In the end, the plan to bring a taller building and more people to the oceanfront was a straightforward matter, according to the county officials who in July gave the go-ahead for a new condominium at the old Sea Horse Bath and Tennis club site.

The approval opens the way for a six-story, 34-unit complex. It will be bigger than neighbors wanted, but smaller, officials said, than it could have been.

“When you have regulations set up and developers meeting them, you really can’t change midstream,” Palm Beach County Zoning Director Jon McGillis said, after the meeting at which the plan was approved.

The developer, Kolter Property Group, hopes to get the condominium built and open for sale within the year, and proceed with plans to add four single family homes to the west side of the property, Bob Vail, vice president of Kolter said. The total number of units still will be fewer than those
permitted under current density requirements, he added.

“We would have thought that would have made some people breathe a sigh of relief,” he said.

Opponents to the project, though, say questions about its impact have only begun and go beyond the matters of aesthetics, resources, drainage, emergency services and traffic they already have raised as objections to the plan.

Robert Ganger, president of the Florida Coalition for Preservation called the project “a benchmark — because it’s gone from 23 residential units per acre, which was all the old Sea Horse had for 50 years.
The county has a policy that it shall not approve any increases in residential density in coastal high-hazard areas.”

“As we have all seen when facilities are constructed too near the water’s edge, a series of cascading events initiate which exacerbated beach erosion,” he wrote.

Tichenor added increased demand for expensive and controversial beach renourishment projects is one of the consequences of coastal construction.

“We fall into this situation where approvals are given to build very close to the ocean,” he added. “You have people believing, rightly or wrongly, that the beach used to be 200 feet wider. Maybe it was, in the brochure. People move in and become worried about being swept away. And they want sand.”

“That’s the one thing we can do,” Kraus said. “Because they’re making the situation worse.”

Residents of condominiums neighboring the site, many of whom already use “Gulf Stream” in the return addresses of their printed stationery, have petitioned the town to take the pocket of land, overwhelmingly favoring being included in that town over becoming Boynton Beach residents.

“Less units with a Gulf Stream address is probably worth more than more units with a Boynton Beach address,” Gulf Stream Mayor Bill Koch noted in an early July meeting.

“I think it would be preferable,” Vail conceded. “I think it would be crazy not to say that. It’s just common sense. The flaw in it is that area doesn’t really look like Gulf Stream to begin with. We are where we are. And we’re fine with that.”

The planned six-story building will neighbor an existing seven-story building on one side, a five-story building on the other side, and an eight-story building diagonally across the street.

Vail adds, “We don’t want it to be an eyesore. We don’t want it to stick out.” And he says his company has worked with neighboring residents to meet their concerns.

After the approval Koch sympathized with neighbors of the project, though, adding that their prospects of becoming official Gulf Stream residents appeared dimmer.

“That’s the way the cookie crumbles,” he said.

Ganger, of the Preservation Coalition, agrees that the new condominium will be in line with its surrounding structures.

“That’s because they’re all too tall,” he said.

Ganger hopes the project will inspire towns along the coast, from Manalapan to Delray Beach, to work collaboratively.

‘”The Sea Horse project is a wake-up call — another wake-up call,” he said, after the plan was approved. “We have to come to some agreement that we live by common rules.”

He described his vision.

“We all agree that we’re not going above four stories. We all agree we’re not going to increase population density. We can then plan our infrastructure needs as a barrier island.” Those needs include water supply, waste disposal and emergency services, he said. “A master plan, if you will.”

By Dianna Smith

As the sun rises each morning, when the water is calm and other people are still sound asleep, Jim and Sande Strong peer across their deck and are reminded why they are some of the luckiest people in Delray Beach.

Paradise is in their front yard.

Living on a boat is just a vague dream for many, but for couples like the Strongs, it’s the real deal. They start their days reading the newspaper on their deck, which overlooks the Intracoastal Waterway, and they end their days at the same place, sipping glasses of wine while the sunset paints the sky in pastels.

They’ve lived at the Delray Beach City Marina for 11 years and, before that, they lived in a three-bedroom villa in Boynton Beach. And though the Strongs have always wanted to live on the water, Sande admits she’s terrified of it because she doesn’t know how to swim.

So why live on a boat?

“Look around you,” Sande Strong said while fixing a drink. “We used to come by here all the time and Jim used to say, ‘That’s where we’re going to live someday.’ ”

There are 24 slips at the marina and 14 house live-aboards. It can take months and sometimes years of waiting for one to become available. The Strongs made it to the top of the list twice before accepting the invitation the third time around.

The inside of their boat looks more like an apartment, with three flat-screen televisions, a beautiful living room, lots of storage space and a dog named Emma, who greets everyone who comes aboard.

They’ve made it through four hurricanes (and are normally evacuated before things get too rough) and they’ve traveled in their home to local Florida hot spots like the Florida Keys.

But they’re often tied to the area because they own Sande’s Restaurant on Federal Highway in Delray Beach — a small mom and pop breakfast and lunch joint where the food tastes like home cooking and waitresses remember the customers’ names.

“We work hard at the restaurant,” Sande said. “You deal with people 100 percent of your time. So we come home and sit by the water. It’s very calming and peaceful.”

Jim has retired from the restaurant business and his wife recently cut her hours so they can enjoy more time on their boat at the marina.

The City Marina is just like any other neighborhood. Neighbors look out for each other and they gather for “block parties” — cocktails and food at sunset —every now and then. The average age here is about 50, but there is a family or two in the mix.

Across the Intracoastal are families as well, including the Petersen family — Mike, Kim and Stefan. Right now, their 65-foot boat is anchored nearby at the Yacht Club of Delray Beach, but it hasn’t always been there.

The Petersens have traveled in their boat across the Atlantic Ocean into the Mediterranean, and their stops have included Morocco, Israel and Egypt. When they reached the halfway point across the Atlantic — about 900 miles from land — each family member jumped into the water and swam around the boat to mark the occasion and then celebrated with a cake baked by Kim.

They called themselves the “mid-Atlantic swim team.”

The Petersens lived in Canada before selling their home and most of their belongings to move to Palm Beach County in 2005. Stefan and their daughter Lauren — who is now in college — became home-schooled so the family could take part in building the boat themselves, starting with only a catamaran shell purchased in New Zealand.

“We had done the whole being busy, sports, suburbs thing,” Kim said. “We were pretty well established. But we always had this dream.”

And it became their children’s dreams too.

Stefan, 16, said he got to be Christopher Columbus and discover new worlds and now he would like to one day work for the U.S. Coast Guard because he feels at home on the water. Kim recently wrote a book about their adventure called Charting the Unknown and she’s working on a second book about their journey through the Mediterranean.

But for now, their journey has landed them right here in Delray Beach.

They’ve been in Delray Beach for eight months off and on now and they picked the city after learning they could walk to town from their boat but still be close to the ocean. The family recently bought their first car here in five years and Mike, who hadn’t worn a suit since 2005, finally bought his first tie since moving to Florida.

The Petersens are considering staying in Delray Beach. And sometimes Mike and Kim even think of selling their boat and living on land, though their children beg them not to because this boat is now their home.

So the family plans to keep living the life so many envy.

And when people ask them — as many do — where do you live?

They can continue to answer with a smile, “On the water.”

By Mary Thurwachter

Like any lady in her 86th year, the clubhouse requires primping and preening from time to time, and sometimes a bit more. That’s what’s happening this summer.

The final phase, which likely will be done next year, will involve replacing windows on the south side of the building. The architect and contractor is William Wietsma. All the work is completed during summer months, while the club is closed.

How it all began

The Gulf Stream Golf Club was founded by a handful of members of the Everglades Club in Palm Beach. William G. Warden, Edward W. Stotesbury, John F. Harris, Edward Shearson and Paris Singer felt the swelling membership there compromised the club’s exclusive character. At the time, the founders limited the Gulf Stream club’s membership to 200 with a $2,500 membership fee.

