The Most Rev. Gerald M. Barbarito, Bishop of Palm Beach, presided over the Rite of Installation of the Rev. Father D. Brian
Horgan (far right) on June 10 as the fifth pastor in the history of St. Lucy Catholic Church. Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star

Carved from an overgrown tract of mangroves,
church has grown into centerpiece of Highland Beach

Related Story: Celebrating 50 years of St. Lucy Church

By Janis Fontaine

Hundreds of Catholics in southern, coastal Palm Beach County call St. Lucy Catholic Church in Highland Beach their home church. The small house of worship on A1A is wedged between towering condominiums that sprouted up around it since it was founded in 1968.
This year, the church celebrates its golden jubilee, marking half a century of providing spiritual guidance, respite and comfort, in keeping with the parish mission statement: “Our community welcomes all, judges none, embraces and protects the vulnerable, and seeks to make the stranger, the unloved and the unwanted feel at home.”
Maureen Mooney Stamper of Boca Raton has been attending St. Lucy for nearly 20 years, first as a tourist, then as a snowbird and now as a full-time resident. Early in the church’s history, 75 percent of parishioners were seasonal. Now the opposite is true — only 25 percent are snowbirds.
When Stamper lost both her son and her husband in 2014, she recalled, “It was because of my faith that I was able to get through it.”
Stamper found comfort in the arms of her church family and has blossomed again. “I thought I’d never be me again, but I became a better me,” she said.
That good feeling comes from the joy of giving back to the church that helped her through hard times. “I never realized what I could do,” Stamper said. “Father mentored me.”
She became a lector, then a eucharistic minister, honors she treasures. “I’ve gotten more out of it than I have given,” Stamper said. “I’m so proud of the work the congregation does.”

ABOVE: Following installation Mass, the Rev. Father D. Brian Horgan greets parishioners. He came to St. Lucy in 2013 to assist Father Gerald Grace, who has since retired. BELOW: Horgan spends a moment in reflection during his installation service at St. Lucy Catholic Church. Photos provided by Lashells Photography

ABOVE: St. Lucy Catholic Church members representing the Parish Council attend the June installation of the Rev. Father D. Brian Horgan. Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star

Michelle DeGennaro and Rosemarie Amato are co-presidents of the St. Lucy Council of Catholic Women, a charitable ministry of the church. The group has more than 130 members, making it one of the largest groups of its type.
“Lucky us!” DeGennaro said. “We are a very active group. We really want to help and there are plenty who need it.”
The group supports child-related charities, including Birthline, Aid to Victims of Domestic Abuse, Place of Hope and Boca Helping Hands. The council also gives an annual college scholarship to a young Catholic woman.
Amato is a former New Jersey snowbird, now a Boca Raton resident, who has attended St. Lucy since 1988. She’s devoted to the church and the CCW, and enjoys planning its major annual fundraiser, a fashion show. Amato says, “Whenever we ask for help, we get it. No one ever tells us no.”
Parishioner Peggy Gossett-Seidman — who also serves as a commissioner for the town of Highland Beach — has been attending St. Lucy for more than 25 years. St. Lucy still holds up as the heart of the community and there’s also a great deal of “doing good deeds quietly,” Gossett-Seidman said. “It’s a beautiful reflection of the community, a great lift and a sparkle for everyone.”
For many years, the church has also served as a polling place.

Father Horgan’s influence
On June 10, the church held the official rite of installation of Father D. Brian Horgan as the fifth pastor in St. Lucy’s history. Horgan is known for his kindness, his work with children (he previously taught at Cardinal Newman High School), and his sense of humor.
Horgan has worked at St. Lucy since 2013, and his welcoming attitude is contagious, DeGennaro said. “He’s young, influential and appealing.”
Nearly everyone who speaks about Horgan, who turned 47 on July 4, mentions his youth, and many praise the bishop for sending a youthful priest.
To be viable, a church must attract new members, and that’s certainly part of Horgan’s plan. He welcomes families, encouraging them to sit in the front row. He says parents shouldn’t feel they need to remove a rambunctious tot from the sanctuary during Mass.
To him, a church’s youngest parishioner is just as important as its oldest. A children’s Mass on Friday is becoming one of the most popular services.
The church, which grew from 500 families in 1995 to 1,300 members today, is a multicultural fishbowl, with different cultures living in harmony, all following Horgan’s open-armed example.
Pastoring this new generation of Catholics means embracing the growing Spanish-speaking population. Dianne Barreneche spoke on behalf of the parish’s Hispanic community at Horgan’s installation, praising him for being “so devoted he learned Spanish so he could say Mass in Spanish to his Hispanic parishioners.” The congregation laughed, imagining Father Brian’s Irish-accented Spanish.
Bishop Gerald M. Barbarito spoke at the installation, as did Carl Feldman, the mayor of Highland Beach, and several other civic and church leaders. Hundreds of faithful showed up to take in the pageantry.
Horgan’s self-deprecating sense of humor and way with words set the tone. The young pastor is so agile with words, Barbarito said, he was adding Horgan’s name to his short list of potential eulogists.
The bishop spoke about how well St. Lucy serves its faithful and praised the “wonderful relationship” that the parish has cultivated with the town.
Before moving to the parish hall for a luncheon featuring Irish foods (corned beef, boiled potatoes and carrots), Horgan closed by quoting the Irish poet Keats and then said that the words of St. John Vianney best described his feelings about his parish: “A priest is not a priest for himself, but for others.”
Perhaps DeGennaro said it best: “This little church on A1A you can call home.”
No special events have been planned to mark the 50th anniversary.

Rick Felberbaum cuts pastry for ice cream sandwiches at Proper Ice Cream. Frustrated by slow progress in Boca Raton, he opened his shop in Delray Beach. Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star

By Mary Hladky

As his passion for the practice of law faded, Rick Felberbaum wanted to pursue a new one.
After years of studying and experimenting, he perfected a recipe for what he thought was the best ice cream he had tasted, with innovative flavors such as strawberry and toasted pistachio and passionfruit and salted caramel.
The next step was finding the right spot for an ice cream shop. Felberbaum bought a building at 310 E. Palmetto Park Road, a potentially customer-rich location within walking distance of a number of restaurants, across the street from the Palmetto Promenade apartments and townhomes and a few blocks from the Mark at CityScape apartments.
He then asked city officials to change the allowable use of the first floor of his building from office space to a 971-square-foot ice cream shop.
It took him nearly two years to get approval from Boca Raton City Council members, sitting as Community Redevelopment Agency commissioners, on Jan. 8. Yet he still needed to jump through more hoops before he could launch his business.
Felberbaum threw in the towel. He opened Proper Ice Cream in June — in Delray Beach.
“The city took such a long time to approve my plans, I had to make other plans,” he said in March. “I had no other choice.”
Felberbaum isn’t alone in his frustration with the city’s time-consuming and costly process for approving plans in the downtown.
Critics say the city makes it so difficult for small-business owners that they are shunning the city’s center.
John Gore, president of Boca Beautiful, which advocates for responsible city growth, calls it a “small business-unfriendly atmosphere. The outcomes are stifling small-business growth in downtown Boca.”
“The property owners and business owners downtown are in the midst of a very, if not hostile, at least extremely bureaucratic business environment right now,” said attorney Michael Liss, founder of the Downtown Business Alliance.
The city has strict ordinances governing downtown development that hold large developers and small-business owners to the same standards.
The intent of the ordinances is to guard against overdevelopment and to protect small-town charm in the downtown. They limit building height and density, require developers to provide open space and adequate parking and press developers to use architectural designs in harmony with those of legendary architect Addison Mizner, among many other things.
Large developers have plenty of complaints about these rules and the length of time it takes to get approvals, too, but they have deep pockets and legal teams. Small-business owners can be hard-pressed to pay for attorneys to help them navigate the process, and for costs imposed on them such as for a city consultant’s review of their projects.
Politics plays a role as well. The City Council has faced a backlash from vocal downtown residents who contend the downtown is overdeveloped, with too many large condo and apartment projects already built and too many more in the pipeline.
The most recently elected council members, Andrea O’Rourke and Monica Mayotte, ran as “resident-friendly” candidates who pledged not to ignore the wishes of their constituents.
Some observers say as a result, council members hold developers’ and business owners’ feet to the fire in strictly complying with the rules, and that city staff follows suit. That has translated into a very difficult environment for people like Felberbaum.
The ordinances are not tailored to address all the many different projects that can come before the CRA.
In the case of Proper Ice Cream, the main ordinance governing downtown development has no provision for an ice cream shop. So, it was classified as “retail high” — even though it wasn’t that at all — and subject to the same review as a large condo or hotel project.
City Council members are aware of some of these deficiencies and say they are streamlining the process. They all but apologized to Felberbaum at the Jan. 8 meeting just before they approved his shop.
“Thanks for staying the course,” then-Mayor Susan Haynie told him. “This is a poster child for why we need small-scale IDA [individual development approval] processes so we don’t have to go through the full review process that we do for a larger, more extensive building.”
“We are trying to come up with a way to make it easier for small businesses to succeed, ” said Jeremy Rodgers, who was deputy mayor at the time.
“We can all scream for ice cream, but it shouldn’t have to take months of screaming to get there,” said Mayor Scott Singer.

