Head of school says goodbye to Gulf Stream School,
where he took pride in caring, listening

ABOVE: Joe Zaluski, in a hat borrowed from a kindergarten student, congratulates Amelia Grandic and her classmates on a job well done after they talked in 2018 about what they want to be when they grow up. BELOW: Zaluski greets students the first day of classes this past year. Kristen Zankl snaps a photo of him with her kids Alexa and Trevor. Photos by Rachel S. O’Hara/Gulf Stream School and Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star

By Rich Pollack

The aging rocking chair in Joe Zaluski’s office says much about the man whose 14 years as the leader of Gulf Stream School will soon draw to a close.
The office has a desk in it with chairs on both sides, but Zaluski is quick to invite visitors to take a seat facing him as he settles into the rocker.
“It gets me out from behind a desk,” he said. “It gives us a chance to focus on each other.”
Since taking the reins as head of school in 2005, Zaluski has had to focus on a lot of things, from building enrollment and funding to improving facilities, while also working closely with the school’s board of trustees and parents to implement projects they have deemed necessary.
His primary focus, however, has been guiding students and faculty and challenging them to do better for themselves and the school. That and his talent for listening will probably be his greatest legacy.
For Zaluski, 66, a long-planned retirement will mean an opportunity to return to Ohio with his wife, Sally, and be close to their children and grandchild.
For the school, the changing of the guard is a chance to welcome the new head of school, Dr. Gray Smith. He — like Zaluski did — will bring in new ideas and approaches when he takes the job in July.
Zaluski’s leadership and dedication to those who learned from him will certainly be missed.
“It is the end of an era,” says Hilary Lynch, a former Gulf Stream student who later served as president of the board of trustees.
It is easy to list the tangibles that will be part of the Zaluski era when that chapter in the history of Gulf Stream School is written.
Financially, the school has remained strong. The endowment quadrupled since his arrival, while donations to the school’s annual fund are reaching new levels, including 100 percent parental participation at one point.
“People donated because of Joe,” Lynch said of a man students and parents alike call Mr. Z. “They saw his strength in leadership.”
Enrollment stayed strong, even during the recession, with attrition low compared with that of other independent schools.

ABOVE: As he did every day, Zaluski greets students as they arrive in mid-May. He did the same when they departed. BELOW: Zaluski (in red) oversaw the 2016 revamping of the playground, an important facility improvement during his tenure.

Improvements during tenure
Zaluski is credited with raising the school’s profile, so that Gulf Stream School became better known and better able to cast a wider net when trying to attract students.
Facilities during Zaluski’s tenure underwent improvements, with renovations to every classroom and the construction of a new pavilion with three classrooms above it. All were funded through a major capital campaign.
There was also construction of a new playground, a project led by the school’s Parent Auxiliary.
Zaluski enhanced the out-of-school experiences for middle school students. Students in eighth grade go to the Grand Canyon every April, and they go to Canada every other year with seventh-grade students.
On alternating years, seventh- and eighth-grade students take a trip to Homosassa Springs, where they swim with manatees. Seventh-graders also go to the Everglades and sixth-graders visit St. Augustine in May. 
Even with all of that, Zaluski may be remembered more for his intangible impact on students — in part because of his love of reading but also because of the time he took to listen.
“Every person who met Joe, as well as students, felt that they had a personal connection with him,” said Bettina Young, whose children went to the school and whose husband served as president of the board of trustees prior to Lynch’s years in the position. “He wanted people to know ‘I’m here, I’m listening, come speak with me.’ ”
Young tells this story to illustrate the point:
It was 2005, Zaluski had just arrived and there was no furniture in his office yet. Young and three of her children came to say hello. Zaluski invited them all to sit on the floor with him “crisscross-applesauce” style and asked the children about their interests.
“Joe sees the humanity in children,” Young said. “He understands that there are differences and he listens.”
While students know they can come to speak with their headmaster, they also never forget his role.
“That’s what’s magical about him,” Young said. “The children feel the closeness, but they still have respect for him.”
His understanding of children has been a plus for Zaluski, who says the school’s role is not just to teach students fundamentals but to develop character.
He believes that the school should be a safe place for students, not just from physical danger — although he has led recent efforts to secure the campus — but from emotional challenges that could be as basic as an argument with a parent or a sibling.
“These are still kids, they’re still thinking, and they still have internal conflicts,” he said. “A child needs to know ‘I can come to school and know that I’m going to be greeted by people who love me, care about me and want to help me succeed academically and emotionally and accept me for who I am.’ ”

ABOVE: A proponent of combining fun with learning, Zaluski plays the superhero Captain Pajamas while taking part in the annual Halloween parade. BELOW LEFT: Zaluski smiles as pre-kindergarten student Michael Bonutti pulls out a raffle ticket at an assembly program during the 2017-18 school year. BELOW RIGHT: Zaluski stands among students for a photo that commemorated the 75th anniversary of Gulf Stream School during the 2013-14 school year.

Classroom presence
Though he had the responsibilities for running a prestigious school — a full-time job — Zaluski still took time to teach two sixth-grade reading classes every week.
“Reading is the most valuable skill for success,” he said. “I want the students to be lifelong learners.”
He’ll tell you that during 14 years at the school, he learned a lot from the students and the faculty. “There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t learn something new.”
He shared much of what he learned with teachers and other staff members, who advanced professionally thanks to his coaching as well as from programs that help pay for additional education.
“It’s been a pleasure to work with the teachers I’ve worked with for 14 years,” he said.
He says he gets back more than he gives. “If I’ve been a role model for teachers and students, I can honestly say they have been a role model for me,” he said.
When it comes to students, Zaluski’s interaction began with welcoming them at the front of the school every morning, shaking hands on occasion and saying hello to parents as well.
“It sets the tone for the day, that the head of school is out here greeting you,” said teacher Bridget Langford. “It says he cares.”
Legacy of caring
Zaluski is quick to point out that many of the traditions and the culture of caring for which Gulf Stream School is known were in place when he arrived, thanks in part to his predecessor Anne Gibb. Yet those who know him well say he has been a careful custodian of the culture, nurturing it and adding a few touches of his own. Among faculty and staff, there is no doubt that Zaluski truly cares about them and their success.
“Joe will undoubtedly be remembered as an unwavering advocate and mentor for the Gulf Stream School students and faculty,” said Casey Wilson, director of alumni development and a former student who now works closely with the head of school. “His commitment to our personal and professional growth will be a major part of the Zaluski legacy.”
Zaluski says he will miss Gulf Stream School but that the time has come for his wife and him to be back home and close to family. He leaves with few regrets, saying only that there is always room for improvement in whatever profession someone chooses.
“I’m very fortunate to have been here for 14 years and to be able to end my career here,” he said.

ABOVE: The pink cottage is all that remains of the private school’s original structures as head of school Joe Zaluski retires.
A manicured field on the east side of the campus handles sports like lacrosse and soccer, daily recess and special events. The school was built on the former grounds of Gulf Stream Polo. LEFT: Second-grader Cali Greenhalgh gives Zaluski a hug in May as she makes her way to class at the start of the day.

