Marisa Vinas was recently accepted into the University of Miami Chapter of the Golden Key International Honour Society. Marisa serves as Vice President of Membership Communications on Golden Key’s Executive Board. Members are in the top 15 percent of their class and have an interest in service and leadership development. Marisa, a junior, is studying neuroscience psychobiology with plans to follow in her father’s footsteps as a plastic surgeon after she completes her education. She is the daughter of Dr. Luis and Theresa Vinas of Ocean Ridge. Photo provided

Gulf Stream’s Mayor Bill Koch (center right) and Town Manager Bill Thrasher (right) recently joined Homeowners Association President Julio Martinez (center left) and the board’s project manager, Ned McDonald (left) to mark the official opening of the new front entrance to Gulf Stream’s Place Au Soleil. Photo by Jerry Lower

Members of the Literacy Center Committee gather at the site of the future home of the Literacy Coalition of Palm Beach County at 3651 Quantum Blvd. in Boynton Beach.  The 12,204-square-foot Literacy Center for Education, Training and Outreach will serve as the hub for literacy services provided throughout Palm Beach County.  The anticipated project cost is $3.5 million, and the capital campaign has raised $2.27 million from more than 300 donors. Groundbreaking is anticipated as soon as all pledges are in place to fund the construction in its entirety.  From left: Board President Maggie Dickenson, board member Kristin Calder, Past Board President Laurie Gildan, board member Audrey McGlothlin, Literacy Coalition CEO Darlene Kostrub, Board Vice President Lisa Koza, Literacy Coalition Founding President and Capital Campaign Chair Gale Howden, and board members Bettina Young and Bryan DeFrances. Photo provided

Bill Finley (left), board chair of Community Partnership Group and its member agency Parent-Child Center, is moved by receiving the William F. Finley Founder’s Award recognizing courageous and visionary leadership for community change. Patrick McNamara, CEO, presented the award at the recent Chairman’s Club cocktail fundraiser held at Finley’s Ocean Ridge home. Members of the Chairman’s Club support the Parent-Child Center and its programs, Palm Beach County’s largest provider of services to children and their families dealing with issues related to abuse, neglect and critical illness. Photo provided

Dr. Ra’anan Gissin, senior adviser to former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, spoke on behalf of Jewish National Fund in early December at the Manalapan home of Joan and Bill Bernstein. Gissin is one of Israel’s leading spokesmen on security, strategic issues and the peace process.

LEFT: Gissin (left) joins hosts Joan and Bill Bernstein. Bill Bernstein is a member of the JNF Palm Beach Board of Directors. Photo provided

If there’s one character trait that runs through Harold “Sonny” Van Arnem’s life, it’s determination.
    As a teenager, he was determined to make the football team even though he’d never played the game. He achieved his goal, playing alongside future football great Roger Staubach and catching the eye of Ohio State coach Woody Hayes.
    Then — crash.  The summer before his senior year, Van Arnem severely injured both arms and hands when he was accidentally hurled through a glass door. They told him to forget about playing football. But after at least a dozen surgeries, his gritty determination put him back on the gridiron. He would go on to win a college football scholarship.
    Van Arnem says those early challenges shaped him for an entrepreneurial career that had plenty of ups and downs. A pioneer in remote interactive computing and computer leasing, he engineered high-stakes business deals with lucrative payoffs. He developed various businesses and sometimes got burned by his partners. It’s all chronicled in his autobiography (working title: Sonny Side Up), which he plans to publish electronically.  
    Today, at age 70, he’s busy running Van Arnem Properties Inc. of Delray Beach. His real estate investments include the Town Square office building, Santa Fe Suites and miscellaneous commercial properties in the city’s central business district.
    But his true passion is communications technology, a field he knows intimately.
    While serving on the Delray Beach Education Board, Van Arnem helped advance the “Digital Divide” project, a city/county/school district initiative to supply needy families with refurbished computers, free Internet access, and training.
    “I learned that thousands of families in southwest Delray Beach were surviving on food stamps. The kids had no computers. How could they succeed in school?” Van Arnem said.
    He and others worked to get funding commitments to pay for PC refurbishing and wireless routers; the first 10 Delray Beach families have been served under the program as officials continue to seek funding.
    Looking back, Van Arnem says his determination may be a genetic trait; he had a strong Irish mother and a hard-working Dutch father. Or, it may have been a gift from the Almighty.
    “I think the most important thing is the connection you have with God,” he says.

    — Paula Detwiller

10 Questions

    Q. Where did you grow up and go to school? How do you think that has influenced you?
    A. I grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, and attended Catholic schools from first grade through high school. I got a football scholarship to Xavier University, stayed one year, and transferred to the University of Cincinnati to join their team. I graduated with a degree in economics. My first job was with General Electric. I was recruited for GE’s business training course, which was, and still is, the best training of its kind. That training set the stage for everything I’ve accomplished in business.

    Q. Tell us about your career. What were the highlights?
    A. I helped launch GE’s computer division in Phoenix, back in the days of mainframe computers, when IBM dominated the industry.
In 1966, GE moved me to Detroit and in 1968 I started my first company called Applied Computer Time Share, which marketed access to GE mainframes via remote terminals. We processed transactions for more than 20 banks in Michigan electronically, long before that was commonplace, and at one point we had more than 100 manufacturing companies outsourcing their data processing to us.
    During those years, I helped establish a doctoral program in computer engineering at the University of Detroit.
    Later I got involved in cable TV network ownership. That exposed me to the entertainment world, and I produced a number of motion pictures, including Love at First Bite with actor George Hamilton.
    I was one of the founders of the North American Soccer League, the first professional soccer league in the U.S., and I owned a team called the Detroit Express, which played at the Silverdome. I also started and ran a number of communications technology companies over the years, including Cybergate, the very first Internet Service Provider in the southeast U.S.  

    Q. How did you get into the commercial real estate business?
    A. When the “dot-com” industry imploded, I was living and working in Europe. I decided to return to the U.S., regroup, and invest in land for development. Big mistake! Who could have predicted what happened to real estate? Anyway, I have my commercial real estate business in Delray Beach, and I am waiting to find a technology company to acquire or start.

    Q. What advice do you have for young entrepreneurs starting out in business today?  
    A. Make a plan, work your plan, and be committed to it. Find people who buy into the plan and can execute it according to your vision. Be patient. Continue to reinvent your business. Don’t quit.
    Q. Tell us about your family.
    A. My wife, Bridgette, and I have been married for 25 years. We have three sons together: Sean, who’s a freshman at Atlantic Community High School; Maxwell, a student and semi-pro skateboarder; and Adam, a music student, artist and writer living in Colorado.
    I also had four children during my first marriage. Harold Louis IV is a web developer and the founder of Money.net. Heather, the family anchor, is married and living in Beirut, Lebanon. And my oldest daughter, Aleise, works for Prudential Securities in the Midwest.
    My second-oldest daughter, Heidi, became a quadriplegic at age 16 after a horrible accident.
 She rose above it and became a crusader for people with disabilities. She won numerous honors for her work, including an award from President Clinton. It broke our hearts when Heidi died in her mid-30s.
    
    Q. Have you had mentors in your life? Individuals who have inspired your life decisions?
    A. My high school football coach, Jim McCarthy, inspired me by example. In four years of playing for him, he never spoke to me personally. After the final game of my senior year, he calls me down to his office and says, “You know, we’ve never talked, but I want to tell you how much I enjoy you as a person and a player, and I want to see you succeed in life.” The truth was, he was full of love and caring.