Luff’s Fish House opened in February in downtown Boca after the owner battled for nearly four years. The Coastal Star

Process cost Luff’s ‘a fortune’
Restaurateur Arturo Gismondi faced similar difficulties as he tried to open Luff’s Fish House in a historic 1927 house at 390 E. Palmetto Park Road.
The architect, Derek Vander Ploeg, described the process as “a herculean effort” that consumed nearly four years and cost Gismondi “a fortune.”
The last hurdles presented themselves in December as Gismondi prepared to open.
He sought permission to use a different roofing material than what was originally approved because the original was no longer available.
He also had painted a portion of the building sea foam green rather than a reddish brown that had been previously approved.
The city cited him for using the wrong color, and he had to appear before a special master who told him he had 90 days to repaint, Vander Ploeg said.
Gismondi did so immediately, but also asked the city to allow him to use sea foam green, or what the city calls spring mint — a change that required an amendment to the IDA needing CRA approval.
But before that, he had to seek an OK from the Community Appearance Board. The city’s consultant also had to weigh in for a second time and concluded green complied with the city’s standards better than reddish brown.
“It has been painful,” Vander Ploeg said in mid-March, while still awaiting a verdict from the city. “It is still unresolved for something that should be simple.”
While the city has begun streamlining its procedures, none of the changes adopted so far would have helped Felberbaum and Gismondi, who could not be reached for comment.
The city, for example, has eliminated the Zoning Board of Adjustment and transferred its responsibilities to the Planning and Zoning Board and has simplified the process for abandonment of rights of way and easements. City staff is working on proposals for additional changes.
The city has not acted on streamlining proposals submitted in 2012 and, after revisions, in 2014 and approved by the Downtown Boca Raton Advisory Committee.

Critics: ‘Streamlining’ isn’t

Vander Ploeg and Glenn Gromann, a former Planning and Zoning Board member who has considered running for mayor, headed up the streamlining proposals.
“They have streamlined nothing,” Gromann said. “Wherever they tried to streamline, they made the rest of the process longer. Since they started to talk about streamlining, it now takes six to 12 months longer” to get approval for a project.
His recommendations included allowing amendments to site plans to be reviewed and approved by city staff and the city manager to shorten the process. Similarly, in the case of a minor revision to an IDA, such as a change in paint color, city staff and the city manager could make the call.
Vander Ploeg said the ordinance governing downtown development already allows city staff and the city manager to review small projects and, if they comply with city ordinances, to be placed on the CRA’s consent agenda so they could be approved quickly. If a CRA commissioner has questions or concerns, he or she could ask to pull the matter from the consent agenda for discussion or debate.
But that provision is rarely used, he said, because CRA commissioners and city staff prefer a full review of every project to avoid criticism.
Liss said the main problem is how the CRA is structured. City Council members also comprise the CRA board, and City Manager Leif Ahnell also is the CRA executive director. He wants an independent CRA with its own executive director.
“Our elected officials have absolutely no vision for what to do about business or property ownership in the downtown,” he said. “A CRA is supposed to be an independent economic engine. Ours just acts to get in the way of anybody conducting business or improving real estate.”
An independent CRA could streamline the approval process just for the downtown, he said.
While the city grinds away at streamlining, Luff’s Fish House opened in February, the latest addition to Gismondi’s portfolio of restaurants that includes Trattoria Romana and La Nouvelle Maison.
Felberbaum, who still has a small law practice, is both making and selling his ice cream at 1445 N. Congress in Delray Beach.
But even before selling directly to the public, he launched a wholesale business providing ice cream to renowned chef Clay Conley’s Buccan and Imoto restaurants in Palm Beach and Grato in West Palm Beach, as well as 1000 North, which counts former NBA star Michael Jordan as an investor, in Jupiter. It also is sold at Joseph’s Classic Market in Boca Raton and Palm Beach Gardens and will soon be sold at a Joseph’s coming just west of Delray Beach.
Felberbaum hopes to go national soon; he signed a contract for a national marketing campaign.
“It is very exciting,” he said in June. “The potential is amazing.”
And his business space in Boca Raton? It’s on the market. Asking price: $2.3 million.

A construction crew works on the foundation of a separate rectory in 1987. Photos provided by the Highland Beach Library

A statue of St. Lucy is visible from A1A south of Linton Boulevard.

St. Lucy timeline

Oct. 3, 1968: St. Lucy Church is officially established after the Diocese of Miami purchased a tract of land, overgrown and mostly mangrove swamp. Under the direction of the founding pastor, the late Rev. Michael Keller, a temporary chapel was erected for services.

1972: A temporary church is built under the direction of the Rev. Patrick Slevin, the second pastor, and dedicated by Archbishop Coleman Carroll of Miami. 

1974: The Rev. Anthony J. Chepanis becomes the third pastor in May. The church buys the adjacent property to the south for a rectory. 

1980s: Needing a larger church, St. Lucy plans to expand, but a lawsuit with Florida’s environmental agency stops the plans because of the protected mangroves. After an arduous, nearly three-year legal battle, the church loses and is forced to grant an easement of more than an acre to the state of Florida for the preservation of the mangroves.

1984: The property is transferred from the Diocese of Miami to the Diocese of Palm Beach.

On Feb. 12, 1986, Dr. Adelmo Dunghe received his ashes from Father Anthony Chepanis on Ash Wednesday at St. Lucy. Boca Raton News file photo by Tracey Trumbull

1987: The new church is officially dedicated by the Most Rev. Thomas V. Daily, the first Bishop of the Palm Beach Diocese, on Dec. 5.

1992: The new rectory and offices are built close to A1A, (not in protected mangroves). The Most Rev. J. Keith Symons, bishop of the Palm Beach Diocese, dedicated the rectory on Dec. 13.

1997: Father Gerald Grace becomes the church’s fourth pastor.

2013: Father D. Brian Horgan joins Father Grace midyear.

2016: Father Grace celebrates 50 years as a priest in June and retires soon after.

2018: Horgan is officially named St. Lucy’s fifth pastor on May 1 and formally installed June 10. In recognition of its 50 years, St. Lucy is honored on June 20 with this official statement: “The Most Rev. Gerald M. Barbarito, Bishop of Palm Beach, joyfully extends his prayerful congratulations to the people of Saint Lucy Catholic Church in Highland Beach on their golden jubilee. We give thanks to God for the many priests and faithful who have tirelessly given of themselves to Highland Beach and the surrounding area. Thank you for 50 years of loving service to the Gospel of Jesus Christ through your faith and good works.”

ABOVE: The parish budget in 1968 reveals the church’s early expenses — and how much money collections raised.
BELOW: A Sun-Sentinel newspaper clipping discusses the legal turmoil in the community before the church was approved.