Gulf Stream School

Founded: 1938
Grades: Pre-kindergarten (starting at age 3) through grade eight
Tuition: Ranges from $18,225 to $26,280 per school year
Enrollment: Maximum of 250 students
Heads of school in 81 years: Eight
Parents of current students who attended the school: 10
Faculty members who attended the school: Five

Stakes just off Gulf Stream’s narrow roadways are popular, especially across the street from a construction site. A 1999 policy allows PVC pipe 3 feet high. Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star

By Steve Plunkett

Mayor Scott Morgan wants homeowners, especially those in the town’s core area, to remove the green stakes and concrete pyramids and buttons they’ve put next to roadways to keep vehicles off the grass.
“The number of stakes, primarily stakes, has increased so substantially that it presents a real hazard to our residents. We have many more kids in the neighborhood, riding bikes, jogging, running, whatever,” Morgan said at the Town Commission’s May 10 meeting.
The obstructions, which people might think are in their front yards but are actually in the town’s right of way, also cause flat tires on emergency vehicles and detract from Gulf Stream’s “aesthetic appearance,” the mayor said.
A 1993 ordinance stated that nothing but low landscaping and mailboxes could be within 6 feet of a road’s pavement, Town Manager Greg Dunham said. In 1999 commissioners decided that residents near an “active construction site” could install white or dark green, capped PVC pipe 36 inches above grade and 2 feet from the road’s edge, Dunham said.
“The pipes shall be removed immediately following the issuance of the [certificate of occupancy] at the construction site,” the policy says.
In 2004 another ordinance made it unlawful for anyone “to place and/or maintain any obstructions within the right of way of the town without first being given authority in writing by the town,” Dunham said.
Morgan said, “The reason why we have the stakes and the reason why they have grown in popularity is because our streets are so narrow. They’re really single-vehicle streets.”
Students from the Gulf Stream School on a field trip to the commission chambers offered suggestions, including a limit on the size of delivery and landscaping trucks.
Commissioner Paul Lyons said he did not want to consider widening all the town’s streets.
“I live on Polo Drive,” he said. “I think it still maintains the feeling that we’d like to have. In other words, it’s not too wide.”
But, Lyons said, “We need to eliminate the obstructions.”
Commissioner Joan Orthwein, who also lives in the core area, said most stakes are not even needed. “People just got on the bandwagon,” she said.
With commissioners’ blessing, Morgan sent a letter to residents after the meeting, pointing out the safety hazard and “unsightliness” of yard stakes.
“If you are one of the residents with traffic obstructions on the grass right of way, please remove these items from your yards as soon as possible,” Morgan wrote.
The town will fill in ruts and place new sod on yards damaged by vehicles. Dunham will also contact landscaping companies to see if they can send smaller trailers into Gulf Stream.
In other business, commissioners:
• Extended for five years the town’s contract with Delray Beach Fire-Rescue. Delray Beach can raise its rates each year by the Consumer Price Index or by 5 percent, whichever is higher.
• Approved a revised landscaping plan for 3400 Polo Drive that preserves a large ficus tree at the front. Kevin and Michelle Clark are building a two-story, 7,406-square-foot Bermuda-style home there. 

Trash bags taped over hydrants alert firefighters that the hydrants are not in top form and still need repair. Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star

By Dan Moffett

Ocean Ridge caught a lucky break in April when a motorist swerved off A1A and slammed into a fire hydrant near the corner of Thompson Street.
Wayne Cameron, the town’s building official and newly named public works supervisor, quickly arrived on the scene to inspect the damage.
What Cameron found was extensive corrosion on the hose connector valves that ultimately led him to check every one of the town’s 141 fire hydrants.
He found dozens that were in awful shape and posed a potential danger. Cameron, who came to Ocean Ridge from Greenacres a year ago, and Tracey Stevens, the former town clerk who took over as acting town manager in February, discovered that routine maintenance to the hydrants may not have been done since 2009. The maintenance should be ongoing.
Though Ocean Ridge buys its water and fire services from Boynton Beach, the town owns the infrastructure, and with it the responsibility for keeping it in sound condition.
“This is a public safety issue,” Stevens said. “It’s going to be a big cost to get the system up where it needs to be.”
It turned out that four of the town’s hydrants were either missing or not working at all, and 32 were functioning below acceptable standards.
Police Chief Hal Hutchins and his two lieutenants joined forces with Cameron and public works employee Billy Armstrong to make as many repairs as possible as quickly as possible.
“Numerous members of the staff have been working every day since we discovered this issue,” Hutchins said. “It’s time-consuming and it is an expensive thing to fix.”
Stevens said it will cost the town close to $100,000 to get all the hydrants working: at least $45,000 for the four that need to be replaced and another $40,000 for six that need to be overhauled.
Going forward, annual maintenance costs, which years ago were not reflected specifically in the town’s budget, could run around $30,000.
Cameron, who took over public works supervision in April, said the hydrant network was repaired and operating efficiently enough to give adequate protection to the entire town before the end of May.
“We took immediate action,” he said. “I’m confident we have eliminated the immediate threat.”
How could the maintenance have been neglected for so long?
Mayor Steve Coz said it was poor performance by an employee.
“This has been derelict,” Coz said during the town meeting on May 6. “The person responsible for maintenance has been derelict, and it wasn’t discovered until recently.”
Stevens, who came to Ocean Ridge three years ago, is reluctant to assign blame but says the public works supervisor has been responsible for getting the maintenance done. Town commissioners recently approved hiring an employee to fill a vacancy in that department.
“We don’t want to point fingers at anyone,” she said, “but I can tell you what the hierarchy is. The public works supervisor reports to the town manager.”
In other business, the Town Commission voted 5-0 to approve a plan for an A1A crosswalk near the Crown Colony Club and Fayette Drive. Based on a traffic study completed this spring, the plan now goes to the Florida Department of Transportation for review, a process that likely will take months to complete.

Featured in the May edition of The Coastal Star, Heather Bolint and Bryan Galvin have been walking the coast of Florida to document and pick up waste plastic. Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star

By Ron Hayes

When last we heard from Bryan Galvin and Heather Bolint, the intrepid beachcombers were resting up in Everglades City after an eight-day canoe voyage across the Everglades.
That was on April 29.
Galvin, a former lifeguard at Gulf Stream’s St. Andrew’s Club, and his partner, Bolint, had left Amelia Island on March 1, determined to walk the perimeter of mainland Florida all the way to Pensacola.
They would pick up plastic trash along the way, educate anyone willing to listen about the plague of unsustainable plastic bottles, etc., threatening our beaches. And they would reach Pensacola by June 30.
PlasTrek 2019, they call it.
On May 24, we reached them in Manasota Key, about 37 miles south of Sarasota.
“The Gulf Coast isn’t so badly polluted as the east coast,” Galvin reported. “The beaches are cleaner. But some cities rake their beach every day with a tractor, so the plastic is still washing in.”
Before crossing the Everglades, the couple took a three-day break. In Key Biscayne, they spent $1,000 on a little sleeper trailer they could pull behind their truck, then left the truck, trailer and about 80 burlap bags full of plastic trash with friends in Delray Beach.
Now they’ve retrieved the truck and walked the 95 miles from Everglades City to Manasota Key, filling another 10 bags.
“Our next goal is St. Petersburg,” Galvin said. “We have a beach cleanup scheduled there June 1 with a local group called 1 Piece Each.”
Yes, he said, he and Bolint are still speaking to each other.
“There’s some great, amazing, fulfilling days, and then some days when we don’t know why we’re doing this,” he confessed. “Some nights we sleep on opposite sides of the bed. But then we meet some people who cheer us on, and we remember why we’re doing this.”
Are they still on schedule to reach Pensacola by June 30?
“I’m not sure. We’re still hoping for the end of June. We don’t want to be trekking the whole summer.”
He paused.
“Let’s say by July 1.”