    Q. Do you have a favorite quote that inspires your decisions?  
    A. “Never complain, never explain.” [Benjamin Disraeli]

    Q. How did you choose to make your home in coastal Delray Beach?
    A. In 1990 we relocated our company, Finalco Inc., from Virginia to Boca Raton. Finalco was one of the largest computer and telecom leasing companies in the world, and we took over the 100,000-square-foot building that formerly housed IBM.
My wife and I had always dreamed of living on the ocean, so we bought property in coastal Delray and built on it.
    
    Q. What is your favorite part about living in Delray Beach?  
    A. The sunrises, the ocean, and the weather.

    Q. Who or what makes you laugh?
    A. The scary excitement of things makes me laugh — like the first time I ever flew on the Concorde supersonic jet. We were going so fast, the plane started to shake, and it felt like the wings were going to fall off. I burst out laughing because of the exhilaration of it.

The current Ocean Avenue Bridge was built in 2001 in Boynton Beach. The first span was built in 1911. Photo by Tim Stepien

By Tim O’Meilia
    
Perhaps it was the drowning of a 19-year-old girl in 1909 as she tried to ferry across what was called the Inland Canal that spurred the construction of the first Ocean Avenue bridge linking what it now Ocean Ridge and Boynton Beach.
    More likely it was tourism — ignited by Henry Flagler’s railroad and Maj. Nathan S. Boynton’s oceanfront hotel — that prompted the building of a wooden swing bridge in 1911 so Midwest visitors could more easily reach the beach from the train station.
    That one-lane wooden bridge, barely wide enough for a horse and carriage, lasted 25 years until a more modern, Depression-era concrete two-lane drawbridge was finished in late 1936 at the cost of $75,000.
    The political dispute over where a third and final version of the bridge would be built rattled on for nearly a quarter century before a higher span was completed in 2001 at the Ocean Avenue site of the original ferry.
    But those early years are the most fascinating. Histories compiled by the Boynton Beach Historical Society, Ocean Ridge historian Gail Adams Aaskov and Boynton Beach Library archivist Janet DeVries tell the story of the early days of Ocean Ridge and Boynton Beach.
    The Ocean Avenue bridge was a key piece of that story. Boynton, a Michigan soldier, politician and businessman, bought land in the mid-1890s. Taking a cue from Flagler, he built a seaside hotel in 1897, just south of where the bridge is today.
    A year earlier, Flagler’s Florida East Coast Railway reached the area. Boynton’s five-story hotel had 45 rooms, a wraparound porch and several cottages to attract the area’s first snowbirds from the Midwest.
    The only way from the train station to the hotel was a small flat-bottomed dredge called a lighter. Ladies wearing long dresses and holding parasols and gentlemen in their vested suits stood on it and pulled themselves across by a chain that stretched across the narrow East Coast Canal.
    An Oct. 25, 1909, story in The Palm Beach Post tells the tragic tale of two Indiana sisters and their German shepherd jumping onto the lighter.
    “All went well until the dog started towards the end of the barge where the unfortunate young woman was busy pulling across. As the dog neared her, the barge listed, and suddenly, the three were thrown into the canal,” the article said.
    One sister swam to safety but 19-year-old Sofrona Austin drowned. The fate of the dog went untold.
    The swing bridge was completed in 1911 and served as more than just a more convenient way to reach the hotel. It became a money-maker for the Florida Coast Line Canal Co., which collected a toll from vessels navigating up and down the canal.
    Bridge tenders collected the tolls, lowered a chain across the canal and opened the span by walking in a circle while pushing a wrench-like crank around the foundation set in the middle of the canal. Tenders lived in a small house where the Banana Boat sits today.
    As the federal government started to connect the lagoons and canals along the coast to form the Intracoastal Waterway, the dismantling of the swing bridge was ordered in the early 1930s. But local residents demanded a new bridge in its place.
    The second Ocean Avenue bridge — a bascule bridge — was the first of a series of Palm Beach County projects built by the federal Public Works Administration during the Depression, according to a 1937 story in The Palm Beach Post-Times. The county contributed $33,750 toward the two-year project. The bridge opened in the winter of 1936.
    In 1976, state road engineers labeled the bridge “functionally obsolete” and so began three decades of bickering over where a new, higher, wider bridge should be built.
    Boynton Beach officials wanted the new span built one block north at Boynton Beach Boulevard, hoping to rejuvenate a flagging downtown. Ocean Ridge residents objected to losing homeowners’ property and preferred a smaller bridge. An Ocean Ridge doctor sued to keep the bridge out of his backyard.
    By 1990, all sides agreed that the boulevard would be the spot. But environmentalists waded into the fray, literally, claiming protected mangroves would be destroyed. State environmental officials agreed, refusing to issue a permit in 1994.
    Back the plans went to Ocean Avenue. This time Ocean Ridge wanted to declare the 1936 version a historic landmark to prevent its demolition. Coastal Towers residents didn’t want to lose their view. Banana Boat owners didn’t want to lose their entrances.
    Never mind that repeated mechanical breakdowns forced its frequent closing, backing traffic up on the Woolbright Road bridge. As the bridge deteriorated, firetrucks and ambulances were banned and heavy trucks were forbidden to use the bridge.
    A $24.5 million plan for an 11-foot taller, 45-foot wider Ocean Avenue bridge was approved finally in 1996 but construction did not begin until late 1998.
    Some called it neoclassical, with its decorative arches, rounded piers, open railings and four towers. Others labeled it “Disney-esque” for its turquoise handrails, street lighting and decorative ironwork of leaping fish.
    It opened in March 2001 — seven months late.
    Said one observer:  “It’s like a fairyland.”                

                 Decorative grillwork with a nautical theme decorates the pedestrian walkways across the Ocean Avenue bridge in Boynton Beach.  Photo by Tim Stepien

Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are.
— Bertolt  Brecht

    Construction cranes on the horizon. Traffic backups on A1A as property is cleared for new construction and roof trusses, swimming pool tiles and landscaping are delivered at new home sites. These are some of the unmistakable signs of change that began in 2011 along our coast.  
    What’s ahead for 2012? I don’t have a crystal ball, but here are some changes I know we can watch for:
    In both Manalapan and Ocean Ridge, elected officials are discussing allowing larger homes to be built.
    Ocean Ridge will likely revisit its ban on commercial properties as Manalapan continues to discuss the size of beach houses and the current and future zoning of the more-than-four-acre Benjamin property on The Point.
    In Gulf Stream, we’ll be watching as new six-story oceanfront condos are occupied and the first subdivision in recent memory makes it way through the approval process.
    In Delray Beach, small houses will continue to be replaced by larger homes and any remaining empty lots will be built on. And how those homes will be used (and by whom) will continue to be a hot topic — one that could have repercussions in neighboring coastal towns.
    In South Palm Beach, one strong nor’easter (or hurricane) will send oceanfront condos scrambling again to reinforce their seawalls against pounding waves and disappearing dunes.
    In Lantana, the closing of the bridge will force Hypoluxo Island residents to spend a couple of years driving through South Palm Beach and Ocean Ridge to reach the mainland.
    And in Briny Breezes, the now-annual fear brokering about the park’s future infrastructure needs has begun and is steaming toward what could become an irreversible discussion with a new prospective buyer for the 48-acre waterfront location.
    To add to the uncertainty of these changes is a March election. Several commission seats are up for grabs and rumors of long-serving mayors not seeking re-election are sounding more and more likely.
    With shifting governmental leadership — and an increasing number of lawyers at commission meetings — it’s hard to miss the incoming tide of change in our little towns.
    If the change that’s made is the change you want, it will require turning off the incessant television fixation with the national elections and paying attention to what’s being discussed in the planning and zoning meetings at the local level. We have dedicated residents who volunteer to serve on these boards, but they need to hear from residents as to what is and isn’t acceptable zoning and development for our area. This is normally the first place that proposals surface.
    If there were ever a time for our coastal towns to join forces in the development of an area master plan, the time is now.
    Will we agree on every issue that arises in 2012? Not likely. But if we can locate the low-hanging fruit and plant seeds illustrating our unified commitment to the coastal lifestyle we want to preserve, we can lay the groundwork for our future.
    To paraphrase Jack Welch: Let’s change before we have to.