According to Donald Curl’s book Mizner’s Florida: American Resort Architecture, it took Mizner a mere six hours to produce plans and sketches of the building. The construction contract was awarded to Cooper Lightbown, and Donald Ross, the most influential golf course designer of the day, signed on as the golf course architect.

For added appeal, Mizner gave the façade an arcaded loggia and a double flight of curving stairs. Men’s and women’s locker rooms were located on the ground floor, while a living room (Mizner room), dining room and oceanfront terrace led off from the loggia upstairs. Durable pecky cypress beams and a large fireplace were built into the dining room. Even the club kitchen was given a panoramic ocean view.

The neighboring polo fields

Months after the club opened, John S. Phipps bought land on the north end of the golf course for stables and polo fields. The town soon became the winter polo capital and socialites from far and wide would come to watch the games. So did Hollywood types, such as Gary Cooper and Ava Gardner. Club members, including Phipps, began building houses in the area, which became a town in 1925. The Town Council held its meetings at the Gulf Stream Golf clubhouse before Town Hall was built years later.

Polo games concluded in 1963, when the Phipps family sold the land for development.

Focus on golf

When it opened in January 1924, the club’s members were known to take a dip in the ocean after hitting the links. Over the years, that has changed and members began to focus on golf and social activities. It is not a beach club.

Early reports gave the 18-hole course high marks. “The golf course is in the very pink of condition,” wrote the Palm Beach Daily News. “The rains of recent days have given the turf and the greens a beautiful luster and a wonderful body so that the balls rebound easily and roll along when they strike the ground.”

Of course some of the balls didn’t hit the intended target, sinking in the pond. Some of those old relics were retrieved and remain part of a display of errant golf balls near the bar in the clubhouse.

While golf was the focus, social activities remained important as well, with Sunday luncheons bringing members from Palm Beach by car or boat. Luxurious yachts
tied up at the club’s now-defunct docks, located between the 11th and 16th greens of the golf course.

Tropical storms in 1926 and 1928 damaged the golf course, but the clubhouse stood strong.

World War II years

The club closed during World War II, when the clubhouse was made available to the military. During that time local residents could, for a modest fee, use the golf course.

According to a program produced for the club’s 50th anniversary in 1974, submarine attacks occurred frequently in 1943.

“A Coast Guard patrolman noticed a beam of light in the Gulf Stream Club and, upon investigation, it was determined that a German agent, who had illegally gained
entry, had been using an aperture in one of the oceanfront hurricane shutters
through which he was signaling submarines with a flashlight. Although seen by
the Navy Patrol as he jumped from the building, the agent was never
apprehended. At the time, Boca Raton was an important bomber base from which B-17s flew directly to England for action.”

The club reopened in 1946 and has been going strong ever since.

Bauer says the club employs 75 to 80 people during the season, from mid-October to mid-May, and about 30 during the off-season. The golf course is maintained all year long and open strictly to members.

Mary Thurwachter is a West Palm Beach freelance writer and founder/producer of the travel e-zine INNsideFlorida.com (www.innsideflorida.com).

I’ve worked under university grants that were discontinued for lack of funding, for Internet start-ups that failed when the hi-tech bubble burst and for an industry that needed to purge itself of well-paid middle management when the real estate bubble burst.

You could say I’ve been “busted” a few times.

As a result, I feel for the men and women who sat quietly and listened to their bosses talk about cutting “unnecessary services” during last month’s municipal budget workshops. I’ve seen their faces. They’re scared.

This summer, as I’ve attended the budget workshops for our coastal communities, I’ve heard the following in almost every town:

• The majority of elected officials do not want to raise taxes, and

• There’s a growing feeling that public employees have become an elite, protected class compared to workers in the private sector.

When I took my latest buyout, I was one of 300 who left the company. Two years later, some are seriously struggling with health issues, mortgage payments and day-to-day expenses. But others are embarking on envious adventures as they start their own businesses, go back to school, or take off to travel the world.

We all know that very few of us will ever return to a workplace with nice offices, dependable paychecks, expense accounts, benefits, savings plans and paid vacation.

The world has changed.

Job security — long gone from the private sector — is now looking shaky for public employees.

For all of us, these are hard times requiring hard decisions.

If you have the expertise to offer advice and solutions, please consider participating in the budget process in your town. Not only could it impact your local taxes and which community services remain, you may even be able to offer a solution that saves someone’s job.

By C.B. Hanif

Rev. Aaron Janklow arrived at the First Presbyterian Church of Delray Beach doing what any congregation wants of a new clergyman. The result is TnT — or Twenties ’n’ Thirties — the popular young professionals group he leads.

The new associate minister didn’t find much going on for the above-20-year-old, post-graduate, young professional age group, other than the club scene. So he replicated the TnT of his former First Presbyterian Church of Ann Arbor, Mich., from which he arrived last August.

His group meets at 6 p.m. on the first and third Wednesdays of each month in the church’s Christian Learning Center.

“This has turned into a place where they can pursue their faith, but also find a good group of solid friends,” said Rev. Janklow, 28, before a recent meeting. “We go out to dinner after this pretty frequently. Or we go to see movies together and different stuff. So it’s been good.”

TnT began over lunch with Kim and Grant Winker, who are very involved in the “Community Church By the Sea” pastored by the renowned Rev. Dr. Ted Bush. They quickly were joined by Karlton Brown, currently on a mission trip in Ghana.

“There are about eight core members, and up to 13 people on a given night,” Janklow said. “We have (age) 22, just graduated college, to 38 and married, but not yet with children.”

The majority aren’t members of his church. Some who attended on a recent Wednesday were casually dressed. Others, seemingly fresh from the office, wore a tie — or not.

Kevin Bush, 30, said South Florida churches tend to strongly support younger and older people, but “there’s this yawning gap between 20s and 30s even 40s.”

“It’s nice,” said Grant Winkler, 38, “to meet friends that have similar types of values in terms of faith and the way you look at life, and to have a group where we discuss the kinds of things that we discuss here.”

“The things that we talk about here,” said Taylor Schieck, 23, “give me an opportunity to ask my questions and be honest about how I feel about religion and faith.” His wife of one week, Sarah, 22, was attending her first TnT meeting.

“It’s a great opportunity for young people to get together on a regular basis and talk about their faith,” said Ann Margot Peart, 32, before Janklow opened up with prayer and launched a discussion of The Reason for God, by Timothy Keller. “And I’ve found it extremely educational as well.”

For more on Twenties ’n’ Thirties, call the church at 561-276-6338 or go to www.firstdelray.com/youngprof.htm.

By Emily J. Minor

Briny Breezes Mayor Roger Bennett told town officials recently they need to plan for his retirement. He wants to give up the mayor’s seat so he and his wife, Barbara, can do some more traveling.
“I would like you to really consider a plan of action so I can resign,” Bennett said at the July 22 town meeting.

His colleagues on the board groaned their displeasure, but indicated they understood.
Bennett said he’s been dealing with some health issues recently and would like to leave office while he’s still well enough to do some traveling. He and his wife just celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary.
“What I was really interested in doing was planting the idea,” he said later. “I didn’t want to spring it on them.”
He said he is prepared to serve as mayor for another few months.
Bennett has been mayor for three and a half years and says the most challenging task, to date, was the Evaluation and Appraisal Report. The EAR is a state-required progress report on the town’s growth goals.
Also at the July meeting, town officials indicated there would be no change in the town’s tax rate for the coming year. Last year, Briny grabbed attention across South Florida for levying the highest rate allowed under state law: 10 mils, or $10 for every $1,000 of taxable property.

