Mary Kate Leming's Posts

Bring quarters: Beach parking prices continue to rise

Posted by Mary Kate Leming on June 1, 2011 at 15:30

By Angie Francalancia

The beach is timeless, forever lapped by waves and shaped by shifting sands.
Not so the parking meter, a ticking intrusion into the untroubled landscape that is a day at the beach.
Parking meters or daily fees are the norm at city beaches up and down the east coast, and as cities wrestle with budget shortfalls, they’re making sure to capture money from every potential spot. More parking meters are going in at previously free spots in Boca Raton, and fees are going up at beachside meters in Lake Worth — coincidentally, the cities with the largest area beaches. Fees rose earlier this year at beachside meters on Palm Beach as well.
“I think if you look up and down there are very few places where you can park at the beach for free. There should be some recognition that it does cost money to have a beach,” said Boca Raton Assistant City Manager Mike Woika.
At city beaches between Palm Beach and Boca Raton there are 3,780 parking spots — including 400 spaces along or adjacent to A1A in Delray Beach — according to city officials.
Palm Beach County’s parks add an additional 597 spaces. At all but 377 of those spaces — those in the county’s three small parks in Ocean Ridge and Gulf Stream — beach patrons will pay to play on the sand.
Boca Raton is installing 202 meters to four locations where beach parking previously was free: the pavilion at Palmetto Park; Red Reef Park West; and two spots on the west side of A1A where beach lovers previously could park and walk across the street to the sand: Spanish River Boulevard and East Palmetto Park Road. The rate will be $1.50 an hour, one of the lower meter rates along the coast. But most of these spaces are a little farther or time-limited compared with Boca Raton’s other beachside parking lots.
At Red Reef Park and Spanish River Park there are 1,152 parking spaces, but a day at the beach — or any fraction of a day — costs $18 on the weekends.
To save money, Spanish River Park is closed Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Smaller South Beach Park costs $17 a day on the weekends. All are a dollar cheaper on weekdays.
Lake Worth Beach is installing new meters at its beach with 688 parking spaces. The new meters, like the new ones in Boca, allow people to pay with coins or credit cards, potentially alleviating the hassle of leaving the sand to feed the meter. The rates are going up from $1.50 to $2 an hour.
At the county’s R.G. Kreusler Park adjacent to Lake Worth Beach, the parking rates will rise to $2 an hour, matching Lake Worth’s rates in October, said Dave Lill, aquatics director.
But perhaps the biggest deterrent to beach goers is the long-planned reconstruction of the Lake Worth Casino and strip of retail shops that will cause most of the parking lot to be unavailable.
“We’ll have a rotation of parking spots open for the next few months,” said Lake Worth Public Services Director Joseph Kroll. Construction is expected to start this month, and last 11 months. “I’ve got to keep a minimum of 40 percent open at all times, so that’s about 200.”
Even with the diminished number of slots, Lake Worth expects to raise an additional $116,000 annually from the beach parking area, helping the city to keep its staff of lifeguards.
Keeping lifeguards on the beaches was cited as the reason Palm Beach raised its parking fees in October from $2 an hour to $5 an hour at both midtown and Phipps Park.
But seven months after the meter fees rose, Palm Beach is grappling with the avoidance efforts — a situation Boca Raton may face as well.
“We know regular beach goers are avoiding as best they can the $5 beach charge, and parking in both legal and non-legal parking spots to avoid the charge,” said Palm Beach Deputy Town Manager Tom Bradford.
But with revenue projections from the increased fees hitting their mark, town officials surmise that tourists are willing to pay it.
“I’m sure we’ll see that, too, because we have a lot of neighborhoods and condos along A1A,” said Woika of Boca Raton. “We’re going to be doing more patrolling of neighborhoods to make sure beach parking is not [occurring] in residential areas.”
As the summer season heats up, with fewer available spots and higher fees at previously free ones, beach lovers may go hunting new slices of paradise.

The beachside shuffle
These area beaches are undergoing changes at the meters or in the lots:

Palm Beach: Raised hourly rate at beach parking meters from $2 an hour to $5 an hour on Oct. 5.

Lake Worth: Raising hourly rates from $1.50 to $2, replacing older style meters to meters that allow payments via coins, credit cards or prepaid “smart” cards and allows beach goers to pay via mobile phones. Construction at Lake Worth Beach will decrease available spaces to about 40 percent for the next 11 months.

Boca Raton: Adding parking meters at 202 previously free parking spots at the pavilion at Palmetto Park, at Red Reef Park West off A1A, Spanish River Boulevard and Palmetto Park Road. Metered parking will be $1.50 an hour. Visitors can pay by credit card as well as with coins.

Bad news gets less bad for town coffers: Decline in property values eases

Posted by Mary Kate Leming on June 1, 2011 at 14:52

By Tim O’Meilia

South County homes and businesses are still leaking taxable value, but this year it’s closer to a dribble than a dam break.
While eight of nine coastal towns lost more than 5 percent of their taxable real estate value in 2009, only Manalapan declined more than that last year, according to preliminary figures released May 26 by the Palm Beach County Property Appraiser.
In fact, Briny Breezes was one of two Palm Beach County towns — Jupiter Inlet Colony was the other — to gain value. The taxable property in the coastal mobile home town is up 2.37 percent.
Ocean Ridge, South Palm Beach and Boca Raton suffered less than a 2 percent fall.
Or, as South Palm Beach Town Manager Rex Taylor put it: “The increase in the decline is lessening.”
Still, the slight decline means town officials must find bits of bare-bones budget carcass to scrape away again this budget season. Most of the nasty work has been done in the last three years of free-falling tax values — laying off workers, cutting services and dipping into reserves.
“We’ve weathered that storm,” said Boca Raton Budget Director Sharon McGuire, whose City Council kept the tax rate the same by using $2 million in reserves to keep the budget balanced last year and in 2009. “But that can’t be an ongoing plan.
“Hopefully, the values are flattening now, but unfortunately, expenses don’t remain at the same level,” McGuire said.
South Palm Beach, which suffered the most dramatic South County decline in 2009 at 14.06 percent, improved the most to a 1.48 percent slide.
“Hopefully, the effect we’re seeing is the bottom of the trough, but no one knows how long we’ll be in that trough,” Town Manager Taylor said.

Rising slowly
The Property Appraiser’s Office believes property values may be bottoming out as well, but Property Appraiser Gary Nikolits thinks it may be two or three more years before the market begins to rebound.
“We have a feeling thing are stabilizing a bit,” said John Thomas, residential appraisals director for Nikolits’ office. “We’re not really good at predictions, but we’re hopeful. Throw the chicken bones out, spin the wheel, go see Madame Rosa and gaze into her crystal ball and we’ll come up with our best guess,” Thomas joked.
Hard numbers may be more helpful. Countywide, values dropped 10 percent in 2009, but 2.77 percent last year. Two years ago, every Palm Beach County municipality lost more than 5 percent of its taxable value and almost half fell by 10 percent or more.
In 2010, things improved. Twenty-one of the county’s 38 municipalities lost less than 5 percent in value and only 7 dropped more than 5 percent.
Still, the total taxable value across the county is $123.7 billion, compared with $169.4 billion in 2007, before the real estate bubble exploded.
Briny Breezes’ uptick in value is due to the property appraiser having a better handle on land values, since few sales occurred in the aftermath of possible sale of the entire town to a developer three years ago.
“I knew that revenues would be up but I didn’t know they’d be up that much,” said a jubilant Briny Breezes Mayor Roger Bennett. “It means several thousand more dollars for us.”
Ocean Ridge lost less than one percent in value, compared with more than nine percent in 2009. “It would be nice if we got some of it back, but at least we didn’t go down much,” said Town Manager Ken Schenck.
He suspects an uptick in challenges to individual assessments by homeowners in town may have helped soften falling values. “I’d like to think this is the end of it, but I don’t know,” Schenck said.
Gulf Stream lost barely two percent in taxable property in 2010, less than half of the 2009 amount of 5.4 percent. Mayor William F. Koch said it will make planning for next year’s budget easier.
“We’re not bleeding as bad as some other communities,” he said. “Hopefully, next year they’ll all be up.”
Highland Beach, which had a slight decrease in falling values — from 6.08 percent to 4.9 percent — based its budget projections on a similar reduction this year. “So this is a little less and that’s good,” said Town Manager Kathleen Weiser, who said it won’t change the town’s approach to budgeting. “We’re in the early stages, but we’ve given the department heads marching orders to keep expenses the same or less.”
Although Lantana lost more than 4 percent in taxable value, that is much improved from the 17.30 percent decline the year before.
“It’s obviously not as bad a number. It’s a lot better than 10 percent,” which Town Manager Michael Bornstein feared. He estimated the tax revenue loss of slightly less than $111,000. “Our previous years were double digits.”