By Rich Pollack

Neighbors west of Pompano Beach first noticed the 2013 Hyundai Sonata in a vacant field in April, shortly before the body of affable Highland Beach resident Elizabeth Cabral, 85, was found in her apartment across from the ocean.
Cabral’s car, recovered after someone called the Broward County Sheriff’s Office to report a suspicious vehicle, is just one piece of evidence Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office detectives have collected as they try meticulously to piece together what is thought to be only the second homicide in the history of the small coastal community.
Late last month, the Sheriff’s Office released a one-page, heavily redacted report that confirmed Cabral’s death was a homicide, something many in Highland Beach — including many of her neighbors — had long suspected.
Although the Sheriff’s Office has been unusually tight-lipped about the case, the report provides a glimpse into what may have happened to the woman known to friends and relatives as Betty.
The murder weapon, according to the report, was either a knife or a sharp cutting instrument and there were no signs of forced entry into the condominium. In fact, the door to the unit in the Penthouse Highlands condominium along State Road A1A was unlocked on the night of April 30 when a Highland Beach police officer went to check on Cabral after the car was found.
In addition to homicide, the report states the suspect or suspects committed armed robbery and auto theft.
The crime has left residents and relatives wondering why anyone would want to hurt Cabral.
“She was a wonderful woman,” said Alan Croce, president of the Penthouse Highlands Association and a retired high-ranking law enforcement official in New York. “She was the most outgoing person you’d ever meet.”
Croce said he saw Cabral, who used a walker to get around and was often helped by aides, about a week and a half before police discovered her body.
“She gave me a big hug and a kiss,” he said. “One of her aides was with her.”
Robert Cabral, a nephew of Betty Cabral’s late husband, William, said the couple were comfortable financially, but suspected there was nothing of great value in the apartment that would be taken in a robbery.
“They were not very extravagant,” he said.
The couple, who lived in Cambridge, Mass., before moving to Highland Beach 22 years ago, were together for about 50 years and had no children, Robert Cabral said.
William Cabral worked for the city of Cambridge, mostly with veterans, his nephew said, while Betty held administrative positions at a hospital in town.
After her husband, who suffered from dementia, died in 2017, relatives urged Betty to move into an assisted-living facility. But she chose to stay in her home and remain independent.
Croce said she was friendly with other residents in the building, but didn’t have many visitors other than her aides and a financial adviser who visited regularly.
In recent years, Croce said, Cabral stopped driving and relied heavily on her aides to get around. The aides, he said, would drive her car.
Robert Cabral, who lives on the west coast of the state, said he didn’t know his aunt had died — and didn’t know the circumstances of her death — until very recently.
“Months went by and we knew nothing,” he said. “We don’t even know where the body is.”
He said he and other relatives hope to reach an out-of-state relative of Betty Cabral’s whom the Sheriff’s Office most likely notified of her death.
Deputies towed Cabral’s Hyundai Sonata from near Pompano Beach to the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office headquarters for processing. The keys were on the floorboard.
Like Robert Cabral, Croce is seeking more information about Cabral’s death, hoping to calm other residents in the usually quiet building.
Major crimes are rare in Highland Beach, a town that has a full Police Department with officers routinely on patrol. Highland Beach has repeatedly been rated among the top 10 safest cities in Florida by organizations that conduct ratings.
Highland Beach’s only other confirmed homicide occurred in 1994 when someone fatally stabbed Richard P. Ramaglia, 49, in his home in the 4000 block of South Ocean Boulevard.
Palm Beach County Sheriff’s deputies later arrested Mary Juhnke, 23. Juhnke told detectives an argument over whether she should have an abortion led to the stabbing.
Juhnke later pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 17 years in prison in December 1994.

By Steve Plunkett

The Greater Boca Raton Beach & Park District wants the city to pay part of the cost of rebuilding the Ocean Breeze golf course.
District Chairman Robert Rollins calls it “Erin’s question” — “How much are they going to give us from the sale of the municipal course?” — after Commissioner Erin Wright first raised the issue months ago.
Wright and her colleagues are sure to seek an answer from the Boca Raton City Council at the next joint meeting July 23. At the May 9 joint meeting, two Boca Raton residents asked council members the same thing.
“I would encourage you to seriously consider not burdening the new golf course with so much debt when there is a substantial amount of proceeds coming from the sale of the existing golf course,” resident Kevin Wrenne said.
Barry Tetrault called the $65 million the city will reap from the sale a “windfall.”
“I haven’t seen or heard anyone on the City Council even acknowledge the fact that they’re going to put money into the [Ocean Breeze] golf course. That’s scary, it really is,” Tetrault said. “Are you going to chip in for the financing of this course?”
Mayor Scott Singer replied that the council has not discussed how to spend the $65 million.
Rollins, at the next Beach & Park District meeting, summarized the reaction.
“It was like watching a hot potato getting tossed there on the council — nobody wanted to touch that. ‘Well, we’ll get back with you, we haven’t thought about that yet,’ ” Rollins said.
Commissioner Craig Ehrnst agreed with Wright and Rollins.
“I don’t think we should foot the bill for everything,” Ehrnst said.
Their request to help pay for reconstructing Ocean Breeze raised alarms on the city side that the district may be running out of money.
“We’re hearing … that they’re wanting us to participate [in rebuilding Ocean Breeze] and we have no plans or anything in the budget or forecast for funding that sort of thing,” City Manager Leif Ahnell told council members a week after the joint meeting.
“We have a number of other projects that are already on the books to be funded by the Beach & Park District that we’re having concerns they may not be stepping up as our partners to pay their fair share, in the millions and millions of dollars,” Ahnell continued.
City Council member Monica Mayotte, at a candidate forum before she won her seat in March, said some of the money from the golf course sale should go toward Ocean Breeze.
“That makes sense — golf for golf,” Mayotte said then.

By Steve Plunkett

Who is a resident, and how much should he or she pay to use park facilities?
Those are two questions the Boca Raton City Council and the Greater Boca Raton Beach & Park District will try to answer at a joint meeting July 23.
Michael Kalvort, the city’s recreation services director, gave council members an overview of the mishmash of fees people pay at parks depending on whether they live in Boca Raton, outside the city but in the district, or somewhere else.
For example, Boca Raton rents pavilions at Spanish River Park to nonresidents at a higher, nonresident fee, while the Beach & Park District has a policy not to rent its pavilions in Sugar Sand Park to nonresidents.
“It’s not the most easy thing to understand, but that’s part of the issue at least from my perspective,” Kalvort said at the council’s June 11 workshop. Even defining who is a resident is problematic.
“I can’t tell you the amount of times we have people coming in from unincorporated Boca who have a Boca address and think they’re a city resident,” Kalvort said.
Some of the biggest differences, however, come in renting a baseball field or buying a tennis membership. The Beach & Park District charges residents $17.75 an hour for a baseball field; nonresidents pay $53.25 an hour. Boca Raton’s hourly fees are $25 for residents and $140 for nonresidents.
Kalvort then turned to tennis memberships.
“There are three different facilities that charge three different rates,” he said.
A family tennis membership at the district’s Swim and Racquet Center is $553 for residents and $1,598 for nonresidents. At the city’s tennis center the charges are $323 for resident families and $834 for nonresidents. At Patch Reef Park they are $213 for residents and $384 for nonresidents.
A family swimming membership at the district’s center is $127 for residents; at the city’s Meadows Park pool it’s $164.
“Trying to explain all that to our citizens over the phone or sometimes even in person gets to be very difficult and very complicated,” Kalvort said.
When it comes to sports leagues that use the parks, 36 percent of the current 6,100 youth athletes are nonresidents.
“So about 2,100 nonresidents are utilizing our fields,” Kalvort said. He suggested that when council members meet with Beach & Park District commissioners they consider limiting participation or raising fees for nonresidents.
Council member Monica Mayotte agreed that the system needs to be easier.
“I don’t want us to lose revenue on any changes that we might make, but we need to simplify this for everyone involved,” Mayotte said.
District Chairman Robert Rollins said a number of things Kalvort mentioned should be explored at the joint meeting.
“Having been on this commission for 23 years, I can’t tell you the number of times that we have talked about user fees,” said Rollins, who was re-elected unopposed for another four-year term in June, as was District Commissioner Susan Vogelgesang.
Rollins also recalled his 10 years on the city’s parks advisory board.
“Whenever the discussion came up, ‘Well, they do it this way in Waukegan,’ we’d say, ‘Well, this is Boca. This is a whole lot different than these other areas where you are looking at comparisons,’ ” he said.