Compared to what residents were paying before, it was a 262 percent increase.
Bennett said the budget would be in good shape largely because the new police contract with Ocean Ridge will save the town an estimated $150,000 over the next three years. The current service contract with Boynton Beach ends in October.
The town’s estimated $740,000 budget is still in draft form, but final adoption is scheduled for 5:01 p.m. on Sept. 23.

By Margie Plunkett

A recent study of parking in downtown Delray Beach would remove a feature that some merchants believe keeps the shopping area bustling — free parking.

The study by Kimley-Horn Associates Inc., which was presented at community meetings in July, recommends metering Atlantic Avenue and other downtown areas that are now free in an effort to ease traffic congestion that has resulted from the town’s successful growth. Part of a larger parking-management plan, fees for parking would be set at various levels to steer motorists who want to park longer term away from the closest downtown on-street parking.

Some merchants think taking away free parking downtown will drive shoppers out of town. “All we’re doing is shifting them to the malls,” said Carole Lynn of Forms Gallery on Atlantic Avenue, who attended one of the community meeting.

Connie Wichman, who has worked at Mercer Wenzel Department Store on Atlantic Avenue for 39 years, agreed. “I think they’ll be making a big mistake. It will not be the friendly image we’re trying to project. It will alienate people.”

The study says lack of adequate and available parking can result in loss of economic activity. In addition to evaluating the city’s parking supply and operations downtown, the study also was intended, it said, “to identify strategies to efficiently manage and to offset the city/CRA’s expenditures for parking.”

The core of downtown has 547 designated on-street parking spaces, according to the study’s count. Parking is free and is limited to a maximum two hours from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., except for valet parking spaces. There are also some five-minute parking spaces. Parking is enforced with tickets written for violators, according to the study, which says on-street parking is used heavily by customers, business owners and employees.

The study recommends that the first 20 minutes of parking should be free, and following that the fee should be $1.25 an hour for parking in the downtown core, extending the same rates that are now charged on Atlantic Avenue west of the Intracoastal Waterway. Off-street parking would cost $1 per hour with a maximum of $5 for the day.

The area east of the Intracoastal has had on-street paid parking since 2002, a measure that helped redirect beachgoers to parking along A1A and allow shoppers to use the Atlantic Avenue parking, according to the study.

“I think it (paid downtown parking) is a horrible ideal,” said Lynn. “We’ve talked to many of our customers, they like the ambiance of a little town, that this town gives them the opportunity to relax and shop -— and not have to feed a meter.”

Residents don’t mind paying to park for dining — looking at it as part of the cost of entertainment, but the attitude is different among shoppers, Wichman said. “I do not want to pay — to put money in a parking meter — to buy a pair of pantyhose at Mercer Wenzel. To pay money to shop is not right.”

Longer-term parking by employees and visitors who want to spend more time downtown should be in off-street facilities. If employees and business owners take up the close, on-street spaces, patrons could be discouraged from visiting, the study says.

Wichman, however, says while one or two employees may use Atlantic for parking, employees overall don’t take up the on-site parking spaces. “Everyone knows where to park,” she said, adding that the parking garages are not in convenient places.

The cost to put in pay stations for on-street parking and surface lots downtown would be about $1.4 million, the study says.

Just a few weeks ago, Kenny Gilbert became executive chef at PGA Resort & Spa, but he’s hardly a newcomer to these parts. Originally from the Cleveland lakeshore suburb of Euclid, he brought his Southern-influenced international style south more than a decade ago, exec cheffing at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club & Spa in Jupiter and then at BallenIsles Country Club in Palm Beach Gardens before running off to Telluride, Colo., for a few years.

The Ritz, of course, still likes to claim Kenny, and in fact, last winter at the Ritz-Carlton Palm Beach in Manalapan, he was a star at the annual Food for the Poor fundraiser. His chosen dish: bison.

Of course, the Palm Beach heavens are filled with culinary stars. Before he left for a big gig in Miami and more recently Kenya, Hubert DesMarais put The Four Seasons on the map, a reputation continued by Darryl Moiles. Daniel Boulud makes frequent visits to his Café Boulud at The Brazilian Court in Palm Beach, while its sister hotel, The Omphoy, boasts Michelle Bernstein.

Tales of two cities: Last month, Lake Worth Mayor Rene Varela complained of drunken spending and pledged to cut $4.5 million from the city’s budget. Some of the oomph seems to be leaving downtown. Latest to go is Miami Subs at the corner of Lake and Dixie, and the raucous Ouzo Blue, open only a year and a half, shut down a few weeks ago, as did its sibling in Palm Beach Gardens. A greater loss is L’Anjou, its lace curtains drawn for good after more than three decades of French cuisine and a lasting memory as a backdrop in Body Heat.

Not all the losses are culinary. Those with a taste for things old, really old, will have to shop elsewhere now that Yesterday’s Antique Mall has shuttered. Mall owner Steve Gaffney said he was offered a new lease and higher rent, too. It hasn’t helped, he said, that eBay has become such a big player in the antique world.

Building owner Cimaglia Holdings LLC of Pompano Beach claims to have a new tenant, but has not said who it is.

So much for glum: Out on the beach, the city has asked REG Architects to design the renovation of the beachfront casino. When the original building went up in 1922, gambling was legal. A1A ran between the casino and the ocean and bathers took an underpass to the beach. A1A is farther west now, well off the dune line, on filled land, and the casinos are elsewhere, but architect Rick Gonzalez has done his best to reclaim the original design with colonnaded archways, towers and tiled roof.

Gonzalez comes with impressive credentials. Projects include the Harriet Himmel Theater in CityPlace, the 1916 Palm Beach County Courthouse restoration, the International Polo Club in Wellington and the new ballroom at The Mar-a-Lago Club.

The city believes it can come up with the $6.5 million for the project. Hope so. In 1921, the city signed a contract for $99,500, but by the time the casino, underpass and pier were done, the cost was $150,000.

While Lake Worth is smarting, down in Delray Beach, they’re playing it smart. According to the most recent count, says Marjorie Ferrer of the Downtown Development Authority, Delray has 102 restaurants in the downtown area, which could keep a body busy for quite some time. Tastemakers of Delray may help ease the load. It’s a two-day restaurant crawl (Aug. 13 and 14, 5-10 p.m.), with 24 of the town’s best offering menu tastings paired with wine, beer or cocktails. Examples: Anticuchos (marinated skirt steak skewers) at Cabana El Rey with a Santa Rita 120 Cabernet Sauvignon, Thai chicken in a traditional sweet red chili sauce paired with a Blackstone Pinot Grigio at Ziree or chocolate mousse with a Marcel Martin sparkling wine at Café de France.

To crawl, however, you’ll need a passport: $25, available at the participating restaurants above and Sundy House, Tryst, The Blue Fish, 32 East, Olio, Linda Bean’s Perfect Maine, Il Bacio, Taste Gastropub, Brule Bistro, City Oyster & Sushi Bar, Cugini Grille, Johnnie Brown’s, Paddy McGee’s Irish Pub, GOL! The Taste of Brazil, Crepes by the Sea, Cut 432, Lemongrass, J&J Seafood, Caffe Luna Rosa, Boheme Bistro and Boston’s on the Beach.

The passport also provides admission to after-parties and drink specials, plus special savings through Sept. 30 at participating restaurants. Proceeds benefit the American Cancer Society. For more info, call the DDA at (561) 243-1077.

Carl DeSantis, who made billions with Rexall Sundown vitamins, wants to pump some new life into some properties he owns. DeSantis owns all of the land on the north side of Atlantic Avenue from Northeast Sixth Avenue to Veterans Park along the Intracoastal. It’s only 8.5 acres, but in Atlantic Plaza II, DeSantis envisions a $325-million complex — 182,000 square feet of retail space, 106,000 square feet for offices and 197 residences.