This red-legged thrush, spotted April 25, was only the second on record in the U.S. Photo provided by Paul Waller

By Mary Thurwachter

If you noticed an onslaught of visitors to the Lantana Nature Preserve in late April, there was good reason. A rare bird was spotted there. As the word spread, the park, wedged between The Carlisle assisted living facility on East Ocean Avenue and the Intracoastal Waterway, attracted birders from all over the region.
The bird, a red-legged thrush, was first photographed there early on the morning of April 25 by an Arizona bird-watcher who didn’t immediately recognize the species. He left the preserve for a park in Fort Lauderdale where he met two other birders. They identified the thrush, which had been spotted only once before in North America.
By 1 p.m. an alert went out via messaging and on eBird — an online database of observations — and bird-watchers flocked to the coastal habitat in hopes of seeing the bird for themselves.
The red-legged thrush is a blue-gray bird with a bright orange-red eye ring and red legs. Its appearance in Palm Beach County marks only the second time the species has been seen in the United States. The previous sighting was in Brevard County on May 31, 2010. 
Among the first on the scene after the alert went out were Doreen LePage, a birder since the mid-1960s, and Mary Dunning, who took up the hobby a year and a half ago. Both are members of Audubon Everglades, the Palm Beach County chapter of the National Audubon Society.
Dunning, who lives in Wellington and works in Boynton Beach, went to view the thrush during her lunch break.
“I always have my binoculars with me,” she said. “I went again after work and saw the bird again, but by the next day it had flown away.”
LePage, of Boynton Beach, arrived, camera and binoculars in hand, soon after Dunning. “I was excited,” she said. “I had checked my list of bird observations to find this was truly a new U.S. bird for me. The red-legged thrush was listed as an ABA Rare Code 5 bird with only one other sighting in the U.S.”
American Birding Association codes range from 1 to 6, with 6 meaning the bird is probably extinct. Code 5 birds are recorded five or fewer times in the ABA Checklist Area, or have fewer than three records in the past 30 years.
LePage said the area had experienced easterly winds for several days, which sometimes push Caribbean vagrant birds into South Florida.
“Interestingly, the Bahama mockingbird had been found in this same park several days prior and was still present in the parking lot area,” LePage said of a species that is a Code 4 — not recorded annually in the area but with at least six total records, including three or more in the past 30 years.
She saw the thrush resting in the leaf litter under an 8-foot palm tree. She said she took many photographs as the crowd grew. “Folks were parking at the shopping center across the street and anywhere they could park,” she said.
“The resting bird soon got up and began foraging for insects in the leaves,” LePage said. “It appeared to be very comfortable with the respectful onlookers watching its every move.”
As she was leaving, she saw a Bahama mockingbird perched and singing in a fruiting bush on the side of the parking lot. “How cool … an ABA Rare Code 4 and 5 bird from the Caribbean within 30 feet of each other for my eBird list,” she remembered thinking.
LePage and Dunning said the Lantana Nature Preserve is a magnet for rare and migrating birds. Other rarities to visit the preserve recently included a white-crowned pigeon and a Key West quail-dove. 
Those who live near the Lantana Nature Preserve noticed all the commotion.
“I’ve been seeing a lot of people with cameras there lately,” said Ilona Balfour, who visits the park frequently and is a member of the Friends of the Lantana Nature Preserve. She said she hoped the birds would be able to steer clear of some stray cats hanging out there recently.
Longtime bird lover Richard Schlosberg, who lived on Hypoluxo Island until about a year ago and now lives in Connecticut, said he had been visiting the area on the day the rare bird was found.
“When I saw a hubbub — a police car and several people walking determinedly with news-station-size still camera lenses, I followed a few people to the Lantana Nature Preserve,” he said. “They mentioned a rare bird and were very enthusiastic. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the time to add the rare thrush to my life-list, nor even reconnoiter the usual inhabitants” such as yellow-crowned night herons.

Related Story: South Palm Beach: Sheriff’s unscheduled presentation to council brings objections

By Dan Moffett

Lantana Town Council members are very pleased with the state of their Police Department.
So pleased, in fact, that most of them don’t even want to consider expanding it into another community.
It took the council less than 15 minutes during the May 13 town meeting to turn down an invitation from South Palm Beach to take a look at providing police services for the town.
The vote was 3-2 against exploring the expansion. Councilmen Lynn Moorhouse, Ed Shropshire and Phil Aridas voted no. Mayor Dave Stewart and Vice Mayor Malcolm Balfour voted yes, believing the idea was at least worth examining.
“It adds depth of service, and that’s the whole thing about adding more employees,” Stewart said of a potential expansion. “It actually costs our town no additional money — just like we do with Hypoluxo. I personally would like to see us go forward, but the consensus is to not even give them a proposal.”
With 33 sworn officers, Lantana’s department also provides police services for the 2,800 residents of neighboring Hypoluxo. But Moorhouse said he was “very neutral” on expanding further outside the town limits, without support for the idea from Police Chief Sean Scheller.
“If there’s any hesitation from our Police Department,” Moorhouse said, “I don’t want to go into this. I respect them 100 percent. They’re doing a great job. If they’re happy where they are right now, I don’t want this.”
Scheller, who has been chief for seven years, said his department is in a good place right now, though he took neither side in the debate.
“I am perfectly content with the Police Department that we have,” Scheller said. “There are pros and cons to expanding. If you want to explore it we can, but I like the level of service that we provide to our residents.”
Aridas said he was concerned that South Palm Beach officers had been outspoken in expressing their desire to merge with the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office — not Lantana.
“Why would we want to take disgruntled employees into our grips?” Aridas asked. “To make an employee happy is hard enough. To bring them in when they’re not happy is twice the battle.”
Town Manager Deborah Manzo said she believed the call from South Palm Beach was worth considering because it offered the town a rare chance to add an asset for the long run.
“I think you want to look long-term because this opportunity is not going to come up too often,” Manzo told the council. “And it could be something that in the future might be good for the town.”
In other business, the town got a clean bill of financial health from its auditing firm, Grau & Associates of Boca Raton. The auditors’ annual report found no deficiencies, made no recommendations for changes and commended the town’s staff for high levels of professionalism and cooperation, Grau partner Racquel McIntosh told the council.

Related Story: Lantana declines invitation to bid on policing South Palm

By Dan Moffett

South Palm Beach council members say they’re determined to get their debate over police services back on track after a raucous council meeting raised complaints and divisions about process and agendas.
Mayor Bonnie Fischer said the Town Council was caught off guard when a half-dozen representatives from the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office and police union showed up for the council’s May 14 meeting.
“We were surprised,” Fischer said. “We didn’t know the Sheriff’s Office was coming.”
Surprises aside, council members voted 4-0 (with Vice Mayor Robert Gottlieb absent because of illness) to allow Frank DeMario, the sheriff’s chief of law enforcement operations, to make a 20-minute presentation on what his agency could offer South Palm Beach if it took over policing.
DeMario’s appearance and presentation were not advertised in the town’s agenda for the meeting. To promote transparency and public participation, the state’s Sunshine guidelines recommend that municipal commissions give adequate notice when substantial issues are brought up for discussion.
That didn’t happen, and Fischer said that was a mistake. Kevin Hall, property manager of the Palmsea Condominiums, agreed.
“I appreciate you looking into this,” he told the council. “However, I’m highly insulted that you did this tonight. Everybody’s been watching the agendas. Nobody’s here who should be here. This shouldn’t have happened.”
Joe Savarese, president of the Horizon West condo association, urged the council to slow down.
“I kind of object to the guys trying to push this through,” he said. “I support our police. I don’t want them to leave. But we can’t do it on the spur of the moment. Everybody has to have input.”
Councilwoman Stella Gaddy Jordan agreed: “The meeting wasn’t handled right. That shouldn’t have happened.”
Fischer said the council is a long way from making a decision and was merely “seeking information.” But nonetheless, the public should have been informed, she said.
Council members have been considering options for police service since the town’s eight officers came forward two months ago and supported merging with the Sheriff’s Office. Under state law, police mergers are possible only for contiguous jurisdictions — meaning South Palm’s options are the sheriff and the towns of Palm Beach and Lantana.
The council ruled out Palm Beach, citing recent reports of turmoil within the department. Lantana has ruled out South Palm Beach, voting against expanding the department.
Newly seated Councilman Mark Weissman has been pushing efforts to negotiate a deal with the Sheriff’s Office. Weissman cites the town’s pay scale, which puts officers at the bottom in Palm Beach County, and safety concerns because of the department’s small size. He said the town recently went unprotected for four hours when two of its officers were called to Lantana to respond to an incident there.
“We have many shifts where we only have one person on,” Weissman said, “and there’s been times when we have nobody here.”
He said the council needs to move quickly to make a decision.
“I believe the town has a responsibility to our officers to let them know what our intentions are,” Weissman said. “We can’t continue to kick that can down the road.”
Councilman Bill LeRoy also has called for action, proposing a $10,500 yearly raise for each officer in the department.
“Our police officers are very poorly paid,” LeRoy said. “I proposed the raise before the Sheriff’s Office even came into view. The $10,500 would take us from last to sixth in the county.”
Jordan thinks the pay issue is overstated. “For our size town and what we ask our officers to do, our salaries are pretty good,” she said. “This is a cushy position, so to speak.”
Town Manager Robert Kellogg said he is working on a five-year police budget projection with the town’s accountant. Kellogg said the estimates will be available soon and will help the council compare costs with merger proposals from other agencies.
The council intends to discuss the police issue again at a workshop scheduled for 4 p.m. June 18, followed by the regular council meeting at 6 p.m.
“This is not just about money,” Fischer said. “This is a change to something we’ve had for 50 years. That’s what people are concerned about.”