— Mary Kate Leming
Editor, The Coastal Star

By Tim Pallesen

Catholics were few in number when the Delray Beach Catholic Women’s Club started the first parish.
St. Vincent Ferrer Church celebrated its first Mass at the old Delray Theatre in 1941.
Today, the region from Boynton Beach to Boca Raton has nine Catholic parishes.
But St. Vincent’s remains strong in its 70th anniversary year because of a focus on families, a growing school and its own special charm.
“The first families were very strong in their faith,” said Judy Palivoda, whose parents were among the founders.
“We had mostly farmland and dairy then,” she said. “The theater was the place to use because there wasn’t any place else.”
Baptists outnumbered Catholics by a wide margin at the time. No Catholic parish existed between Lake Worth and Fort Lauderdale when the 10 ladies of the Catholic Women’s Club started St. Vincent’s with help with a Lake Worth priest while their husbands were busy in the fields.
Palivoda’s mother, Maurieta Nichols, wrote as church historian that Catholics here were “elated and grateful” when Irish priests and nuns then embraced St. Vincent’s as their mission.
The Rev. John Kellaghan arrived from Ireland in 1944 as the perfect personality to promote the new congregation.
“He was full of life and out in the community doing community things,” Palivoda said. “That had a lot to do with the early popularity of the church and school.”
The Irish priest even became the first charter member of the Delray Beach Elks Club to spread word around town that the Catholics had arrived.
“People knew Father Kellaghan, whether they were Catholic or not.”
Kellaghan negotiated the purchase of seven acres on what’s now George Bush Boulevard and began raising money to build St. Vincent’s first church.
Masses at the Delray Theatre ended in 1949 when St. Vincent’s dedicated its church with a capacity for 500 people.
The 100-by-51-foot concrete structure often had pigeons in the rafters that required special attention before worship services could begin. “We had to make sure the seats were clean before Mass,” Palivoda laughed.
The opening of St. Vincent’s school in 1955 would prove to be important for the congregation’s long-term success.
“Father Kellaghan wanted to help families,” the school’s current principal, Vikki Delgado, said. “What better way to carry out the mission of the parish than by building a school?”
Children who lived in the south county had risen before dawn to ride a bus to attend Sacred Heart Catholic School in Lake Worth. “But that was quite a trek in those days. It made for a long day,” Palivoda said.
The opening of the south county’s first Catholic school brought more families into the parish.
“People from surrounding towns came to St. Vincent’s,” she said. “We needed more church services to accommodate all the people.”

First nuns arrive
Four Sisters of Mercy nuns arrived from Ireland that year to educate the Catholic children. Both parents and students at St. Vincent’s were delighted.
“The nuns were strict but a lot of fun,” said Palivoda, who enrolled in the school’s first graduating class.
“They had quite a brogue,” she recalled. “Sometimes we didn’t quite catch what they were telling us.”
Sister Mary Clare was Ana McNamara’s favorite teacher.
“She radiated like a gentle spirit. She never raised her voice in the classroom. I loved going to her classroom,” said McNamara, who was so inspired by Sister Mary Clare that she is now a teacher at St. Vincent’s herself.
“The nuns believe that faith formation is first and foremost in education,” McNamara said.
A convent was built next to the school in 1961 for the increasing number of Sisters of Mercy nuns. The Rev. John Skehan replaced Kellaghan in 1963. A new church with seating for 1,100 opened in 1970.

Crime takes wind out
The momentum at St. Vincent’s suffered a blow when Skehan and his successor, the Rev. Francis Guinan, were convicted of misusing church funds in 2009. Police originally said $8.6 million in church money was missing, though that number has been disputed.
St. Vincent’s parish lost 500 families as a result of the scandal.
But now the parish is growing again. Membership is up to 2,900 families after 100 new families joined the congregation this past year.
Monsignor Thomas J. Skindeleski, the first American-born priest at St. Vincent’s, replaced Guinan in 2005. He credits the renewed popularity of the school for making the turnaround happen.
“The school is our big feature once again,” Skindeleski said. “Parents are moving into the parish because they want to get our quality education.”
Delgado was hired as its new school principal in 2008. Class sizes were reduced while the school was able to keep tuition costs low to increase enrollment.

Fest, nuns distinguish school
St. Vincent’s annual festival — the largest by any parish in the diocese — raises more than $100,000 each February to support the school. The festival began as a one-day St. Patrick’s Day event to honor the parish’s Irish tradition. Now it’s a three-day multicultural celebration that reflects the many ethnic backgrounds at St. Vincent’s.
Delgado sent schoolchildren out into the community to feed the poor after the scandal.
“The worst thing we could have done afterward would have been to hide,” Delgado said. “We needed to let the community know that St. Vincent’s is still here and vibrant.”
Most Catholic parishes in South Florida no longer have nuns. The Sisters of Mercy at St. Vincent’s have retired one-by-one and returned to Ireland.
But Skindeleski invited other nuns in 2008 to give children the same spiritual guidance. The three Servant Sisters of the Immaculate Conception who answered his call are easy to distinguish in their full-length habits.
“Nuns make a real difference by their presence in modern-day parishes, as much as their predecessors did in the old days,” Skindeleski said.
“The sisters are back to develop that spiritual component to education that parents see as important,” said McNamara, who gives tours to new students and parents.
“With all the chaos in today’s world, St. Vincent’s is still the solid ground for families to stand on.”             

St. Vincent Ferrer February Festival
Friday, Saturday and Sunday,
Feb. 24-26
St. Vincent Ferrer Catholic Church, 840 George Bush Blvd.,
Delray Beach
Live music in outside tent and indoor Irish pub, carnival rides including roller coaster and Ferris wheel, food, flea market and entertainment. Highlights include antique car show and fish fry Friday night, Dolphins cheerleaders Saturday, and Irish dancers after Sunday morning pancake breakfast.
Free general admission.
Unlimited rides $30 (one day) and $60 (weekend) or $25 and $50 in advance.
Call 276-6892 or see www.stvincentferrer.com for details.

Caron Treatment Center video: Ocean Drive | Ocean_Drive_brochure.pdf

By Margie Plunkett and Tim Pallesen

Beach area residents rallied in December in protest of planned luxury beach-side sober houses, filling commission chambers at two meetings and spurring city leaders to scour law in search of changes that will protect residential neighborhoods.
Neighbors protested laws that allow houses in residential neighborhoods to be rented in such a way that dozens of unrelated people can reside there during the course of a year.
Residents argued that the safety and security of their neighborhoods were compromised by allowing sober houses — which they claimed are big business that’s contrary to residential use.
“We’re asking for support for preserving single family neighborhoods,” said Mary Renaud, president of the Beach Property Owners Association.
The city showed its support at its Jan. 3 meeting when commissioners agreed to hire the South Florida law firm, Weiss Serota Helfman Pastoriza Cole & Boniske as well as the powerful Washington D.C. legal and lobbying firm, Patton, Boggs and Blow to assess the city’s sober housing ordinances and regulations. A maximum expenditure of $125,000 was approved.
The outcry was sparked when word leaked out that an addiction treatment center had purchased a house at 740 N. Ocean Blvd. for $1.6 million and had been approved to house up to seven people while they went through treatment at another location.
Residents pored through a stack of city records and determined that the Pennsylvania-based treatment center, Caron Foundation, sought and had been granted permission for the sober house.
They also learned Caron had made a second “reasonable accommodation” request for another beach side house.
While the application from West Palm Beach attorney James Green did not divulge the intended address, citing confidentiality protections, it did note that the house contained 7,481 square feet of living space.
Through other records, they learned that a six-bedroom, five-bath house at 1232 Seaspray Ave. was on the market for $2.995 million.  
It has 7,481 square feet of living space. As of early this month, the house was still on the market.
Andrew Rothermel a spokesman for Caron, a non-profit drug and alcohol abuse treatment agency with a center in Boca Raton, declined to comment on whether Caron had purchased the house at 740 N. Ocean Blvd.
Asked if there were any other houses Caron was interested in, he said, “There may be one more.”
Rothermel added: “We’ve been good neighbors in Delray for 20 years,” noting Caron owns a 46-unit apartment building off Lowson Boulevard for patients who need more support.
“We have every intention of maintaining the character of the neighborhood and being good neighbors.”