To run the show, DeSantis’ CDS International Holdings has hired Bill Morris as vice president for development. Morris’ recent development credentials include Delray’s 217-unit Worthing Place and the 255-unit Palmetto Place in Boca Raton. This project may be his longest, with a phased-in five- to seven-year buildout. An abandoned gas station at the corner of Atlantic and Fifth already is gone and some other small buildings, including DeSantis’ former antique shop and art gallery, won’t be far behind. The biggest chunk, Atlantic Plaza, also will be razed, but DeSantis will see that all those tenants are relocated.

If you enjoy being green, drop by Crane’s BeachHouse in Delray Aug. 19 from 6-8:30 p.m. for the inaugural Green M&Ms Party. It’s a fundraiser for two of the greenest operations around: the Friends of the Mounts Botanical Garden in West Palm Beach and the Everglades-protecting Arthur R. Marshall Foundation. Lots of tree-huggers and swamp-sloggers — ah, the stories they can tell — plus a raffle, live music, hors d’oeuvres and a free drink. Donation is $25. Inquiries and reservations to garyschwei@aol.com.

Thom Smith is a freelance writer. He can be reached at thomsmith@ymail.com.

By Margie Plunkett

Lantana has approved a lease deal with the Lantana Athletic Association that gives it use of a portion of the Sports Complex for free in exchange for maintaining the quadruplex for the next baseball and softball season.

“We hand over the keys and they’re charged with handing it back in at least as good condition as it is,” Town Manager Mike Bornstein said. Lantana will continue to maintain the irrigation system.

The town made the arrangement with the LAA after a tight budget put the Sports Complex operation on the chopping block. The town said it no longer could shell out the operating costs as its budget revenues from property taxes continued to fall in response to the declining housing market.

“It’s really a good way to use the fields,” said council member Elizabeth Tennyson. “They’re really bigger than the town can afford in a good year.”

The Lake Worth Sharks also have scheduled a meeting with Lantana’s town manager to discuss a potential deal for another area of the Sports Complex.

While the Sports Complex typically closes in August to let the fields rest, Bornstein said, it had already closed by late July because Lantana didn’t have the staffing to cover it. Resident Christopher Smith wondered why the town can’t keep the Sports Complex open as a grassy park, where he as a runner as well as others could enjoy the open fields.

“If you do that it becomes highly trafficked by a lot of people — and there are a lot of impacts,” Bornstein said. “We still owe money on it. We pay $125,000 a year just in debt service. If we let just anyone use it, it will decay beyond repair. And passive parks still require a lot of maintenance.

“I just would hate to see the space lost,” Smith said.

Council members also took budget action at the meeting, holding the tax rate steady at 3.2395 mills, or $3.24 per $1,000 of assessed value. Even though Lantana is fiscally conservative and trying to hold the line on taxes, Bornstein said, residents will still see an increase on tax bills because of county rates.

Bornstein will draft a letter to county commissioners on behalf of Lantana council members, outlining the municipality’s plan to hold the millage rate and asking them to do the same.

Lantana’s total taxable value fell 17 percent to $722.5 million. The mayor pointed out that the town has seen its millage rate drop by half since 2002, moving from 7 mills then to 3.2395 mills this year. The tax rate is still tentative and can be decreased — but not increased.

But holding the line on taxes has resulted in budget cost cutting that has meant measures like turning over partial operation of the Sports Complex to the LAA because it’s too expensive for the town to run. Other budget cuts have come in the form of a six-month-early retirement for Police Chief Rick Lincoln and the cutting of two police captains’ positions as one will become the police chief and the second is departing voluntarily.

For the third year, town employees won’t have cost of living increases, Mayor David Stewart said, and he praised town staffers for their valiant attempts to balance the budget that have brought them into range with an $87,000 deficit remaining.

“This budget does take out all the fluff, any basic nice little things that we try to do in the town,” Stewart said. “There are no extras. We’re just providing basic services to keep the tax the same.”

By Tim O’Meilia

Let the music play on, play on, play on.

That’s the Lionel Ritchie All Night Long message most of the nearly 200 people who attended the Lantana Town Council meeting July 12 delivered.

By a 4-0 vote, music lovers and partygoers persuaded the Town Council to drop a proposed ban on outdoor music at sidewalk cafes after 9 p.m. Instead, the council will allow the town’s current noise regulations banning “loud and raucous” noise, especially after 11 p.m., to control the Ocean Avenue waterfront.

“The economy is not in great shape. Businesses are closing down. This is not very friendly for the business owner,” said Wayne Cordero, owner of the popular Old Key Lime House on Ocean Avenue, which has outdoor seating on the Intracoastal Waterway and late-night live music.

Cordero submitted a petition of what he said were the signatures of 2,700 people opposing the 9 p.m. outdoor music cutoff.

“We’re probably the nosiest place in town” yet the Lime House has had only five complaints in the past year, he said.

Another restaurateur who has yet to open also complained of the proposal. “This will destroy the development and beautification of Lantana. This does not make any sense whatsoever,” said Leopold Balistrieri, who plans to open Apicius Ristorante and Enotica, a restaurant and wine bar, later this summer at the former Il Trullo site.

“I didn’t think Frank Sinatra was that noisy,” he said.

Residents filled the 125-person council chambers and left more than 50 more people outside listening on loudspeakers. Ironically, the discussion ended at 9:30 p.m., 30 minutes after the proposed music shutdown.

The limit on outdoor music was part of an annual zoning code revision. Outdoor cafes had not been regulated previously under town ordinances and all recommendations except the music limit were approved with little discussion.

Only a handful of the 27 people who spoke supported the 9 p.m. cutoff.

“Sometimes it’s just noise to me,” said Alfred Brode, who lives three houses away from the Old Key Lime House. “If you had a home close and listened to music and noise every day …” he said.

Sandra Picone, another nearby resident, said she couldn’t go outside some nights because the music was too loud. She also questioned whether many of the 2,700 signatures on the petition were from town residents.

Both the Greater Lantana Chamber of Commerce and the Old Village Point Association, an Ocean Avenue condominium, opposed the limit.

And Police Capt. Jeff Tyson said restaurant owners always cooperated when noise complaints were made, although there were few.

Although Councilwoman Elizabeth Tennyson sympathized with the residents who were disturbed by the music, she asked, “Is there anything to guarantee a resident can sit in his yard and not have to listen to someone else’s music?”

By Tim O’Meilia

A heated argument between the South Palm Beach mayor and a council member ignited an extended round of shouting and catcalling from residents who attended the July 27 Town Council meeting.

At the center of it all: the Palm Beach Oceanfront Inn.

By the time the four-hour meeting concluded, the council denied an appeal by the owners of the 58-unit motel to operate watercraft and the council tentatively approved placing two charter questions on the March 8 ballot that would limit the inn’s expansion, if approved. All by 3-2 votes.

The dispute began when Councilwoman Stella Jordan tried to block Mayor Martin Millar from allowing a lawyer for the inn to plead the watercraft case directly to the council. Town Manager Rex Taylor and Town Attorney Brad Biggs had previously denied several attempts by the inn to obtain permission to operate watercraft.

Jordan asked for a motion to put the vice mayor in charge of the meeting, but Millar said, “I will not pass the gavel. Over my dead body.”

The argument raged for 20 minutes and audience members shouted and hooted, primarily at Jordan. Police Chief Roger Crane escorted one woman away from the dais after she approached Jordan’s seat.

Inn attorney Eric Christu argued that the motel was entitled to operate the watercraft as part of its state-recognized riparian rights. Biggs’ opinion was that allowing the watercraft operation was an expansion of the motel’s use and not allowed because the motel, the only commercial building in town, is a non-conforming use and expanding a non-conforming use is prohibited.