Featured in the April edition of The Coastal Star, Ray Charley (right) celebrates the end of his cross-country ride with biking partner Roberto Cintron. Photo provided

By Stephen Moore

Part-time Ocean Ridge resident Ray Charley completed the 3,050-mile Ride Across America in Support of Our Veterans bicycle ride on May 18. It was 48 days from San Diego to St. Augustine through deserts, mountains, back roads, cold weather, sweltering heat and thunderstorms.
But to hear Charley reminisce about the challenge, it seems as if he were taking a late-afternoon ride on A1A because he had help — lots of it.
He got spiritual assistance from his wife, Kate, who gave him a necklace with the Lord’s Prayer on it. Roberto Cintron, a fellow rider from Miami, presented him with a bracelet with TGBTG (To God Be The Glory) engraved on it.
He got emotional aid by holding his newborn granddaughter the day before the ride began. He was certain his daughter would give birth after he left on the ride, which would have delayed his seeing the baby for at least 48 days.
But the biggest assistance came from his riding companion Kip Othold. They formed a bond likely to last forever. They rode together, bunked together, wrecked together, laughed together, suffered together and gave each other nicknames.
“I was really fortunate that Kip and I became close friends,” said Charley, who turned 68 during the ride on May 1. “We were lucky that we had the same ideas about how to ride and what we wanted to do on the ride, so it made it really enjoyable — special. We were both saying ‘this isn’t a race, this is a ride, so let’s take our time and enjoy every day.’”
“We were joined at the hip,” said Othold, a 67-year-old retired auditor from Houston. “We were together 24/7 for 48 days. … Most marriages can’t handle that. We got along like brothers. In fact, better than my brother and I get along.”
They took nicknames from the Western series Lonesome Dove. Charley was Woodrow (Call, played by Tommy Lee Jones) and Othold was Gus (McCrae, played by Robert Duvall).
“We were the two older guys riding across the nation,” Charley said, “and we thought this could be our last drive.”
“I had to explain Woodrow to him,” Othold said, “because he had never seen the show.”
They had two minor wrecks — with each other. On the third day, Othold had pulled off the road to check his tire and looked up and saw Charley riding hard toward him with his head down.
“He ran right into me,” Othold said. “He knocked me down and he also went down and hurt his elbow.”
The second wreck occurred when they touched wheels going up a hill. Both went down, and Othold got a gash above his left eye and had to wear a patch for a day. That night Charley came to dinner wearing a patch on his left eye.
“He called it a sympathy patch,” Othold said. “The next day all 14 riders began the day with patches on their left eye.”
“There was not a day that did not offer a challenge,” Charley said. “I loved every moment of it. It was hard. At times I thought ‘what am I doing here?’ and ‘how am I going to get through this?’ but every day we got up and just ran into the day. Every day was a great adventure.
“I probably will put more miles on my bicycle this year than on my car.”
Charley, who with his family owns three Shop ’n’ Save supermarkets in Pennsylvania, was riding for the Troops First Foundation, which helps veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. At ride’s end he presented the group with a check for $73,600. The entire 14-person riding group sponsored by Trans-America Cycling raised approximately $150,000 for various charities.

Charley is still taking pledges at www.troopsfirstfoundation.org/raysride.

Multiple pumps remove water from the site of digging for an underground garage. Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star

By Jane Smith

Concerned Delray Beach residents are monitoring the massive Atlantic Crossing development underway at the northeast corner of Northeast Sixth and Atlantic avenues.
They post on Facebook, send emails to the city commissioners and lately, alert environmental regulators about possible missteps.
In late April, when they saw dirty water pouring into the Intracoastal Waterway from the construction site after heavy rains, some went into overdrive and contacted city commissioners; regulators from the South Florida Water Management District and the local office of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection; county environmental resource managers; and even 1000 Friends of Florida, a nonprofit smart-growth advocate.
Just north of Atlantic Avenue, Atlantic Crossing has a water district permit to pump filtered underground water into the city’s stormwater system.
The developer of the 9.2-acre project wants to create an underground garage and needs to dewater about 4 acres. The groundwater is pumped through three filtering tanks and into the city’s stormwater system that pours into the Intracoastal Waterway at the northeastern edge of Veterans Park.
“It looks worse than it is,” said Missie Barletto, the city’s deputy director of public works. “They are allowed to transfer sandy water but not to exceed the limit set by their permits.”
The city can only monitor the permits given by the water district and the state DEP, Barletto said.
The dirty water sparked the latest round of controversy for the $300 million complex of residences, offices, stores and restaurants.
On May 5, Kelly Barrette, who lives on the barrier island, posted two photos on the Delray Raw Facebook page with this statement: “I wouldn’t plan on underground parking any time soon at Atlantic Crossing.”
One photo shows a big water-filled pit behind a chain-link construction fence where workers on the Atlantic Crossing complex are digging the underground garage.
The other appears to be taken from the east side of the Intracoastal and shows very dirty water flowing into the ICW at the northeastern end of Veterans Park.
The next day, Barrette sent the photos to city commissioners, asking, “Is there a specific time frame for AC to demonstrate they are going to be able to get rid of the water and actually build the underground parking garage?”
On May 10, Rita Bove, who lives in Barr Terrace condominiums directly across the Intracoastal, posted a photo showing the dirty water flowing into the Intracoastal.
Also about that time, John Miller, a fisherman and former chairman of the city’s Historic Preservation Board, posted that he had sent emails to the Department of Environmental Protection and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission about the possible pollution in the Intracoastal.
The FWC responded that it gets involved only when biohazards are present in the water, an oily sheen is present, or the runoff is killing fish.
When asked about the perceived problems with the garage construction, Don DeVere, vice president of Edwards Cos., replied via the company’s publicist Andrea Knibbs: “Construction of the western garage is progressing, with plans designed and engineered to deal effectively with all the conditions that come with building an underground garage in this specific location.”
Atlantic Crossing sits at a low point in Delray Beach with only Veterans Park separating it from the Intracoastal.
Edwards was brought into the project about seven years ago by real estate investor Carl DeSantis. He sold the project to Edwards in June 2016 for $38.5 million. But DeSantis remains involved through a $16.5 million loan on the eastern half that houses Atlantic Plaza.

