News

By Dan Moffett

    Ocean Ridge commissioners are exploring ways to use traffic calming devices to promote safety and help provide the town with its own identity.
    Newly elected Commissioner Steve Coz said he heard a lot from residents about the need for traffic calming while campaigning for his seat in March.
    “There were three issues that continually came up,” Coz said. “People were complaining about speeding. They were complaining that the town needed an identity — that the town be identified as a community separate from Boynton. And they were worried about safety.”
    During the July 11 Town Commission meeting, Coz showed commissioners some possibilities that he and town engineer Lisa Tropepe had developed. The idea is to use calming devices on Ocean Avenue, Midlane Road and Beachway Drive, not only to slow down motorists but to send them visceral signals that Ocean Ridge is its own place — with its own character and its own rules.
    “When you go into the town, Ocean Ridge is defined as a safe community, with low speeding,” Coz said of the proposal. “It makes a statement.”
    Tropepe suggested that commissioners consider installing raised speed tables at intersections on Ocean Avenue.
    Constructed of bricks or pavers, the devices would help slow traffic entering the crossroads from four directions and add an aesthetically pleasing detail to the neighborhood, she said. A center median device could help define the town’s Beachway entrance.
    Tropepe said costs for the devices range somewhere between $30,000 and $50,000 each, depending on size and design choices. Vice Mayor Richard Lucibella said he believes that those numbers are high and the town could get the work done for less.
    Coz cited Olive Avenue in downtown West Palm Beach as a good example of how the raised intersection devices might work.
    “Great ideas and very nice changes,” Mayor Geoff Pugh said, “but we haven’t paved the roads in Ocean Ridge in over three years.”
    Pugh said that if commissioners decide to go forward with traffic calming, they should “dovetail it with paving and repairs” throughout the town. He said the commission needs to look at traffic calming within the context of paying for the town’s overdue road work.
 
    In other business:
    • At a July 13 special meeting on the budget, commissioners unanimously approved a preliminary tax rate maximum of $5.35 per $1,000 of assessed property value — the same rate Ocean Ridge has had for the last two years.
    The town’s property values rose about 7.5 percent since 2015, from roughly $825 million to $887 million, in line with the increase throughout Palm Beach County. Ocean Ridge’s rollback rate — the rate at which tax revenue would remain the same as last year — is $4.99 per $1,000 of assessed value.
    Commissioners set a budget workshop meeting for Tuesday, Aug. 23 at 10 a.m. to work out the details for fiscal 2016-2017.
    Immediately preceding the workshop, beginning at 9 a.m., commissioners will meet to consider changes to health insurance plans for the town’s employees.
    Several employees have complained about coverage problems with the town’s current carrier.