“So, anything they want to let people do: go in a canoe, ride a bicycle, is an expansion?” asked Christu.

Millar and Councilman Brian Merbler’s support of the appeal was defeated by Jordan, Vice Mayor Donald Clayman and Councilwoman Susan Lillybeck.

The same voting division held true on the two proposed charter changes. Jordan argued that a charter vote would put the issue in the hands of the voters rather than in the council’s. Twice since 2005, the council has turned down proposals to convert the hotel into a luxury hotel-condominium of more than 10 stories.

One change would limit buildings east of A1A to a 60-foot height, not including a one-story ground-floor garage. The other would prohibit new non-residential uses and ban the expansion of current non-residential uses, except public buildings.

Millar noted that both items are already in the town’s land use plan and zoning code. “Your whole intention is to target the Palm Beach Oceanfront Inn,” he said.

Christu, the inn’s lawyer, said neither Jordan nor Lillybeck should be allowed to vote on the issue, claiming they have a conflict of interest. Both live next to the motel. Christu said both spearheaded opposition to the motel expansion as members of SPB Preservation Inc. Both have denied being members.

In other business, the council set a tentative tax rate of $4.50 per $1,000 of taxable property value and agreed to schedule a workshop to discuss budget details. No date was set. Tax rates can be lowered before final approval in September but not increased.

Taylor, the town manager, proposed a budget based on a 4.3174 tax rate. The town’s property values fell 14.3 percent from last year. The manager proposed no pay or cost-of-living increases for town employees and the elimination of one police officer position, leaving the force with eight. Taylor recently fired a 10-year officer and the position will not be filled.

“I will guarantee it will not go down,” said Millar, who voted against the tentative tax rate. “I don’t see anyone on this council lowering that millage rate.”

The town’s present rate is $7.65, but next year the cost of fire-rescue service will not be included in the town budget. Taxpayers will be billed separately. Palm Beach County Fire-Rescue has proposed a 3.4581 rate for next year. For comparison, the combined rate of 7.7755 is 1.6 percent higher than the present rate.

The town would collect about $300,000 less in property tax next year, not including fire-rescue costs. Taylor said taxpayers would pay $165 less on average.

By Antigone Barton

While authorities still can’t say when, where and how much oil from BP’s Deepwater Horizon drill site might show up on local beaches, they can say where the first tar balls spotted here will go next.

Packaged as a hazardous material, they will be overnighted by FedEx to a United States Coast Guard laboratory in Connecticut, to be cleaned, dried and tested to determine their origin. Whether it turns out to have come from the BP disaster or from a ship’s bilge, the aim is the same: accountability.

“Did you know they can ‘fingerprint’ tar balls?” Delray resident Laurie Clare asked recently. “I didn’t.”

Clare, a habitual beach walker, learned of this intersection of science and detective work right before the Fourth of July, when she found a glop of tar on the beach.

“I stepped in it!” she said. “Remember when they used to have kerosene at all the beach exits to get tar off?”

Without that option, she wore it home, where she went online and contacted BP. The company, in turn, referred her to the Coast Guard. A Coast Guard officer came by the next day to pick up the plastic bag to which she had transferred the tar.

“They’ve been incredible,” Clare said.

“Have been,” because they’ve returned two more times to pick up tar that Clare has encountered on the beach in her half-mile walk north from Delray Beach’s Atlantic Avenue area.

None of it, authorities confirm, has come from the BP site.

“That makes me even madder,” said Clare, pointing out that in addition to the fouling of ocean waters from the BP disaster, boat owners continue to pollute the waters.

Heightened awareness of beach tar has made oil and water a harder mix to ignore than ever, though.

“I’ve been stationed here for two years,” said Lt. Rodney Wert of the U.S. Coast Marine Safety Detachment, Lake Worth, which covers from Melbourne to Lantana. “In the past two years before the spill, I never got a report of a tar ball. We’ve had 142 reports of tar balls since the spill — all the way down to Miami. It’s been quite a change.”

The tar that has been found so far in this area came from ships, or from natural seepage from the ocean floor, Wert said.

In the Connecticut laboratory, all of it has been compared to oil known to come from the spill, through computer-generated graphs of the chemical makeup of each sample.

This has kept the laboratory in Connecticut, which still stores samples from the Exxon Valdes, a busy place, Marine Science Technician Matthew Tyson allowed. But polluting events — both purposeful and accidental — are not so rare to make this event stand-alone. “Caseloads fluctuate,” Tyson said.

Still, even on the brightest day, a walk along the shoreline has taken on a grim aspect since the explosion that pumped several million gallons of crude oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico.

“I don’t live here to walk on the beach and get tar between my toes,” said Clare. “You kind of get used to just looking for shells on the beach.”

Clare hopes that outrage over the BP disaster, and the Coast Guard’s swift response, will lead more beach walkers to notice and report tar on their shores.

“If everyone did this, we could find out where it’s coming from.”

•

To report tar or oil on the beach, call Palm Beach County Emergency Operations Center at 561-712-6400 and then press 2; or, the State Warning Point at 561-320-0519; or dial #DEP on a cell phone.

Local oil response by the numbers

Since the April Deepwater Horizon explosion, and as of July 23:
• 366 people in Palm Beach County have contacted the Palm Beach County Emergency Operations Center to volunteer to participate in any local response efforts.
• The Palm Beach County Emergency Operations Center has received 38 calls reporting tar balls.
• The State Emergency Operations Center has received …
695 reports of tar balls
213 reports of tar patties
97 reports of tar mats
161 reports of oil sheen
• Total by South Florida county …
Palm Beach County — 43
Broward County — 37
Miami-Dade County — 52
Monroe County — 53

By Margie Plunkett

Delray Beach finished sifting through its trash in July, ending an investigation of refuse hauler Waste Management’s billing that turned up about $76,000 due the city and several dysfunctional business practices. No impropriety on the part of either party was discerned.

The nearly six-month inquiry, powered by at least 1,780 man hours, was spurred by an initial investigation by resident Ken MacNamee. Commissioners assigned the Financial Review Board in February to study the questions of whether Delray Beach was receiving all its franchise fees from Waste Management and if the city was overpaying on residential services.

“This has been a very long and painful process,” said Commissioner Fred Fetzer. “I’ve learned a lot from the process and the city staff has. We have to make some safeguards that it doesn’t happen again.”

The review found relatively small sums due for franchise fees and residential collection that Waste Management has now paid, according to Rich Reade, the city liaison with Waste Management who gave the final report to commissioners on July 13. It also helped the staff identify more effective practices.

On the commercial side, three franchise fees and administrative fees were not paid to the city, totaling about $53,000. On the residential side, the review found the city overpaid by about $65,000. The amount was reduced to $26,000 after deducting sidewalk container disposal services that Delray Beach owed. The study also found items including that unit counts were sometimes inaccurate; invoices occasionally required adjusting before the city paid and invoices sometimes had incorrect service dates.

It also turned up an “inadvertently missed” city payment of $177,926 in 2005 that was identified after an employee’s concerns of whether payments were made in advance or arrears. Fetzer called the unpaid bill part of “a quarter-million-dollar question mark hanging over me.”

Waste Management representative Butch Carter explained that the missed payment was a result of nomenclature changes in whether the billings were in arrears or advance after Waste Management bought the assets of the former refuse company. The company did not pursue the payment, he said.

As a result of the review, the city identified a number of processes to improve accuracy of billing, including: coordinating with the trash contractor to ensure all new rates are used; including a monthly rate structure in the annual rate ordinance; taking franchise fees one month in arrears to allow a monthly analysis of revenue earned; spot checking accounts; requiring Waste Management to make written notice of any problems or changes that may affect revenue; and allowing one sector of the city to vote on whether it still wanted to receive a choice of rear-door service.