By Mary Hladky

Tri-Rail officials have chosen their preferred location for a second station in Boca Raton, but can’t yet guarantee it will be built.
The preferred site is the former King’s Deli property along the CSX railroad tracks at Military Trail and Northwest 19th Street, officials said at a sparsely attended June 20 public meeting at the Spanish River Library.
A runner-up site is just to the south, but it is not as attractive to Tri-Rail officials because it is not directly on Military Trail and so is not as easily accessible.
But at least two obstacles must be cleared before the station becomes a reality.
Tri-Rail needs to get funding to build the station and acquire land. Officials peg the station’s cost at $17 million.
The commuter rail had about $8 million from the Florida Department of Transportation and the Palm Beach Transportation Planning Agency to evaluate potential station sites and to design the station. On June 5, the Federal Transit Administration approved the location, clearing the way for Tri-Rail to seek local, state and federal money.
Its ability to build on either of its preferred locations is uncertain. Developer and landowner Crocker Partners owns both parcels.
Crocker Partners managing partner Angelo Bianco, now in a legal dispute with the city over his proposed Midtown development, said he would not sell either one.
“We have a plan for a development,” he said in late June. The preferred station location “is smack in the midst of that.”
Bianco did not divulge details of his new plan for land his company owns, except to say it is an “extensive redevelopment.”
Tri-Rail spokeswoman Bonnie Arnold said she could not comment on what effect that will have on agency plans.
“We have not even discussed it,” she said June 29.
Communication between Tri-Rail and Crocker has been scant.
Tri-Rail officials said they could not contact Crocker about the land until the FTA approved its preferred location for a station, and had not done so as of the June 20 public meeting.
Bianco said he called Tri-Rail officials after they announced their preferred station site. He said they confirmed the location, but did not ask if he would be willing to sell the land.
Litigation between Crocker Partners and the city further muddies the waters.
Crocker Partners led a coalition of landowners proposing a “live, work, play” redevelopment of about 300 acres in Midtown, between Interstate 95 and the Town Center mall.
Crocker Partners originally supported the second Boca Raton station as a complement to its transit-oriented development where residents of up to 2,500 proposed apartments would walk or take shuttles to their jobs at nearby office buildings or retail stores, and to restaurants and nightlife. Its representatives had hinted they might consider donating land for the station.
More recently, Crocker Partners said the station, while desirable, was not necessary to make Midtown a success.
But momentum for Midtown came to a halt in January, when the Boca Raton City Council delayed voting on two ordinances that spelled out how Midtown could be redeveloped and instead voted to create a “small area plan” for the area that would not be completed until the end of this year.
Crocker Partners sued the city in May, saying its actions created an impermissible building moratorium. By then, other Midtown landowners had started moving ahead with their own redevelopment plans.
If it’s ever built, the station would have two parking lots with 75 spaces, and a drop-off area for passengers getting rides to the station. Buses and shuttles could access the station and bicycle parking would be available. The current scheduled opening date is in 2023.
A 2016 Tri-Rail study found that about 1,000 riders were projected to use the new station on weekdays, enough to support construction. But Tri-Rail also expected that to rise if Midtown landowners built residential.
Several residents attending the public meeting voiced objections to the second station.
Bobbye Miller questioned why Boca Raton needed two stations. “Everyone in my neighborhood is not for this,” she said.
Anthony Catalina, director of planning and capital development for Tri-Rail’s governing agency, said the Yamato Road station is Tri-Rail’s busiest, and rider surveys showed demand for a station in the Midtown area because it would be a more convenient location for them.

Boca Raton Airport Operations Manager Travis Bryan carries a bag of trash from an international flight to the incinerator at the U.S. Customs facility. Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star

By Rich Pollack

At the Boca Raton Airport, trash has become a very big deal.
Since the airport’s new U.S. Customs and Border Protection facility opened a few weeks ago, the airport has been burning trash coming off international flights in a new on-site, medical-grade incinerator, reducing everything placed inside to ash.
The process of destroying any foreign materials that could bring disease or blight, or create other problems in the United States, is an arduous and detailed one, required and overseen by both customs and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
“One of the highest priorities of the USDA and customs is to make sure that no contaminants enter the country through trash,” said Airport Director Clara Bennett. “That’s why we have such strict procedures in place to make sure everything is burned before it goes into the community.”
Boca Raton is one of only a few airports in the state — and the only one in South Florida — to have an incinerator to burn trash coming off airplanes that cross international airspace.
Other airports, including Palm Beach International, Fort Lauderdale Executive and Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International, use a hauling service to dispose of garbage.
But as plans were being developed for the new customs facility, Boca Raton officials determined it would be most cost effective — and more efficient — to purchase the 1,830-degree incinerator rather than contract with a hauler.
Officials estimate that having a customs- and USDA-certified hauler come to the airport to remove the international trash twice a week would cost about $20,000 a year, almost as much as the $26,000 incinerator, especially since there would be an additional charge for extra pickups.
“This is a much more cost-effective process,” Bennett said, adding that other airports are in contact with Boca Raton to learn more about the incinerator. “The unit will probably pay for itself in a year.”
Since the incinerator is on-site — in a locked area adjacent to the customs facility — Boca Raton Airport staff can also be more responsive and can burn airplane trash, including food waste, on relatively short notice.
All seven of the Boca Raton Airport Authority’s full-time staff members have been trained in a process, which along with other details, was hammered out during a six-month period in cooperation with customs and USDA officials.
As part of the process, the Boca Raton Airport is now an officially regulated USDA garbage-processing facility.
As a result, taking out the trash at the customs center is a lot more complicated than just bringing the garbage barrel out to the curb for pickup.
According to airport Operations Manager Travis Bryan, trash from each plane coming from out of the country — usually between 15 or 20 a week — must be placed in a special trash bag 3 mils thick, then sealed and deposited in specially marked trash cans outside the customs center. Once full, the trash barrels are padlocked.
Although the airport staff has 72 hours to dispose of the trash, Bryan says members of his three-person operations crew check the cans every day and burn the trash when the cans are full.
“Everything we put in has to be reduced to ash,” Bryan said, adding that trash will be burned until it meets the requirement.
A log of each burn is kept and a detailed process is outlined should an accidental spill occur before the trash makes it to the incinerator.
Bennett said she is in the early stages of looking into the possibility of working with veterans organizations and scouting organizations to use the incinerator to properly dispose of retired American flags.
So far, the incinerator has been kept pretty busy with the new customs facility handling 61 flights with 215 passengers in its first four weeks of operation.
“It’s about what we expected,” Bennett said.
Among the flights coming into Boca Raton are those that originated at airports in Ireland, Portugal, Canada, Venezuela and the Bahamas.

By Steve Plunkett

Police are hamstrung by state rules that limit what they can do in Lake Boca, where a man drowned this April during the hugely popular Boca Bash.
City Attorney Diana Grub Frieser calls the state preemptions “just so surprisingly restrictive” when it comes to boating and local governments.
“Perhaps they weren’t originally designed for these types of, kind of massive, events. They were just intended for boating and navigation, open waterways, so this is kind of an unusual thing,” Frieser said June 11 as the City Council reviewed this year’s bash.
The event, which now attracts about 1,500 vessels and 10,000 attendees to Lake Boca, started in 2006 as a birthday celebration and, though not sponsored, grew through word of mouth, a web page, printed flyers and social media, Police Chief Dan Alexander said.
A 32-year-old West Palm Beach man, Francis Roselin, was found under 5 feet of water April 29 after he had last been seen swimming in the lake. His was the first death to occur at a Boca Bash event.
Alexander assigned 38 police officers to the event; together they worked a collective 553.75 hours at a cost to Boca Raton taxpayers of $35,402. City fire-rescue units answered 15 calls for help with total personnel costs of $9,318.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission assisted Boca police along with the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, Boynton Beach police’s marine unit, the U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Fish and Wildlife. The FWC issued six boating under the influence citations, handled 16 other violations and made 15 public assists, Alexander reported. His officers issued seven citations, nine warnings and seven juvenile referrals.
The Police Department created a “safety lane” on the lake for marine patrol boats to get through, but beyond that could do very little to control the crowd, Alexander said. The Wildflower site next to the boat launch at Silver Palm Park was closed, as was Pioneer Park in Deerfield Beach.
“Actually the most significant events that we’ve had don’t involve law enforcement,” Alexander said. “The drowning wasn’t a law enforcement-related event. We had a fractured neck at one point that was pretty significant but again, that wasn’t a function of enforcement.”
Frieser suggested the city lobby the legislature to change Florida law.
“But the state has been very slow in trying to be flexible to allow local governments more control over these … events that cause real public harm,” she said.
Mayor Scott Singer said the city should remind organizers next year of this year’s drowning.
“There’s a very fine line between … a fun afternoon boating and a very unsafe afternoon that has significant ramifications,” he said.

By Emily J. Minor  

The attorney for suspended Boca Raton Mayor Susan Haynie told a judge at a “status check” hearing last month that his team had just received discovery materials from prosecutors and needs more time to prepare.
Palm Beach Circuit Judge Glenn Kelley scheduled the next hearing for July 26; a trial date could be set then.
Haynie, 62, was arrested April 24 on charges of failing to disclose income she and her husband, Neil, received from developer James Batmasian, whose city projects she favored in several City Council votes.
She has not resigned as mayor, although the governor suspended her from that position.
At the core of the charges from the Palm Beach County State Attorney’s Office? Haynie, a longtime city servant who has lived in Boca for almost 50 years, is accused of collecting $140,000 since 2014 from business deals with Batmasian, which Haynie failed to disclose.
During that time, prosecutors allege she cast four favorable votes on Batmasian projects.
In May, Haynie switched attorneys, hiring former federal prosecutor Bruce Zimet, now a noted defense attorney, who a decade ago represented Batmasian — the developer at the center of the Haynie scandal. In 2008, Batmasian served eight months in federal prison for payroll tax evasion. 
The two cases are unrelated and Zimet has said there is no conflict of interest.
No plea deal is in the making, Zimet said at the June 19 hearing.
He called Haynie “very engaged in the case” and said they’re looking forward to “seeing what the evidence is” in the state’s discovery files. Zimet said they’re confident “there’s just no case there.”

