Paul Aho (inset below), who grew up

in Ocean Ridge, wrote the book Surfing Florida.

Photos provided

By Willie Howard

    Florida surfers needed someone to chronicle the origins of their relatively young sport and assemble a collection of vintage surfing photographs from the Sunshine State.
    Lifelong surfer Paul Aho, an Ocean Ridge native who now serves as dean of an art school in Kentucky, has filled the void with the May publication of Surfing Florida: A Photographic History ($31.95, University Press of Florida).
    Aho grew up a short walk from the ocean waves on Tropical Drive, where his parents owned Henri’s Motel. He caught the surfing bug in 1965 just as the advent of light fiberglass boards was popularizing the sport.
    Not long after Aho started surfing, though, officials in the oceanfront towns of Ocean Ridge and Palm Beach sought to ban wave riding at their beaches.
    Now dean of the Paducah School of Art and Design in Kentucky, the author was among a group of teenagers who gathered signatures on a petition to defeat Ocean Ridge’s proposed surfing ban.
    The town of Palm Beach’s 1964 surfing ban was not so easily defeated. It was overturned by the Florida Supreme Court four years after the town began enforcing it.
Area surfers sold “I Gave to Save Surfing” bumper stickers for $1 to raise money for the legal fight.
    Aho’s 264-page book started as a traveling exhibit that opened in 2012 at Florida Atlantic University.
    Aho said people laughed when he applied for a Florida Humanities Council grant to produce a surfing history exhibit, but he eventually won the grant.
    In addition to showcasing the stars and pioneers of Florida surfing, Surfing Florida demonstrates that Florida’s wave riders held their own in the water and created their own surf culture — complete with music, films and contests — as the sport evolved on the more famous beaches of California, where the waves are generally taller.
    “It’s a fallacy to think we don’t get good surf in Florida,” Aho said. “We certainly do.”
    The first documented account of surfing in Florida dates back to 1909, when Daytona Beach bicycle shop owner Eugene Johnson read an article about surfing in Hawaii and decided to try his hand riding waves.
    Florida wave riding became more popular in the 1930s. A photo in the book shows men standing on a beach holding gigantic surfboards — the first Florida Surfing Championships, held in 1938 at Daytona Beach.
    Chapters of Surfing Florida are devoted to different regions of the state. The Palm Beach County and Treasure Coast chapter includes photos of surfers enjoying the waves created by the grounding of the 441-foot Greek freighter Amaryllis, which washed ashore at Singer Island in a 1965 hurricane and stayed there for three years.
    Surfing Florida also pays tribute to Florida’s early surfing photographers and many of the state’s first shapers of fiberglass surfboards.
    Pioneer board shapers included Ron Heavyside, who learned his trade as a teenager building Caribbean Surfboards at a bicycle shop in Delray Beach.
Heavyside also built surfboards in Hawaii before founding the Nomad Surf Shop on North Ocean Boulevard in 1968.
    Heavyside still designs surfboards at the landmark surf shop, where he works with sons Ryan and Ronnie, both of whom are avid surfers.

Fifty years ago this summer,
the Vietnam War began.
Area veterans remember the trials and triumphs of that era.

Al Naar displays his medals in his Ocean Ridge home.
Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star

Charles McGill of Gulf Stream still wears symbols

from his days in Special Forces.

Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star

Stories By Ron Hayes

    When does a war begin? And when does it end?
    On Aug. 7, 1964 — 50 years ago next month — the U.S. Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, granting President Lyndon Johnson the right to wage war in Vietnam without a formal declaration of war.
    By then, 216 Americans had already died there. The first was Richard B. Fitzgibbon Jr., killed on June 8, 1956.
    On April 30, 1975, with Saigon falling to the North Vietnamese, U.S. service members and diplomats were evacuated by helicopter.
    Two weeks later, on May 15, Kelton Rena Turner, an 18-year-old Marine, was killed when Cambodian communists fired on the SS Mayaguez, a U.S. container ship.
    When the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C., was dedicated in 1982, there were 57,939 names on “the wall.” Since then, the names of 347 military personnel who later died of their wounds have been added.
    All told, 3,403,000 Americans served in Vietnam, and most of them returned. Some came home with wounds both visible and invisible, but they all brought memories.

Al Naar, in August 1968 in the Quang Tri Province of Vietnam.

Photo provided

Marine and Navy uniforms that Al Naar wore during the Vietnam War.

Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star

Al Naar
Ocean Ridge
    For Al Naar of Ocean Ridge, the war in Vietnam began in May 1968, when he arrived in Danang, a Navy medic assigned to the Marines.
    He was 21 that year.
“The war had moved north and the Marines weren’t surviving the chopper ride to Phu Bai, so we convoyed to Quang Tri, 8 miles south of the Demilitarized Zone,” he remembers. “It seemed like the incoming choppers with dead and wounded Marines never ended.”
    Naar is 67 now, retired from a career in the health care industry. Twice a year he lectures at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, R.I. Along with his words, he brings a slide show of 150 snapshots he took in the battalion’s five operating rooms. The brightly colored photos include a lot of red.
    “The copters brought in the wounded, and they’d radio what they had,” he explains. “Twenty walking, seven critical, five KIAs. Those CH446 SeaKnight copters — you can’t imagine how loud. The back goes down and the stretcher-bearers come rushing out. It was organized chaos. Patients screaming and docs calling orders.”
    They tried to save Americans first, then South Vietnamese soldiers, then civilians and, finally, any Vietcong.
    “We saved a lot,” he says, with pride. “We lost a lot, but we saved more than we lost.”
    As long as the wounded were coming in, he was there. Sometimes his day was two or three days long.
    “Sometimes during surgery, they’d start lobbing rockets at us and we’d leave the patient lying on the table and go huddle in a corner, and I’d think, ‘I hope this doesn’t hurt too much.’ But they always missed.”
    When there was time to sleep, he slept in a tent, with mosquito netting to keep out, not mosquitoes, but rats.
    “Some were big as kittens,” he says. “I was more afraid of getting bitten by a rat than getting shot.”
    Naar left Vietnam on May 28, 1969, and flew home to New Jersey for 30 days’ leave.
    “I went to a bar in New Brunswick we all used to hang out at and ran into a friend I hadn’t seen. My friend introduced me around — ‘He just got back from Vietnam,’— and one of the other guys there looked at me and said, ‘So what?’ ”
    But he has no regrets.
    “It’s probably the most important thing I could have done,” he says. “Looking back, we know the war was a mistake, unwinnable, but my part was nothing but saving lives.”

Charles McGill, when he served in Special Forces in Vietnam in 1969.

Photo provided

Charles McGill (center) provides first aid to a man in Vietnam in 1969.

Photo provided

His Special Forces patch reads ‘to free the oppressed.’

Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star

Charles McGill
Gulf Stream
     “When people ask me if I was a Green Beret, I tell them ‘No, that’s a hat’, ” Charles McGill says. “I was U.S. Army Special Forces.”
    At the top of the Gulf Stream home where he’s lived for 37 years, McGill keeps a small, airy room lined with bookshelves and souvenirs,
    “Welcome to my ego room,” he says. “My I-Love-Me room.”
    The books are largely military history, with the occasional surprise. Essentials of Philosophy. The Poetry of Robert Frost. There’s a mock sign announcing “Green Beret St.” and several photos of a 27-year-old U.S. Army sergeant posing with his buddies, and his M-16 rifle.
    “At some point,” McGill says, “we’re the sum of our memories,” and for the next hour or so, this 72-year-old man talks about a boy from DeLand who survived a mild case of polio in 1952 and grew up to spend 1969 leading South Vietnamese mercenaries through mountainous jungles in search of the Viet Cong.
    “We went on three- to five-day operations,” he says. “Not missions, that’s what civilians call them. We went in stealth, in jungles, searching for somebody to shoot and someone to shoot at us.”
    He enlisted, he says, because he wanted to do something grand, something really big.
    “I wanted to test myself, and I thought Special Forces was the hardest thing I could do.”
    As he speaks, you realize McGill does not live in the past, but he’s given it a lot of thought.
    “Vietnam was a necessary war because there were two ideologies — communism against capitalism — and we didn’t want to fight another land battle in Europe, so we fought it in Vietnam. It was a proxy war.”
    He left Vietnam on Dec. 31, 1969, with a Bronze Star and a Legion of Merit from the South Vietnamese government.
    In 1975, he spent 18 months in Africa as a private security contractor, then went to work for a computer company before starting his own firm, Creative Communications. In the I-Love-Me room, he is working on a memoir of his year “in country.”
    “After the North Vietnamese took over,” he says, “they killed almost everyone who worked for me, and now they’re turning about as capitalistic as we are.”
    Did the U.S. lose the war in Vietnam?
    “We never lost a land battle,” McGill says, “but we lost the political and public support.”
    And was it worth the loss of life?
    “If we’d won it, it would have been.”

Scott Symons
Highland Beach
    “When you write this,” Scott Symons said, “I hope you’ll emphasize that Vietnam vets aren’t as screwed up as everyone thinks. Three million men served there. How many are living under bridges?”
    Symons, 69, was the first in his family to attend college, a student at Rutgers University who came home one day with an application to the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps.
    “I said, ‘ROTC, Dad, what’s this mean?’”
    “It’s good,” his father told him. “It means you’ll be an officer.”
    Symons signed up, graduated Rutgers in 1966 and arrived in Vietnam in August 1967, a lieutenant in the 4th Transport Command, Quartermaster Corps.
    “My eyes were bad enough that I was not allowed to be in combat arms,” he said. And so he wound up supervising about 300 South Vietnamese and 25 Americans — warehouse workers and mechanics driving food and ammo, tents, cots, radios, rifles and beer to supply the 9th Infantry Division.
    “I went to the bush because my clients were in the bush,” he explained. “I would say — just myself — I was in a situation maybe once a month. If somebody shot at us, we returned fire. But the odds were with you.”
    Except when they weren’t.
    On Jan. 30, 1968, Symons was enjoying a weekend off at the Bachelor Officers Quarters, a hotel behind the U.S. Embassy in Saigon.
    “It was R&R,” he said. “We had a great time Saturday night, and then it was 3 a.m. Sunday morning.”
    A team of 19 Viet Cong had blown a hole in the Embassy wall and occupied the grounds, part of a series of surprise attacks known as the Tet Offensive.
    “Forty guys in a hotel and only five of us had weapons,” Symons recalled. “Yeah, I was scared. So was everybody else.”
    He came home a captain in August 1968, went back to Rutgers to earn a master’s degree in business on the G.I. Bill and did well in pharmaceutical marketing.
    When he talks about Vietnam now, Symons is humble about his service, and philosophical about the war.
    “There was a difference between officers and enlisted men,” he emphasizes. “The officers had it easier.”
    And what did he learn from the experience?
    “To speak a little Vietnamese,” he says, then reconsiders. “The biggest lesson I learned is to get up, show up, be there on time, do what you’re supposed to do and things will be OK.
    “We got delivered there,” he says, “but once we were there, we did our job.”

By Rich Pollack

    Taxable property values in Palm Beach County’s coastal communities have continued to grow, with increases ranging from barely noticeable in Briny Breezes to more than 14 percent in neighboring Gulf Stream.
    New construction and home sales to buyers who do not benefit from Florida’s homestead exemption are being credited for much of the increase in the coastal communities.
    Countywide, the taxable property value increased 7.39 percent, according to preliminary numbers released in late June by Palm Beach County Property Appraiser Gary Nikolits.  
    The countywide tax rolls increased for the third consecutive year and showed that taxable value increases were widespread throughout the county’s municipalities.
    “This is the first time that every jurisdiction in Palm Beach County has had a taxable value increase in more than a half-dozen years,” said John Thomas, director of residential appraisal services for the Palm Beach County Property Appraiser’s Office.  
    Little Briny Breezes barely made the cut, with assessed property values increasing only half a percent from $35.2 million to $35.4 million.

    In South Palm Beach, taxable property values increased just 1.5 percent from $259.3 million to $263.1 million.
    On the other end of the charts, Gulf Stream showed the largest increase of any municipality in Palm Beach County, with a 14.3 percent increase due largely to new construction on a 16.6-acre county pocket the town annexed in 2011.
    “This is the biggest increase in the tax roll in my tenure,” said Town Manager William Thrasher, who has been in Gulf Stream for 19 years.
    The completion of a five-story condominium building on the property, which hit tax rolls in 2013, helped increase the assessed value of new construction in the town by close to 700 percent, from $8.32 million to $65.73 million.
    Thrasher said the increase could generate an estimated additional $407,000 in revenue for the town if town commissioners vote to keep the tax rate at $3.70 per $1,000 of taxable property.
    That additional money, he said, could be used to offset the cost of legal fees to defend ongoing lawsuits filed against the town as well as to cover the cost of improved street lighting.
    New construction also had a significant impact in Ocean Ridge, where assessed property values increased by 6.27 percent, with the taxable value of new construction growing from $1.6 million to $5.1 million.
    Much of that, says Town Manager Ken Schenck, can be attributed to new single-family homes as well as improvements to existing homes.
    Any additional revenue generated by the increase in assessed values, Schenck said, could be used to address issues that were placed on the back burner during the economic slowdown. “We’ve been holding back in the last few years on purchasing equipment and on salaries,” he said.
    In Highland Beach, where the assessed value of new construction topped $14 million, Finance Director Cale Curtis said the town could receive as much as $432,000 in additional revenue if commissioners keep the tax rate at $3.95 per $1,000 of assessed value.
    In Delray Beach — which saw close to a 10 percent increase in assessed property values — and Boca Raton — which saw a 5.63 percent increase in tax rolls — commercial property increases played a more significant role than in the coastal communities, which have far fewer businesses.
    Florida law allows the assessments on commercial property and non-homesteaded property to increase as much as 10 percent a year but limits the annual increase for homesteaded properties to 3 percent or to the change in the Consumer Price Index, whichever is lower. This year, the consumer price index increased just 1.5 percent.
    With home market values continuing to rise and with sales volumes increasing along the coast, some expect the upward trend in tax rolls to continue.
    “Property tax rolls are higher now because of increases in values and increases in sales,” says real estate veteran Sue Tauriello. “We’re not where we were in 2004 and 2005 but, in my opinion, it looks like we’ll get there in the next couple of years.”