McNamee brought concerns with Waste Management’s billing to commissioners’ attention after realizing he was billed for rear-door pick up at his house that he didn’t use, according to Commissioner Gary Eliopoulos.

The issue later led to a vote of no confidence against City Manager David Harden, because McNamee’s concerns weren’t resolved as quickly as commissioners deemed appropriate. In February, the mayor formalized the review of the Waste Management billing and turned it over to the FRB.

After Reade presented the final report, Commissioner Angeleta Gray pointed to the $26,000 figure and said, “Is that all we came up with?”

“The analysis found sloppiness on our part and Waste Management’s part,” Harden said, explaining that the city has come up with processes to avoid future inaccuracies. However, he said, “You’re dealing with 25,000 to 30,000 counts; it’s not uncommon to have some errors.”

Mayor Woodie McDuffie thanked all involved — McNamee, Reade, the FRB and staff among them. ”It’s been a long, arduous, tedious process,” he said, noting the biggest gain was gleaning the kinks in the process. “We need to be in constant vigil watching the contracts in the city. Waste Management has acted in good faith. No one here acted improperly. The flaws in procedure need to be corrected and corrected now.”

The Mediterranean fruit fly invasion is likely on its last wings, according to Mark Fagan, spokesman for the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services — the agency responsible for containing the pest.

“We did a full life-cycle test and are in the middle of the second one, and are projecting Sept. 1 as the day that we hope to get permission to declare eradication,” Fagan said.

Since June 2, when the first fruit flies were found in one of the hundreds of traps hung in mango, loquat and sour orange trees in the Delray Beach area, the agency has put “all hands on deck” to fight the outbreak of ceratitis capitata — medfly. If left to
multiply, the fly invasion could cost the state billions in crop losses.

The last outbreak was more than a decade ago and efforts have been steady to prevent another, with more than 60,000 traps set around the state.

“We credit the diligence of the state workers who found the first flies so we were able to put all efforts into eradication.”

It’s believed that fruits brought in from the Caribbean, perhaps by a boater or private plane, could have been the source of the fly, but Fagan said it’s difficult to pinpoint. “We’ve had agents going door to door to ascertain the source, but we’ve been unable to turn up anything yet.”

The fly’s threat is not to human health, but to the economy that depends on fruits and vegetables. A number of tropical fruits including citrus, winter vegetables and others — 250-plus plants — could be lost to the fly that lays its eggs, hatches, and rots the fruit as it thrives and reproduces in astronomical numbers within only one life-cycle, a seven-day period.

“The summer heat works in our favor — the hotter it is, the shorter the life span,” Fagan said.

The state took immediate action to prevent the outbreak, releasing millions of sterile flies by air and on the ground in the target areas. A quarantine was issued for a 90-mile radius centering in eastern Delray Beach.

No fruits can be moved out of the area or sold unless consumed on the seller’s property, or as processed (cut and frozen) while the quarantine is in place.

Two commercial groves in the area were affected: Truly Tropical in Delray Beach, and Zill Mangoes in Boynton Beach. No trees were destroyed at either property, Fagan said.

It may be a few weeks more, Fagan said, before mango sales can get back to normal. “Even if we receive declaration of the eradication, the state may want us to go through one more life cycle just to be safe.”

Landscapers also were put on alert not to remove any fruits from yards or take them from the quarantined area. “They signed compliance agreements, where we explained
one-on-one — here’s what you can do and what you must do.”

Homeowners are still asked to cooperate — allowing traps to be hung in their trees, and they’re asked to dispose of mangoes in their trash, by double-bagging them and
putting them in the regular trash — not the landscaping refuse.

“We need to minimize the risk of movement of the flies,” Fagan said. “It’s an abundance of caution and we appreciate the cooperation of the public in helping us.”

To keep up with the current regulations or for more information about the medfly quarantine, call the state’s helpline at (888) 397-1517.

Among the dozens of the dead and dying and the iffy west of the bridge along George Bush Boulevard in Delray Beach, one Calophyllum inophyllum is emphatically alive.

Even the experts can’t say why. Within a single variety, trees show quirks and personality, tree service owner and Mounts Botanical Garden Board President Michael Zimmerman of Lake Worth says, and the conditions they live and breathe oxygen into can shift by the moment.

What the experts CAN say is that Florida’s cold slam this last January and its effects on tropical trees were the worst in their memory, and some, like Zimmerman and Tim Simmons and Raul Rivera of the Delray Beach parks staff, have been tending to trees for nearly 30 years. “I’ve never seen anything
like that before, and I worked in nurseries before I came here,” Rivera says.

The prolonged freeze, 11 days from January 3 to 14 when temperatures fell below 32 degrees F., was the longest since forecasters started keeping records 80 years ago.

While most trees and bushes shook off the chill, Clusea, Ficus and some species of palm, coconuts, spindles, Copernicea and bottled palms, took killing blows to their oldest, lowest leaf fronds. Those can be trimmed away, as long as the topmost source of new leaves, the bright green apical
meristem, keeps on leafing on.

Calophyllum, a round-crowned, pale-barked tree native to equatorial Africa and Latin America and known as “beauty leaf,” hit the wall of frost. South of a line between temperate and sub-tropical climates, falling locally around PGA Boulevard, the heat-loving trees couldn’t cope. Now, in cadres
along George Bush Boulevard and in clutches up on A1A and in once-welcoming rows in Anchor Park just to the south and in a number of gated communities, many Calophyllum stand bare-limbed and forlorn.

For beauty leaf, Jack Frost is a beast. Air anywhere near freezing, driven by wind, amplified by rain, can knife through leaves, pierce the bark and growth-layer and scythe into the phloem, the layer of soda-straw-like cells that draw water up from roots to crown.

The killing of those cells is unseen. The death rattle is literal. Calophyllum’s rounded, waxy-faced leaves so good at repelling salt from ocean air have little defense against prolonged frost. They freeze and dry to a dusty brown, rattling in the sea breeze, then spiraling down.

Residents watched them tumble. “I came here on a day when all the leaves were falling,” says John Krolikowski, parish manager of St. Vincent Ferrer Catholic Church on George Bush west of the Intracoastal. “It was like up north.”

The sight was as rare as snow. “Typically in the winter with cold weather, they say for every mile you move west (from the coast) you lose a degree in temperature,” Zimmerman says. “So even in 1989, when we had a really bad freeze, it only lasted one night. The coastline was saved, because of the
warm ocean, the ocean breezes.

“This year, we had freezing temperatures all the way to the coast. We had wind, we had rain, and we had really cold air.”

Tropical trees, he explains, don’t get a winter off-season. They grapple through the whole calendar with a host of diseases, cankers and molds and microbial invaders such as lethal yellowing, a phytoplasm carried by leaf-hoppers, and with animal invaders from tiny worms and beetles and borers to the latest renewed scourges, the Mediterranean fruit fly and the white fly, which attacks Ficus trees. They also contend with the mercurial excesses of climate, hurricanes, drought, heat, cold.

“Trees are kind of like batteries,” Zimmerman says. “They have stored energy. They try to fight whatever it is, whether it’s cold or insects or disease, and when they run out of energy, it’s all over.”

In conditions such as January’s, some of the Calophyllumt, even partly withered by a north wind and driving rain that browned their northern half, can struggle through. Most of them lose.

“The cold caused serious die-back of branches and even entire trees,” Bill Schall, commercial horticulture extension agent for the Palm Beach County Cooperative Extension said via e-mail. He sees winter- bitten trees from Palm Beach through Delray and Boca and beyond, and he advises waiting to clearly identify dead tissue, pruning it out, and possibly applying general purpose fungicides and bactericides to protect remaining live tissue. “If too much of the tree is
killed,” he says, “the tree should be replaced.”