Work to fix a flaw in the floating yellow boom that contains silty water satisfied the city’s request for action. Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star

Prompted by social media postings in late April, city staff inspected the area near the outfall pipe at the eastern end of Northeast First Street.
Patrick Figurella, city engineer, recommended the turbidity barrier be lengthened by 10 feet. The barrier consists of a floating yellow PVC buoy attached to a PVC curtain that is kept vertical by heavy chains along the bottom.
“The barrier wasn’t fitting snugly to the sea wall,” Barletto said on May 8. The contractor had to fabricate brackets to hold the barrier closer to the sea wall.
After the brackets were installed in mid-May, they “are doing a satisfactory job of holding the turbidity barrier closer to the sea wall, as requested by the city,” Barletto wrote in a May 22 email.
Water Management District and DEP regulators have said the new configuration is acceptable to them, Barletto wrote.
In April, the city found the project did not exceed its sediment limits, called nephelometric turbidity units. Its dewatering permit allows a maximum reading of 29 NTUs above the turbidity level of the Intracoastal. Turbidity measures how clear the water is.
Figurella also wrote that on April 23 the contractor replaced a damaged sock filter on one of the tanks.
But the water district found one reading on May 2 at 37.48 NTUs.
“They were also digging for an elevator shaft, using a sump pump, that caused the increased turbidity,” said Wayne Blythe, head of the environmental section at the Water Management District.
It’s not an “egregious violation,” Blythe said. “Sometimes we have situations where the reading is hundreds over the limit.”
The water district is seeking “compliance, rather than fining,” Blythe said. “The contractor is on our radar screen. He knows he is subject to increased scrutiny.”
That permit allows the contractor to remove water 12 feet below grade at a rate of 1.5 million gallons a day, or more than two Olympic-size swimming pools a day. That permit expires March 31, 2021.
The local office of the state DEP allows the contractor to keep an approved copy of its stormwater pollution protection plan and weekly inspection reports on site, Jill Margolius, local DEP spokeswoman, wrote in mid-May.
“The Southeast District Office has received multiple complaints with regard to dewatering activities and discharge to the Intracoastal Waterway [from Atlantic Crossing],” Margolius wrote. “The department dispatched an investigator to the site in response to these complaints. We are working on an inspection report.”
The report was not available at press time.
When asked whether the underground garage is the best way to handle the vehicles of Atlantic Crossing’s patrons with its proximity to the Intracoastal, DeVere wrote: “The single level of underground parking, while more costly and demanding to build, allows for the public open space and cohesiveness that makes this possible.”
He also said that once finished, the underground garage will need pumps to keep it dry and generators that would turn on during major storms.

By Jane Smith

Some barrier island residents said they’ve been waiting 15 years to see sidewalks along George Bush Boulevard in Delray Beach.
Their wait is scheduled to end in spring 2021.
That’s when the Florida Department of Transportation will use $3.7 million in federal gas tax funds to make a 1.2-mile section into a complete street — sidewalks, bike lanes, travel lanes and pedestrian lighting. The work will be done between Northeast Second Avenue and State Road A1A.
“The new sidewalk and curb will prevent people from driving over our lawn,” said Cheryl Dern, who lives in a townhouse at the southwest intersection of A1A and George Bush.
No matter what traffic barrier that she, her husband, George, and their fellow Cambria Crest homeowner/residents put in the ground, people still drive over part of the lawn when turning right from George Bush Boulevard to go south on A1A.
FDOT unveiled the plans at a May 15 workshop at the Delray Beach Public Library.
Most attendees seemed to favor the road redo, which is scheduled to be finished in the fall of 2022.
“The George Bush bike lanes will connect those on Northeast Second, Northeast Fifth and Northeast Sixth avenues, giving bike riders a northern route to the beach,” said Jason Bregman, who heads the master plan committee for the nonprofit Human Powered Delray.
The George Bush bike route has been in the planning stages since 2014, Bregman said.
Bike riders will have their own lanes until Andrews Avenue just east of the Intracoastal Waterway. East of that road, George Bush Boulevard is too narrow. Bike riders will have to share the road with vehicles in that approximately one-eighth of a mile stretch to the beach.
The project calls for reducing the width of the automobile travel lanes from 12 feet to 10 feet, giving bike riders at least 2 feet and as much as 7 feet in their designated lanes. It also calls for widening sidewalks on the south side and building new sidewalks on the north side of the roadway, installing pedestrian lighting to make sidewalks safer, and milling and resurfacing the road.
Cyclists will still have to walk their bikes on the bridge sidewalks over the Intracoastal Waterway. The FDOT project does not cover bridge improvements.
Deputy Vice Mayor Bill Bathurst, the City Commission’s designated FDOT liaison, said he would like to walk the route with a project engineer to help him understand it.
Bob Victorin, president of the Beach Property Owners Association, said it was his first time seeing the plans. He needed more time to discuss them with his board.
But resident Kathy Fazio did not like what she saw. “It’s a safety issue,” she said, “with bikes, pedestrians and cars in a narrow space.”
Fazio, who lives on Harbor Drive on the barrier island south of George Bush, planned to discuss the plans with neighbors to come up with their own ideas for how to use that $3.7 million on the boulevard.
“That’s a lot of money,” she said.
But if their plan doesn’t include bike riders, the city likely would lose the grant money and would have to pay for the roadwork itself, said Albert Richwagen.
His family has owned Richwagen’s Delray Bike & Sport for 57 years in Delray Beach. He is also a board member of Human Powered Delray.

By Jane Smith

Delray Beach bakery owner Billy Himmelrich is asking a Palm Beach County Circuit Court judge to reopen his lawsuit against the city.
Himmelrich and business partner David Hosokawa want the judge to reconsider their claim under the Bert Harris Act, which protects property rights.
The partners say when the city created a three-story height cap for downtown properties in early 2015, Delray Beach limited what they could build on their four parcels, according to their May 6 rehearing motion. They own two parking lots and two buildings just east of the Old School Square grounds.
They were not notified in writing, as the Bert Harris Act requires. Himmelrich, though, did attend the zoning hearings.
The city’s outside counsel filed a response on May 17. They are seeking $6.9 million in damages.
“The court was correct in its ruling that the passing of an ordinance in itself does not create a private property cause of action,” according to the response.
Himmelrich and his business partner must first create a formal plan that is denied by the city, then they’ll have a cause of action to pursue, the response states.
As of press time, a date was not set to rehear the partners’ motion of the judge’s April 26 ruling that dismissed their case.
To cover their bases, Himmelrich and Hosokawa appealed that ruling on May 24 to the 4th District Court of Appeal. The appeal will be on hold until the judge rules on the rehearing motion, according to the partners’ appeal motion.
The partners had sued Delray Beach in May 2018 in an effort to build four stories on the four parcels. Their tenants are the Tramonti and Cabana El Rey restaurants. Both eateries have long-term leases that expire in 2024, Himmelrich has said.

By Jane Smith

Delray Beach is asking a judge to dismiss the lawsuit that fired City Manager Mark Lauzier filed in Palm Beach Circuit Court claiming the city violated the state’s Whistleblower Act.
Lauzier sued Delray Beach on April 29, claiming his March 1 firing was in retaliation for not allowing the mayor to fly her 15-year-old son to Tallahassee at taxpayer expense. The Whistleblower Act protects workers from retaliation after they report unethical or illegal acts by their employers.
But the city’s outside counsel filed a reply on May 21 that states otherwise. In the motion to dismiss Count I, the Whistleblower complaint, Brett Schneider wrote that Lauzier wrongly relied on an Expedia travel itinerary for his reason in filing the suit.
Lauzier’s writing “Denied” and “Not official City employee travel — Must be reimbursed” Feb. 25 on the itinerary does not constitute the written complaint required by the Whistleblower Act, the city’s motion to dismiss says.
Further, the itinerary is not a protected disclosure under the Whistleblower Act, according to the motion. Delray Beach is asking the judge to dismiss that count with prejudice, meaning Lauzier cannot refile it.
Mayor Shelly Petrolia had charged two Tallahassee plane tickets on a city purchasing credit card, which she is allowed to do provided she reimburses the city.
Petrolia and her son were going to the state capital for the first week of the legislative session in March, she said. The mayor was going to lobby state representatives and senators during Palm Beach County Days. Her son, Anthony, was going to be a Senate page for one week.
Even so, it was Commissioner Ryan Boylston who wanted to call the special meeting on March 1. He had met with the city’s internal auditor, Julia Davidyan, in late February to listen to her concerns about the city manager.
Shortly after Lauzier was hired, he rewrote the city’s personnel manual so that it favored his staff choices, the auditor said. He did not update the city charter or alert the mayor, as was required.
He also hired inexperienced staff at high salaries and promoted his assistant to assistant city manager when she did not have the required experience, Davidyan found.
Boylston met with Lauzier on Feb. 26 but wasn’t satisfied with Lauzier’s answers and wanted to call the commission together to discuss the auditor’s concerns. City policy, though, allows only the city manager and mayor to call a meeting.
Boylston then reached the city attorney, who called the mayor to let her know that a colleague wanted to hold a special meeting. The city attorney explained why, and the mayor agreed to call the meeting.
Six weeks before Lauzier was fired, he received a 4 percent raise, the lawsuit says in an effort to bolster his claim that he was wrongfully fired.
But his lawsuit didn’t say the pay vote was 3-2. The mayor and Commissioner Shirley Johnson voted against giving Lauzier a raise.
At an annual salary of $244,000, Lauzier was the highest-paid Delray Beach employee.
As the city manager, he had the power to hire and promote, his lawsuit says. He is seeking severance to cover five months of pay and benefits, seven months of paid leave and a year of health insurance benefits.
On May 21, Schneider filed a separate document with the court, responding to Lauzier’s claim of breach of contract. That document denies the city breached Lauzier’s contract and denies he is owed damages.
The employment agreement that Lauzier signed allowed the city to fire him for cause, which Davidyan detailed at the March 1 meeting.