Commercial property hit
Lantana, unlike many coastal towns, has a significant inventory of business properties, which are beginning only now to see a decline in value across the county. “I’m worried about our commercial property taking a hit,” Bornstein said.
Manalapan’s taxable value declined even more than in 2009, the only South County town whose fall increased — from 4.03 percent to 7.22 percent. Thomas, of the appraiser’s office, said more recent sales gave his office a better look at the seaside town’s property values.
Despite the falling revenues, Mayor Basil Diamond doesn’t think the Town Commission will resort to a tax rate increase, a tactic the commission has avoided in recent years. Last year, the town manager and finance director’s positions were combined and other part-time posts joined.
Diamond said the taxable value doesn’t reflect home construction and permitting under way now. “It won’t help us this year, but it will be good for us next year,” he said.
Recently, mayors of coastal towns met to discuss streamlining operations. “Maybe we can coordinate things better. Maybe we can share positions,” Diamond said.
He is hopeful town boards will agree to finance a study to see how they can coordinate services. “Everyone likes what they have, but there may be some areas we can consolidate,” he said.
Taxable property values will not be final until July 1 and are typically slightly less onerous than this month’s preliminary numbers. Taxable value is not the same as market value and does not include exemptions for homestead and other breaks.
This year the military serving abroad will get an additional homestead exemption for every day they are out of the country.

County Pocket: Remembering a magical place called Belair Drive

Posted by Mary Kate Leming on June 1, 2011 at 14:46

Tami Pleasanton (left) and Kim Jones remember growing up in the county pocket. Photo by Jerry Lower

By Ron Hayes
In the summer of 1969, a registered nurse with two young daughters to raise started looking for someplace to live closer to her job at Bethesda Memorial Hospital.
“I didn’t want to stray too far from work,” Jeanne Punté remembers, “so I would leave for the 3-to-11 shift a half-hour early and roam the streets looking for places near the beach.”
Eventually, she found Belair Drive, 10 small homes on an unincorporated cul-de-sac just south of Briny Breezes.
To the post office, it was in Boynton Beach.
To the phone company, it was in Delray Beach.
To the sisters, it was heaven.
When Kim Jones, 13, and her sister Tami, 11, moved in that August, Gulfstream Park was 15 years in the future. The parking lot was a scrub thick with Florida holly, the tiny street was lined with lush coconut palms — and the rent at No. 8 was $150 a month.
“If your objective was to bring two girls up in a natural, safe haven, our mother struck gold,” Kim Jones says today.
“What we are was formed by our mother’s desire to put us in a place that would nurture our talents,” her sister adds.
Today, Tami (née Jones) Pleasanton is the headmistress at St. Joseph’s Episcopal School in Boynton Beach, guiding the education of 260 boys and girls no older than she was then.
Kim Jones retired nearly 20 years ago after a lucrative career as a professional engineer. Nowadays she devotes much of her time to the nesting sea turtles she first befriended as a girl on Belair Drive.
“We’d spend summer nights on the beach with a bonfire,” Kim remembers, “and one evening a massive green sea turtle crawled right by us to nest, and I was hooked.”
As they reminisce together in Pleasanton’s office, 40-year-old memories emerge, of a tiny street that prepared them for a great big world.
“We were latchkey kids, but we didn’t know it,” Tami says. “We didn’t wear bathing suits until mother decided we’d better, and then we didn’t wear tops for a while because nobody ever came there.”
“We were just sea waifs,” says Kim.
Their neighbors were all retirees, they recall, older couples who taught them respect for the elderly.
“Our role models were 80-year-old retired engineers from Pratt & Whitney or housewives who made dinner for everyone and passed around pasta,” Tami says.
Tony and Marie Brunaldi, in the corner house, would tie a 250-yard line to a tree and lay it out over the sand with three or four lifebuoys attached.
“We’d make sure they got in and out of the water safely,” Tami adds. “We became sensitized to older people’s needs.”
They learned to drive on Belair Drive, and Kim, who learned to surf in the ocean just east of their home, has gone on to ride the waves off Easter Island, Tahiti, Bali.
“I think we cooked out every night,” their mother says, “and we always had a lot of fish because we caught it right down there at the beach.”
They kept an aquarium, home at one point to an octopus they found on the beach. The octopus escaped, to be discovered at last clinging to the bottom of their dining room table.
Later, they bought the house next door at No. 10 for about $30,000. Last year, its assessed value was $242,000.
“I got the bedroom to the east,” Tami says, “so I went to bed every night listening to the waves and woke up to the same thing.”
And then one evening, theft came to peaceful Belair Drive.
“A huge St. Bernard showed up hungry,” Jeanne Punté recalls. “We had a steak on the grill, and she just took it and disappeared into the woods.”
Not long after, the girls heard puppies yelping in the scrub. They gave the puppies away and named the St. Bernard “Passport.”
When Kim left home for her first engineering job in Schenectady, N.Y., Passport went with her.
Tami departed Belair Drive for college in 1976, and their mother, the last to leave, moved to Palm Beach Gardens in 1984.
“It was heaven,” Tami says. “Everything you wanted and needed was there.”
Not long ago, she adopted a rescue dog from Tampa. The dog, about 3 years old, was named Buffett when she got him — whether for Jimmy or Warren, she’s not sure.
But he’s a St. Bernard.

Editorial: Summer is all about numbers

Posted by Mary Kate Leming on June 1, 2011 at 14:03

I spent a lovely, breezy evening this past month riding on a golf cart counting trailers in Briny Breezes. Although the U.S. Census counted 800 housing units in the community, my detailed accounting found 484 — not counting bath houses, public buildings or empty lots.
Go figure.
    I spent a lot of time doing just that — figuring — this past month. May was one for the numbers: sea turtles, property tax rates, budget workshops, special assessments, hurricane projections and even the latest circulation numbers for Florida’s daily newspapers.
    The upshot of all this number crunching? Some good news, some bad.
    Sea turtles: Although most of the nests counted are north of Riviera Beach, the county is seeing a trend toward more sea turtle nesting along our beaches. In Ocean Ridge alone there have already been 25 more nests counted than at this time last year. By all accounts, that’s good news.
    Taxes and budgets: When it comes to tax rates, budgeting workshops and special assessments, it’s better that you read a complete account than depend on me to summarize. Please check out Tim O’Meilia’s excellent tax rate story on Page 1, Margie Plunkett’s Lantana budget story on Page 15, and Steve Plunkett’s Gulf Stream special assessment story on Page 14.
    Hurricane season: I’m usually numb to hurricane predictions this time of year, since they are always revised before we get into the heart of the season. Still, it’s June and we should all be thinking about our evacuation plans. If the La Niña theory is accurate, we should be spared the worst until the later part of the season. But as we know, it only takes one. Be prepared.
    Newspapers: Although the ABC service that audits daily newspapers has become more flexible in what can be counted as circulation, the numbers continue spiraling downward. That’s bad news (no pun intended) for daily newspapers. So, unless small, independent community papers like The Coastal Star can survive, the number of reporters on the street dwindles as the daily papers shrink. That’s bad because to make good decisions, we need good information.
    So, as you make business decisions about how to reach your customers, please consider your local newspaper. When you do, I hope you’ll consider The Coastal Star — even if the editor is a little number-challenged from time to time.