Susan Haynie was elected in March.

Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star

By Dan Moffett

    It’s more than poetic irony to suggest that Susan Haynie took the road less traveled to get to the Boca Raton mayor’s office. For four decades, Haynie has devoted her professional life to making all of South Florida’s roads less traveled.
    Most mayors in Palm Beach County got to their office through careers as lawyers, small-business operators or political activists.
    Haynie is the outlier in her peer group. After graduating from Lynn University, she started working for Boca Raton as a traffic engineer in the 1970s and, in one way or another, has been looking to solve transportation problems ever since.
    When Boca Raton voters elected her in March, they got a hybrid — a mayor who is part politician and part traffic engineer. Haynie already has shown signs of being adept at both.

    “I’ve always had an interest and a natural curiosity in transit,” she says. “It’s always intrigued me.”
    That curiosity has taken Haynie on a long ride through the state’s circuit of planning and transportation groups and boards. You name the acronym and she’s probably done the time: She currently chairs the Palm Beach County Metropolitan Planning Organization and sits on the board of the Florida Metropolitan Planning Organization.
    How many mayors have been selected “Woman Transportation Leader of the Year” by  South Florida Women in Transportation? Haynie won it last year.
    Connections mean as much in politics as they do in transportation. Last month, the county’s MPO approved $8.5 million in federal money to supplement $10 million the state has set aside to build a second Tri-Rail station in Boca Raton near Military Trail and Glades Road — an important win for the city.
    Haynie declines invitations to credit her influence as MPO chairwoman for getting Boca Raton the money. But for others, the connection is obvious.
    “She’s tremendous,” says state Sen. Maria Sachs, D-Delray Beach. “She knows how to get things done. Her expertise is especially tuned to finding solutions for these public transit problems, and people in Tallahassee know that. I personally like her and I certainly respect her background.”
    Bill Hager served with Haynie on the Boca City Council for seven years before winning a seat in the state House.
    “I am a big fan of hers,” says Rep. Hager, R-Boca Raton. “She is a true public servant. She’s got no dog in the hunt. Mayor Haynie understands the traffic stuff, but she also understands how these regional traffic planning facilities work.”
    Haynie deflects the flattery but is willing to allow that when she talks about transit issues, the right people will listen, and that can bring good things to the city.
    “My expertise and involvement in transportation planning benefits Boca Raton by allowing me the opportunity to address our mobility challenges with resources from county, state and federal levels,” she says. “Having a second Tri-Rail station serving the Town Center mall area is critical to advancing our planning mobility initiative.”
    Haynie believes the second station can be as effective as the city’s other stop on Yamato Road at giving commuters alternatives to cars. Passengers who get off the train at the Yamato station have four choices besides driving: They can walk to nearby businesses and offices; they can take a Palm Tran bus; they can hop on a connector shuttle to get downtown; or they can ride a bike, perhaps pedaling on the El Rio Trail that runs 9.1 miles along the edge the Florida Atlantic University campus.
    “If you give people choices,” Haynie says, “they’re going to take them.”
    She believes the proposed site for the new station has potential to appeal to a wide variety of commuters — even tourists who will spend time and money at the mall.
    “The area is currently a destination for both workers and shoppers,” Haynie says. “This station is critical to advancing our initiative. It will provide easy access to transit, removing cars from the roads and improving mobility in our community.”
    Before getting the Tri-Rail money for Boca Raton, Haynie and the City Council turned some heads when they turned down close to $50 million in state and county funds for expansion projects on Palmetto Park Road and Federal Highway.
    When was the last time a municipality said no to money for new infrastructure?
    What’s more, the city has told the county it does not want a half-dozen other projects that were scheduled to take place during the next 25 years. Some cynics have accused Boca Raton of not building roads for xenophobic reasons: to discourage out-of-towners from commuting through the city.
    If you don’t build it, maybe they won’t come.
    Haynie finds the suggestion amusing. But being selective about road projects is at her philosophical core.
    “We don’t want to add more wide roads to the city,” she says. “It doesn’t make sense to see a mom pushing a stroller across eight lanes of traffic. We want Boca to be a walkable city.”
    When she began her career as a city traffic engineer, Boca Raton’s population was half the 89,000 it is today, and the prevailing wisdom was that South Florida could build enough roads to satisfy its rapid growth. Today, Haynie and others at the forefront of a more progressive era in urban planning believe that new construction isn’t the answer.
“You can’t solve congestion problems with asphalt,” she says. “Technology has to be part of the solution.”
    The city is using adaptive traffic signals to help relieve congestion on some of its busiest roads and intersections. Think of them as smart stoplights with sensors that are capable of measuring traffic demand in real time, and then adjusting the timing of signals to keep vehicles moving in the direction that’s needed.
   “We will have to change our culture,” says Sen. Sachs. “We have become a lot like California, driving wherever we want to go. That can’t last. We will have to get people out of their cars and get them to accept that there are other ways to get around. We need leaders who know what it takes to move people from one side of the city to another, and Susan certainly knows how to do that.”
    After only a few months in office, the mayor has gotten the culture change moving in Boca Raton.
    “Transportation issues are about more than building wider roads,” Haynie says. “Today they’re quality-of-life issues. We need to take innovative approaches to deal with them.”

“I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
Pledge of Allegiance by Francis Bellamy, as written in 1892.

    When you attend as many municipal meetings as I do each month, you end up saying the Pledge of Allegiance many, many times.
You get to know where the American flag is located in every town hall.
    I’m glad it’s there. And I’m glad we stand to recite the pledge before we get down to the mundane development of ordinances and often-rancorous input from the public.
    It’s a reminder that we are all a part of something grander: one indivisible nation.
    There have been revisions to this pledge through the years — four of them, in fact — but that was bound to happen. This is America, after all. We swear and shout and make our voices heard. Because it’s our right. We are lucky that way.
    So as we celebrate Independence Day and as I sit through yet more angst-filled meetings embroiled with discussion of private vs. public beaches or fears of neighborhood sober homes, I think about how essential it is that we have a forum where we have an opportunity to remind our elected representatives that they work for us — all of us.
    There’s a mental trick I play when I find myself cranky about missed deadlines, emptying the dishwasher or making yet another routine trip to the grocery store. I take a deep breath and visualize families carrying their most precious possessions as they walk miles to cross borders. I think about abandoned boats beached along our shoreline in the early hours of dawn. I think of hungry children huddled in refugee camps.
    We laugh now about our mothers admonishing us to “think of all the starving children in Africa.” But our wise mothers were doing more than getting us to eat our vegetables, they were reminding us just how lucky we are to live in country with a pledge that concludes with the words, “with liberty and justice for all.”
— Mary Kate Leming,
Editor

Alene Egol helps Dress for Success clients choose donated clothing.

Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star

By Lucy Lazarony

    What’s the first thing an attorney with a master of arts and master of philosophy in Germanic languages and literature wants to do when she retires?
    If you are Alene Egol, the answer is dress women for success.
    Egol retired from her job as an attorney in Florida Power & Light’s alternative energy division in January 2012. Not long after, a friend approached her about volunteering for Dress for Success Palm Beaches.
    “I love it,” says Egol, who serves as grant writer and board secretary for Dress for Success. “I love the concept of helping women get back in the workforce.”
    Dress for Success promotes the economic independence of disadvantaged women by providing professional attire, a network of support and career development tools to female clients referred from 67 Palm Beach social service and nonprofit agencies.
    “Seventy percent of our clients who come to Dress for Success are single moms. That’s staggering,” says Egol, who lives in coastal Delray Beach with her husband, university professor and published author Winston Aarons.
    Egol, who expresses her sense of style as a jewelry maker exhibiting at Cacace Fine Art Gallery in Artists’ Alley, also assists Dress for Success clients with choosing clothes and accessories from the Dress for Success Palm Beaches boutique, at 118 E. Ocean Ave., in Lantana.  
    “At Dress for Success, we deal with women from 17 to 70 from all walks of life. We have young women with GEDs and women with Ph.D.s and law degrees,” Egol says. “I’ve dressed all different women. It’s just where life has brought them, particularly with our economic downturn, with our mortgage crises.”
    What’s the most rewarding part of volunteering? Seeing the transformation after a successful personal shopping session, Egol says.
    “By the time they leave they have their heads lifted up and their shoulders back. They have a smile on their face and a sense of self worth.”
    Dress for Success provides women with appropriate business attire for initial job interviews, including shoes, a handbag, accessories, plus makeup and toiletries. They also receive interviewing tips and a note of encouragement.
    “We even review their handshake with them and smile so they know how to do a good handshake when they go to an interview,” Egol says.
    In 2013, 480 women in Palm Beach County were dressed for job interviews and employment suiting thanks to Dress for Success Palm Beaches.  
    Dress for Success also provides job-training programs to interested clients to help them land jobs.  
    And when they land the jobs, they can return for more shopping. In their second visit to the Dress for Success boutique, they receive a week’s worth of clothes.
    “I really love working with clients. I love dressing them. I love styling them,” Egol says. “Many times our clients leave and we have tears in our eyes. To watch the transformation is amazing. It really is so touching.”

How you can help
    Dress for Success Palm Beaches welcomes monetary and clothing donations.
Mail donation checks to Dress for Success Palm Beaches, 118 E. Ocean Ave., Lantana, FL 33462.
    To donate by credit card, visit www.dressforsuccess.org (look for Palm Beaches affiliate page) or call 249-3898.
Bring clothing donations to the Career Transformation Center at 118 E. Ocean Ave., Lantana, during business hours, by appointment only. Call 249-3898.

By Mary Thurwachter

    A zoning change for 10 acres of prime waterfront property that has been home to the Cenacle Spiritual Life Center in Lantana for nearly 60 years won the approval of the Lantana Town Council on June 9.
    The change, from C1 commercial to MW Mixed Use Waterfront, paves the way for development of a high-end rental community.
    Ocean Ridge developer Jerry Goray and Trinsic Residential Group (a Dallas-based company with an office in Miami) bought the property contingent on the zoning change. The property stretches between Dixie Highway and the Intracoastal Waterway and is across the street from the K-mart shopping center at the corner of Hypoluxo Road and Dixie Highway.
    A second public hearing and vote on the zoning change is on the council’s agenda for July 14.
    The property, at 1400 S. Dixie Highway, has undergone several zoning changes since 2009, when there was a proposal to build a hotel there. Then, the town changed the zoning from R3 residential to commercial.
    But after the hotel deal fell through in 2010, the council changed the zoning back to R3 residential.
    In 2011, the land was again rezoned to C1 commercial at the request of the Cenacle sisters, who argued that a commercial designation would buoy the market value.
    Mayor David Stewart, who cast the lone dissenting vote on the most recent zoning change, had some stern words for the Cenacle spokesperson, Sister Mary Riley, and attorney Al Malefatto, who represents the nuns.
    “It’s not our responsibility to make people’s property worth more,” Stewart said.
    “Three years ago, you had a justification letter as long as War and Peace (for rezoning to commercial). It’s not a town’s responsibility to bail people out.”
    Sister Mary Riley, who had appeared before the council several times previously, was unable to attend the June 9 meeting. Malefatto, however, offered an explanation.
    “What happened in the economy over the last five years is unprecedented,” he said. “Conditions have changed.”
    When the hotel was being proposed, “the room (council chambers) was filled with objectors,” he said. This time, he said, neighbors seem to be more in favor of the proposal.
    Boca Raton attorney Bonnie Miskel, representing the developers, said the plan is to build 319 units with resort-like amenities and lush landscaping. Miskel and the developers had meet with neighbors and members of the Chamber of Commerce to talk to them about the planned community.
    The mixed-use waterfront designation, she said, is a better fit than the current commercial designation. Some of the apartments would likely be live/work units to accommodate small businesses such as architects, designers, artists or attorneys. Renters would have their businesses on the first floor and live upstairs.
    In other action, the council approved a change to the comprehensive plan and the zoning map for the A.G. Holley property from MI Mixed Use Industrial to MXD Mixed Used Development.
    Southeast Legacy Investment LLC of Boca Raton bought the 73-acre parcel with plans for a multi-use development, combining residential units with retail and commercial space. A charter high school also may be built at Lantana Commons, the new name for the site at 1199 Lantana Road.

By Mary Thurwachter

    A rebounding economy and $39 million uptick in taxable property values to $724.9 million will give Lantana more money to work with next year.
    But residents shouldn’t expect a spending spree. After all, expenses are going up, too.
    For the first time, the town will have to buy flood insurance, a $63,000 expense. Pension costs for 27 police officers are up $24,000 to $413,000; and pension costs for almost 40 general employees are $140,730.
    Health and dental insurance, factored by claims, is estimated to rise 17 percent at a cost of $1,056,530.
    And, while no cost of living raises for employees are planned, the budget does call for merit raises of up to 2 percent, depending on annual evaluations.
    The police department would like to add a dispatcher, and the town would like to continue to retain services of a lobbyist for $60,000 a year.
    Among capital improvement expenditures that total $429,569 are computers, library books, computer software, beach parking lot lights, a generator for Town Hall, an air conditioner for the library and a new police car for the chief.
    With these and other projected expenses, the proposed budget leaves a $275,397 deficit, a number that will need to come down considerably, Mayor Dave Stewart said. The budget has to balance, after all. In the past, the town has occasionally borrowed from its reserves to make up for a shortfall.
    Town Manager Deborah Manzo and Finance Director Stephen Kaplan will be sharpening their pencils to cut proposed spending in the weeks ahead.
    It is unlikely the current tax rate, $3.23 per $1,000 of taxable property, will change. Lantana has had the same rate for six years. Stewart made a point to note the poor attendance for the budget hearing on June 23, one of the most important meetings of the year, he said. Only two residents showed up.
    A second budget workshop will be held at 5:30 p.m. on July 14 and the council will set its tax rate on July 28. Two public hearings will follow, with dates yet to be announced.