By Jane Smith

The Downtowner open-air vehicle company has officially parted ways with the City of Delray Beach.
The transportation company rankled the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency when it reduced the number of vehicles it would provide for its point-to-point service from nine to seven and pulled its bid for the fixed operator contract that would replace the current trolley system.
The reason? The $5 million liability insurance policy that the CRA required for the transportation service.
“I feel like I’ve been had,” said Adam Frankel, CRA board member and a city commissioner. “The commission received a lot of criticism last September that we had run you out of town, when it was you who had changed your business model.”
CRA Chairwoman Shelly Petrolia agreed. “I thought the cars were already ordered,” she said.
“Our other contracts in Florida require only $1 million in insurance,” said Mike Monaco, chief technology officer for the Downtowner. “We underestimated the cost of the $5 million policy.”
For example, the Downtowner’s contract with the Tampa Downtown Partnership requires a $1 million policy, said Karen Kress, transportation and planning director for the group.
The Downtowner uses Teslas and Chevy Bolt electric vehicles in Tampa because their charges last longer than in the global electric motorcars that are popular in Delray Beach.
Because the Downtowner changed the terms of its $591,985 point-to-point bid, the Delray Beach CRA board members voted 6-0 to award that service to BeeFree Holdings. Board member Ryan Boylston had left the meeting before that vote was taken.
The BeeFree firm, based in Miami, operates under the name Freebee. The company had been ranked first by the selection committee when the original bids were considered.
The company provides point-to-point service in Coral Gables, where its contract calls for $3 million of liability coverage.
Jason Spiegel, managing partner of Freebee, declined to comment until the firm has a signed contract.
Like the Downtowner did in Delray Beach, Freebee will use GEM vehicles. The two firms also offer apps for smartphone users that promise to say when the vehicles will arrive.
But unlike the Downtowner, Freebee will have to find a place near downtown to store and charge its vehicles. The firm’s bid was $401,560 annually for five GEM vehicles with a sixth that will be wheelchair accessible.
The Downtowner has four electric vehicle charging sites adjacent to its offices on Northeast Fourth Avenue. Downtowner open-air vehicles have not operated in the city since October 2018.
With the Downtowner pulling out of the fixed-route proposal, the CRA voted 6-1 to award that contract to the competitor, First Transit, with Frankel voting no. He is opposed to the large vehicles.
First Transit, which provides drivers for the city’s diesel-fueled trolleys, will offer two Starcraft Allstar Ford vehicles that carry 20 passengers and are powered by propane gas. A backup vehicle will use diesel fuel, considered more polluting than propane gas.
The mini buses each will have a DriveCam running to record both sound and video, but First Transit wants to charge $70,000 extra to equip the vehicles with passenger counting and other technology. The firm’s initial $512,606 bid was accepted. The advanced technology system costs will be decided separately.
The departure of the Downtowner and subsequent agreement with First Transit for fixed-route transportation means the CRA will likely have its current diesel-fueled trolleys running past June 30. The point-to-point service, set to begin Sept. 1, also is delayed.
“That means another 100 days,” said Petrolia, also the Delray Beach mayor. “I’m not happy.”

Briny Breezes resident Ed Manley, a World War II veteran, received a hero’s welcome from hundreds of well-wishers at Palm Beach International Airport after returning from a daylong trip to Washington D.C. courtesy of Honor Flight volunteers. ‘There must have been 100 veterans on the flight,’ said Mark Madden, Manley’s guardian on the May 11 trip. They visited Arlington National Cemetery and the memorials for World War II, the Vietnam and Korean wars and the Air Force before boarding the return flight, which landed about 10 p.m. The highlight for Manley, 97, who served in the 101st Airborne Infantry Division, 502nd Parachute Battalion, was the reception and send-off veterans received at the airports. ‘I was losing confidence in the country because I didn’t think anyone really cared,’ he said. ‘But the young people made me feel like I had been in church for a year and a half. It was really well done.’ Photo provided by Holly McCarthy

By Dan Moffett

Problems with building permit processing continue to beleaguer Briny Breezes officials.
Town Manager Dale Sugerman told council members that recent permitting errors by C.A.P. Government Inc., the outside contractor that handles building inspections and plan reviews in Briny, prompted him to meet with the company’s president last month to discuss corrective action.
Sugerman said he gave Carlos Penin at least 11 examples of instances in which C.A.P. made processing mistakes that caused permits to be incorrectly approved, erroneously filed or lost in the electronic system.
“Sometimes C.A.P. was just not paying attention,” Sugerman said. He told the council that he’s concerned the company might have “taken on too much business” and might not have the resources available to give Briny the efficient service it wants.
Sugerman said if C.A.P.’s performance doesn’t improve, the council might have to consider hiring another firm.
Even when the system works as intended, homeowners have complained for months that obtaining permits is unnecessarily complicated and too confusing.
Alderwoman Kathy Gross, during the May 23 council meeting, proposed restructuring the town’s permitting procedures.
“The process is convoluted as it starts with the corporation, then it goes to the town clerk, and sometimes it goes back and forth several times,” Gross said. “Then the town clerk has to deal with C.A.P.”
Gross proposes allowing the corporation to deal directly with building contractors and Briny’s building official at the beginning instead of having applicants come first to Town Hall and the clerk. Unlike the corporate office, which is open daily, the town’s office is open only three days a week, which further restricts the process. The change would fix that.
“It puts the process in one location and it saves money for the town by eliminating excess work on the town clerk,” Gross said.
Donna Coates, the corporation’s general manager, said she was open to considering the change and taking on the added workload. Sugerman said he liked the idea. Town Attorney Keith Davis said the plan could be shaped to satisfy statutory requirements.
The council agreed to study Gross’ proposal and bring it up for discussion at the next town meeting on June 27. “We’ve got some homework to do,” Sugerman said.
In other business, the council unanimously approved a resolution of concern that expresses the town’s complaints about the Gulf Stream Views townhouse project next door in the County Pocket.
The resolution lists four problems:
• Excessive noise, dust and vibration from the ongoing construction project.
• Heavy construction equipment clogging the town’s streets.
• The increased traffic that the project will generate in the area once completed.
• Drainage and flooding problems that could result from losing the roughly 2-acre property as a drain field for surrounding neighborhoods.
The resolution is aimed at Palm Beach County officials, in particular District 4 Commissioner Robert Weinroth, who represents Briny Breezes.