By Mary Hladky

The battle between the city and Midtown developer Crocker Partners has intensified, with Crocker suing the city in May in an effort to keep its project alive and the city in June asking a judge to toss the lawsuit.
Another dispute arose in June, when Mayor Scott Singer proposed ordinances that would replace county zoning regulations — which remained in effect after the city annexed the Midtown area in 2003 — with city zoning regulations. The change would give the city more control over noisy bars and restaurants.
Singer described the ordinances at a June 11 council workshop as a “glitch bill” that would address residents’ concerns about loud music.
But at a City Council meeting the next day, attorney Henry Handler said the disagreements between Crocker Partners, his client, and the city will “only be exacerbated” by the ordinances. “This will likely lead to disparate piecemeal zoning regulations, which will drive the city and major Midtown landowners further apart and exacerbate existing disputes,” he said.
Public hearings on the ordinances will be held July 24 and Aug. 21 before they could be adopted. The City Council is expected to discuss the litigation in a closed-door session July 24.
The lawsuit, filed May 23, accuses the city of treating Crocker Partners differently from other property owners and not following its normal procedures for project approval.
It seeks to have a judge compel the city to write land development regulations for Midtown. The lawsuit also asks a judge to rule that the council’s delay in adopting ordinances containing those regulations and its Jan. 23 vote to instead develop a “small area plan” for Midtown are illegal and invalid.
The lawsuit aims at rules imposed on Midtown, which Crocker Partners says are unconstitutional and create an impermissible building moratorium.
They include a mandate that a new Tri-Rail station be operational, all street infrastructure be done and improvements to Military Trail finalized before the proposed construction of as many as 2,500 housing units would be approved.
No similar requirements were put in place before the city established regulations for the Northwest planned mobility development in 2015, the lawsuit states. Midtown also is a proposed planned mobility development.
The lawsuit amounts to asking the city “to do its job” by approving the regulations for Midtown that would allow Crocker Partners to submit development plans to the city, said Crocker Partners managing partner Angelo Bianco.
“They were supposed to do this in 2011. We are asking a judge to get them to do it.”
Crocker Partners told the city in April that it planned to sue for $137 million because the approval delays left it unable to redevelop three properties it owns in Midtown: Boca Center, The Plaza and One Town Center.
Bianco said if he wins on the most recent suit, he would abandon plans to seek damages.
“The last thing I want to do is hurt the taxpayer,” he said.
In its June 14 motion to dismiss, the city argues that it is not required by law to enact land development regulations for Midtown and a judge cannot decide the validity of those regulations in ordinances that have not been enacted.
“Plaintiffs are seeking relief in the wrong venues, have brought stale claims, have wholly failed to allege the basis for their claims and are seeking decisions on matters the are not ripe for adjudication,” the city’s motion states.
Crocker Partners originally joined with other landowners in the Midtown area in an ambitious plan to redevelop about 300 acres between Interstate 95 and the Town Center mall. They envisioned a “live, work, play” transit-oriented development where people would live in new residential units and walk or take shuttles to their jobs, shopping and restaurants.
But delays in enacting ordinances that would allow the Midtown project to go forward caused the group to break up, and some are moving ahead with individual redevelopment plans. They include mall owner Simon Property Group, the now-closed Sears building owner Seritage Growth Properties and Glades Plaza owner Trademark Property Co.
Even so, Bianco thinks he can create a smaller version of Midtown, with fewer residential units, on about 80 acres that Crocker Partners controls, provided the city sets parameters for what can be built in that area.
The city has hired two consultants, Community Marine and Water Resource Planning and Larch Design Plus, to help it create a small area plan. The contracts total nearly $50,000.
The city now expects to have a small area plan crafted by no later than December, which would then be formally adopted by the City Council, a city spokeswoman said.
The consultants invited the public May 23 to offer their vision about how Midtown could be redeveloped.
About 120 residents attended the session at the Spanish River Library. They split into groups and came up with general ideas on Midtown’s look.
Each group’s ideas shared similarities, such as low density, low- or mid-rise buildings, pedestrian friendly, lots of green space and improvements to Military Trail.
Residential units would number no more than 1,250, and many people wanted fewer.
Jim Anaston-Karas, principal of Community Marine and Water Resource Planning, said another public session is planned for September.

NOTE: Due to a production error, an earlier version of this story did not appear in the June edition of The Coastal Star.

Final social event stirs a half-century of memories

Jean Fletcher and Claude Donawa enjoy a final dance together at the Boynton Beach Civic Center. Photos by Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star

By Ron Hayes

Walls go up, and walls come down, and in between lives are lived.
On Tuesday, Sept. 4, 1962, Mayor Thomas A. Summers turned a shovelful of dirt at the corner of East Ocean Avenue and Seacrest Boulevard, and a new, $100,000 Boynton Beach Civic Center was born.
The walls stood strong through 56 years of teen dances and rummage sales, pingpong and pool, Jazzercise and hurricanes, but now they’re about to come down.
On Sept. 3, the city will hand the Civic Center keys to developers, and those old walls will make way for Town Square, a $118 million, 16-acre redevelopment.
And so, for six hours on Saturday afternoon, June 16, some men and women who were young when the center was young gathered there to mourn, remember, dance a last dance — and write on the walls.

DONNIE & JEANNIE, ’69
Inside a heart, of course.
Regina Day, 66, was born in Delray Beach, and Don Day, 67, moved there when he was 6. They met at the old Seacrest High School.
“We’d come up from Delray,” Don Day said, as a trio called Three’s Company burned through Great Balls of Fire onstage.
“This was the main dance hangout,” he remembered. “The idea was to pick up the girls in the parking lot so you didn’t have to pay to come in and then take them to the Royal Castle in front of St. Mark’s School on U.S. 1.”
One night, he got in a fender bender on Ocean Avenue. “Took the gray primer off my old Ford Falcon,” he said. “I finally painted it white.”
But his future wife, Regina — known to all as Jeannie — could not be lured to Royal Castle.
“I was the good girl who came in with my cousin and danced,” Jeannie Day said. “We were real dancing machines back then. That’s why last year I had to get new knees.”

The Civic Center and the library (in background) will both be demolished to make way for the Town Square redevelopment.

Cathy Patterson, 67, was one of the organizers who decided the city should host a Last Dance at the Civic Center “so all the kids who used to hang out here could say goodbye.” She also suggested it be from noon to 6 p.m., even though those Saturday dances of the 1960s were at night.
“Nowadays, we all have to get to the early bird at the LongHorn,” she laughed.
Cathy thinks the dances cost 25 cents when she was a girl, but her husband, Jim, says 50 cents, and he should know. Jim Patterson, 72, was the city’s recreation supervisor back then and held the job for 30 years.
“It was 50 cents for Boynton Beach Youth Association members and a dollar for others,” he said.
Memories fade, but both agree they met within these walls.
“He was running the dances,” Cathy said. “I was 16 and he was 21, the adult in the room.”
You could tell Jim Patterson was the adult in the room because he wore a coat and tie.
“We didn’t have that many problems,” he recalled. “I had to watch out for a little bit of drinking, and check the bathroom for smoking. A few kids would get drunk.”
On a good night, he said, the teen dance might draw as many as 300, 400 kids.
“But we averaged about 150. We paid $70 or $80 for a band, $90 if they were real good. The big local band was The Avengers.”
Propped on an easel near the door beside a table full of Civic Center scrapbooks, a blown-up, black-and-white photograph from the old Boynton Beach News Journal has captured the five Avengers with their Beatles hair and bellbottoms in February 1969.
The Avengers’ bass player was an 18-year-old boy named Dana Carrier.
Onstage at the last dance, facing that photo from the stage, the bass player for Three’s Company was a 67-year-old man named Dana Carrier.

DANA & LYNN
LYNN LOVES DANA

In a heart, of course.
Lynn Shephard and Dana Carrier met here, too, and married.
“I tried to get the original band back together for this,” he said, “but they’re all over the United States. One’s in California and one in Tennessee, one in South Georgia. I gave them four months’ notice, but …” He shrugged.

ABOVE: Dana and Lynn Carrier married after meeting at the Civic Center and returned there for the Last Dance.
BELOW: A February 1969 Boynton Beach News Journal clipping shows Dana Carrier and his band, The Avengers, performing at the Civic Center.