Looking down the row of Calophyllum along the narrow strip of ground between sidewalk and George Bush Boulevard in front of St. Vincent Ferrer, Mike Zimmerman acknowledges that a few trees show scattered sprigs of new leaf. Then he says, “I’d take all of these down, put in something else, like silver buttonwood.” It hurts him to say it. “I can only take a tree down once,” he says. “I can prune it and nurture it for a lifetime.”

Replacing just one tree here, he adds, could cost at least $250. Not replacing them, though, would cost the street its colonnade of shady green canopies and part of its character. For now, these Calophyllum are left with amputated branches.

The ones who cut back those branches were superintendent Tim Simmons and crews from his 58-person staff at the city of Delray’s Park Maintenance Department. They continue to cut away winter-killed fronds from hundreds of palm trees. While property owners are responsible for trees on their grounds, the parks people monitor all the city’s street and park trees and take action where
needed, attacking dead and damaged trees from a bucket truck with an elevated cherry-picker, with a brush bandit for chipping and mulching wood, with excavators and a mechanical tree spade and a machine to dig out and grind stumps.

In the rigors of tree trimming and removal (just two of their many duties throughout the city, including all landscaping in public facilities and the parks), they have learned to stay both watchful and hopeful. “Trees can and DO grow back,” Simmons says. “Most of the palm trees are holding up. We want to be sure.”

They also live on a budget, one that becomes tighter each year. “I have one tree-trimmer (on staff), Earkis Hill (III), with help from Steve Sack, for 15,000 to 20,000 trees we have to maintain,” he says.

Trimming and cutting down trees, Simmons says, can be an urgent matter of public safety. Hurricanes wreak havoc, and even normal aging takes a toll. Just finding water while being pinched between sidewalk and street, in Zimmerman‘s words, can be like “trying to eat with a tiny spoon.” Trees that succumb need removing.

Still, Zimmerman says, losing trees hurts everyone. They benefit residents and passersby and tourists and businesses, offering shelter and shade and backdrops of curtaining green, forestalling erosion, hosting whole food chains of animals and becoming central to the visual face of a neighborhood.

As the single surviving Calophyllum on George Bush Boulevard proves, every tree is as distinct as every person.

“Trees ask so little and give so much,” Zimmerman says. “We need to take care of them the way they take care of us.”

The sun rising over the Atlantic warms the sand and sparkles off the ocean, making a beautiful image framed by the sliders in Jackie Balestrieri’s bedroom window.

The 8-year-old is oblivious to the perfect beach day developing outside the Mayfair Ocean, where she lives in South Palm Beach. She’s pulling on tights, her monogrammed warm-up jacket and a pair of gloves — ready to hit the ice.

She’s one of a handful of skaters — and one of the youngest — who have made Palm Beach Ice Works their second home in their quest to one day skate for Olympic
gold.

It all started with a play date.

“My friend asked me if I wanted to go ice skating,” Jackie recalled. “I said, ‘Sure, I’ll try.’ So I went and I loved it! I took the first basic lesson, then I started to take private lessons.”

The rest, as they say, is history — or at least history in the making.

Palm Beach IceWorks sits in an industrial area off Florida Mango Road in West Palm Beach, just five minutes from Rosarian Academy, where Jackie will be a third-grader in the fall, says her mom, Edie Balestrieri. But ice skaters come from all over South Florida to train at the 58,000-square-foot facility.

The rink is the creation of Lori Alf of Boca Raton, who built it so her daughter, 12-year-old Caterina, would have a dedicated place to train. There are hockey teams there as well. Lori Alf built the rink with enough locker rooms for big meets. And on Sundays, there’s open skating. But there’s lots of time dedicated to the dedicated ice skaters.

About 40 of the skaters are competitors, moving through the eight skating levels with tests, regional and state competitions, and new, more difficult skating programs.

Delaney Cattano, who turned 12 in April, is such a serious skater that her family is home-schooling her to work school around skating. She makes the trip from
Delray Beach to IceWorks almost everyday.
She and most of the older girls are training for the South Atlantic
Regionals that will be held in Wake Forest in October.

Jackie doesn’t compete yet, but like most of the serious ice skaters, she trains with more than one coach. Ted Kelton, a 25-year international coach, teaches her jumps and spins — power classes, Jackie says — and Martha Edmonds teaches her technique.

“I want to try to learn my double axel and learn how to do some spins that are very hard,” Jackie says. “I always want to challenge myself. The axel is my favorite.”

Jackie loves skating so much that she had her eighth birthday party there with her friends from Rosarian.

“Some people believe skating’s not a sport, but it is. You’ll love it because you’re so free,” she says. “You may fall, but you gotta get used to it. When you fall, you learn.”

Here’s some turtle low-down, according to Robert Schonfeld:

Turtle nests

“Sometimes the mother will create a pile of sand because of the way she’s hit it, and that’s not really a nest. I also have to determine the species and that’s determined by looking at the tracks.

“One that made a nest in front of my condo recently had to be about 350 pounds. I could tell because some of her tracks had to be 5 feet long and 3 or 4 feet wide. To make marks like that, it had to be a loggerhead.

“Once a turtle starts to lay her eggs, she’s in a trance and she won’t go back to the ocean until she’s finished. She’ll cover the eggs up, and then go back.”

If the mother turtle sees someone before she starts laying or bumps into rocks or a seawall, she’ll stop and go back to the ocean. “That’s what we call a false crawl,” Schonfeld said. “We have encroached onto their nest-making environment.”

When Schonfeld finds a new nest, he puts up a stake with a sign that says “Keep 10 feet away” to mark the spot. The babies hatch two months later.

In each nest, 100 to 150 eggs are buried in about a couple feet of sand. “As the baby turtles dig their way out, the sand that makes up the ceiling falls to the bottom and becomes the floor and the whole nest rises up.

“Then, the baby turtles burst out and go to the sea.”

Some of the babies don’t get out — maybe a piece of grass or a part of an egg gets in the way, or maybe the turtle went in the wrong direction.

“You are not allowed to touch the nest, but after the nest has been evacuated three days, you can. And in August, groups of children and adults help me rescue — dig up — the baby turtles in nests already evacuated.

“No one else in the state is doing that, but in my territory, every Sunday morning in August, at 6:30 a.m., we dig up the little babies that didn’t get out.

“The babies are cute. They fit right in your hand, yet they are fully capable of taking care of themselves. Children enjoy seeing the baby turtles and rescuing them.”

Schonfeld’s not entirely sure how long turtles live. He’s heard it could be up to 100 years, though they grow to full size in about 25 years. The leatherback can weigh as much as 1,500 pounds. The green turtles and the loggerhead get to be about 300 to 400 pounds.

“We have teenage immature green turtles that live here, but none of the turtles that lay their eggs here, live here. They come from the Caribbean or Central America every two to three years to make their nests and lay their eggs to perpetuate their species,” Schonfeld said.

“This is where they were born, and this is how they do it.”

•

If you want to take part in rescuing the baby turtles, call Schonfeld to make a reservation at (561) 547-1088. The group meets at the north end of Lantana
Beach.

His neighbors call him the Turtle Man, because he walks the five-eighths-mile South Palm Beach shoreline, counting and marking off the sea turtle nests. He also counts false crawls — that’s when turtles come onto the beach, but don’t make a nest.

“Sea turtles … [have] survived 200 million years. They don’t have many predators and, although they haven’t changed much, they’ve adapted pretty well,” he said.

The first ashore during the turtle season are the leatherbacks in March. They are followed by the loggerheads in April and, at the end of June, the greens make their way here.