Hal Stern at the Seagate Beach Club, part of the resort his family visited as snowbirds before buying a house in coastal Delray Beach. In retirement Stern is chairman of the city’s Green Implementation Advancement Board. Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star

By Jane Smith

Hal Stern remains a do-right kind of guy.
His dad was part of the “greatest generation.” As a Jewish man going off to fight Hitler, he didn’t complain about the conditions. “He did it because it was the right thing to do,” said his son.
Stern, who lives in coastal Delray Beach, took that lesson to heart and looks for areas where he can make a difference.
He was a history major at George Washington University during the height of the Vietnam War protests on college campuses.
Stern, 68, remembers the 1971 May Day protests that shut down Washington, D.C. Thousands were arrested and detained near RFK Stadium.
“Washington was a cool place to be,” Stern said. “You could walk right into the Capitol. There weren’t any metal detectors.”
He saw Richard Nixon be inaugurated as president and met Hubert Humphrey and Lyndon B. Johnson.
He also made it to the Woodstock music festival in 1969. “I came from a summer camp in northeastern Pennsylvania and didn’t get stuck in the mud or on a closed highway,” he remembered. “I saw Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and The Band. I left when Jimi Hendrix was singing the national anthem. But my ride didn’t show up and I was late getting back to camp. I was fired from my counselor position at 9:15 a.m. because I had missed my breakfast post. Then, I had to call my mom to pick me up. My dad wasn’t mad that I got fired, but he wanted me to have a backup plan.”
A retired lawyer from the D.C. area, Stern brings that passion for action to his role as chairman of the Delray Beach Green Implementation Advancement Board.
The Green Board has had two big successes this year.
One was a milestone in its effort to rid the city of plastic straws.
Florida’s new governor vetoed a bill that would have barred a local government from adopting or enforcing a ban on plastic straws until July 2024. Several cities statewide had passed plastic straw bans.
“These measures have not, as far as I can tell, frustrated any state policy or harmed the state’s interests,” Gov. Ron DeSantis wrote on May 10.
Currently, Delray Beach is educating restaurant servers and others to not offer single-use plastic straws, unless requested. In January, the city will start enforcing the ban.
The Green Board also assessed the city’s tree canopy this year. Stern told the City Commission in April that Delray Beach has an overall canopy of 23 percent. Trees help to combat climate change by providing shade on hot afternoons, helping to slow traffic and cleaning the air by absorbing carbon dioxide while releasing oxygen.
To improve the tree canopy, the Green Board wants to plant 10,000 trees in the city by 2035. Its members will organize planting events and help to strengthen the city’s tree ordinance.
In October, the board plans to have a Climate & Art Festival, drawing together Delray Beach art and education institutions.
“We all should leave this world a little better than we found it,” Stern said, quoting a youth scouting motto.

Q. Where did you grow up and go to school? How do you think that has influenced you?
A. I grew up in the Jackson Heights area of Queens, N.Y. It was just me and my sister and my parents in a two-bedroom apartment — not many secrets when you live so close together.
I was a history major at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Then, I went to law school at Case Western in Cleveland, but the lure of D.C. called to me.

Q. What professions have you worked in? What professional accomplishments are you most proud of?
A. I was a general litigator in the Washington, D.C., area for about 10 years. We sold that practice and moved into the corporate world in 1988. We helped poor patients who went to the emergency rooms or had surgery find either Medicaid or veterans insurance to cover their bills. I’m proud that we helped many poor people pay for their care.

Q. What advice do you have for a young person selecting a career today? 
A. Figure out what you’re good at and then explore until you find a place where your skills fit. Don’t be in such a hurry to choose a career. Take time to explore. A lot of young people today pick finance, but when they start working in that field, they hate it.

Q. How did you choose to make your home in Delray Beach?
A. My in-laws and parents retired to Boynton Beach. We explored the area and found Delray Beach. My kids called me, ‘the mayor of Delray Beach’ because I loved it so much. After I retired, we came down as snowbirds and lived at the Seagate hotel on Atlantic Avenue. We walked the barrier island and eventually picked a street where we wanted to live.

Q. What is your favorite part about living in Delray Beach? 
A. What’s not to love? The town has a true sense of place. Just like Washington called to me as a college student, this town calls to me. There are not many beach towns where you can walk down its main street, pass 15 or so restaurants and then end up at the beach.

Q. What book are you reading now?
A. Metropolis, by Philip Kerr. I like it because it’s a historical thriller. Kerr combines the hard-boiled Dashiell Hammett writing style set in the Weimar Republic of Germany.

Q. What music do you listen to when you need inspiration? When you want to relax? 
A. Postwar jazz for both. I like listening to tunes by John Coltrane, Dexter Gordon and early Dizzy Gillespie. There’s no talking, it’s all instrumental.

Q. Do you have a favorite quote that inspires your decisions? 
A. Theodore Roosevelt’s “The Man in the Arena.” I’d rather get beaten fairly than sit on the sidelines criticizing and not getting things done.

Q. Have you had mentors in your life? Individuals who have inspired your life decisions?
A. I’ve had two. My parents taught me the value of hard work and being honest. The second was a senior partner in a firm I had joined. I had been a general litigator and joined his firm to set up a branch in the Washington, D.C., area. Bernard Landau had a system that helped hospitals collect payments from uninsured patients.

Q. If your life story were made into a movie, who would you want to play you?
A. George Clooney. What man wouldn’t want him to play his life? I like him because of his intensity and he’s not bad to look at. I also think Jimmy Stewart would fit. He was a genuine person, an honest man. I think of his movie Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

By Rich Pollack

Since it opened just about a year ago, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection facility in Boca Raton has had close to 7,000 aircraft passengers come through its doors.
They have come on almost 1,500 planes and arrived after departing from 40 countries, including Italy, Germany and England.
They have brought with them warm-weather clothing and sometimes pets. They’ve also brought trash — lots of it.
Between May 31, 2018, and May 20 this year, 2.35 tons of trash collected from aircraft arriving from overseas has been burned to ash in a special incinerator installed at the Boca Raton Airport. The trash includes everything left over on the plane, especially food or foreign material that could bring disease or blight.
The statistics help document the need that customs facility advocates had been talking about for years.
“The usage has exceeded our expectation,” said Airport Authority Executive Director Clara Bennett.
Bennett said the number of passengers using the facility is close to double what had been predicted in a feasibility study done to justify the construction of the $3 million, 4,200-square-foot facility.
Customs officials say that the station in Boca Raton sees an average of four or five flights on weekdays with 10 to 15 flights on Saturdays and Sundays combined.
Sundays are the busiest day of the week, according to Boca Raton Airport records, accounting for about 25 percent of all arriving international flights needing to clear customs.
The overall number of planes coming into customs increases significantly, however, when President Donald Trump is at Mar-a-Lago, since Palm Beach International Airport is closed to international general aviation aircraft while temporary flight restrictions are in effect.
The busiest seven-day period of the year, for example, was Feb. 12-19, which included Presidents Day and a presidential visit. During that time, 83 flights and 406 passengers passed through customs in Boca Raton.
The week also included the busiest day of the year — Feb. 15, the Friday before Presidents Day, with 27 flights and 114 passengers traveling through customs.
In general, the customs facility is closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and operates from only 10:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., but pilots can request after-hours clearing for an additional fee.
Overall, inspectors at the facility have not seen any problem with passengers attempting to bring contraband into the country.
“Traffic at the Boca Raton Airport tends to be 99 percent law-abiding travelers,” said Jennifer Connors, U.S. Customs and Border Protection port director at the Port of Palm Beach, which includes the facility at the Boca Raton Airport. “So far, it’s been a reasonably easy operation to manage.”
Connors said the newness of the facility and the relatively light traffic make the Boca center a desirable location for customs inspectors. “It’s a nice place to work,” she said.
Pilots and passengers — especially those coming from the Bahamas as well as the Turks and Caicos — are also finding it a convenient place to clear customs.
In the past, planes coming into Boca Raton from out of the country would likely clear customs either at Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport — which has one of the busiest general aviation customs centers in the country — or at Palm Beach International.
That would often mean an additional landing and fuel-consuming takeoff.
With the customs facility in Boca, that step is eliminated.
Bennett points to the case of a pilot with a plane at the Boca airport who flies to the islands frequently. With customs in Boca, he is able to save about an hour flight time and about $100 in fuel costs.
The dollar savings are negated a bit by a fee the Boca airport charges to help offset the costs to build, operate, maintain and staff the customs facility.
The fee, based on the size of the aircraft, ranges from $50 for a single-engine plane to $425 for a large jet.
In addition to aviation traffic, the customs facility is available to boats coming in from overseas. In the first year, 34 vessels and 77 passengers have cleared in Boca Raton.
Bennett said that the airport’s goal in requesting a customs facility was always to provide a valuable and convenient amenity for the customers.
“That has in fact been truly borne out,” she said.