— Mary Kate Leming, editor

A Coastal Star: Artist dresses up electrical boxes with mosaics — South Palm Beach

Posted by Mary Kate Leming on June 1, 2011 at 13:58

By Tim O’Meilia

What to do about the three weathered, rusting FPL electrical boxes in South Palm Beach that keep the street lights on along the town’s 5/8-mile strip of A1A?
Why, ask the town’s unofficial artist-in-residence Penny Davidson, who, conveniently, lives next door to Town Hall. After all, she created the life-sized bronze loggerhead turtle crawling atop a rock in front of Town Hall to mark South Palm Beach’s 50th anniversary in 2005.
“They’re an eyesore. They’re horrendous,” retired movie hair stylist Paul Least said of the electrical boxes. He campaigned for two years, calling FPL, rallying condo dwellers and pestering town officials to get behind the project.
Not that he had an idea of how to camouflage the boxes. “Just leave it to Penny, because she’s the artist,” he said.
After getting approval from town officials, Davidson brainstormed with Town Manager Rex Taylor last July. “I had done stained glass and worked in sea glass but not usually for outdoor exposure,” she said.
Stained glass was out of the question because the 3-foot by 4-foot creation had to be mounted on marine plywood to stand in front of the boxes. She settled on a glass mosaic.
“It had to be a glass mosaic,” she decided. “I had never done that. How much different would it be than stained glass? Well, there was a world of difference.”
The mosaic was five-and-half months in gestation from sketch to grout between the glass pieces.
“I wanted to reflect the ambiance of the town,” she said. “My first idea was the ocean. An underwater view seemed like a natural to me.”
Davidson painted what she saw snorkeling. Amid the ocean hues of blue swim a grayish barracuda, a manta ray, a pair of sand dollars, a grouper swimming along the bottom and three yellow-striped sergeant majors near undersea coral.
“I wasn’t going to put a turtle in but I had a big space and he belongs there, too,” she said of the loggerhead with flippers outstretched.
Her condominium, Horizons West, let her use a storage room to cut the glass and then soften and bevel the edges with a grinder. She baked each painted shard in her oven.
Then she included a penny, her signature, on the mosaic, sealed the grout and erected it in front of the FPL box at the Southgate condominium.
Davidson, who won’t reveal her age (“I’m 75 and she’s younger than I am,” said Least, helpfully), took a roundabout journey to her late-in-life art career, just as she and her husband, Sol, took a unique trip leading to settling in South Palm Beach.
Born in New Jersey, she taught in low-performing schools in Des Moines, Iowa, for 30 years, but not art. After her three children left the nest, the Davidsons traveled to find a place to retire.
They bought a houseboat in 1982, put it in the Mississippi River 150 miles from home and puttered around for five months before reaching South Florida. They logged 5,000 miles, motoring up the Ohio River to visit a son in Pittsburgh, then back down the Ohio to the Mississippi and south to the Gulf of Mexico.
They hugged the Gulf coast to Sarasota and crossed the state through Lake Okeechobee, settling in Delray Beach. They were live-aboards for eight years, finally buying their ocean-view condo.
Out of curiosity, Penny dabbled in street painting at local festivals, then tried her hand at Gator glass fiberglass creations. Then she tried creations made from sea glass found along the shoreline.
The bronze loggerhead that has become a town symbol was her first venture in that medium. She sculpted it in clay, had a mold made and the turtle was poured on site.
“You do it and you find out” whether you’re any good, she says with a shrug.
Now that the underwater mosaic is installed, she’ll start on the next. “I’ve been thinking about a view from the ocean of the condos along the beach, with them reflected in the water,” she said.
The last will focus on the Town Hall as the heart of the town, with its music and lecture series and art displays. But, who knows, she may change her mind by then.
“The commitment of the town to art in public places is unbelievable,” Davidson said. And she appreciates that
it’s not art by committee.

WXEL radio will be known as WPBI

Posted by Mary Kate Leming on June 1, 2011 at 13:45

By Jenny Staletovich

    Seven years after it was put on the selling block, WXEL-FM finally sold to Classical South Florida after the Federal Communications Commission approved a deal with Barry University May 16.
    The 40-year-old station, started to educate migrant workers and home to local public affairs broadcasting as well as national radio programming, will be known as WPBI.
It becomes part of radio empire American Public Media, which owns Classical South Florida and operates 43 stations in seven states and produces, among other shows, A Prairie Home Companion.
    The sale had been bitterly fought by local supporters who opposed the sale to a national group, arguing the station would lose its local flavor. In announcing the sale and change in call letters, Classical South Florida said it will “concentrate the program schedule on classical music while continuing to provide news and information programming.”
    The deal was applauded by Miami Shores-based Barry, which bought the station in 1997 and over the years poured $5.3 million into both the radio and television stations. It had been trying to unload the cash-strapped station since 2004. An earlier deal with a New York television station fell through and when bidding was reopened in 2009, CSF emerged the winner with a $3.85 million offer.
    “We are very pleased that the FCC approved the sale of WXEL-FM to Classical South Florida,” Barry spokesman Michael Laderman said in an email. “They are an excellent local organization with a very strong backing, one that the listeners of the radio station — from Broward County through the Treasure Coast — will be thankful for.”
    WXEL Channel 42 will remain as a PBS television affiliate, offering its lineup of public broadcasting shows, according to a letter from WXEL to supporters.

Along the Avenues: Steve Forbes pays a visit to Trump’s place

Posted by Mary Kate Leming on June 1, 2011 at 13:42

By Thom Smith

For decades the family yacht tied up at local marinas, the better for dad to entertain big clients and the family to enjoy a little respite from Northeast winters.
Malcolm Forbes died in 1990, but the wining and dining aboard Highlander has continued, albeit at its seasonal berth in Fort Lauderdale. So it isn’t like Steve Forbes is unfamiliar with Palm Beach. In fact, he’s a welcome guest at many homes on the island.
But until a few weeks ago, the businessman, unsuccessful presidential candidate and editor and publisher of Forbes magazine had never been to the home — the estate most synonymous with Palm Beach: Mar-a-Lago.
On a whirlwind tour for Northwestern Mutual to drum up business among its clients and prospects and to inspire company agents, Forbes teamed with Northwestern CEO John Schlifske to host a luncheon of beef filet and sea bass in the grand ballroom and to offer his take on the economy.
“I think within five years, the dollar will again be tied to g-o-l-d.”
“A weak dollar means a weak recovery.”
In investing, “Emotions are your enemy; consistency is the key.”
Since Mar-a-Lago’s owner was elsewhere, weighing a decision to withdraw — as pace car driver for the Indy 500 — Forbes and Schlifske took a brief look around Mar-a-Lago on their own. After climbing the iron spiral staircase in the parlor, Forbes could only shake his head.
“It’s amazing,” he said.
Asked if he still harbored any political ambition, the affable Forbes laughed and answered,
“I’m an agitator now; I’m in my Tom Paine mode.”
Advice for Trump? Silence and a smile.