Change sought requiring fewer annual tenants
Within a week of the initial Dec. 13 Commission meeting where the BPOA and other neighbors first protested, the Planning and Zoning board recommended commissioners lower the number of times a home in a single-family residential neighborhood can be rented to twice a year. That was stricter than both the three-times-a-year policy commissioners had asked the board to consider at its Dec. 19 meeting and current law, which allows for six rentals a year.
The number of rentals, however, is only the beginning of review of the complex issue, City Attorney Brian Shutt said, adding there’s much research to do.
Planning and Zoning Chairman Cary Glickstein acknowledged: “We’re not going to accomplish everything tonight. This is a step. We want to draw a line in the sand and build from that.”
Members of the BPOA plus others grew noticeably perturbed at the Dec. 13 meeting when told that an ocean-side sober house had already been approved — but that the location of the property was protected by law and could not be revealed.
Another outcry went up when Mayor Woodie McDuffie said that if sober house properties are kept up, they won’t affect neighbors’ property values. The mayor cut the public hearings short when the crowd’s emotions heated further.
Warned at both meetings against making remarks that could be discriminatory when directed at “sober” or “halfway” houses, residents said they are against “transient” housing in all uses in residential districts, not just those that may be protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act or the Fair Housing Amendment.
Treatment centers have successfully argued in federal court that cities cannot discriminate against people with alcohol or drug addictions. In addition, they have maintained that they do not have to disclose locations of sober houses because the addresses of people in treatment are part of their medical records, and thus, confidential.

Complex ordinance requires careful review
During the commission meeting, former Commissioner Gary Eliopoulos said that in July 2009 he and other city lawmakers had changed regulations, addressing the number of rentals as well as limiting the number of unrelated adults living in a house to three.
Eliopoulos said there are instances in which the law has been interpreted to mean that each bed or room in a house can be rented six times a year.
“I’m urging this commission to go back and look at that ordinance,” he said. “If we got it wrong, I would urge you to get outside counsel and get it right.”
McDuffie later in the meeting discussed “not rushing it” in reviewing the complex ordinances. He also noted that it could cost the city to boost enforcement to make sure transient housing is following code.
“This is going to send a clear signal that transient housing is going to be scrutinized,” he said.
 Heeding those words, the city has hired recently retired Police Lt. Marc Woods to inspect and monitor transient houses throughout the city as well as educate the owners to city regulations.
McDuffie later sent a letter to the local legislative delegation, urging the state to step in to license and regulate the substance-abuse treatment industry.
“We need your help on this issue more than anything else
I have confronted since taking office,” McDuffie wrote.
“Our Village by the Sea receives rave reviews for the beach, Atlantic Avenue, our events and how well it is run, but we have another name that is not so complimentary: The Drug Rehab Capital of the United States.”
During the Planning and Zoning board meeting, Director Paul Dorling said that sober house  owners come before his office to seek “reasonable accommodation” to allow more residents than the law permits. He did not recall denying any of the dozens of requests for sober houses throughout the city.

Concern about ‘strangers’ and litigation
Resident Bill McCauley said he had been good friends with the owner of the home at 740 N. Ocean Blvd. that apparently was purchased by local attorney Michael Weiner for the Caron Foundation.
“Rick was a great neighbor,” McCauley said, noting he died last year of cancer.  Caron plans 48 or more different tenants each year, McCauley said. “How can I have a neighborhood relationship with 48 different strangers?”
The possibility of a lawsuit blanketed discussion at both government meetings, from note of previous Boca Raton litigation that has guided Delray Beach policy over concerns of potential suits from neighbors or sober home operators.
In that vein, attorney Weiner had a court reporter and videographer at the Dec. 19 Planning and Zoning meeting.  
Residents urged officials not to be swayed by the threat of a lawsuit.
“There are going to be lawsuits no matter what,” said resident and lawyer Scott Richman, explaining that the board’s actions shouldn’t be formulated merely to avoid a suit. “First thing: You need to protect the citizens.”
Warned Caron’s Rothermel: other cities have lost lawsuits when they opposed similar requests for sober houses in residential neighborhoods.
“They suffered in court and spent a tremendous amount of money fighting it.”                 

