Related: Six seeking two commission seats - Seat 1

Six seeking two commission seats - Seat 3

Three candidates for mayor (Seat 5)

The March ballot has this charter amendment proposal: “The City Charter requires a board of adjustment to consider and decide appeals and variances to the land development regulations. Other city boards can perform these duties. This charter amendment would eliminate the Board of Adjustment. Shall the charter amendment be adopted?

Choices to succeed term-limited Mayor Shelly Petrolia all have sat on City Commission.

Related: Six seeking two commission seats - Seat 1

Six seeking two commission seats - Seat 3;

Charter amendment on the ballot

Delray Beach voters have plenty of choices in the March 19 city election, with three candidates each in the race for mayor and for two open City Commission seats. All posts are for three-year terms and all seats are elected by voters citywide.

Related: Six seeking two commission seats - Seat 1

Three candidates for mayor (Seat 5)

Charter amendment on the ballot

Delray Beach voters have plenty of choices in the March 19 city election, with three candidates each in the race for mayor and for two open City Commission seats. All posts are for three-year terms and all seats are elected by voters citywide.

Related: Six seeking two commission seats - Seat 3

Three candidates for mayor (Seat 5)

Charter amendment on the ballot

By Anne Geggis

A special magistrate is expected to rule Feb. 20 on whether Ocean Ridge’s new beach sign ordinance is too vague for enforcement due to the beach’s shifting sands.

Also at issue: Does a sign printed on both sides amount to two signs or just one?

Public anger over “No Trespassing” signs erected on the beach by the Turtle Beach of Ocean Ridge Condominium Association led town commissioners in September to adopt regulations limiting beach signage. The new ordinance specifies how large the signs can be (they can’t exceed 18 inches by 18 inches), how they can be placed, and that they face “either to the east or to the west.”

Even with that specificity, Turtle Beach and the town still aren’t seeing eye to eye, with the town saying the association’s new signs are not in compliance.

A 90-minute hearing on the case Jan. 9 in front of a special magistrate did not produce an outcome. Special Magistrate Amity Barnard asked both the town attorney and the Turtle Beach representative to draft memos of no more than three pages to make their arguments on the state of Turtle Beach’s compliance with the ordinance.

The town says that two-sided signs, like the two now in place at Turtle Beach, amount to four signs, violating the two-sign limit. The association disagrees. And, the town says, the placement was not as described in the ordinance approved in September.

The ordinance says that signs are not allowed to be placed on the beach seaward of the toe of the frontal dune, which is the first natural or manmade mound or bluff of sand located “landward of the beach” that has significant vegetation, height, continuity or configuration that offers protective value.

“The signs as of today are still double-sided and they still are at an approximate amount of feet from the frontal toe,” said Officer Aaron Choban of the Ocean Ridge police.

But the association says that there’s no telling exactly where seaward of the front toe is from day to day.

Turtle Beach association President Mark Feinstein said he had numerous “pleasant” conversations with town officials and thought an agreement had been reached. The dune goes in and out — it’s not linear, he said.

“After I got the notice of violation, I was actually shocked and surprised,” said Feinstein, who is a lawyer and also had one representing him at the hearing. “… I certainly think that the ordinance is, at best, vague.”

The special magistrate could levy a fine up to $250 a day after a finding if the property is not brought into compliance. If the violation is found to be irreparable or irreversible, the special magistrate could impose a fine up to $5,000.

A construction trailer and portable toilet are still visible at the site on Jan. 28. Staff photo

By Anne Geggis

When 2024 dawned and an Ocean Ridge home under construction for the past eight years still wasn’t finished, its owners were on the hook to pay the town $50,000 in addition to the taxes owed on the land.

Failing to meet a Dec. 31 deadline to wrap up the planned construction, Oceandell Holdings LLC, which owns the oceanfront property at 6273 N. Ocean Blvd., was required to make a payment in lieu of taxes by the end of January, according to an amendment to the construction extension agreement dated Jan. 10.

Revised plans submitted to the town in June called for the property owners to apply and obtain a temporary certificate of occupancy by Dec. 31. Failing that, the town was owed $50,000 to help make up for the taxes it would have collected if the project had been completed in 2023, the agreement says.

Town Commissioner Carolyn Cassidy estimates the protracted construction timeline — which has kept the building off the tax rolls — has meant the town has collected one-fourth of the taxes it should have since 2017, considering the difference between taxing vacant land and taxing the same land with a house on it year after year. 