Carrier had auditioned for The Avengers to replace a departing guitarist, he recalled. The other guys told him he wasn’t good enough to play guitar, but if he wanted to be a bass player, they’d get him a bass and teach him. Garage bands were loose like that back then.
“We used to rehearse in a tin barn down where Bud’s Chicken is now,” he said.
They played the tunes most of today’s teenagers have never heard of, and they will never forget.
“We played a lot of Vanilla Fudge,” he said. “Young Rascals. Good Lovin’ was my big song, and we had a singer who had a voice like Gary Puckett, so we could do Young Girl.”
Meanwhile, Noel Cyr, 67, and his brother Duane, 65, stood against the wall, reminiscing about The Tree.
Something in Noel’s grin, and the way he spoke those two words, let you know The Tree should always be capitalized.
“This was the place to come and meet girls,” he explained, “and The Tree was this big banyan tree out in back. You’d go out there to kiss.”
They pushed through the side door, stepped out into the library parking lot and pointed.
“That’s it, right there,” Noel Cyr said, and sure enough, straight across the lot, beside Southeast First Avenue, a majestic banyan tree still stands with branches low enough to hide a multitude of teenage temptations.
“There’s probably a couple girls here today that I took out to The Tree,” Noel said.
The library wasn’t here back then, it was dark, and there were other trees around, so The Tree was really several trees.
“If you could get the girl outside, any tree was a good tree,” Duane Cyr said.
But of course the good girls wouldn’t venture back here, surely.
“Well,” he drawled, “they were good girls when they came out here, but they might not have been good girls when they went back.”
The Tree has survived, but youth doesn’t, and the teen dances didn’t, either.
“What killed the teen dances was psychedelic music,” Jim Patterson said. “I tried to keep it going. I bought six black lights, but the kids weren’t dancing to that sort of music.”
By the 1970s, he was patrolling preteen dances instead.
“We played bubble-gum music, but we didn’t have a band,” he said. “It was just records.”
And then came Jazzercise classes.

GONNA MISS THIS PLACE 197????
Monica Roundtree Cleckley, 44, a Boynton native, led her daughters, Maliha, 9, and Kirinyaga, 15, around the hall while she made a smartphone video.
“I went to dances here, and I brought my daughters for ballet and tap classes. It was a hub for things to do on a low-key street. Everybody in the community coming together.”
On Aug. 13-26, the Civic Center will be reopened to accommodate early primary voting, but this last dance would be the last real event.
Teenagers become Medicare recipients, band members move away, memories fade, time flies and walls fall.
The teen dances of the 1960s could draw 400 on a good night, but the Last Dance at the Civic Center never saw more than 60 or 70 that Saturday afternoon.
By 5:55 p.m. when the real last dance came due, there weren’t more than 25 or 30 old-timers lingering. The others had already left, for that early bird at LongHorn, perhaps, or a nap.
In the end, a young group called Bright Colors played a song called Good Times, recorded in 1979 by the rhythm and blues band Chic. Dana Carrier sang along, but only a few people danced.

Historic preservationist and longtime resident Susan Oyer writes a goodbye message to the Boynton Beach Civic Center.

GREAT EXAMPLE OF 1960S ARCHITECTURE. WELL LOVED. GOODBYE AND GOD BLESS. SUSAN OYER.
Oyer, whose great-great-grandfather arrived in Southeast Florida in the early 1870s, stepped back to read what she’d written on the wall.
“Jazzercise in here as a kid,” she said. “Beautiful building — sorry to see it go — ‘progress’ I guess.
“How many buildings can you fight for?”

Manalapan leads South County with 10.51% increase

By Mary Hladky

For the seventh year in a row, the taxable value of Palm Beach County properties has surged to a new high.
After making up the losses last year from the Great Recession, countywide taxable property values jumped 6.53 percent to $187.8 billion this year, according to the county Property Appraiser’s Office. That’s well above the pre-recession taxable value record of $169.4 billion set in 2007.
The total market value of countywide properties now is $264.7 billion, up from $251.9 billion last year.
While property values continue their upward march, experts see no sign of a housing bubble. The $263,900 median value of a Palm Beach County home in April was 18.8 percent below the pre-recession peak of $325,100, according to the national real estate website Zillow.
And while values keep rising, the rate of growth has decreased in recent years.
“Continued modest, sustainable growth indicates a healthy and stable real estate market in Palm Beach County,” Property Appraiser Dorothy Jacks said in a video announcing the 2018 valuations.
Speaking to the County Commission on June 19, Jacks said 16 new apartment complexes were added to the tax roll this year, and 20 will be added in 2019, with an average value of $50 million per project.
Those complexes accounted for more than $800 million of the total $2.4 billion in new construction added to the tax roll, she said.
“The biggest trend in Palm Beach County, apartment complexes have become the new condos,” Jacks said in the video.
As it has for the past two years, Delray Beach outpaced other cities in south Palm Beach County with a taxable value increase of 8.62 percent.
“People coming here find it to be a place they want to relocate to,” and the demand for homes pushes prices up, said Delray Beach Mayor Shelly Petrolia. “We have so much going on, an explosion almost, from single-family homes to townhomes to apartments to condos.”
Boca Raton saw a 6.32 percent rise in taxable values, while Boynton Beach was up 7.12 percent.
“Boca Raton’s unmatched quality of life makes us a great place to live and invest,” Mayor Scott Singer said in an email. “The increased valuations reflect how attractive we are.”
The overall growth leader in south Palm Beach County was Manalapan, with values up 10.51 percent to $1.4 billion.
Town Manager Linda Stumpf said the increase was due to the addition of several newly constructed high-end homes to the tax roll and the higher valuations of other homes that sold.
Property values increased 10.26 percent in Briny Breezes, 8.02 percent in Gulf Stream, 3.63 percent in Highland Beach, 7.99 percent in Lantana, 5.95 percent in Ocean Ridge and 5.36 percent in South Palm Beach.
All cities and towns in Palm Beach County saw taxable value gains. Those with the biggest jumps were tiny Cloud Lake with 16.45 percent, followed by Haverhill at 12.61 percent. The smallest increases were Highland Beach’s and 2.67 percent in the Village of Golf.
The drivers of growth, beyond new apartment complexes, are downtown development in Delray Beach, Boca Raton, Boynton Beach and Lake Worth, as well as the construction of new hotels, Jacks told the County Commission.
“Values in the [downtown] cores are rising very quickly,” she said.
Unlike Broward County, which is largely built out, land is available in Palm Beach County and there is a demand for new housing in the western parts of the county, Jacks said.
New apartments set trend
The largest additions to the tax roll in Delray Beach, Boynton Beach and Boca Raton illustrate the trends.
In Delray Beach, the top additions include the $80 million expansion of Delray Medical Center, the 248-apartment Delray Station at 1720 Depot Ave. and the 146-apartment Caspian Delray at 190 SE Fifth Ave. in the downtown, said Dino Maniotis, tax roll coordinator for the Property Appraiser’s Office.
In Boynton Beach, the largest additions included the 80-apartment Quantum Lake Villas at 2700 Quantum Lakes Drive, the 350-apartment Cortina at the intersection of Congress Avenue and Old Boynton Road, and the 93-room Holiday Inn Express at 2001 W. Ocean Drive.
In Boca Raton, the top four are the 378-apartment Palmetto Promenade at 333 E. Palmetto Park Road in the downtown, the 370-apartment Residences at Broken Sound at 5500 Broken Sound Blvd., and the 282-apartment Allure Boca Raton and 400-apartment Altis Boca Raton, both in the former Arvida Park of Commerce, now called The Park at Broken Sound.
Local governments use the tax roll numbers to begin calculating how much property tax money they can expect in the coming year, so they can set their annual budgets and 2018-2019 tax rates.
That process will end in mid- to late September, before the Oct. 1 start of the new fiscal year.
An increase in taxable value means the county, cities and towns will collect more money from property owners in 2018-2019 even if they keep their tax rates the same as in 2017-2018.
Elected officials can increase the tax rates even though property values have risen, but they typically don’t want to anger taxpayers by doing that. They often opt to decrease rates a small amount so they can say they have lowered taxes even though their tax revenues will rise.
Officials contacted by The Coastal Star in June either did not comment or would not say whether they are considering keeping tax rates the same or lowering them because they had not finalized budgets for the new fiscal year.
Petrolia said decision-making this year is complicated by a state constitutional amendment on the November ballot that would create another $25,000 homestead exemption, which is expected to pass and would cut city and county property tax revenues.
“I will probably be more conservative this year,” Petrolia said.