Caron Treatment Center video: Ocean Drive | Ocean_Drive_brochure.pdf

By Tim Pallesen

Neighbors weren’t aware last January when Caron Treatment Centers applied to operate a top-tier sober house steps from the ocean.
They weren’t aware a few weeks later when the city gave the Pennsylvania-based Caron approval to operate a five-bed facility without even knowing the facility’s address.
They weren’t aware last April when Caron paid $1,595,000 through a local attorney to buy a house at 740 N. Ocean Blvd.
    And by the time neighbors learned early last month about the planned rehab retreat for wealthy executives, movie stars and pro athletes with addictions, it might have been too late to do anything about it.
    But they soon were fighting back.
    Mindy Farber, a civil rights attorney who owns a house in coastal Delray Beach, was contacted by angered coastal property owners seeking legal advice to oppose Caron.
    Farber said Caron’s application was “inadequate and required much more information and scrutiny.”
    She also believed the city would be on sound legal footing if it tightened its regulations regarding the number of people allowed to live in a sober house and limited the turnover.
    Word of the proposed seaside enclave for well-to-do rehabbing people trickled out last month after neighbors heard rumors and checked out Caron’s website. They noticed a familiar house.
    The website describe the house’s “away from it all” setting as perfect for paddle boarding, kayaking and walks on the beach just steps from “Delray Beach’s small town, urban chic charm.”
    “This is outrageous,” said Bill McCauley, one of the Ocean Boulevard neighbors urging Delray Beach officials to tighten laws to prevent transient housing in single-family residential neighborhoods. “This is not welcome in our quiet beach community.”
    Sober houses for recovering alcoholics and drug addicts aren’t new in Delray Beach. But no houses were known to exist east of the Intracoastal Waterway.
    Until now.
    Caron says it is marketing its “Ocean Drive” residence to a wealthy clientele that demands all the amenities. A lesser address won’t do.
    “These are people of influence and affluence who are running your brokerage firm or might be your banker,” Caron executive vice president Andrew Rothermel said. “They are high performing but they have a chemical dependency.
    “They don’t do well in a facility that has fewer amenities,” Rothermel said. Among the amenities planned for Ocean Drive, set to open this year: 24-hour staffing, and around-the-clock nutritionists and chefs, according to Caron’s website.
    About two weeks after residents began complaining about the Ocean Drive proposal, Caron removed from its website a video and brochure touting the facility.
    City records reviewed by The Coastal Star show that on Jan. 14, 2011, West Palm Beach attorney James Green applied  for “reasonable accommodations” for a residence to house recovering addicts that would be operated by Caron. He cited federal housing and anti-discrimination laws for not having to divulge the address of the house.
    Attorney Farber’s response: Green’s request was a “misapplication of the law.”
    She added, “Since it does not appear that they are getting treatment in Delray, we see no reason for the confidentiality of the address and we see no basis for the residents being considered disabled.”
    Property records show Delray Beach attorney Michael Weiner acted as a trustee for an undisclosed entity when he purchased the 6,120-square-foot house last April.
    Weiner declined comment. Rothermel said that Weiner “has represented us from time to time on a number of issues.”
    Cary Glickstein, the chairman of the city’s planning and zoning board, blasted the transaction at a Dec. 19 zoning hearing.
    “This is a commercial enterprise using attorneys to take title so the corporation can remain anonymous as long as possible,” Glickstein said. “It just plain stinks.”
    Glickstein also criticized Paul Dorling, the city planning and zoning director, for approving Caron’s request to operate without asking for an address.
Dorling said, considering legal rulings that protect the privacy of recovering patients, that the address was “irrelevant.”
    “It seems absurd that the city is granting approval without an address,” Glickstein responded. “It’s crazy.”
    City officials have said that federal housing and disability-rights laws classify recovering addicts as disabled and entitled to “reasonable accommodations” for their recovery.
    Those laws, city officials say, also prohibit them from asking for addresses of treatment houses because patients’ addresses are part of their medical records, and thus, confidential.
    Dorling said Caron has city approval to house seven unrelated adults in the five-bedroom house. He has, he said, approved dozens of such “reasonable accommodation” requests allowing treatment centers to exceed the city law that restricts to three the number of unrelated people living together. Many of those had no address for the proposed facility.
    Meanwhile, work crews in late December were busy reroofing and renovating the interior of the yellow Bermuda-style house at 740 N. Ocean Blvd.
    Across the street, two oceanfront mansions are each on the market for $7.5 million.
    Realtor Wendy Overton said she notified the owners of one of the houses about the new neighbors after the zoning hearing. “They’re not happy,” she said.
    Neighbors who live on Southways Street, which borders the 740 N. Ocean house to the south, also are concerned.
    “It’s scary. I can’t think of anything I’d rather not have,” neighbor Lois Bromley said. “I certainly don’t believe it’s good to have these kinds of people close to children.”
Heidi Sargeant said she is a next door neighbor, has three children and is vehemently opposed to transient housing.  She said it has the potential to be unsafe, adding, “Where are we going to put the eight cars?”
The house will have a chef and a masseuse, she said, adding, “Where are these people parking? I’m concerned about the value of our homes. Do you want that next to you? I don’t think so.”                   

Carrie Delafield is one of four coastal women coordinating fundraising for Impact 100 — an organization whose mission is to make a gift of $100,000 to one local non-profit organization each year.  Photo by Jerry Lower

By Allen Whittemore

    Carrie Delafield knows a good charity when she sees one; after all, she has been volunteering her time for many years with many organizations around the country.  
    However, when the wife and mother of three girls aged 7, 8 and 9 became a full-time working woman (she owns Periwinkle on Atlantic Avenue in Delray Beach), she found that she was too busy to commit much time anywhere else.
    Then she was asked to become part of Impact 100 in Palm Beach County.
Impact 100 is gaining momentum around the country as a pre-eminent women’s organization whose mission is to make a gift of $100,000 to one charity each year.  
    “We can completely change a charity in one day,” says Delafield.
    Delafield was instantly taken with the organization and its makeup.  
“It is exactly what a charity should be: women working together for completely local causes.”  Further, it fits her busy schedule. “Impact 100 allows you to give as much or as little time as possible.”  
    Delafield has spent her time recruiting women, who each donate $1,000, plus a small membership fee, to participate.  
    Says chapter founder Tandy Robinson, “Carrie has overwhelming energy, and she has done an incredible job in bringing in new members and spreading the word. Her enthusiasm is contagious.”
    Both women are energized by the multigenerational nature of the 87 women who are enrolled in this, the inaugural year in Palm Beach. They are optimistic about finding the 13 recruits needed to reach the 100-member plateau.  
    That would mean the group would have $100,000 to donate at its first award ceremony in May.   
At that amount, the “grant is transformational to the recipient,” says Robinson.
    Any southern Palm Beach County nonprofit [501(c)(3)] organization is welcome to submit an application, and from these the Impact 100 subcommittee will divide them into five categories: arts and culture; education; environment; family; health and wellness. Five finalists will be chosen.
    A representative from each of the finalists will give a presentation at the May meeting before the entire membership votes.  The winner will receive a check that night.  
    The money is given without restriction. “This provides endless possibilities with $100,000,” says Delafield.  “And exponential opportunities for those involved.”  
     The Palm Beach County Chapter was organized using the blueprints of the other 14 Impact 100 groups around the country, but “we will have the flexibility to tailor it to our local needs,” says Robinson, who lives in coastal Delray Beach.
    She has had considerable help putting all of this together from Delafield, and also Lisa Mulhall of Delray Beach and Cindy Krebsbach of Boca Raton, who hope that Palm Beach County can match the incredible growth rate of the Vero Beach chapter.  That group has more than 300 members and is able to present three awards each year.
    “The spirit of community giving is truly awe inspiring,” says Delafield.                       

For more information, go to www.yourcommunity foundation.org/Impact-100-PalmBeachCounty.