Remember Jeff Greene, one of the few candidates rolling in dough who wasn’t elected last year? The onetime Breakers busboy made the Forbes 400 list by investing in, and then betting against, the real estate market. Then last year he ran for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate (yes, some Democrats are rich, too!) and was trounced.
For a while we didn’t hear much from Jeff. Having licked his political wounds, he’s back doing what he does best — buying real estate — but not before signing on in February to The Giving Pledge. That’s the campaign spearheaded by Warren Buffett and Bill Gates to urge rich folks to give half their wealth to charity.
Greene likes to spend money almost as much as he likes to make it. Earlier this year he bought a 43,000-square-foot loft in New York’s Soho for $26 million.
With one young son, and another baby due in September, Greene reportedly was looking for some property where he and wife Mei Sze Chan could raise them. On May 3 he bought Tyndal Point, a 55-acre estate in the Hamptons. The price was not reported, though its most recent listing was $44.99 million.
Back in Palm Beach, as a “fun investment,” he got a deal worthy of Donald Trump, picking up the Omphoy Ocean Resort for a reported $42 million. Not bad considering it offers 134 rooms, a spa and two restaurants, including Michelle Bernstein’s. Through their Ceebraid Signal Corp., previous owners Richard and Leslie Schlesinger had paid $42 million in 2005 for the former Palm Beach Hilton and poured an additional $55 million into renovations.
“We love Palm Beach and want to continue having the Omphoy run as the great hotel that it is,” Greene told The Palm Beach Daily News. “It’s packed on the weekends. It’s the most elegant boutique oceanfront hotel in Florida and maybe in the country.”

Speaking of big oceanfront homes, Casa Pugilista is for sale … again. Well, that’s not really the name, but pugilism did buy it for boxing promoter Don King. Now he hopes he’ll have less of a fight trying to sell the Manalapan estate. Asking price: $19.95 million. That’s down from $27.5 million in 2009, but up from the $14.3 million they (technically King’s wife, Henrietta) paid for the two adjacent lots and houses in 1999.
King, whose Only In America offices lie on the east side of I-95 in Deerfield Beach, turns 80 in August. Henrietta died in December. When he first put it up for sale, he said the kids were grown and it was time to downsize. Now he has even more reason to sell.
So what does $19.95 million bring?
Three acres, 300 feet of beachfront and two docks on the Intracoastal, two houses, two pools, a tennis court, a generator, a grill big enough to barbecue 100 slabs of ribs, an illuminated replica of the Statue of Liberty facing the ocean. The larger house (18,000 square feet) has nine bedrooms. The smaller “guest” house (6,800 square feet) includes five bedrooms, an outdoor cabana with kitchen and an ice cream parlor.

Seems like only a few weeks ago we were announcing the opening of the Atlantic Ocean Club and its upstairs sibling Buddha Sky Bar on Atlantic next to the tracks in Delray. Actually it opened Jan. 24, and while the Sky Bar is going strong, AOC is history. Shuttered in mid-May, it’s being replaced by The Pop-Up … but only for four months. At the helm is Glen Manfra, last heard from as culinary director for David Manero’s restaurants, which include Vic & Angelo’s across the street and The Office, half a block west.
Manfra first emerged two decades ago as the chef at Bice in Palm Beach. He was a partner in Amici and Galaxy Grill, then dropped from the scene for a few years before teaming with Manero.
Sources say the menu will change frequently and will offer lower prices.

New to Delray: Island Flair on the Ave, featuring Caribbean vendors, musicians and food, premiered May 21 in Southwest Fifth Avenue Plaza. The Flairs are held the third Saturday of every month from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.. Admission is free. Potential vendors should call (561) 290-6739.

Starting over. Apicius, the controversial upscale Italian restaurant on Ocean Avenue in Lantana is history. In its place: Bar Italia. Reportedly under new management, although ownership remains with the controversial Leo Balestrieri. Apicius’ brief stint (It opened last September), was greeted with generally positive reviews for the quality of food, but a mixed bag on service, including unpleasant encounters from Balestrieri toward customers who complained. We’ll wait to judge the book by its new cover.

Palm Beach Golf Course, which Golf Digest has called “the best par 3 in the U.S.,” has a lot going for it: location (smack dab against the ocean), reasonable rates and its recent renovation by golf legend Raymond Floyd. Plus the folks who run the snack bar claim to make the best burger in Palm Beach and soon will add a roaming food and beverage cart … with full liquor service.
     But there’s more. On June 2, they tried a singles night, an 18-hole scramble, including cart and one “adult” beverage for just $20. It could become a regular event.

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

Briny Breezes: New clerk and old division on view at meeting

Posted by Mary Kate Leming on June 1, 2011 at 13:32

By Emily J. Minor

Briny Breezes has a new clerk, and she’s both experienced and eager to work — driving north from Broward County a few days a week because she says she likes working for small government.
Shari Canada doesn’t live in Briny or own property here, so the Town Council on May 26 appointed alderman Nancy Boczon as the clerk pro tem, meaning for the time being, and in name only. Canada was then sworn in as deputy clerk.
Canada, 36, of Hollywood, will earn $25,000 a year for the part-time job. She has worked in other municipalities and said she found the job when Briny advertised online with the Florida Association of City Clerks.
Canada jumped right into the role at the May 26 meeting, and said she was thrilled. “I love small towns,” she said.
From 2003 to 2005, she was the town clerk for Southwest Ranches, a small rural community in western Broward County. Following that, she worked for five years in the much larger city of Hallandale Beach, training staff, handling all the agendas and legal advertising and serving as municipal supervisor of elections.
In other action, the council:
• Instructed Mayor Roger Bennett to continue talks with other coastal managers and mayors about the possibility of joining forces for some town services, such as fire and rescue, water and sewer and police. Most coastal towns buy these services from larger municipalities — although Manalapan does have a small water plant. Bennett said it might be worth discussing consolidation of services along the coast.
• Heard a direct and rather plaintive speech from Town Manager Steve Best, who asked that council members and town residents remember how special Briny Breezes is and keep in mind that everyone should work together. The corporate side of Briny has recently held back on paying $30,000 of town expenses that council members assumed it would pay. Corporation Board President Mike Gut has said the board is unhappy with high attorney fees.
Best has been on the job about a year and said he knew little about Briny’s down-home uniqueness until he took the job.
“I’m sure if you talk to some people, they’re going to tell you this whole thing stinks,” said Best, referring to the disagreement between Briny’s corporate and government factions.
“Please come back to my board of directors with more explanation. The goal is to get it resolved.”