By Tim Pallesen

    Delray Beach will keep its own fire-rescue department after Palm Beach County Fire-Rescue failed to assure a long-term savings for city taxpayers.
    A county takeover was projected to have saved $2.1 million the first year. But three of five city commissioners voiced concerns after their financial director predicted that a county contract was likely to be more costly in the future.
    “There’s no certainty that the initial savings would not be offset by future costs,” Mayor Cary Glickstein said. “I’m not interested in relinquishing control based on a one-year contract proposal.”
    “There’s not enough on the table to say this is good,” Commissioner Shelly Petrolia agreed.
    Glickstein had asked the county for a price quote last September at the request of the labor union representing city firefighters and paramedics, who face possible cuts in their city pension benefits.
    City fire-rescue workers would have become county employees under the proposal. The city would have kept its five existing fire stations.
    “We would be honored to provide excellent service to you,” County Fire-Rescue Deputy Chief Mark Anderson said in presenting the county proposal at a June 10 workshop.
    But Commissioner Jordana Jarjura joined Glickstein and Petrolia to say long-term costs were unknown.
    They formed a majority to dismiss the idea even though Commissioner Al Jacquet said he wanted to explore it further. Commissioner Adam Frankel called the county offer “attractive for many reasons.”
    The majority agreed with the city’s chief financial officer, Jack Warner, who recommended it would be best to “strengthen and improve” the existing city fire department that began in 1923.
    Fire Chief Danielle Connor said 14 new firefighters need to be hired at a cost of $1.2 million. She warned that 21 of the city’s fire-rescue employees are searching for jobs elsewhere.
    “We’re severely short-staffed,” city paramedic Ken Thompson told commissioners.
    Delray’s decision to keep and improve city fire-rescue services should ease concern in Highland Beach, which paid $3 million to Delray this year for services. The two cities have a contract until 2017.
    Delray also collects $389,536 annually to answer fire-rescue calls in Gulf Stream, where officials are worrying about dwindling budget reserves from a year of fighting lawsuits and appreciate the stability the city’s decision brings.
    “The decision not to go with the county was done sensibly and without any rancor or emotion. It was a very professional discussion, and I commend Delray,” Vice Mayor Robert Ganger said. “We’re going to have to be very vigilant, however, as we go into discussions on the extension of our own contract, which expires in five years.”
In Highland Beach, town officials say they have no short-term plans to change fire service providers but will continue exploring the feasibility of contracting with others — including Boca Raton Fire-Rescue and Palm Beach County Fire-Rescue — in the long term.
“We’re continuing to look at several different alternatives,” Town Manager Kathleen Weiser said.
The town is also putting on hold plans to switch its 911 emergency dispatch services to Delray Beach while it investigates future fire service options. Currently, 911 calls from Highland Beach are handled by the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, which dispatches Highland Beach police officers but transfers medical and fire calls to Delray Beach Fire-Rescue.

Dan Moffett and Rich Pollack contributed to this story.

A water truck sprays down the temporary driveway in front of Andrew Ross’s dental office

in Delray Beach. Inside the building (below), it is business as usual.

Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star

By Tim Pallesen    

    Dentist Andrew Ross is as difficult to extract as an embedded molar.
    So his 32-year dental office remains open despite construction of the giant Delray Place shopping center around him at the foot of the Linton Boulevard Bridge.
    Ross was the only tenant with a lease when all other buildings in the previous shopping center at the southeast corner of Linton and Federal Highway got demolished last year.
    He refused to leave, so the new 130,000-square-foot shopping center that will be home to Trader Joe’s is being built around his little 1,600-square-foot dental office.
    “As awful as it seems, it has worked out very well,” Ross said. “My patients are loyal. Once they’re inside the building, they don’t know what’s happening outside.”
    Delray Place developer Joe Carosella failed to get Ross to leave when they met to talk last summer. Ross’ lease extends to June 2017.
    Carosella declined comment for this story, but Ross quotes him as saying: “I know you have a lease, but you are in my way.”
    Ross wouldn’t budge. “At this point in my life, I wasn’t about to build a new dental office,” he said.
    So bulldozers and cranes cause a storm around him. Dental patients have their own little access road and Ross says a friendly construction manager helps him keep his dental office open for business.
    Ross also has been blessed by new walk-in clients.
    “I’ve always had good exposure as people cross over the bridge — now I’m more visible than ever,” he said. “I’m anything but angry about this.”

INSET BELOW: City Manager Louie Chapman Jr.

By Tim Pallesen 

   City commissioners voted 4-1 on July 1 to pay $69,400 to suspended City Manager Louie Chapman Jr. for his resignation.
Mayor Cary Glickstein and Commissioner Jordana Jarjura voiced frustration as they joined Commissioners Al Jacquet and Adam Frankel to accept the buyout settlement.
    Glickstein called Chapman’s settlement offer “highly repugnant.”
    “It offends me that we’re being extorted to settle this,” Jarjura said.
    But the four commissioners said they voted for the settlement to end a stalemate in which only three commissioners wanted to fire Chapman. The city charter requires four votes to fire a city manager.
    Only Commissioner Shelly Petrolia refused to agree. “To fork over taxpayer dollars as payoff sends the wrong message,” Petrolia said.         
    Chapman’s settlement includes 20 weeks of pay worth $61,500 plus nine days of vacation at $5,500 and a $2,400 pension refund.
    Glickstein, Jarjura and Petrolia had attempted to fire Chapman with cause after the county inspector general said Chapman misled commissioners on a $60,000 purchase of garbage carts. Chapman wouldn’t have received severance pay under his contract if a fourth commissioner had voted to fire him without cause.
    Chapman’s contract entitles him to 20 weeks of severance pay if he is fired without cause.
     In exchange for the buyout, Chapman promises not to sue the city.
     He asked that the 90-day suspension that he received in May be revoked and replaced in his personnel file with a letter of reprimand. Commissioners balked on that request, which might affect whether Chapman signs the settlement agreement. If he does not accept the terms, the agreement may come back for further discussion at the city’s July 15 meeting.
    Chapman also asked commissioners to drop any ongoing investigations about his performance and conduct. Glickstein said he is aware of one ongoing investigation that the commission is powerless to stop.
    Chapman was hired to his $160,000 job in January 2013 before Glickstein, Jarjura and Petrolia were elected.
Chapman had offered to resign last May in exchange for two years of pay equal to $320,000. Commissioners rejected that settlement offer.