By Thom Smith

For three decades, Lou Tyrrell has generated hard-hitting drama in Palm Beach County, first with the Theatre Club of the Palm Beaches, then with the Pope Theatre and with The Florida Stage, until last June, when the curtain fell with a thud. The move to the Kravis Center from Plaza del Mar in Manalapan had looked promising … until the economy fell into the pit. Tyrrell had no choice but to close.
    But once a trouper, always a trouper.  “I was trying to figure out what would be the next model,” Tyrrell said. “It was obvious that our crowd wasn’t going to follow us up to the Kravis. In the new model, people would have a place to come where the show was part of a larger experience.”
    Meanwhile, in Delray Beach, Alyona Ushe, with help from the Community Redevelopment Agency, was turning the ground floor of the new parking garage at Old School Square into a hub for the arts — musicians, actors, filmmakers, painters, sculptors, writers and art educators. Voila! The Arts Garage.
    To enhance the city’s image as a thriving arts community, the CRA also bought a 15,000-square-foot warehouse with 28-foot ceiling a couple of blocks away in Pineapple Grove. Envisioned as an “arts incubator,” it could provide space for galleries, studios, education and — here’s where Tyrrell fits in — a multi-discipline black-box theater.
    “They asked me to sit on advisory committee of the warehouse,” Tyrrell said. “Meanwhile Alyona asked me to do some theater at the garage. This was the new model I was looking for.”
    Tyrrell went right to work. A Master Playwright Series opens Feb. 7 with Israel Horowitz doing a reading of Line, which has been playing in New York for 39 years.  On Valentine’s Day, John Pielmeier will read Agnes of God, followed by Bill Mastrosimone (Feb. 21) and John Guare (Feb. 28). A reading festival of six new plays will follow in the first week of March and on March 16, Woody Sez will open for a three-week run. A musical with a bite, it celebrates the centennial of folk hero Woody Guthrie.
    “What Woody was writing about during the Great Depression is just as pertinent today. The echo is clear and consistent,” Tyrrell said. “We feel it’s a great way to launch a theater program.”
    In conjunction with the Guthrie production, Tyrrell will revive a Florida Stage program of education outreach. Students from five schools and two children’s centers will write monologues and songs based on their experiences during the downturn. The best will be performed.
     If Woody Sez Is successful, he’ll develop a full performance season for next year.
    “Here we go again! I was in my 30s when I did this the last time,” Tyrrell laughed. “To come full circle is a real gift to me and allows me to contribute to the community where I’ve lived for 30 years. If there’s a nook or cranny, we’ll try to turn it into a theater. We can’t help ourselves.”
                                        ***
The theater at the former Florida Stage in Manalapan has been empty for a year and a half now.
But Palm Beach Gardens producer and performer Alan Jacobson plans to change that.
Jacobson said he plans to bring a mixed bill of music, musical revues and theatrical works to the 252-seat space, which will be called The Plaza Theatre.
He promises “a hybrid between a regional theater and a performing arts space.”
Stephanie Young, marketing director for Plaza del Mar, confirmed the deal.
There will be a sneak preview of the theater during a grand opening for the plaza on Jan. 20. A soft opening, with the Dreyfoos School of Art troupe Dreyfoos to Go!, is set for Feb. 14. The first big act will be Donna McKechnie, who starred on Broadway as Cassie in A Chorus Line. Her show, My Musical Comedy Life, will consist of a performance and a master class. It is scheduled for Feb. 17-18, and a Neil Sedaka revue, Breaking Up is Hard to Do, is set for March 1-18.
For tickets, call 385-2683.
                                        ***
    Moving to a new home: More often than not, it’s dreadful. Things break or disappear. Maybe a caster falls off a chair  …  a file cabinet topples … the coffee urn shorts out.
    But this is one of those blue moons reserved for joy, and one look into Rena Blades’ eyes confirms that she’s tickled pink with her new digs. As executive director of the Palm Beach County Cultural Council she knows some things aren’t right  … yet … but she can see the big picture  —  a new home, a showcase for her organization and the artists it supports.
    “So many people have no idea we even exist,” Blades said a day after beginning the move into the building at 601 Lake Ave. in Lake Worth. “Now they’ll really know who we are and what we do.”
    Since it was founded in 1978, the Cultural Council has served as the spine for the county’s arts community. But its offices were hidden in a high-rise on Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard. Modern conveniences, but no style. The new headquarters on the main street in one of the county’s most artistically active cities will give it a face and certainly more personality.
    The space is boiling over with credentials. The Art Deco Lake Theater opened in February 1940. As a college student in the late ’60s, I saw Joseph Strick’s film version of James Joyce’s Ulysses there. As times changed, it served as a disco and a restaurant theater.
    In 1980, Patrick Lannan bought the building. He lived in Palm Beach and New York, was a director of ITT, a member of the executive committee of Macmillan Publishing and chairman of the board of Poetry magazine. He also collected art, lots of it, and he could use the renovated theater to spotlight promising artists.
    Three years later he was dead. In 1986, the Lannan Foundation decided to move most of the 5,000 works in his collection to Los Angeles, and in 1989 it donated the building and more than 1,100 works of art to Palm Beach State College (then Palm Beach Community College). It was renamed the PBCC Museum of Contemporary Art, but according to news reports, the college was not a good steward. Works were damaged. More than 100 disappeared.  
In 1999, Palm Beach attorney, arts patron and museum trustee Bob Montgomery and his wife, Mary, bought it and its contents for $500,000 and renamed it the Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art. New energy brought new exhibits and cutting-edge shows, but it couldn’t attract a sufficient endowment.
    In March 2005 it again went into hibernation, but soon after the Cultural Council began to envision it as its showcase, the face on the body. In 2008, Bob Montgomery died. Negotiations soon began with his family and with Lake Worth city officials. In January 2010, the deal was announced: The family would donate the building and its contents to the council, and the city would put up $700,000 in cultural improvement money for renovations.
    “When we got it, it was essentially just a big box,” Blades said. “It took some work, but for the first time, this building has offices,” Blades said, pointing to new glass-tiled walls overlooking the main gallery. We still have 2,500 square feet of exhibition space, which will be more than enough. But the main thing is that for the first time in our history, we’ll be an active presence in the community.”
    Now the waiting is almost over. Blades expects to finish the move this month. The old ticket booth will serve as a welcome area. A ramp from the original theater leads from the lobby to the display area. Overhead in the lobby is the only vestige of Lannan: the whimsical, somewhat bawdy figures in Tom Otterness’s frieze, Battle of the Sexes, which he commissioned for the original museum, remain saucily vigilant. Not surprisingly, they survived.
                                         ***
    If you want art and culture, Palm Beach and West Palm Beach aren’t quite up to snuff. Judging from the 2012 Muse Awards, recently announced by the Palm Beach County Cultural Council, southern Palm Beach County is the place to be. The year’s top art or cultural program was the Morikami’s Bon Festival. The Boca Raton Museum of Art was named the top arts and cultural organization with a budget more than $500,000, and the Palm Beach Poetry Festival at Delray’s Old School Square (coming Jan. 16-21) was the best under $500,000.
    Artist and educator Steve Backhus, outreach program manager for the Milagro Center in Delray Beach, whose “unique and tailored programs teach young people how to discover their individual creativity and reach their highest potential,” was named the outstanding arts educator, while FAU art professor Carol Prusa was honored with the Herbert Ubertalli Award for Visual Arts. So there!
    For tickets ($300) to the Muse Awards gala dinner and show Feb. 9 at the Kravis Center, call 472-3340.
                                         ***
    Five stars for the Ritz-Carlton Palm Beach and The Four Seasons Resort, the only hotels in Florida to max out in Forbes Travel Guide (formerly Mobil). So what if the Ritz is in Manalapan and the Four Seasons is only a few yards north of Lake Worth beach.
    The only central Palm Beach resort to draw attention was The Breakers, with four twinkles, still not bad when none in Lauderdale, Miami or Miami Beach — including The Four Seasons, Loews, the Mandarin Oriental or Trump International — could score better than four stars.
    On the restaurant side, Café Boulud and The Restaurant (at The Breakers) managed four stars.
    Of course, diners don’t hold back when assessing restaurants. Whether they’re visiting their favorite hole-in-the-wall pasta joint, chowing down at a Chinese buffet or making the annual outing for the candles-and-piano anniversary treatment, they want it done well. Americans, according to the annual Zagat rankings, dine out 3.1 times a week and 66 percent of them say service is their No. 1 concern.
    South Floridians, however, eat out more — 3.4 times a week — and 72 percent have problems with service. Of course, with the average meal price at $40.70 (New Yorkers pay $43.36 and Las Veggies a whopping $47.53), they have a right to complain.
    Not many problems in the new 2012 Zagat guide, however, with Café L’Europe, which scored 27 (out of 30) in service as well as food and décor.  
    Chez Jean Pierre in Palm Beach and Marcello’s La Sirena in West Palm Beach were tops in food, 28, and scored 26 in service. Drawing mention in Boca was Chops Lobster Bar — 26 for service along with The Breakers’ Flagler Steakhouse and Café Boulud. Delray’s Sundy House scored 27 for service, trailed at 26 by Piñon Grill in Boca, Michelle Bernstein’s at The Omphoy and Cafe Boulud.
                                         ***
    Wonder what Zagat diners will think of Iggy Lena’s pizza. Recently opened in Delray’s Pineapple Grove, the one-time paramedic’s aptly named Pazzo Italiano (“crazy Italian”) offers — along with pasta, subs, salads and desserts — a 30-inch pizza. Price is $29.99, but before you scream, consider that it’s almost four times the size of a 16-incher that typically goes for $10 or more.
    Lena’s a big believer in marketing. He’s owned restaurants before and also sells real estate. At one former venture called Heart Stoppers, waitresses dressed as nurses served 3-pound, 13-inch-high burgers. Lena continues to think big: He says he’s working on a 48-inch pie. Hello, U-Haul!    
                                         ***
    On a slightly more somber note, Breathe brings Mediterranean cuisine to Atlantic Avenue, but daring to go where none have ventured, before. The restaurant-lounge-nightclub is west of Swinton Avenue at 401 W. Atlantic. General Manager Sylvie Benloulou promises “a funky new twist on Mediterranean region fare” from Executive Chef Marcel Ivan  in a chic, stylish and intimate atmosphere that includes a couple of DJs and, on the patio, hookahs (tobacco only).
                                         ***
    Another time and place … for Callaro’s Prime Steak and Seafood. Seven months ago it closed a decade-plus run at Plaza del Mar in Manalapan. On Dec. 28, co-owner Danny Callaro reopened in his hometown at the corner of Lake and J Street with his husband and wife partners Keith (he’s the chef) and Beth (she manages the front of the house) Scragg. It’s in the spot formerly occupied by L’Anjou.
    “I am so excited to bring Callaro’s to my hometown,” Danny said.” My family and I have lived here for many years and I always wanted to be downtown. We have had such a wonderful experience working with our neighbors and the city of Lake Worth. The climate is right for a steakhouse on the avenue.”
                                          ***
Here and there.
    Sources say he travels light, with a backpack slung over his shoulder and a baseball cap to mask his identity, but they still know it’s country music star Kenny Chesney when he checks into the Delray Beach Marriott or makes a non-singing visit to Boston’s down the street, as he did during the holidays. Has something to do with a girlfriend who lives here. . .
    Another girlfriend-boyfriend deal — this time the hometown boy was lunching at Boheme Bistro with his squeeze while checking our real estate brochures: Could Nick Loeb and Sofia Vergara be looking for new digs in Delray? Nick, who’s been living in L.A., wants to sublet his New York apartment, and says he’ll be spending more time in Florida.
 … Fresh from her recent smash interview with ex-boxing champ Oscar de la Hoya, Univision journalist Teresa Rodriguez was spied near the beach in Delray with a friend from Miami … and travel guru Johnny Jet (aka John Di Scala) checked in at the Delray Marriott. He has family in Gulf Stream.