By Sallie James

DELRAY BEACH — Delray Beach fashion designer Marjorie Scott Ott, a devoted mother and entrepreneur whose stylish line of resort wear garnered national attention, died on May 3 at home. She was 97.
Mrs. Ott created the Toby of Palm Beach line of clothing in the 1960s that was carried by upscale stores such as Neiman-Marcus, Bonwit Teller, Peck and Peck and Jane Spencer. The popular clothing line, initially sewn by local seamstresses in their Florida rooms, was eventually manufactured in Miami. When ultimately Saks Fifth Avenue picked up the line, it stipulated that no store within 50 miles of any Saks could carry the line, except for Jane Spencer of Delray Beach.
Despite Mrs. Ott’s fame as a fashion designer, her sons remember her as a humble optimist, a bold adventurer who loved to sail, a devoted mother and a lover of life who kept things in perspective with her heartfelt sense of humor.
“She was the sweetest, funniest, warmest person,” recalled her son Richard Tobias. “She was an art major and she was very creative. The designing thing sort of was a fluke. She had these shifts you could put on over your bathing suits — our grandmother liked it and she told Mom, who had a dressmaker, make one for my mother. My grandfather said this could be good business.”
Born on Oct. 4, 1921, in Queens, New York, Marjorie Scott attended Kew-Forest School, Skidmore College and the University of Arizona, graduating with a bachelor of fine arts degree in 1941 at age 19.
She worked as a draftswoman for American Export Airlines, plotting out its flying boat-conducted trans-Atlantic surveys. Her foray into fashion came when she became a senior stylist for Macy’s in Manhattan.
She married Richard Tobias Jr. in 1950 and lived with their three sons near Nyack, New York, until they decided to move to Palm Beach in 1957. But their journey there was somewhat unconventional: The family — with two dogs and three very young boys — cruised south on their 63-foot yacht until arriving in Florida, where they decided to stay.
“It was crazy. I was only 2 months old when they decided to come down to Florida by boat. My brother Scott was 2 and brother Richard was 5,” said her son Charles Tobias. “It was a big boat with one engine and we were in the ocean sometimes and in the Intracoastal Waterway sometimes.”
By November 1957 they’d had enough and decided to settle permanently in South Florida. The family lived in Palm Beach and then Delray Beach, where Mrs. Ott launched Toby of Palm Beach.
She created the apparel lines Toby Tanner and Marjorie Scott, both produced by Tanner of North Carolina, and designed a fashion line for David Crystal/Izod of New York, her sons said. She traveled often but was devoted to her family. She never lost her sense of humor.
The Tobiases divorced in the early 1970s. He died in 2005. She married Carl Ott in 1975; he died in 2004.
“My mother, in the most serious of times between my brothers and I, would look up at us and give us cross-eyes and try to make us laugh. She would give the hat off her head to anybody,” Charles Tobias recalled.
Her motto? “To thine own self be true,” from Shakespeare, Charles Tobias said.
Her son Richard Tobias, an artist, remembered what his mother did when she learned that one of his close friends was traveling to New York for the first time.
“Mom said to her, you have to have an LBD if you are going to New York — a little black dress. My mom gave her this little black cocktail dress and my friend said it made her trip worth it,” Richard Tobias recalled. “She was fun. She was so cool — she wanted to bring out the best in everyone.”
After retiring from the fashion industry in 1973, she purchased a knitting and needlework boutique in Delray Beach, purchased the historic Pittman House, which was later donated to the Delray Beach Historical Society’s historical village, and operated two other specialty shops in Delray for several years.
Her children said she remained sharp to the end.
“She was humble and she was funny, had a great sense of humor and just welcoming to people always,” Richard said.
Memorial services were pending.

By Sallie James

BOCA RATON — Jon Randal “Randy” McDonald loved to go barefoot, throw parties, chat up his neighbors and spend time with his beloved sheepdogs. He was also a talented investment professional, recently named one of the top brokers in Florida.
When he died on April 17 after a brief illness, leaving behind his wife, Lori, those who knew him said the community lost someone who was “everybody’s best friend.” He was 63.
Mr. McDonald was born in Racine, Wisconsin, and spent most of his childhood in St. Croix. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin in Madison with a degree in finance and most recently worked for Morgan Stanley. He rose through the ranks to become a senior vice president, a wealth adviser and a corporate client group director during his tenure there.
He was also a member of the Riviera Civic Association and a keen supporter of the neighborhoods on the barrier islands, said fellow Riviera board member Katie Barr, who had known Mr. McDonald for years.
“Randy was always right there, always ready to serve or to have a party. Whatever it took, Randy was the guy,” Barr said. “He is really leaving a big void. He was 63 but he was like 23 in spirit. He had a very youthful persona.”
The McDonalds often walked their huge sheepdogs around the neighborhood and chatted with people along the way, friends recalled.
“Besides the fact that he was fun and had a generous heart and spirit, he was extremely smart so he was a huge asset,” Barr said.
He was “always the voice of reason” when it came to making decisions for the neighborhood, Barr added.
Kevin Meaney, president of the Riviera Civic Association, said the community lost a good guy with a great sense of humor, who knew how to focus when it came to neighborhood issues.
“If we needed to rally over some things that were going on in the neighborhood he would get involved,” Meaney recalled.
George O’Rourke, Mr. McDonald’s neighbor and a former co-worker, remembered him as someone who truly loved life.
“He was very much a community activist. He was multidimensional: professional in his work as a community activist and a true friend to many in the city,” O’Rourke said.
He was preceded in death by his parents and his brother, Mark. He is survived by his wife, his three sheepdogs and three sisters.
In lieu of flowers, donations in his memory can be sent to Abandoned Pet Rescue, at www.facebook.com/fund/AbandonedPetRescue, or Animal Aid Inc., at www.animal-aid.com.

By Jane Smith

Delray Beach Public Works staff unveiled the second phase of the beach master plan on May 28.
The work will start July 8 and is scheduled to be finished mostly by Nov. 19, said Aaron Cutler of Mathews Consulting who was hired to monitor the project.
When finished, the beach promenade will have amber lighting on the beach side of State Road A1A that is friendly to sea turtles and pedestrians. The $3.3 million project also includes enhanced crosswalks and dune fencing.
“Finally,” said Bob Victorin, president of the Beach Property Owners' Association. His group has been waiting about 10 years for the improvements.
The amber LED lights will be fitted on 124 poles about 10 feet high to light the walkway. Forty, 4-foot-tall bollards also will have amber lights. Most of them will be placed behind the main pavilion at Atlantic Avenue and A1A.
Between George Bush Boulevard on the north and Casuarina Road on the south, the lights will be on a timer to go on at dusk and shut off at 10 p.m. during sea turtle nesting season.
Separately, Florida Power & Light engineers are working on having amber streetlights installed on their 25-foot poles later this year. Currently, FPL’s lights on the west side of A1A are white LEDs that don’t turn on during sea turtle nesting season.
In mid-April, MBR Construction won the bid to construct the second phase of the beach master plan for the city.
Commissioners approved the Fort Lauderdale firm’s bid, even though at $3.3 million it was about $800,000 more than that of West Construction of Lantana.
Also on the April 16 consent agenda, commissioners approved hiring Mathews of West Palm Beach for $256,000.
Earlier in April, West was sent a letter detailing problems with two city projects they had worked on, including the eight lifeguard stands.
Cutler, vice president of Mathews, said his company will have employees on site daily and post photos each day on Twitter (@beachmasterplan) and Facebook (#beachmasterplanphase2).
He also said a hotline has been set up for residents to ask questions or report problems. The phone number is 833-335-7292.
City staff asked MBR to delay starting the work until July 8 to not interfere with the city’s Fourth of July celebration.
MBR, which signed a contract on May 23, will spend the downtime ordering the light poles, bollards, posts and the steel cable for the dune fencing.
The project will include eight A1A crosswalks with reflective paint. The crosswalks at the intersections at Atlantic and Casuarina will be painted and stamped to look like bricks.