Delray Beach: Holdout wins city preservation award

Posted by Mary Kate Leming on June 1, 2011 at 13:27

By Paula Detwiller
They called her “the holdout.”
The year was 1997, and the city of Delray Beach wanted to take Pat Healy-Golembe’s historic house by eminent domain to expand a parking garage near the beach. She said “no sale.”
The developer proposed an alternate plan: It would move her house to a nearby corner, thus freeing up the land for the parking garage expansion. She said no way.
“It wasn’t about money,” Healy-Golembe says. “We never even talked money. It was all about preserving the house and keeping it in its original location.”
That house is the Scott House, built in 1925 by E. H. Scott, a Delray pioneer, railroad manager and mayor. The location: 19 Andrews Ave., just off East Atlantic Avenue, about a block from the ocean. It was originally used as a residence for managers of the old Seacrest Hotel, a much-loved resort that occupied the corner of A1A and East Atlantic Avenue for more than 50 years.
Healy-Golembe bought the Scott House in 1985. By being a holdout when the city wanted her property, she earned the respect of her neighbors.
“I still have people thanking me,” she says. “I truly felt that a huge parking garage would have changed the streetscape of Andrews Avenue forever. The presence of my house breaks up the massing, and I think the locals appreciate that.”
Delray Beach’s Historic Preservation Board appreciates that, too — enough to honor Healy-Golembe with a Preserve Delray Award last month.
“Pat has maintained her Mediterranean Revival house in very good condition over the years,” said Historic Preservation Board chair Dan Sloan, “and we thought that was deserving of an award.” Sloan says Healy-Golembe’s determination to keep the house in its original spot in the face of mounting development pressure gave her extra points in his book.
“When you move a house, you’re ripping it out of its historical context,” Sloan says, “and Delray has done that so many times to build parking structures, some of which remain underutilized.”
Sloan laments the many old Delray homes that have been relocated to the city’s West Settlers Historic District to make way for new construction elsewhere.
“It’s nice that those homes weren’t demolished,” he says, “but now the West Settlers District is like an orphan home park.”
Truth to tell, the Scott House lost much of its historical context when the Seacrest Hotel was razed and replaced with a Holiday Inn (now the Marriott) in the early ’80s. In 1990, the Historic Preservation Board placed the Scott House on the local Register of Historic Places not only to “remember the previously existing ensemble of structures known as the Seacrest Hotel” but also to protect one of the last remaining Mediterranean Revival-style private buildings in the beach area built during the 1920s boom period.
It was the architecture that captured Healy-Golembe’s heart back in 1985. She fell in love with the stately two-story structure with its elaborate arched doorway flanked by two columns. The inside of the house had been remodeled — or “remuddled,” as Healy-Golembe puts it — during the 1960s with shag carpet and linoleum covering the original wood floors and “god-awful drapes.” An interior decorator by trade, she refinished the floors and redecorated the interior, creating a comfortable office and studio for her business.
As Delray Beach’s preservation movement got under way in the 1980s, Healy-Golembe was an active participant, serving on the city’s first Historic Preservation Board alongside people like Clemmer Mayhew, the city’s unofficial historian. She hosted parties at the Scott House to encourage local residents to support the formation of historic districts.
Today the Scott House is surrounded by hotel parking facilities on three sides — proof that you can’t completely stop redevelopment. But the woman they called “the holdout” doesn’t mind. She calls her façade “the rose between two thorns” and enjoys seeing people’s reactions when they discover it.
“There’s something of substance in an old house that you don’t get with the new ones,” she says. “And once they’re gone, you can
never bring them back.”

Delray Beach
Historic Preservation Awards
6th Annual Award Recognition Program
Awards are given to those property owners and their design teams who have significantly contributed to the preservation and rehabilitation of historic properties throughout the city, or provided compatible new development within a historic district. Recipients were recognized at the Delray Beach City Commission meeting on May 17.

Categories and recipients

New Signage
44 E. Atlantic Ave., Old School Square Historic District
Mural
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Paul’s Place, Old School Square Historic District
Exterior Alterations
222 SE Seventh Ave., Marina Historic District
255 N. Swinton Ave., Old School Square Historic District

Residential Additions, Renovations, and Restoration
138 NE First Ave., Old School Square Historic District
702 SE Second St.(AKA 200 Marine Way), Marina Historic District

Multifamily Residential/Commercial Additions, Renovations and Restoration
135 NE First Ave., Old School Square Historic District
44 E. Atlantic Ave., Old School Square Historic District

Single-Family Residential New Construction
704 SE Second St., Marina Historic District

Commercial New Construction
251 Dixie Blvd., Del-Ida Park Historic District

Preserve Delray Award
This category was added in 2009 in response to the city’s designation as a Preserve America Community. It recognizes property owners who continually preserve their significant piece of Delray Beach history.
Residential
19 Andrews Ave., the Scott House, Individually Designated

Multifamily/Commercial
401 NE Second Ave., Del-Ida Park Historic District

Manalapan: Potential for term limits discussed

Posted by Mary Kate Leming on June 1, 2011 at 13:22

By Steve Plunkett

    If town commissioners had term limits, would there be enough candidates to fill all seven seats?
    Commissioner David Cheifetz answers yes and asked his colleagues to consider limits at their May meeting.
    “For a long time there was little turnover on the commission,” said Cheifetz, who suggested three terms as commissioner and three terms as mayor, but no more than five consecutive terms.
    Town Clerk Lisa Petersen surveyed neighboring municipalities at Cheifetz’s request and reported there are no limits in Palm Beach, Gulf Stream, Lantana, Ocean Ridge or Hypoluxo. South Palm Beach commissioners can serve three terms as commissioner followed by three as mayor.
    Petersen also gave a sample of former officials with longer tenures. Kelly Gottlieb and Bill Quigley each served four terms, Edward Singer served eight, G. Kent Shortz 12 and Peter Blum 16.
    “If you ignore the last couple of elections and you go back, you’ll see that very, very few elections in this town were competitive. People stayed on as long as they wanted to,” Mayor Basil Diamond said.
    Vice Mayor Robert Evans was not convinced.
    “I think there’s just too few people that want to serve, and if we do term limits we will find it difficult to find participants,” Evans said. “There are people in this community who are politically active and make a contribution, but most people in town rely on us.”
    He also said Manalapan is smaller than its neighbors and has a smaller pool from which to draw candidates.
    Limiting terms would require a charter change approved by Manalapan’s voters. Diamond suggested asking voters to authorize the commission to set term limits by ordinance in case the town in the future wants to change back to having no limits.
    Commissioner Donald Brennan said polarization between residents on the Point and on the ocean troubles him.
    “Elections here do take on a characteristic of a popularity contest. And in a very small community it gets very personal,” Brennan said. “There is some collateral consequences to these elections when you’re dealing with a population of 400. That’s not a healthy thing.’’
    Brennan said having term limits “would take some edge off or alleviate the atmosphere.”
    “I do think that more people would come out, I don’t mean this in a pejorative way, of the woodwork if it wasn’t for the confrontational risk of running against my neighbor,” he said.
    Commissioner Louis DeStefano said there was no need for term limits when voters can replace an incumbent every two years.
    “I think our recent election speaks for the process,” DeStefano said, citing the March losses of Gottlieb and William Bernstein and his and Howard Roder’s victories in 2010.
    Brennan said Manalapan’s very small population and a geographic split work against it.
    “It’s been very hard to bring these two things together,” he said. “That is not something that other communities have to deal with. Ocean Ridge doesn’t have to deal with the dichotomy between two physically disparate places, two radically different property values.”
    Brennan said another benefit of term limits is having new faces dealing with issues such as the water plant and outsourcing police services.
    “You get people sitting here for a long time that made many of the decisions that we’re now trying to address,” Brennan said. “You cannot get an open discussion of that if you were the author of the decision.’’
    Diamond agreed he had a new perspective on government after taking a two-and-a-half-year hiatus from officialdom.
    “When you’re on a commission or any board for a long time, you settle into a pattern and you’re associating with the same group,” he said. “I don’t think you’re as fresh as you are when you leave” and come back.
    In the end, commissioners asked for a draft ordinance to consider Diamond’s suggestion of setting term limits by ordinance.
    “Then we can experiment with it and see if we end up with no commission,” Evans said.
    In other business, Town Attorney Trela White reported that Wendy and Louis Navellier’s motion for a new trial on their pool cabana dispute was denied. The Navelliers can still appeal, she said, but a $250-a-day code enforcement fine continues to accrue.