INSET BELOW: Robert Rizzotto

By Dan Moffett
    South Palm Beach Councilwoman Bonnie Fischer knew the town police department had made a good hire in Robert Rizzotto when she caught him pulling extra duty at the Town Hall earlier this year.
    “Shortly after he arrived here, he came on a weekend, on his time off, to wash some of the vehicles,” Fischer said. “I thought that was pretty cool.”
    Police Chief Carl Webb agrees. At the town council’s meeting on June 24, he announced that he was promoting Rizzotto to lieutenant and charging him with keeping the town’s road patrols rolling.
    Rizzotto, 43, came to South Palm Beach after serving two years as an officer with the Juno Beach Police Department. Before that, he was a member of the New York City Police Department and was working in its street crimes division during the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
    “Your background will really be most helpful to this town,” said Councilman Robert Gottlieb. “You can move us forward in new directions.”
    Rizzotto’s promotion completes an overhaul of the department that began when Chief Roger Crane retired last year and Lt. Nick Alvaro followed suit in February.
    Webb and Vice Mayor Joseph Flagello cited Rizzotto’s communication skills as an attribute that makes him right for South Palm Beach.
“Lieutenant Rizzotto has a wonderful personality, a great sense of humor, and he’s compassionate,” Flagello said. “He’s got a personality that will fit the town. Not only is he qualified, he’s just a well-rounded human being.”
    Rizzotto gave the town council some advice on buying new vehicles and recommended a switch to an SUV.
Council members approved spending $38,000 to buy a Ford Explorer to replace a 7-year-old Crown Victoria, agreeing with police that switching to the higher profile vehicle makes sense in case flooding becomes an issue. After one recent severe storm, an officer had to volunteer his own pickup truck to help the department navigate high waters in the town.
Rizzotto also advised against buying another Dodge Charger sedan with an oversized hemi engine. He said the extra weight of the motor has kept the vehicle in the repair shop with front-end problems. He recommended buying vehicles with smaller engines for patrolling the town’s five-eighths-mile circuit.
    Rizzotto said using big-engine cars to patrol South Palm Beach with its short roadway and many turns into condo driveways is “like putting a thoroughbred racehorse in a petting zoo.”
    In other business:
    • Town council members unanimously approved sending $1,500 to Lantana to help defray the town’s cost for the July Fourth fireworks celebration. “We enjoy them as much as they do,” said Mayor Donald Clayman. “We’re glad to help with the expense.”
    • Council members unanimously approved the second reading of an ordinance that changes the quorum requirement of the 25-member Community Affairs Advisory Board to nine members.

INSET BELOW: Terry Stewart

By Tim Pallesen
 
    Delray Beach’s new interim city manager promises to stick around as long as it takes.
    Terry Stewart fills a breach that was created when city commissioners suspended City Manager Louie Chapman Jr. for 90 days with pay on May 13.
    Stewart’s contract extends to Aug. 11, the day that Chapman’s suspension had been set to expire. But the city hasn’t begun the search for a new permanent city manager yet, so nobody knows how long Stewart might be needed.
    “I’m certainly willing to stay longer if they need me,” Stewart, a former city manager in Fort Myers Beach and Cape Coral, said after taking the temporary Delray job.
    The situation is complicated by a city charter that requires four votes to fire a city manager. Only three of five city commissioners wanted to fire Chapman. “I need to stay out of that,” Stewart said.
    Voters will decide in an Aug. 26 special election whether to change the charter to require only three votes to fire a city manager.
    Mayor Cary Glickstein and Commissioners Shelly Petrolia and Jordana Jarjura tried unsuccessfully to fire Chapman on May 13 and again on June 3 after the county inspector general said he misled commissioners on a purchase of garbage carts.
    Stewart touted his ethics in his application letter.
    “Respect for and attention to professional ethics is most high on my list of imperatives,” he wrote. “Ethics is founded largely on the concept of honesty. … Integrity is our most valuable asset.”
    Stewart will be paid the same $160,000 salary that Chapman received.

By Bill Hirschman
 
    BOCA RATON — Businessman Jay H. Harris was not famous outside of theatrical circles in South Florida. But within that community, Mr. Harris was revered for his incalculable investment of time, advice and money that fueled its evolution from a region known for dinner theater into a significant center of theatrical excellence.
    Mr. Harris, of Boca Raton, died June 20 at Holy Cross Hospital in Fort Lauderdale at age 77 from complications during surgery to repair a prior hip replacement, said publicist and friend Savannah Whaley.
    Mr. Harris quietly, often anonymously underwrote scores upon scores of productions in South Florida, sometimes at major institutional theaters with six-figure budgets, sometimes providing crucial support for companies operating on a shoestring in venues the size of a living room.
    One company he helped was The Promethean Theatre in Davie. Co-founder Deborah L. Sherman wrote, “Just say that without Jay Harris, South Florida theater could not have existed. … It would have collapsed without his patronage of the entire community.”
    Funding often came with the hands-on unvarnished and even blunt advice resulting from decades of experience as a producer on and Off-Broadway as well as across the U.S., Canada, England and Scotland. Among the best-known productions he developed were Say Goodnight, Gracie, Rupert Holmes’ one-man show about George Burns, and the world premiere of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Anna in the Tropics.
    In the spring of 2012, Mr. Harris received the highest award the local theater community can bestow: the George Abbott Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Arts.
    He was president of T & E Productions and Jay H. Harris, LLC of Boca Raton, and a founding member of JenKay, LLC of New York City. Harris also was a member of The League of American Theaters and Producers and a Tony Award voter.
    He was a full owner in the St. Joseph Express in the U.S. Baseball League in Missouri and a partial owner of another team.
    Mr. Harris was a primary force in revamping the Carbonells, South Florida’s equivalent of the Tony Awards for theatrical excellence.
    Raised in the Bronx, Mr. Harris later served in the Navy. He attended Hunter College and the City College of New York before graduating from RCA institute where he majored in electronics.
    During a business career that spanned nearly four decades, he served in many executive leadership positions including COO of International Controls Corp.
    He is survived by a brother, Alan Harris of Miami Beach, and his executive assistant and longtime friend of 30 years, Candice Dobin.
Services will be private and the family has requested that donations not be made. But a celebration of his life is being planned by his friends for later this summer.
    His straight-talking delivery of his opinions endeared him to some and alienated others. Veteran actress Barbara Bradshaw wrote, “Jay could be blunt, irascible, and the best lunch date a person could ever ask for. He loved South Florida theater and his support was directly responsible for a large portion of its growth, survival and ongoing success … often quietly and behind the scenes … not for recognition, but for what he believed in. He also had a huge heart, blushed when hugged … and a wealth of knowledge that never ceased to amaze me.”
    Bill Hirschman owns and operates Floridatheateronstage.com.

