News

By Steve Plunkett

    Not even a smartphone app could help the Greater Boca Raton Beach and Park District and the City Council choose a date for a joint meeting.
    “It was certainly worth having as a shot, because it shortened up the amount of time to realize that we’re still not going to be able to get a meeting scheduled that way,” Beach and Park Commissioner Earl Starkoff said.
    District Commissioner Dennis Frisch went to the council’s July 26 meeting to invite Mayor Susan Haynie and the four council members to use an app called Meeting Wizard instead of sending a letter from the district’s headquarters to the city manager’s office “that takes three weeks to get back. It’s gone on too long.”
    “I’m with you,” said Haynie, who separately last month became president of the Florida League of Cities. “Let’s just get this moving forward.”
    But by Aug. 15 only two council members had responded, said Briann Harms, the Beach and Park District’s assistant director. Meeting Wizard, which allowed people to issue invitations and respond online, shut down its operations Aug. 12, its website said.
    Starkoff said they should pick dates far in the future to avoid conflicts and proposed Jan. 30, May 15 and Oct. 2, 2017.
“We could actually continue [that pattern] in years ahead,” he said.
    But other commissioners held out hope for a joint meeting this year.
    “I sure would like to have something in 2016 to further the discussion on some of the projects,” District Chairman Robert Rollins said.
    Commissioner Steve Engel said the groups need to meet this year “to kind of clear the air so we can start 2017 with clean slates.”
    The officials decided to ask the council to commit to Starkoff’s three dates and to suggest a possible date in 2016. They also will ask the council to tell City Manager Leif Ahnell to meet every other week with Arthur Koski, the district’s executive director.
    The two panels have tried repeatedly since August 2015 to schedule a joint meeting.