Manalapan: Gatehouse appearance options discussed

Posted by Mary Kate Leming on June 1, 2011 at 13:20

By Steve Plunkett

The gatehouse at Point Manalapan may be rescued by an unlikely knight: the man whose request to remove Australian pines along A1A prompted a review of town policy on exotic vegetation.
Point residents came to the Town Commission’s meeting in April to protest Stewart Satter’s plan to take out Australian pines across from 1400 S. Ocean Blvd., which Satter is demolishing. The neighbors west of the waterway feared that without the trees they would see and hear more traffic and birds would lose habitat.
When Satter heard commissioners and Daryl Cheifetz of the town’s landscape committee go back and forth in May over how to repair a mud hole at the gatehouse, he offered a solution.
“It sounds like it’s like so many things, about money,’’ Satter said. “I will make my landscape architect available to the landscape committee, and I will fund that project where the landscape architect will, at their direction, provide maybe three, four, five, six different options from the simplest option to the most complicated option.
“You can look at those options, and they can look at those options and perhaps maybe even the residents of the Point can vote on those options,’’ Satter said. “And perhaps, depending on the expense of those options, I may even fund the ultimate project.’’
Commissioners first had been asked to approve spending $3,124 to extend pavers and asphalt on the exit side of the gatehouse. An adjacent hedge was removed and now vehicles, particularly trucks, tend to go off the road, Mayor Basil Diamond said.
“It’s a mess and something needs to be done to maintain that property,” Diamond said.
But Cheifetz said she was tired of Manalapan spending $5,000 here and $3,000 there on gatehouse remedies.
“It seems that we keep patch-working a cure for this very important area that has an impact on the aesthetics of the town and also property values, looking at it big-picture,’’ she said.
Cheifetz said she wanted authorization and money to rebuild the paver entrance and put new landscaping in.
“I don’t really see any way to correct that road area unless you redo it,” she said. “It’s going to be obvious where this patch is being placed. Now I don’t know how you’re going to get around that.”
Commissioners asked her to bring them a rendering before they approved spending money, but Cheifetz said she would need money to have a sketch developed.
“I don’t have the exposure to this as much as the folks that live there, but … I’m very sympathetic to this,” Commissioner Donald Brennan said. “It’s taking on the character of a military base that has got the word that they’re going to close it … because it would almost look better without it, because it’s majorly offensive.”
The landscape committee investigated putting concrete bollards along the road, but learned the town would be liable for any damage done to vehicles. It explored lowering the speed limit to 5 mph, but was told the current 20 mph is the lowest allowed.
Commissioners also considered putting in a speed bump (possible, Police Chief Clay Walker said) or posting weight limits on the Audubon Bridge (no limits allowed).
They also discussed the building’s history.
“Are there pictures of what that guardhouse originally looked like?” Cheifetz asked. “I imagine that it had a lovely concept that has sort of gone by the wayside due to lack of maintenance, lack of interest, whatever.”
Diamond said he wasn’t here at the start, but said the gatehouse originally had sliding glass doors and just asphalt, no pavers.
He also said the structure has a significant deterrent effect.
“Right now you see a lot of people that are just wandering around, driving around the island. They see that gatehouse; often they will turn and not even come in Manalapan,” he said.

Barrier islands wary of growth management changes

Posted by Mary Kate Leming on June 1, 2011 at 13:15

By Thomas R. Collins

    Changes to state growth management laws passed during the latest legislative session have area watchdogs and officials wary of the prospects for development in and around coastal barrier island towns.
    The changes, pushed through by Gov. Rick Scott and a Republican-dominated legislature, would mean that it is no longer a state requirement for roads, schools and parks to keep up with development — a concept known as ‘concurrency’ — but would leave it up to local governments to require it.
    Another change would make it more difficult for local residents to challenge changes to local comprehensive plans — the blueprint for future development that is designed to keep projects logical and not overly harmful to the environment. Those changes could not be put out to referendum for a citizen vote. Plus, changes to comprehensive plans — now possible at only pre-determined times twice a year — could be done at any municipal meeting, giving residents less time to prepare if they want to oppose them.
    The Department of Community Affairs, the state agency that oversees development, would be downsized. The new process would allow the state to comment on the projects with the most profound effects, but would not require such review.
    Those supporting the changes say they’re needed to lift up a state economy in which developers are hamstrung by excessive red tape.
    Critics respond that, with projects approved but languishing, it is hardly state oversight that is to blame for the state’s economic woes.
    Bob Ganger, president of the Florida Coalition for Preservation, said the system that has been in place for 25 years has “changed dramatically” and is concerned about the possible effects.
    The group was formed in 2006 to combat a proposal to turn the town of Briny Breezes into a complex of more than 1,500 condos, timeshares and hotel rooms, and has remained the barrier island’s most staunch advocate of sensible growth.
    In part due to the coalition’s work, the state’s Department of Community Affairs swooped in to challenge the enormity of the Briny Breezes project, with meetings attended by Secretary Tom Pelham himself.
    “Without the Department of Community Affairs to question the amended comprehensive plan, clearly the developer would have had the upper hand,” Ganger said.
    With a shrunken DCA, a level of protection may be lost, he said. But added it is too early to declare a doomsday.
     Financial conditions will mean that development will probably be self-limiting at least in the near future, he said, and citizens could always challenge developments in the courts.
    “They’re simply going to shift disputes in to the courts and in so doing slow the process down even more than it would have been otherwise,” he said.
    Joanne Davis, who handles community affairs locally for the community-planning group 1000 Friends of Florida, said changes to the burden-of-proof requirements would greatly limit residents’ ability to challenge a project in the courts — and many people may find it not even worth the fight.
    “Now, the burden of proof is on the challenger, not the developer,” she said.
    She said that putting more control in the hands of local officials — minus state oversight — makes it much easier for developers to have their way.
    “Developers are in the habit of lobbying local governments and offering and promising lots of things that may or may not take place,” she said. “And they’re very good at influencing them.”
    Briny Breezes Mayor Roger Bennett pointed out that “DCA will not disappear” but said the possibility of less oversight might make it easier for a potential project to be approved.
“In many respects it may be a little easier,” he said. But he said he is not aware of any major development proposals.
    “There’s been no talk that I know of,” Bennett said. “It’s been very quiet.”
    Michael Gut, the chairman of the corporate board of the mobile home park, said he also is unaware of any proposals.
    Jerry Lower, the planning and zoning board director for the town and the publisher of The Coastal Star, said he expects the town’s plans to remain the same.
    “The Town of Briny Breezes is working on a comprehensive plan that allows for modest self-redevelopment and the use of housing that is more storm-worthy than the existing mobile homes,” he said. “We don’t see a change in state politics as a reason to alter those goals.”        The Briny Breezes land is not the only parcel that might be seen as juicy development terrain with the changed laws, said the coalition’s executive director Kristine de Haseth.
    “There are numerous post-war and multifamily structures on the barrier island that could represent an appealing target for an aggressive developer,” she said in an email.
    Ken Schenck, town manager of Ocean Ridge, just north of Briny Breezes, said it remains to be seen how the law will affect development.
    “We’ve always got concerns about what they’re going to do,” he said. “We realize something is going to happen there eventually. … In today’s market what they were proposing before probably wouldn’t fly anyway.”
    He said the town could always raise concerns with county or state officials — such as traffic concerns with the Department of Transportation.
    “How much clout we’d have?” he said. “Probably not much.”
    He said it’s also possible that a project in Briny Breezes might even be acceptable.
    “It just depends on what they do,” he said.
    Ganger said he could not imagine a situation in which a neighboring town would sit idly by while development outside its borders threatens its quality of life, regardless of changes to state growth management laws.
    “I really do believe that in our neck of the woods we have well-managed jurisdictions,” he said. “And that it really gets down to your trust in your elected officials to abide by the rules that they’ve already set in prior comprehensive plans “which, in general in our area, are quite reasonable.’’
    Davis said local residents cannot afford to take a back seat as development proposals are made.
    “There’s never, ever a more important time for them to be in contact with their local government,” she said. “Unless the public engages, they will have no voice. Politicians pay attention to numbers. So show up at the meetings.”

