filed Dec. 16, 2019, showed the city’s Labor Relations officials looked into information Rose provided on her application for employment in 2013 as part of the investigation.
According to the city, her application indicated she was employed at Brands and Roses Services from 2006 to 2013 as an administrative assistant. They later found the business was incorporated in September 2009 and voluntarily dissolved four months later in January 2010. News 6 verified those dates via Florida business records.
The city said that her experience at Brands and Roses is what qualified her for the position with the city, and since they found the information to be false, it was grounds for termination.
When we questioned Rose about the job application, she said an agency had helped her fill out the application.
“Are you saying that the agency put incorrect information in your job application?” asked News 6 reporter Treasure Roberts.
“I would have to look at the actual resume and look at the paperwork again,” Rose responded.
Rose added she filled out the application to the best of her ability.
“But you wouldn’t say that if you did put wrong information on an application, that that is a violation?” Treasure asked.
“If you put wrong information, then yes that is,” Rose responded.
Insubordination
As for the insubordination violations, the city stated in the memorandum that she sent non-work-related emails using her city email address as if they were sent on behalf of the Community Redevelopment Agency.
After, she was advised to stop sending emails “of an authoritative manner to City Management officials and/or members of the public,” that those communications should be “conveyed by the appropriate manager,” and she was also told to “relay all Parramore related items to the Director of Urban Development or the Executive Director of the DDB/CRA, so that such issues could be handled in the appropriate manner.”
City officials said that despite the warning, Rose continued to “send emails to City Management and City partners which were misleading and appeared to be authorized by the DDB/CRA.”
“What was the big deal with me, not being able to help my community where I live at?” Rose said.
Rose said she stepped in to help on some issues in Parramore because she felt her managers wouldn’t have.
“I wanted to do what was right for the people, I wanted to get over the red tape, I wanted to help people,” Rose said.
Rose said the city questioned her employment application and brought forth the violations after she filed a complaint accusing the city of discriminatory hiring practices. She says she began to face retaliation.
“They sat me in the hallway in a corner,” Rose said, meaning that the city moved her workspace after her complaints. “They put me in the corner because I was talking about the hiring practices, they put me in a corner because I was a union steward fighting for people.”
Separation agreement
After the city issued the termination memo, Rose appealed with her labor union, and an arbitration date was set in 2020.
“There was an agreement that was filed and there was an agreement that was agreed upon,” Rose said. “And the city paid me, so if there was anything done wrong the city would not have paid me.”
As part of the agreement, Rose also withdrew two complaints she filed with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against the city, and dropped arbitration.
Rose showed us this separation agreement, which wasn’t included in Rose’s personnel file requested from the city by News 6.
For accepting this agreement, Rose was paid more than $18,000. The document also shows there was a non-disclosure agreement. We reached out to the city to verify this document, and are waiting for their response.
Rose questions why this was brought to light after she made it to the runoff. News 6 received the documents through a public records request on Friday, 10 days after making the request. Rose points out that none of this came to light when she ran against Hill for the same seat in 2021.
“It shows that somebody is scared of me being the next District 5 commissioner because this didn’t come up before,” Rose said.
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