Thom Smith is a freelance writer. Find him at thomsmith@ymail.com

 

By Tim O’Meilia
    
Briny Breezes has a new deputy town clerk — again.
Cindy Lou Corum, the assistant town clerk in Loxahatchee Groves for the past two years, was hired Dec. 20 by the Town Council as the town’s only employee. Well, not exactly employee. The town’s only independent contractor.
“I like the small town feel,” she said after observing at the December Town Council meeting. “Very personal, a homey atmosphere.”
Officially, Corum is the deputy. Officially, Alderman Nancy Boczon is the town clerk pro tem.
But, make no mistake, Corum will do the work, including the town’s bookkeeping. Her first major chore will be managing the town’s March council elections in which four seats will be on the ballot.
The job is part-time, 20 hours a week. Corum will earn about $26,000 a year, although the council can adjust that by assigning her additional tasks.
Corum, 55, worked full-time as the assistant clerk in Loxahatchee Groves, Palm Beach County’s newest municipality, until the council there decided this summer to replace the management team and hire a new firm to handle the fledgling town’s affairs.
She replaces Shari Canada, who is leaving Jan. 6 to take a full-time deputy clerk’s position with the town of Lake Park. Canada worked for Briny Breezes for seven months and council members said they were sad to see her leave.
Corum is familiar with small-town affairs. Before Loxahatchee Groves was incorporated, she served on the citizens’ incorporation committee.
Before becoming deputy clerk, she also served on the town’s finance committee and on an advisory committee.
She is pursuing municipal clerk certification.
“I like the casual atmosphere, very low-key. People show up for meetings in shorts and flip-flops. Right up my alley,” she said with a laugh.
Her second task may be more daunting even than running an election. She’ll finish Canada’s job of converting Briny Breezes’ documents-in-a-brown-box style of record-keeping to government in cyberspace.
In other business, the Town Council:
• Gave final approval to an ordinance allowing owners of property in Briny Breezes, not just residents, to serve on the town’s planning and zoning board.
• Approved rules for public comment at town meetings, including a three-minute limit for speakers on one subject.
The rules also ban personal attacks and applause or booing from the audience. 

Ocean Ridge Police officials and Boynton Beach paramedics recently tried parking a fire truck and an EMS rescue vehicle in the garage behind town hall to confirm that the equipment would fit.  Since the garage was built when Ocean Ridge still provided its own fire protection, the vehicles fit with no problems.  Photo by Jerry Lower

By Margie Plunkett

    Retirement, holiday and emergency-duty bonuses are now official policy for Ocean Ridge, formalized after years of tradition — and considerable current discussion.
    Two recently retired police officers became the first awarded bonuses under the policy.
Commissioners approved the policy and granted officers Doc Darville and Dan Tinfina retirement bonuses at their Dec. 5 meeting — but not before an extended discussion on cash vs. token gifts, bonus criteria and employee evaluations, among other issues.
    “I think we should have a policy in place,” Commissioner Lynn Allison said. “It’s unthinkable that someone like Doc work here for 20 years” and not be recognized with a bonus.
    All employees are eligible for the bonuses, but that doesn’t mean all receive it, said Town Attorney Ken Spillias.
The bonuses are not an entitlement: They are always at the discretion of the commission, he added, explaining that for whatever reason — including the town’s ability to pay, the lawmakers have the leeway to choose not to give bonuses.
    While the bonus does not require a performance evaluation, the supervisor must prepare an analysis to determine if the criteria have been met, he said. The commission has the option to agree or disagree.
    For the retirement bonuses, the employee must have been with the town for at least 20 years. Darville and Tinfina, who both met the minimum, were awarded the customary $100 per year of service.
    Ocean Ridge’s police officers are involved with their first collective bargaining. Spillias offered commissioners the guidance that the bargaining unit members should also be eligible for bonuses because they can’t be treated differently in a way that could be perceived as either favoring or penalizing them.
    The bonus for emergency duty would require performance well above the call of duty in a hurricane or other emergency.
    Commissioner Zoanne Hennigan, a former human resources executive at Intel, wanted criteria detailed for bonuses, a consistent employee evaluation system and a gift instead of a cash bonus.
    “This is the policy, not the implementation,” Spillias pointed out.
    Mayor Ken Kaleel said he could understand Hennigan’s concern about the implementation, “but that’s the next step.”
    Hennigan also said, “I have a problem with the retirement bonus.” She explained that every year, the town contributes $10,000 to $12,000 per officer to the Florida retirement system. “I don’t mean to be unsympathetic, but we’ve been giving them a heck of a lot of money and don’t think we should give them a bonus.”
    While fellow commissioners told her the town manager would be responsible for developing a detailed implementation plan after policy was set, Hennigan stuck with her lone “no” vote.
    During the public comment portion of the meeting, Bob Ganger of Gulf Stream detailed benefits of a community holiday fund.
In Gulf Stream, the fund is set up through the civic association as a way for the community to thank employees by contributing money anonymously.
The fund is split among the town employees as a bonus.
    “The gift is very material. For the lesser[-paid] people they say this is how we make our holidays happen,” Ganger said. “It’s a classic example of how to say thank you without getting yourself in hot water.”
    The community gift “has its own set of issues,” Kaleel later said. “I saw the ugly side of what they’re talking about [when Ocean Ridge residents discussed starting a civic association]. Right now I don’t have a warm and fuzzy feeling about it.”                                   