Boynton Beach: Mizner building offered to city

Posted by Mary Kate Leming on June 1, 2011 at 13:13

By Ron Hayes

The Boynton Beach Woman’s Club has reluctantly offered to deed its historic, 85-year-old building to the city because it can no longer afford the $70,000 annual operating budget.
The all-volunteer club supports itself by renting the building for weddings and other social events.
Mayor Jose Rodriguez, who brought up the offer at last month’s City Commission meeting, said the 103-year-old club had originally offered to sell the building and he had responded by suggesting a deed transfer.
The full commission has not yet to put the offer on its agenda for discussion.
The Mediterranean Revival building was designed in 1925 by famed Palm Beach architect Addison Mizner, who agreed to donate his services if the cost did not exceed $50,000. A cornerstone was laid in 1932 and the property dedicated to Major Nathan Smith Boynton.
Originally used as the town library, it has been home to the Woman’s Club since 1961 and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.
Last year, the building’s market value was assessed at $549,393.

Gulf Stream: Critics of utility project cost-share keep up opposition

Posted by Mary Kate Leming on June 1, 2011 at 13:10

More than 30 people attended a recent Gulf Stream Town meeting, some (in red shirts) to complain about undergrounding power line assessments. Photo by Jerry Lower

By Steve Plunkett
Wearing red, Gulfstream Shores residents kept up their assault on what the town wants them to pay to put utility lines underground even as town commissioners set June 30 for a public hearing on the plan.
“Tell your consultants to go back. There are other options,’’ said lawyer Marcie Nolan, representing Gulfstream Shores’ 54 condominium units at the commission’s May 13 meeting.
Nolan repeated that Gulfstream Shores wants the special assessments to be based either on lot size or lot frontage. That would drop per-unit costs, now $6,118 at the complex, to $328, while single-family homes would pay $15,402 on average instead of $10,000, she said.
Edward Johnson, president of the time-share owners at recently annexed Gulfstream Manor, also spoke against the assessments, as did Sophie Bent of Hillside House.
“A lot of our property owners feel the unfairness of the methodology used,’’ Bent said of her 12-unit condo.
At least one complex, the 23-unit Somerset, supports the proposal. “The Somerset voted 100 percent for the methodology you all have chosen,’’ said Nancy Wibbelsman, whose husband is president of the condo association there. “We believe that it was fair for each individual to bear an equal burden because each individual or each family that owns the unit is going to be sharing this burden equally.’’
Bob Ganger, president of the Gulf Stream Civic Association, said while affected property owners polled in a straw ballot approved the project 56 percent to 44 percent, Gulfstream Shores “from the very beginning’’ was opposed to the assessment methodology.
“If one excluded Gulf-stream Shores, who voted overwhelmingly against, the total for the town would have been 65 for, 35 against,’’ Ganger said. Condo residents also disputed variations among condo assessments. Bill Dugmore of Gulfstream Shores said the average unit there is 750 square feet; Wibbelsman told him condos at the Somerset are 1,200 to 1,300 square feet.
“That’s approximately twice the size of a unit at Gulfstream Shores, and you’re being assessed the same amount of money that we are,’’ Dugmore said.
“But you’re benefiting the same amount I am,’’ Wibbelsman responded.
John Caldwell, who lives at the Golf View Club, said his building’s seven units are being assessed $8,200 each, more than 300 other properties on the list.
“With all due respect to our friends from Gulfstream Shores, their average is $6,200 for all of the condos,’’ Caldwell said. ‘’We’re paying $2,000 more than that for our tiny little building, and I just think that’s on its face unfair.’’
Before the public commented, Gulf Stream’s consultants reviewed the safety and reliability of underground electric wires and defended the fairness of the assessments. Nolan at two April meetings had charged that the project’s only benefit was improved aesthetics.
Consulting engineer Danny Brannon said he did not know of anyone being electrocuted by an underground system, but said the same is not true of overhead wires. He also said converting to underground is so important to Florida Power & Light Co. that the utility will pay 25 percent of the project’s costs. Brannon said he also has discovered an electric cable under the Intracoastal Waterway connecting Gulf Stream to the mainland. That should negate fears of power outages caused by downed overhead wires in Briny Breezes or Delray Beach, he said.
Lee Evett of Willdan Financial Services said his firm is the only one in Florida to have completed assessment methodologies, in Jupiter Inlet Colony and the towns of Palm Beach and Gulf Stream, as well as 11 others in California.
Only one was challenged in court, and Willdan was upheld, he said.
“There isn’t a more fair system under Florida law for assigning costs of a particular project than an assessment methodology,’’ Evett said, noting that Palm Beach, like Gulf Stream, has a number of condominiums.
Meanwhile, Gulfstream Shores wrote state Sen. Ellyn Bogdanoff requesting that Florida pass a law declaring condominium complexes a single parcel rather than multiple units when special assessments are imposed.
Mayor William F. Koch Jr. then wrote Bogdanoff to say it would be ‘’unfortunate’’ to take legislative action based on “incomplete information’’ about Gulf Stream’s plans. Gulfstream Shores has other ways to challenge the project, he said.
“The established process for local government legislative decision-making has not been completed and should not be cut short,’’ Koch wrote.
The Town Commission approved an ordinance 4-0 authorizing the special assessments and scheduling the public hearing. Commissioner Chris Wheeler was absent.
“We’ve listened to all your thoughts today and we’re considering them and will consider them,’’ Koch told the condo residents in the filled commission chambers.
Town Clerk Rita Taylor said the hearing, which starts at 9 a.m. June 30, is akin to a “board of equalization,’’ where residents can present grievances over assessments for possible adjustment.
After the hearing, the commission can adopt, reject or modify the assessment roll.
Notices of the hearing had to be mailed to the affected property owners 30 days in advance, Taylor said.
If approved, the assessments will show up on property tax bills in November. The proposed project does not include Place au Soleil, which was built with underground
lines.

Note to readers: Gulf Stream’s June 30 public hearing on special assessments comes too late to be covered in our next edition. Please go to www.thecoastalstar.com for updates on the town’s underground project.

Lantana: Budget reveals less bad news than last year

Posted by Mary Kate Leming on June 1, 2011 at 13:08

By Margie Plunkett

Lantana kicked off its budget process with the prospect of further drops in property tax revenue and other income that could once again force it to grapple with cost cutting. But as one council member put it, the glass is looking more like it’s half full.
    Soon after the town’s May 23 budget workshop, the Palm Beach County Property Appraiser released figures estimating Lantana’s property values dropped 4.3 percent to $692 million. That’s still a vast improvement from 2010, when Lantana saw property values decline about 17 percent, according to property appraiser estimates.
    The 4.3 percent decline was on the less painful side of the scenarios Lantana had laid out, which showed:
    • A 3 percent property value decline would equal a $66,817 drop in revenue.
    • A 5 percent drop would equal $111,361, and
    • An 8 percent reduction would result in $178,178 less revenue.        Lantana — like muni-cipalities everywhere — has been forced to cut back over the last several years and finding new places to reduce spending is ever more difficult. The town has cut 15 positions from its labor pool in the last four years, leaving Lantana with the equivalent of 93 full-time positions currently.
    “I don’t want to see services cut, anybody laid off,” said meeting regular, resident Bob Little. “We’re down to the nitty gritty now.”
    Already the town is falling behind, putting off work that needs to be done to keep spending down, Little said. “If you lay people off, it’s going to get worse. You have to find the money somewhere,” he said, adding that maybe the town has to raise taxes.
    Among the casualties of budget cutting past: the town’s fireworks display this year. Lantana will, however, still put on a 90th anniversary celebration, but the Lantana Historical Society will sponsor that with the help of the Kiwanis Club. The celebration will be held at Town Hall.
    There are some positives signs. In the current fiscal year, revenue is projected to exceed the budget by $110,000, with a boost from fees and fines, according to the town’s presentation at its budget workshop.
    Building permits and zoning fees were up $29,000, parking violations were up $52,000 and code violations were up $35,000, but were also countered by lower revenue from falling franchise fees, including Florida Power & Light’s, which were down $42,000.
    Lantana’s revenue projections for the 2011-12 budget cycle anticipate the continuing challenge from falling property values. But revenues not related to property are also projected to fall $155,000 next year, according to the presentation: Income is on the decline from boat trailer decals, beach decals, parking meters and a charter school that’s closing.
    The town expects to gain revenue from a new lease deal from Fire Rescue Station No. 37 that will bring in $63,800; a new cell tower, $22,800; and building and zoning fees, $30,000.
    The expenditure side also has its ups and downs, with spending on police pensions expected to decline $85,000, but health insurance costs to rise $170,000.
    The next step in the process for Lantana is to review department spending requests and to await the certified property tax valuation expected to be released July 1.
    Council will hold its next budget workshop at 6:30 p.m., June 30 at town hall.               Ú