    Despite intense lobbying from preservationists, the Delray Beach City Commission voted 3-2 to approve a developer’s request that would allow for denser and taller development in a section of the Old School Square Historic Arts District.
    The July 1 vote allows developer Hudson Holdings to build up to 38 units per acre and rise up to 48 feet on a six-parcel section near the intersection of SE 1st Street and SE 1st Avenue. Before the change, zoning in the historic district allowed 18 units per acre and a height of 35 feet.
    Hudson Holdings owns or has agreements to buy more than 20 properties in the district, including the landmark Sundy House, and plans to move or tear down some of the houses to make room for two hotels, “residential inn” units, retail space, a 175-car garage and a park.
    Much of the lobbying was directed at Commissioner Jordana Jarjura, who voted against the project when she served on the Planning and Zoning board, but switched to approve it when the request was first voted upon in early June.
    Jarjura was unswayed. She was joined by Commissioners Al Jacquet and Adam Frankel. Mayor Cary Glickstein and Commissioner Shelly Petrolia voted against it, mirroring the vote taken two weeks ago.
    Preservationists argued that the intense zoning change would upset the nature and balance of the southern portion of the district, made up mostly of one-story bungalows, and result in the destruction of historic houses. Hudson Holding countered that many of the houses were blighted and abandoned and their plans would revitalize the neighborhood while preserving some of the historic buildings. Sundy House, home of the city’s first mayor, would remain in place and the historic 1902 Cathcart House, where a pioneer family lived for 50 years, would be rehabilitated and moved closer to Atlantic Avenue.               
    — Staff report

By Rich Pollack

    It is a question for the ages, but with a bit of a twist in Highland Beach.
    If a tree falls on the public right of way and no one is around to see it happen, does the adjacent property owner still have to replace it?
    That’s one of the questions Highland Beach town commissioners have been wrestling with as they try to clarify a 1990 municipal ordinance dealing with the question of who is responsible for maintaining landscaping on public rights of way.
    A proposed revision to the ordinance that was brought to commissioners in May would have required adjacent property owners to maintain all landscaping on public rights of way.  But it drew concerns from Commissioner Carl Feldman and was sent back to the drawing board before it could be brought to a vote.
    Feldman questioned whether property owners should be responsible for replacing any of the more than 100 palm trees placed along State Road A1A  by the Florida Department of Transportation and the town in 2007.
    “You can’t park your car on a swale, you can’t put a sign in it, you can’t even put your lawn chair on it,” he said. “So why should you be responsible for the palms if they die?”
    As a result of Feldman’s questions, town attorneys are in the process of redrafting the ordinance, removing responsibility for replacing the trees from the adjacent property owner if the tree dies through no fault of their own. In those cases, the responsibility for removing and replacing the tree, if deemed necessary, would fall on the town’s shoulders.
    Attorneys are also planning to add a provision that would absolve adjacent property owners of liability for issues involving trees planted by the state or the town.
    The revised ordinance, according to attorneys, would still require adjacent property owners to maintain landscaping in the public right of way. The ordinance is expected to come before commissioners for final approval within the next few months.

By Dan Moffett

    Delray Beach joined the growing list of Florida communities that have acted against disreputable dog breeders when city commissioners gave preliminary approval to an ordinance that prohibits the sale of animals from puppy mills.
    Though Delray has no known puppy mills, state records show that mass breeding operations in the Midwest have provided thousands of dogs to South Florida sellers, including the city’s only pet shop, Waggs to Riches. The shop’s owner says she no longer uses the breeder cited.
    Mayor Cary Glickstein said he was reluctant to take action that affects only one business but had no choice because county records show that puppies from several unscrupulous breeders have been sold locally.
    “The lifeblood of these puppy mills is in fact the retail stores,” Glickstein said. “The ordinance is absolutely the right thing to do.”
    The first reading of the ordinance passed 4-1 on June 17, with Commissioner Adam Frankel voting no.
The final hearing for the ordinance was postponed July 1 for the city attorney to do additional research on the wording.
Frankel said he opposed the law because the disreputable breeders are “in Kansas, Missouri and Ohio,” not in Delray Beach. He said the commission should stay out of what is an enforcement matter for the federal government.
    “This is an ordinance that addresses puppy mills. Where in the city do we have a puppy mill?” Frankel asked. “In reality, all it’s affecting is one business.”
    More than a dozen Florida cities recently have passed similar laws, including Wellington, Wilton Manors, Sunrise, Parkland and Hallandale Beach. More than 50 cities across the nation, including Chicago and San Diego, also have cracked down. Commissioner Shelly Petrolia said Delray Beach had to join the movement.
    “This is an issue not only about right and wrong but what society is willing to accept as proper treatment of man’s best friend,” Petrolia said. “And it boils down to who will and who will not take a stand against this horrible industry that appears to be more interested in money than living beings.”
    Commissioners Jordana Jarjura and Al Jacquet professed their support for the ordinance, but also expressed disappointment in the behavior of human beings since the public debate began in April.
    “While I understand the passion behind the issue,” Jarjura said, “it’s disappointing how disrespectful we’ve been to each other on both sides of the issue.”
    Jacquet criticized supporters and opponents of the law for “hypocrisy and grandstanding” and wondered why the ordinance should pertain only to dogs and cats.
    “If this is about protecting animals, then let’s make Delray Beach an animal-friendly city all around,” he said, and asked why the activists weren’t also outraged over “slaughtering pigs.”
    The ordinance calls for fines of at least $400 for retailers that sell dogs or cats from unscrupulous breeders and offers assurances to potential pet owners that the animals they buy won’t have breeding-related health issues.
    City police and code officers would enforce the new law, if it survives further public comment and a final commission vote.