By Rich Pollack

    The city of Delray Beach now has a new high-tech weapon in its battle against trash-can overflow.
    For months, representatives from the Beach Property Owners’ Association have voiced concerns about trash spilling out of cans along State Road A1A on weekends, despite regularly scheduled pickups on Saturday afternoons and Sunday mornings and afternoons.
    To help put the kibosh on the garbage problem and save money and the environment at the same time, the city installed two solar-powered trash compactors along the beach in late November, one near the pavilion at State Road A1A and Atlantic Avenue and another at the south end of the public beach, near Anchor Park.
    In all, the city has installed 13 of the high-tech compactors, which along with running on solar-powered batteries also come equipped with technology that notifies city crews when they’re about 80 percent full.
    “They’re quite good looking,” says Mary Renaud, president of the Beach Property Owners’ Association. “They’re a lot better than what we have now.”
    Along with the two compactors on the beach, the city recently installed a compactor downtown in the 400 block of East Atlantic Avenue, in another area where trash overflow was an issue.
    There are an additional nine compactors located in city parks.
    The first city in Palm Beach County to install the compactors and one of the first in the state, Delray Beach is already realizing benefits since the first one was installed early last year.
    “We’re seeing significant costs savings, we’re reducing our greenhouse-gas emissions and we now have cleaner facilities,” says Rich Reade, the city’s sustainability officer who first discovered the compactors while at a conference.
Reade says most of the savings are the result of the trash receptacles not having to be emptied as frequently as regular cans.
    “You end up being able to hold more and pick up less often,” says Assistant City Manager Bob Barcinski.
    In Veterans Park, where all five of the outdoor cans have been replaced with solar-powered machines, compactors are being emptied only about once every 10 to 14 days as opposed to once every day, according to Parks Maintenance Superintendent Tim Simmons.
    The compactors on State Road A1A, Simmons says, are being emptied once every seven to 10 days, as is the compactor downtown. All are emptied with more frequency when there are special events.
    Reade estimates the reduction of staff time and fuel costs could result in an annual savings of at least $15,000.
    While the compactors run about $4,000-$4,500 each, when all is said and done, the city was able to get most of them with minimal cost to taxpayers, according to Butch Carter, government affairs manager for Waste Management, which serves as the distributor for the manufacturer, Big Belly Solar.
    Waste Management donated the first 10 compactors under an existing contract with the city.
The two on A1A and the one downtown were purchased using money returned to the city from recycling.
    From an aesthetic point of view, Carter says, the new compactors are helping to reduce the accumulation of trash around the cans and also minimize the odor, since the cans are fully enclosed, with a door users have to pull down in order to deposit trash.
    “These help keep the area around them from being unsightly,” Carter says. 

Delray Beach Fire-Rescue veteran Danielle Connor was named chief in December, following the resignation of David James effective Nov. 12 after extensive absences due to health issues.
Connor has been with the Delray Beach Fire-Rescue since 1993 and has been serving as chief during James’s absence, including when he returned to work part-time.
She is a second generation firefighter who had progressed through the ranks to assistant chief prior to the most recent appointment.
James, who hired on with Delray Beach in 2007, wrote in his resignation letter, “My recovery from a catastrophic injury has progressed far beyond medical professionals’ expectations. Though I continue to improve, it has become apparent to me that at this time I cannot fulfill the duties and responsibilities of the position at the highest level that I expect of myself and the city of Delray Beach deserves.”
     — Margie Plunkett

By Steve Plunkett

    Gulf Stream town leaders have abandoned hope of recovering any property taxes that residents of the annexed pocket are paying Palm Beach County for services they no longer receive.
    At the town’s urging, County Commissioner Steven Abrams met with the county administrator, budget director and fire chief to get back some of the roughly $240,000 that pocket property owners paid for fire protection in fiscal 2011.
    “Unfortunately, county administration maintains its position that Fire Rescue planned its operations based on a full year’s payment by the unincorporated area, and it was solely the town’s choice to change its provider prior to the end of the year,’’ Abrams wrote Mayor William Koch Jr.
    “We just got taken,’’ Koch said as commissioners discussed the county’s response at their Dec. 10 meeting.
    Gulf Stream absorbed the pocket, bordered by Sea Road, County Road, the St. Andrews Club and the ocean, almost midway through the fiscal year, and sought $19,469 to offset the extra amount Delray Beach billed the town following the March 15 annexation. Gulf Stream pays Delray Beach for fire-rescue protection.
    Commissioners decided suing the county would cost more than the sum they were seeking and that an in-person appeal by Koch would not sway the full County Commission.
    Gulf Stream also wanted $21,728 back from the Sheriff’s Office covering March 15 to Sept. 30. The county levied nearly $176,000 on the pocket to fund the sheriff.
    Property taxes that were just collected again went to the county; the annexed pocket will not come onto Gulf Stream’s tax roll until fiscal 2013.
Abrams said county officials worried that a reimbursement could have financial repercussions in the future.
    “I am told that when other municipalities have annexed land under similar circumstances there were no requests for reimbursements, and this would set an unacceptable precedent,’’ he wrote.
    Property in the annexed area will add roughly $69 million to the town’s tax base.    

By Margie Plunkett

    Boston’s continuing restaurant renovation withstood a neighbor’s appeal before the City Commission, but not before the establishment gave up a planned outdoor lobster cooker.
Commissioners later required an additional conditional use approval be required before live music can be allowed.
    “A change in this space from a small motel to an outdoor restaurant, bar and parking lot will certainly have a major adverse impact on our property,” neighbors George and Patricia Brannen, whose condo is just south of Boston’s, wrote in a letter.
    The second phase of Boston’s renovation included demolishing the Bermuda Inn, which was north of the Brannens’ low-rise condos, and building an outdoor dining area including a bar, seating, the lobster cooker and a platform for live music.
    The Brannens contended that noise from outdoor music as well as odors from the lobster cooker would be a problem at their condo, 30 feet from the restaurant that overlooks A1A and the ocean.
    The couple also objected to potential traffic, noise and pollution and claimed they had not been adequately notified of city meetings to consider the plans, their lawyer, Zorian Sperkacz, said at a Dec. 13 commission meeting. The Brannens did not attend.
    “Live entertainment is totally inconsistent for the neighborhood 30 feet away,” Sperkacz said, as is the proposed midnight closing time of the outdoor area. The neighbor wants a 9 p.m. closing.
    “Put it inside, close the doors and it won’t be a problem,” Sperkacz said of the live music.
    With a little east breeze, Sperkacz also said, smells from the lobster cooker will waft right into the Brannens’ condo.
    Boston’s lawyer, Alan Ciklin, said the lobster cooker was no longer planned and a summer grill was in its stead.
The grill has an exhaust and smells aren’t anticipated invading the Bahama House, he said. “I don’t think the winds go that way,” he said and was immediately met with laughter from the audience.
    Boston’s architect, Bob Currie, lives in the Bahama House as well, but in the farthest unit from the noise and odors, the Brannens said. Neither Currie nor the city apprised them of the Nov. 9 meeting where Boston’s work was approved until after the fact, they said.
    “I’m prejudiced about this,” Currie said. “I believe very much in this project. I think it will be a great asset. Everyone else in our condo approved it and is happy to have (Boston’s) there.”
    Currie said the previous hotel was in disrepair and the swimming pool was noisy. The owner put in a 10-foot wall and landscaping to mitigate noise. It’s got to be a lot better.”
    The architect said the Brannens’ property has a solid masonry wall protecting it, while his is more open.
“We’re going to hear more noise than anyone else — and we’re in favor of this project,” Currie said.
Citing their concern about setting precedent, commissioners voted to require additional conditional use requirements for live music at their Jan. 3 meeting. Those include limitations on sound levels, frequency and hours.
    Boston’s had appealed the Planning and Zoning Board’s determination that a conditional use was
necessary.