Mounds of sargassum, in places more than 30 feet wide and more than a foot deep, pile up on the beach in Ocean Ridge in mid-June. Since then some of the seaweed decomposed but then more arrived on the tide. Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star

Sargassum species perplexes but doesn’t worry

experts, who see no threat to nesting turtles

By Cheryl Blackerby

Sargassum, the brown seaweed that is tossed onto South Florida’s beaches by Atlantic waves, has always been a mixed blessing: Environmentalists love it, beachgoers loathe it.
But this year, the piles of seaweed also have presented a mystery that has scientists baffled. It’s a new species of sargassum with larger leaves and heavier tangled mats than in years past. Where did this new sargassum come from and how did it get here? Scientists believe it didn’t take the usual path on the Gulf Stream.
It doesn’t seem to be carrying as many tiny shrimp and crabs that made the old seaweed species sources of food for seabirds.
And, most perplexing, this year there have been far fewer man-of-war that usually accompany sargassum. Could the new seaweed be keeping them away?
Sargassum started showing up on beaches in May, when it usually does. Beachgoers have to stake their umbrellas away from the mounds, which many consider ugly and smelly blights. Hotels worry about tourists’ reactions. Visitors from other parts of the country don’t know that seaweed is a beneficial part of Florida’s natural landscape.
Marine conservationists see its many virtues: It protects expensive replacement sand on the beaches, it bolsters sand dunes that help keep hurricane surges away from houses and roads, and it gives nourishment to beach vegetation.
Offshore, it provides crucial sanctuaries and nutrients to turtle hatchlings for the first years of their lives and offers safe havens for fish nurseries and protection for dolphins.
The sargassum of past years moved on currents around the Caribbean, through the Florida Straits to the Gulf Stream, and onward to the Sargasso Sea in the North Atlantic Ocean.
The new sargassum is thought to be from Brazil and did not come by currents. It most probably was blown here.
“More recently, I’ve heard a lot of it appears to possibly be a new species or a species that’s not found around here and they think it’s coming up from Brazil, which is very bizarre. I’m not sure what path it’s taken or even if it really is from Brazil,” says Dr. Kirt Rusenko, marine conservationist at Gumbo Limbo Nature Center in Boca Raton.
“If the currents are doing what they normally would do, it would be almost impossible for a floating plant to come here (from Brazil). So I would imagine it would have to be the winds. Possibly the mats are so thick that they would rise out of the water so they would be more affected by the wind.”
The lack of man-of-war normally associated with sargassum is a welcome surprise, but puzzling.
“We have no theories at all,” says Rusenko. “I don’t know if the sargassum is not allowing them to feed or it may be just too thick. I haven’t seen a man-of-war this entire summer.”

Not a threat to turtles
Even though the new sargassum has a larger leaf structure and makes bigger masses, Rusenko doesn’t think the seaweed is a threat to turtle nesting, which started in April.
“We scrape it away if it gets on a nest. Fortunately, there have been only a handful of hatchlings so far and the nests we’ve had didn’t have a lot of seaweed around,” he says. “A few days ago, it would have been a problem. There were 10- or 15-foot-wide mats they would have to climb over.”
Turtle monitors have been busy making sure the seaweed is not a problem for nests, which are often roped off.
Cleanup of beaches must follow strict rules spelled out in permits issued by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and the Department of Environmental Protection. Regulations call for mechanized equipment to stay in the high-tide water line and to give turtle nests and beach vegetation a wide berth.
Clayton Peart, president of Universal Beach Services Corp., says he has seen a lot of sargassum this year. “It’s almost floating in on islands. It’s worrisome,” he says. He and his family have been doing beach cleanup since 1973 from Palm Beach to south Boca Raton.
Peart buries the sargassum in the waterline following the rules of his permits. “We level escarpments when requested, put seaweed in spots where there’s erosion when it’s not turtle season, and pick up trash. ... We’ve picked up everything from cigarette butts to boats, and a 9,000-pound net.”
Dave Rowland, owner of Beach Keeper, has been maintaining beaches for municipalities, including the beach behind the Eau Palm Beach Resort and Spa, for 21 years. He, too, has seen an upswing in seaweed.
“Three weeks of winds from the east brought in a lot of seaweed. This year has been in the top two years for seaweed. A couple of years ago,” he said, “seaweed was a foot thick from the beach to the end of the Lake Worth Pier.”
Joan Lorne of Delray Beach does turtle patrol with the nonprofit Sea Turtle Adventures on a 3-mile stretch of beach in Gulf Stream, Briny Breezes and Ocean Ridge with her daughter, Jacquelyn Kingston. Kingston has been monitoring sea turtles for 18 years, and her master’s degree research has been incorporated into the FWC’s Marine Turtle Conservation Handbook. 
“I don’t have a concern about the sargassum. It’s beginning to dissipate,” says Kingston. “We usually see this. It’s nothing that’s alarming to me. The hatchlings can crawl over it. It’s part of our environment and plays an important role in our ecosystems.”
Betty Bingham has been watching sea turtles and sargassum in Ocean Ridge since her family bought a beach house here in 1959. Bingham, a former town commissioner, moved permanently to the house in 1985.
“In the old days, we would take the sargassum to the dunes to make it harder for the sand to wash out and to give nutrition to the dune plants. Sargassum is enormously nutritious,” she says.
Many towns are beginning to bury the sargassum on the beaches for the same reason — to stabilize replacement sand.
For people who don’t like the seaweed piled on the beaches, she tells them to tear off a piece and shake it into a snorkel mask, then look at the tiny shrimp and crabs that fall out. The seaweed feeds seabirds and is a nursery for sea creatures.
And to those who complain about it, she says: “Tough.”
The sargassum is dissipating, but as Rusenko says, “Who knows, it may come back.”
Michael Stahl, deputy director of Environmental Resources Management for Palm Beach County, says the seaweed “ebbs and flows, although it’s an upward trend. We’re seeing more. It depends on the shore winds and currents and it tends to get concentrated on some beaches.”
There is a lot of speculation on the causes of the larger amounts of seaweed.
“Warmer water would increase the growth rate,” says Rusenko. “We’re definitely concerned. Agricultural runoff, and pesticide and fertilizer pollution coming through the inlets are not helpful.”
As for the turtles, county officials are pleased with nest numbers, although they “won’t break any records,” says Stahl.
“The green turtles are definitely taking this year off. We’ve got five nests in Boca,” Rusenko says. “We haven’t been that low for at least 25 years, and it’s going to be statewide. For some reason, the turtles decided to nest every other year, which doesn’t mean they’re in trouble. This is just an off year. Leatherbacks had 18 nests, loggerheads 396. That’s better than it was 10 years ago. It’s a respectable number.”

Marty Pawlicki of Briny Breezes has tubes running into both arms while he makes the final donation of platelets on his way to the 100-gallon milestone. To the right is Benita Teschendorf, his fiancee, whom he met while donating his 70th gallon. Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star

By Rich Pollack

Talk to Marty Pawlicki and it soon becomes apparent that he is a health and fitness fan, who rides his bike 20 to 25 miles a day and who is a regular on the tennis courts.
Pawlicki is also a numbers guy; he taught math as well as public health at Palm Beach State College before fully retiring a few years ago.
So it comes as no surprise that one of Pawlicki’s most ambitious goals combined the two.
Just a few weeks ago, Pawlicki reached a major milestone when he donated a pint of blood that put him over the 100-gallon mark.
It is an achievement that has been more than 20 years in the making and one that few others reach.
“Giving blood is the easiest way to do something good,” says Pawlicki, 70, a Briny Breezes resident. “It’s easier to replace blood than to replace money.”
Pawlicki, from Michigan, has been giving blood for decades, but he says his quest to reach the 100-gallon mark began almost two decades ago after he attended a celebration honoring blood donors.
He read a booklet there that listed those who gave in order of how much they donated. At the time, Pawlicki was fairly far down the chart, but he was ambitious.
“I wanted to get on the first page of the booklet,” he said.
Once Pawlicki reached 46 gallons, he did a few calculations and set an even more ambitious goal. “I thought I could get to 100 gallons,” he said.
There was a bit of a hitch, however. Blood banks generally limit whole blood donations to six times a year. At that rate, Pawlicki calculated, it would take far too long to reach his goal, and he probably would never make it.
Pawlicki, who has A-positive blood, went a different route, becoming a plateletpheresis donor, who can donate up to 24 times a year, making his goal more realistic.
With pheresis, blood is withdrawn from the body and platelets, the cells responsible for clotting, are removed. The donor’s blood is then put back in the body to house remaining and newly produced platelets.
A familiar face at the OneBlood blood bank in Delray Beach, Pawlicki is there on a regular schedule for about 90 minutes every other week.
“I like doing it,” he said. “You can lie there and watch a movie.”
Through his donations, Pawlicki has gotten to know the staff at the center as well as some of the other regular donors, including someone with whom he plays tennis.
For Pawlicki, his regular trips to the blood center also helped him discover he had high-blood pressure, which is now being treated.
Trained as a nurse, Pawlicki spent much of his career in Michigan as a public health educator teaching all aspects of health, including fitness, nutrition and stress management.
“Health is really synonymous with happiness,” he said, adding that having your health makes it possible to achieve your goals.
It was a few years after his son Michael was born that Pawlicki and his wife (now ex-wife), also a nurse, began giving blood.
“We would go to the blood center as part of a family outing,” he said, explaining that the couple would bring their son, who would play at the blood center while they gave blood. “We all did it together. It might have had something to do with learning to insert an IV.”
Pawlicki believes that the future of blood donations belongs to younger people who he hopes will become donors.
“The only way a high school student should think about losing blood is by donating,” he said.
As for Pawlicki, he now has a new goal — to reach 1,000 donations.
“That’s 25 more gallons,” the former math professor said without skipping a beat.