By Dan Moffett
    
    Ocean Ridge residents may soon get some definitive answers on how commissioners plan to resolve the town’s long-running debate over public beach access.
    The town commission listened to more opinions from residents during a June 23 workshop and then agreed to draft a new comprehensive beach ordinance and write new language for signs — all of it targeted for release during the regular Aug. 4 commission meeting.
    At the workshop, commissioners:
    • Gave unanimous approval to authorizing Town Attorney Ken Spillias to rewrite the town’s beach laws into a beach use ordinance. The revision would consolidate existing laws and restrictions — including bans on glass, dogs, littering and vehicles such as motorbikes and ATVs. Spillias said the new ordinance would apply to all Ocean Ridge beaches, both public and privately owned.
    • Gave Town Manager Ken Schenck the assignment of drafting language for new signs for the public beaches and dune crossovers. The signs are to inform beachgoers of the town’s ordinance and the possible penalties for those who violate it. Still unresolved is whether the signs will say “Public Access” or designate public and private areas.
    • Instructed Schenck to work with Police Chief Chris Yannuzzi to explore the potential costs and benefits of adding another officer or two to the department to help patrol the town’s beaches. Several members of the town commission, James Bonfiglio in particular, have argued that an added police presence on the beach will help deter the misconduct that homeowners have complained about.
    • Assigned the town’s Planning and Zoning Commission the task of developing long-term goals for beach management. The panel is to consider the implications of growth in surrounding communities and what Ocean Ridge should do to prepare for it. The planning won’t get started until October, however, when the commission’s snowbirds return to town.
    Commissioner Richard Lucibella reluctantly joined with the majority in voting for the new ordinance after arguing that it was impossible to enforce the law and prevent trespassing until the commission drew a line in the sand between public and private.
    “You’re going to have to delineate something reasonable. What is the public land? What is the private land?” Lucibella said. “Education and enforcement is the problem. We don’t do either.”
    Lucibella found no support on the commission for a motion to use the “rack line” — the line of seaweed debris that washes up on each high tide — to define the boundary between the public and private beaches.
    “The concept that this town in any circumstance would refuse to honor the private land rights of a taxpayer is anathema to me. Sooner or later you’re going to have to deal with it,” Lucibella said.
    Mayor Geoffrey Pugh said the rack line “goes all over the place” and couldn’t be trusted as a reliable standard. He said the focus of the commission’s work shouldn’t be on dealing with trespassing but finding ways to prevent beachgoers from misbehaving and violating the town’s rules.
    “The body of what we’re trying to do here is mainly dissecting what is good and bad behavior and can we make sure that it is enforced,” Pugh said.
    Said Vice Mayor Lynn Allison: “The property boundary issue, we’re not sure about,’’ but the misconduct issues, “we agree on.”
    Spillias urged the commission to move forward by deciding what behavior is legal or illegal everywhere on the beaches, without distinguishing different rules for the public and private areas. He said restrictions on dogs and glass should apply to everyone, including homeowners, and not just visitors on the public sand.
    “We have to look at what is prohibited everywhere,” he said. ;

By Dan Moffett
    
    Gulf Stream commissioners moved with unusual speed to pass unanimously an emergency ordinance that brings the town’s code in line with federal disability housing requirements.
    The new law took effect immediately, without the typical second reading and the typical second commission vote for approval, according to Town Clerk Rita Taylor.
    Why the hurry and what’s the emergency? Sober houses. And Martin O’Boyle.
    A week before the June 13 commission meeting, O’Boyle sent a letter to the town announcing he was moving forward with a plan to open sober houses in Gulf Stream.
    “I have made a decision to form a company to acquire houses in Gulf Stream for use as Sober Houses,” O’Boyle said in a letter to Town Manager William Thrasher. “I intend to begin the implementation of this program forthwith.”
    O’Boyle, a longtime resident and unsuccessful candidate for commissioner who has filed numerous lawsuits against the town over a wide range of issues, ended the letter with an admonishment, if not a warning: “And, I remind you, that it is our intention to move forward in a rapid fashion. Consequently, we would intend to hold the Town of Gulf Stream accountable for any damages we incurred as a result of purposeful delays.”
    Mayor Scott Morgan declined to draw a connection between the hastily passed ordinance and O’Boyle’s announcement.
    “We thought we had to act in an expedited manner because this issue has been coming up here and in other communities,” Morgan said. “The recent case in Boca Raton was also a factor.”
    The Boca Raton case dates back to 2006, and Gulf Stream Town Attorney John Randolph said he consulted with the city’s attorneys and used the ordinance that ultimately came out of the court ruling as a model for the town’s new law.
    U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks ruled that a Boca Raton ordinance banning sober houses from residential neighborhoods was discriminatory and violated the federal Fair Housing Act. Plaintiffs in the case hailed the decision as a victory for recovering addicts, who deserved protection under federal law, including also the Americans with Disabilities Act, as handicapped and disabled people.
    Boca Raton City Council members had passed an ordinance in 2002 that would have required sober houses to move into areas zoned for medical centers and hotels, before lawsuits forced the city to back off.
Sober houses are homes where people in recovery for drug or alcohol problems live while they are receiving treatment at other sites. No treatment takes place in sober houses.
    Like the Boca ordinance, the Gulf Stream law allows “disabled individuals (or qualifying entities) to request reasonable accommodations” that could include exceptions or modifications of the town’s housing codes.
    The ordinance has a provision that could allow the town to request medical information from sober house residents to document their conditions.
The law says the town should “treat such medical information as confidential information of the disabled individual.”
    O’Boyle urged the commission to delay action on the ordinance and suggested that requiring the disclosure of medical records might violate HIPPA rules — the American Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 that sets standards for patients’ privacy.
    O’Boyle asked Randolph whether the town would request medical records or require them. Randolph said the language in the Boca law had been approved by Middlebrooks himself.
    “This is an ordinance that was approved by a judge in the Southern District Court of Florida,” he said. “I felt it was an appropriate ordinance on that basis to present to the commission.”
    To underscore the implementation of the new rules, commissoners took another uncommon step: They held a special meeting on July 1, with the sole purpose of voting for the ordinance a second time. It was re-adopted unanimously and the meeting adjourned in five minutes.

By Dan Moffett  

    Council members have approved extending an agreement with Palm Beach County that helps the town and its residents to apply for federal HUD assistance. But it wasn’t easy.
    The council first said no to approving the extension on a 3-1 vote, with only Alderman Karen Wiggins supporting the resolution.
    Other members complained that they were unaware that the contract with the county existed and wanted more time to get more information. The agreement, which has been in force for years, lets the town join with the county and take advantage of grants and assistance from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
    The federal government offers housing assistance to elderly and low-income residents, as well as help for communities that might need to repair infrastructure or deal with damage after storms. Virtually every municipality in the state participates in the HUD programs either directly or through interlocal partnerships.
    Clement Clarke, a planner with the county’s Department of Economic Sustainability, told the council he needed to have an answer from Briny Breezes by August for the town to participate in the program. Without an extension, the town would have to wait up to three years for the next chance to partner with the county again.
    The deadline put the council under pressure because it has no regular meeting scheduled for July because of vacations. (Mayor Mike Hill and President Sue Thaler were absent “with notice” from the June 26 meeting.)
    Wiggins insisted that the council reconsider the issue and take another vote. She argued that extending the agreement with the county costs the town nothing and will ensure that the opportunity to apply for federal assistance is available if needed.
    Town Attorney John Skrandel agreed: “I don’t believe there’s anything that would be a down side to this.”
    Acting President Barbara Molina and Aldermen Jim McCormick and Bobby Jurovaty were persuaded, changed their votes and joined Wiggins, making it unanimous approval for extending the agreement.
    In other business:
    • The council is moving ahead with plans to make the deputy town clerk position a part-time town employee, instead of an independent contractor. Aldermen gave unanimous approval to advertising the opening.
    Lesa Shoeman, who has been the deputy clerk since September 2012, was absent from the June meeting. Shoeman had wanted to continue working for the town as a contractor, but council members said they expect her to apply for the newly defined town employee position.
    Wiggins said she recommends having the clerk on hand to keep the town hall open from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Monday through Friday, as part of the new job description.
    • The council reaffirmed some important dates:
    Budget workshops for the next fiscal year will be held at 1 p.m. on July 8, 10 and 11 in the Town Hall.
    The next regular town council meeting is scheduled for Aug. 28, followed by meetings on Sept. 25 and Oct. 23.