This year, by mid-July, Schonfeld had already counted 130 loggerhead nests, beating last year’s count of 120, and, at that point, the loggerheads still had two more weeks until they stop laying in the end of July. He’s counted two leatherback nests this year and five green nests; these counts are in line with previous yearly counts. The leatherbacks finish laying by the end of May and the greens will finish around the end of August.

“I just enjoy monitoring the turtles. It keeps me healthy to walk everyday and it’s a fascinating experience to see them. It’s fascinating to help the little hatchlings and it’s wonderful to teach others about them.

“It’s thrilling to learn about nature,” he said. “I get goose bumps, and it doesn’t get old.”

— Christine Davis

10 Questions for Robert Schonfeld

Q. Where did you grow up and go to school? How do you think that has influenced you?

A. I was born in New York City, and my family moved to Baltimore when I was 11 or 12, where we stayed until I was 17, when we went to Newport News, Va. I went off to
college, University of Richmond, in Virginia, where I received a bachelor of
art degree, and then I went to the University of Maryland, where I earned a
master’s degree and PhD equivalent in American history.

I was offered a job at the University of Buffalo as an instructor, and then I lived in the Washington, D.C., area. Before I knew it, I was running an agency.
So, education is very important.

After I retired, I taught all over. If I had to do my life over, I’d be a teacher. I really enjoy teaching and working with the children.

Q. How/when did you get interested in sea turtles?

A. I have always had a deep interest in everything and anything and I love all animals. I got interested in sea turtles when I went to a symposium on sea
turtles in 1993, when I moved to South Palm Beach.

I live on the beach and after the seminar, I was helping the lady who had the state permit for marine turtle monitoring. When her permit was not renewed, I
took the permit.

I’ve had lots of people offer to help me, but it’s hard because you have to count the nests and false crawls every day and you have to get up before dawn. I’ve
skipped two days in 18 years; one day I was sick and on the other day there was
a hurricane.

Q. What have been your other careers (or hobbies), what were the highlights?

A. Before I was retired, I managed health- and medical-related organizations. I was the branch chief for the National Cancer Institute and I was the executive
officer of the National Institute of Mental Health. At Tulane Medical School, I
was the director of planning.

Now, I am a docent at the Palm Beach Zoo and a master gardener.

I also do all the landscaping for my condo, as a volunteer. I go out with a clipper every morning. I don’t mow the grass, but I keep track if we need more
mulch, or need to buy new plants. It’s fun. It’s not a job. It doesn’t cost the
condo anything.

I love to go to the zoo and I’ve loved my other careers. I was a substitute teacher after I retired for two years in Montgomery County, Md. I worked every
day and I loved it.

I love sports, too. I was the league racquetball champion of the C League at the Jewish Community Center in West Palm Beach when I was 67.

Q. What advice do you have for coastal residents concerned about sea turtles?

A. Be aware of our wonderful area and how sea turtles use our beach. Understand that nobody should come up here and pull up the signs or ride motorcycles on
the beach. Don’t put lights on, because that will distract the mothers from
laying their eggs. Palm Beach County is the second most important beach in the
world for loggerhead turtle nesting.

Q. Tell us about the turtle-monitoring program in South Palm Beach.

A. The state has a big program and a whole division to protect sea turtles. It’s part of the Endangered Species Act, which was passed in 1972, where different
states are required to keep records.

I’ve been monitoring sea turtles since 1993 and still look forward to walking each day at dawn to find new nests. It’s still a thrill!

There’s another hard-working man, Rick Scheer, who helps me two days a week, and my wife helps me, too.

Q. How did you choose to make your home in South Palm Beach?

A. I came here in 1973 from the Washington, D.C., area. Carol and I had recently married and we were looking for a place to live and we liked it here, saw this
wonderful condo apartment for sale directly on the beach and I loved it.

Q. What is your favorite part about living in South Palm Beach?

A.The view of the ocean and beach. It changes everyday and never gets tiresome.

Q. What book are you reading now?

A.All the Pretty Horses, by Cormac McCarthy.

Q. Have you had mentors in your life? Individuals who have inspired your life decisions?

A. Jonas Salk, M.D., of the Salk Institute; John Walsh, M.D., Tulane Medical School; and my wife, Carol Schonfeld. She’s very intelligent and inquisitive and a very wonderful person.

I worked in the office next to Jonas Salk and Walsh was the dean at Tulane. Salk was very inquisitive about research and getting to the bottom of things. Walsh was a fascinating
individual, who wanted to stop people’s suffering.

Carol and I have done a lot of traveling and she’s also a master gardener. We share a lot of similar interests. She never stops surprising me.

Q. Do you have a favorite quote that inspires your decisions?

A. “Never stop learning.” — Jonas Salk

They’re cool. They’re cotton. They’re colorful.

And in coastal South Florida, they’ve long been summer’s uniform: the Lilly Pulitzer classic shift.

The appeal for Moore, 46, who estimates her own collection, “counting the hand-me-downs,” at a dozen or so, is simple: “They’re bright and classic. You can just spot ’em a mile away.”

The story that explains the palate is just as memorable: It features Lilly McKim, the Long Island socialite who eloped with Peter Pulitzer. The independent young wife, with surplus from her husband’s orange groves, opened a juice stand on Worth Avenue’s Via Mizner. Stains from squeezed juice prompted her to buy tropical-color print fabric from Woolworth’s and ask her seamstress to stitch up a shift that would camouflage them. The admiration of customers spawned a line of shifts that, over time, turned Lilly Pulitzer into a one-woman brand.

Long after Lilly became a household word in the upper-echelon households of Vanderbilt and Whitney and Rockefeller, they continue to delight their select clientele.

But like other shops that no longer sell the dress line, Keil’s store carries an array of other Lilly items: tote bags and notebooks and wrapping paper and pencils and playing cards and coffee mugs and more.

The story goes that she took her jet to Key West and hit it off with Peter Pell and James Russell, who had recently founded Key West Hand Made Fabrics and produced a line of tropical-print placemats, said Durante. Lilly Pulitzer worked with designers there to create her instantly recognizable floral- and animal-print designs.

IF YOU GO
What: "For the Love of Lilly" exhibit
Where: Museum of Lifestyle & Fashion History

801 N. Congress Ave. -- Suite 483

(inside the Boynton Beach Mall, near the Sears wing)
When: Aug. 3 -- May 31, 2010
How Much: $5 adults; $1 children ages 2-11

OLD IS NEW AGAIN
Lilly fashions don't die, they just go to eBay and consignment shops, to sell for bargain prices. A sampling:

On eBay: Click on "Clothes and accessories," then refine your
Search by typing in Lilly dresses and you'll get more than 2,500 entries.
Refine the Search again to Lilly shifts, and the number drops to 300-plus.
Pricing runs the gamut from $6.99 for a little girl's dress to $149.50 for a
woman's dress; many shifts are priced between $40 and $80.

In consignment shops: Again, the prices vary, and Lilly's popularity
keeps the merchandise moving in and out. A few examples:

Frugal Fashionista, 825 NE 6th Ave., Delray Beach, 561-865-7857 — "They
sell immediately when I do (have them in the store)," said shop owner
Amber Ortell. "They're among my best sellers." On a recent morning,
she had only one Lilly shift, a size 10 for $24.95. Usually, she said, they
sell for between $10 and $20.

Second Time Around Women's, 10 SE 4th Ave., Delray Beach, 561-278-0493 — Lilly
dresses generally sell for between $10 and $70, sometimes higher if they bear a
"new" tag.

Razamataz, 116 NE Second St., Boca Raton, 561-394-4592 — Lillys are popular
here, too, and vary greatly in price, said store manager Wendy, who declined to
give her last name. If a dress doesn't sell quickly, it's price drops
significantly. A $120 dress will go for $60, an $85 dress to $42.50,
and she had one $55 dress that might slip to $27.50 if it isn't snatched up
first.