We lock our doors when there’s only one person in the office. We lock them when we’re working at night.
There’ve been times when we’ve asked local law enforcement to keep an eye on our office and our employees. We’ve been screamed at on the telephone and had hateful postings on the online and social media versions of our stories. And, of course, we’ve been threatened with lawsuits and sued over our reporting.
Let that all sink in.
We’re a 17,000-circulation, monthly newspaper. We dedicate as much newsprint to features and photos as we do to news reporting. We write obituaries and give a lot of space to monthly calendar listings. We seldom cover crime or courts.
So, as reports from the murderous attack at the Capital Gazette in Maryland unfolded, we were sickened but not completely surprised. There are a lot of angry people out there — even in a community as beautiful and privileged as ours. Even in a city as lovely as Annapolis.
One of the five newspaper employees killed in the attack was a former co-worker of mine. A beautiful and thoughtful writer. A man who loved his family and his profession. A good man.
The last I spoke with Rob Hiaasen was a few years ago. He was curious about the origins and success of our little paper. We talked about community journalism and why it’s become increasingly important in an America where a journalist’s value is often measured in retweets and celebrity. We agreed that every community, no matter its size, is filled with interesting stories that should be told.
If Americans learn anything from the senseless slaughter of professionals just doing their jobs, maybe it will be about the dedication under-paid and over-worked newspaper people feel toward the communities they live and work in. And maybe this will shine a light on our need as a society to move past divisive hyperbole and get a grip on our anger.
I’m not naive enough to believe we’ll ever leave our doors unlocked at night, but we’ll still be here covering the news of our community. Now more than ever.
— Mary Kate Leming, Editor

This congregation was devastated to learn of the shooting in Annapolis June 28 and we are praying for the victims and their families.
While our heart is with the Capital Gazette we can’t imagine what each of you may be experiencing with your colleagues’ suffering. The work each of you produces shines light on the communities where we live and work and provides greater clarity and understanding of those forces that impact our daily lives.
Journalists shouldn’t have to fear attacks, both verbal and physical, while completing their work with integrity.
Threats to journalists are real and this certainty may bring weariness and exhaustion, disrupting your good work from time to time. Our hope is that you will hear from those you serve that your work is important, it is noble, and is our best defense of the liberties we cherish.
That is our intention with this letter. Perhaps these thoughts will be an encouragement to you and fuel determination to face this dangerous climate with rigor and courage.
Lives are enriched and communities are made stronger by what you do. Of this, we are certain.

Dr. W. Douglas Hood Jr.
Senior Pastor
First Presbyterian Church of Delray Beach

By Jane Smith

Unfair. Disrespectful. Insulting. Deceptive. Racial undertones.
Several black community members have spoken those words at Delray Beach City Commission meetings since the beginning of April when commissioners voted to take over the city’s redevelopment board.
A few hours before the June 5 meeting, where Community Redevelopment Agency board expansion was on the commission agenda, the politics ramped up a notch.
Reggie Cox, a former agency board member, called Mayor Shelly Petrolia “the most divisive mayor in the last 30 years” on his Facebook page. He also shared his post to the Concerned Delray Citizens group page on Facebook, a social media platform.
In addition, he wrote, “The Mayor destroyed a black board.” The old CRA board had four black and three white members.
But it was Deputy Vice Mayor Shirley Johnson, the commission’s only black member, who called for the takeover. The four other commission members are white.
The City Commission approved expanding the agency board by a 3-2 vote on June 5. It then voted to add former Commissioner Angie Gray and Pamela Brinson, both black women, giving the CRA board three black members and four white.
Bill Bathurst and Ryan Boylston, both elected to the commission in March, voted against the expansion because they wanted to discuss what their roles would be on the agency board. “We are just getting our feet wet,” Bathurst said.
Boylston agreed and said he wanted to have a workshop first to discuss the commission’s vision for the agency. He also wanted to have a few more agency meetings before deciding whether to expand the board.
“We haven’t put it out to the public,” Boylston said. He wanted to wait a week to give the public an opportunity to apply to be board members.
But the city clerk has been taking applications since late March, a few weeks after Johnson had said she was interested in a takeover vote. The commission voted to take over the CRA board on April 3, the first commission meeting since the election, but left open the possibility of adding members of the public.
By June 5, 30 people had applied to become board members. Nineteen either live in the agency district or have businesses there.
The pool of applicants from the Northwest/Southwest neighborhood, where the commission wants to focus redevelopment, was smaller.
Boylston nominated Connor Lynch, whose dad was mayor. The son has an insurance company on North Federal Highway, which is in the district. Only Bathurst supported the appointment, so it failed.
Johnson then nominated Gray, her campaign consultant, for a four-year term on the board. Gray also had served on the CRA board before her election as a city commissioner. Boylston was the lone no vote.
Vice Mayor Adam Frankel then offered Brinson to serve a two-year term. Brinson had run against Gray in 2014 when Gray lost her re-election bid to Jordana Jarjura.
Brinson was appointed by a 3-2 vote with Bathurst and Boylston voting no.
“It sounds like this discussion has already been had,” Boylston said.
The mayor said, “No, sir. There has been no discussion.”
Boylston then said, “I just hope Delray Beach is paying attention.”

By Jane Smith

Delray Beach city commissioners approved changes to the city’s eight lifeguard towers that will add more than $21,000 to what some have called “mini condos” that now sit on the beach.
One change order on June 19 included seven items: extra 30 days to pressure-treat the lumber in a more environmentally friendly manner; extra seven days to pick the correct color schemes; extra 14 days to comply with state regulations to protect nesting sea turtles; $9,600 for roof material change from cedar shakes to metal; $8,700 for roof color change so that the lifeguard towers now match the roofs on the pavilion and gazebos; $2,906.86 for stainless steel testing of bolts; and extra 30 days starting Nov. 1 to demolish the existing towers. The state won’t allow demolitions on the beach during turtle-nesting season.
Bolt testing cost by an independent laboratory, Applied Technical Services, was not included. That cost was said to be $1,245.
The stainless steel tests were done after rust was found on the bolts just weeks after the lifeguard towers were placed on the beach..
“We were told the stainless steel bolts would not rust,” Mayor Shelly Petrolia said June 19. City Attorney Max Lohman, whose undergraduate degree was in oceanography, said the surface rust on the bolts was likely from a reaction with sulfur in the air. He also explained that stainless steel is not rustproof, but rust resistant.
The commission voted 4-1 to approve the change order to the lifeguard tower contract, with the mayor dissenting.
Petrolia supported replacing the old lifeguard towers, which were no longer usable, but she didn’t want to spend so much of taxpayer dollars on the new ones.
The new lifeguard towers will each have a metal roof, a solar panel to power public safety radios and a fan inside, impact windows, louvered shutters and skids so that they can move easily along the beach.
The $21,000 will come from the 5.2 percent contingency fund in the contract, said Susan Goebel-Canning, new public works director.
The towers now cost $128,951 each. When such soft costs as moving the towers are included, the individual price for a lifeguard tower tops $142,000.
Goebel-Canning assured the commission that the lifeguard towers would last 20 years and the hardware would not have to be replaced.

By Jane Smith

The new Boynton Beach police chief, Michael G. Gregory, will start July 9.
Gregory, assistant police chief in Fort Lauderdale, was selected by the Boynton Beach city manager in mid-June from 83 applicants.
He is negotiating the contract details with the city.
The police chief salary ranges between $99,962 and $149,494, according to the job listing.
“Mr. Gregory’s employment record in Fort Lauderdale is impeccable,” said Lori LaVerriere, Boynton Beach city manager. “I spoke with the city manager and police chief and they both had nothing but praise for him. He will fit our team beautifully.”
Boynton Beach also provides police services to Briny Breezes and its nearly 600 residents.
A Fort Lauderdale native, Gregory, 51, started with its Police Department in 1987 as a detective. Over the years, he moved through its ranks. He most recently led the Support Services Bureau.
Gregory had entered Fort Lauderdale’s Deferred Retirement Option Plan, forcing him to retire in 2019.
He has a master’s degree in public administration from Florida International University, a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from Florida Atlantic University and an associate degree in criminal justice from Broward College.
Gregory is a member of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, Police Executive Research Forum, National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, Florida Police Chiefs Association, American Society of Public Administrators and the National Forum of Black Public Administrators.
The Boynton Beach Police Department has about 155 officers and 53 nonsworn employees. Its budget is approximately $30.4 million, and it protects about 73,000 residents.