Lantana: Officer charged with multiple robberies

Posted by Mary Kate Leming on June 1, 2011 at 13:06

By Tim O’Meilia

    A Lantana police officer was arrested and charged with three counts of robbery after he allegedly pulled over Hispanic men and stole their money after they left check-cashing stores.
    Officer Mark Ott, 35, faces a maximum of 90 years in prison for three counts of robbery with prejudice for targeting Hispanic men between February and May. Ott, an officer for four years, was released on $25,000 bail. He is on administrative leave without pay.
    According to the probable cause affidavit, Ott made multiple stops of Hispanic men, searched them and returned some of their money. He took $35 to $400 at each stop.
    The arrest came after an undercover sting operation resulting from a February incident when he stopped an FBI agent and his son. That led to an investigation involving the FBI, the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office and the State Attorney’s Public Integrity Unit task force.
    Ott was arrested May 19 after he pulled over an under-cover Sheriff’s deputy and an FBI agent, took $400 in photocopied bills, but kept $150 before letting the men go. The money was later found stuffed in Ott’s tactical vest, according to the affidavit.

Ocean Ridge: Arrests stand despite snafu

Posted by Mary Kate Leming on June 1, 2011 at 13:01

By Thomas R. Collins

Ocean Ridge officials breathed a sigh of relief this month when a state board overseeing police officer training let three dozen arrests stand even though the officers who made them hadn’t gotten their firearms recertification from a properly certified instructor.
    All of the town’s 21 police officers — 14 regular officers and seven reserve officers — had gotten their firearms certification renewed for the 2006 to 2008 period and the 2008 to 2010 period through an instructor who was certified as a general firearms instructor but was not state-certified.
    Ocean Ridge Police Chief Chris Yannuzzi said that shortly after he became chief last year, he was surprised to learn of the glitch. “I asked our firearms instructor, ‘Are you state certified?’ … And the answer that day was, ‘No.’ ”
    He said he then called the state, asking, “What do we do now?”
    Town officials — along with officials from other towns in the same boat — had to travel to Ocala to appear before the Standards and Training Commission, part of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. That board issued a waiver for the certification, thereby allowing the arrests made by the officers to stand.
    Ernie George, chair of the commission and president of the Palm Beach County Police Benevolent Association, said the instructors involved had gone through most of the training, but hadn’t completed an internship under another state-certified instructor.
    “This has happened before where the instructors are totally trained, they have the proper training,” he said. “So we’ve waived it in the past for other counties around the state.”
    He said there was never a question about the officers’ proficiency with firearms.
    “All the officers qualified on the (gun) range,” he said.
    The arrests at risk in Ocean Ridge ranged from burglaries to domestic-violence cases to less serious charges. Arrests in capital cases — including homicides and sexual batteries — are handled by the Sheriff’s Office for the town and therefore were not at risk, Yannuzzi said.
    All of the town’s officers were quickly recertified through Boynton Beach, and the town’s firearms instructor has been properly state-certified, he said.
    Why hadn’t the problem with the instructor’s certification been discovered earlier? Requirements on certification changed for the 2006 to 2008 period, and Yannuzzi chalked it up to a “misinterpretation of the rules.”

South Palm Beach: Breakwater prospects occupy commission

Posted by Mary Kate Leming on June 1, 2011 at 13:00

NOTE: Story has been corrected since printed to reflect the following date change:

• Changed the date of the June council meeting to the 21st, rather than the 28th, also to accommodate Flagello’s schedule.

By Tim O’Meilia

    Clutching to a sliver of hope that a breakwater project to protect the eroding South Palm Beach shore can be revived, Palm Beach County commissioners will meet with federal and state environmental regulators June 28.
    “Hopefully, that will serve to revive those projects, otherwise it will be incumbent on individual condominiums to protect their buildings,” County Commssioner Steven Abrams told the South Palm Beach Town Council May 24.
    County Commissioner Priscilla Taylor called for the workshop after commissioners deep-sixed a breakwater project off Riviera Beach, which effectively killed plans for a breakwater project that would have protected 1.3 miles of shore from the south end of the town of Palm Beach to the Ritz-Carlton resort in Manalapan, covering both South Palm Beach and the Lantana public beach.
    Sixteen visible breakwaters averaging 120 feet long would have been placed 200 to 250 feet off shore of South Palm Beach. Instead of breakwaters, nine 115-foot submerged groins would be placed in front of the Lantana public beach.
    Neither the county, nor the state, nor the federal Army Corps of Engineers had money budgeted for the estimated $15 million to $25 million project. Work was supposed to begin in 2013.
    Commissioners said they were concerned that above-water breakwaters would interfere with sea turtles reaching the beach to lay their eggs. However, submerged breakwaters would be much less effective in protecting the beach, computer models have shown. Only Abrams and Commissioner Karen Marcus backed the Singer Island project.
    First-year State Rep. Jeff Clemens, D-Lake Worth, also weighed in on beach restoration. “I am not in favor of dredge-and-fill projects, but other approaches are more effective,” he told council members at the May 24 meeting.
    “I want DEP (Department of Environmental Protection) to come up with a statewide plan to address the situation. For each town to come up with its own plan is crazy,” Clemens said.
    Councilwoman Bonnie Fischer asked Abrams for county help in gaining beach access for equipment to repair and build sea walls behind condominiums, if necessary. Abrams said he would work on that.
    In other town business, the council:
    • Agreed unanimously to move the time of their monthly meetings from 7 p.m. to 7:15 p.m. at Councilman Joseph Flagello’s request so he would not be late.
    • Changed the date of the June council meeting to the 21st, rather than the 28th, also to accommodate Flagello’s schedule.
    • Renewed unanimously the town’s participation in the county’s urban county program, which would make the town eligible for disaster relief money or federal stimulus money, should either become available. The federal money is administered through the county.
    Mayor Donald Clayman said the town would file an appeal June 1 to the U.S. Census Bureau of its official 2010 population count. June 1 is the first day appeals can be filed.
    The census showed the town with 1,171 people — 360 fewer than 10 years ago. But the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections lists 1,292 South Palm Beach voters on its rolls.

Boynton Beach Sister Cities, Young Artist’s Showcase: Boynton Beach City Library

Posted by Mary Kate Leming on June 1, 2011 at 12:50

Meaghan Donahue, an eighth-grader at St. Joseph ’s Episcopal School in Boynton Beach, received an honorable mention for her artwork. She lives on Hypoluxo Island.

St. Joseph’s Episcopal School Go Green Auction: Quail Ridge Country Club

Posted by Mary Kate Leming on June 1, 2011 at 12:48

Kelly DuBois (top left), Deanna Patrick,
Jackson Langford and Carolina Carney attend
St. Joseph’s auction April 8, which raised more than $160,000 for the school.