Cassidy is also one of the neighbors to the project.

“We’re all just tired of the construction — lots of trucks parked illegally — and it appeared to be abandoned for a while,” she said.

The latest construction manager seems to have improved things for now, though, she added.

The principal listed as a contact for Oceandell through the state Division of Corporations could not be reached for comment; nor could Andrew Rivkin — who representatives have identified as the owner of the property and who was the Oceandell signatory on the agreement with the town.

Town Clerk Kelly Avery said as of Jan. 29, the payment had not been made.

If the construction drags on past March 15, the owner shall pay the town $5,000 a day for each day that construction continues for “liquidated damages,” according to the agreement signed by the town attorney, clerk and manager. The daily damage assessment would accrue until May 1, potentially a maximum of $235,000 in fines.

That’s a one-month extension from the deadline commissioners approved in September. They had called for the $5,000-a-day penalty to start if construction was not completed by Feb. 15, and capped those fines at $150,000.

The owner recognizes the work “has continued for an extensive period of time and has negatively impacted the neighbors and the town,” the agreement says. “The owner further recognizes that time is of the essence under this agreement and if the March 15 construction deadline … is not satisfied by the owner, the neighbors and the town will continue to be negatively impacted and suffer financial loss.”

When asked, Town Attorney Christy Goddeau did not offer an explanation for the one-month extension, but said that the commission would be updated on the property at February’s meeting.

The project has become known as “the parking garage house” because its front was, at first, allowed to be built without windows. The Palm Beach County Property Appraiser’s website shows that the 1.13-acre property has been taxed solely for the land value starting in 2017, with the total market value of the land at $9.2 million.

The first building permit for the site was issued in May 2015.

“We’re just trying to do our best to expedite completion … have it be a completed home instead of a construction site,” Cassidy said.

By Anne Geggis

The Ocean Ridge Town Commission has five seats, but January’s meeting brought to 10 the number of commissioners who have sat on the dais in the past year.

Ainar Aijala Jr. and David Hutchins were sworn into office to replace Commissioners Philip Besler and Ken Kaleel, who turned in their resignations effective Dec. 30.

Kaleel said he was resigning rather than comply with a new state law that requires those serving on local elected commissions and councils to file a detailed disclosure of personal assets, effective Jan. 1. Besler was hanging it up for personal reasons, he said.

Aijala and Hutchins swore to faithfully execute all the duties of town commissioner to applause from the crowd at the Jan. 8 meeting. Their appointments are good only until the March 19 election, when voters will decide who fills three commission openings — including their seats — that are on the ballot. Both Aijala and Hutchins have qualified to run in that election.

Hutchins, a town resident since 1990, said he hopes to put his eight years of experience serving on the Planning and Zoning Commission to work in this new role. He is optimistic about the town’s direction but sees some areas that could use improvement.

“Repairing and replacing existing, worn infrastructure is a priority always, but living within our means has to be part of the equation,” he texted about why he stepped forward to serve.

Aijala, who hails from Michigan, said serving on an elected board fulfills a longtime interest in public service that he couldn’t pursue beyond nonprofit roles because of his position at Deloitte, the largest professional services firm in the world. There, he was CEO of its global consulting practice.

The town is on the right track, and he intends to use his professional experience in strategic planning to help it operate even more efficiently, he said after he was sworn in.

“Ocean Ridge is a very special place,” he said.

The past year has been rife with the town’s leaders coming and going, however.

The two exiting commissioners, Besler and Kaleel, were appointed to replace two other commissioners who resigned in 2023, Martin Wiescholek and Kristine de Haseth. In addition to that, Commissioner Carolyn Cassidy became a new face on the dais last April, after finishing ahead of then-Mayor Susan Hurlburt, who came in last in a three-way race for two commission seats.

Wiescholek, the other winner in the March 2023 election, resigned at the same April meeting at which he was sworn in for a second, three-year term. His resignation came minutes after the commissioners agreed in a split vote to hire Town Manager Lynne Ladner on a full-time basis. Two hours later, at the same meeting, de Haseth resigned, saying she wanted to spend more time with her family.

So, Mayor Geoff Pugh and Vice Mayor Steve Coz are the only holdovers from before the last election.

Aijala and Hutchins were selected for commission appointments out of eight applicants.

The town’s charter calls for vacancies to be filled at the next election instead of having an appointee fill out the remainder of an unexpired term — something that’s done in other communities such as Manalapan and Gulf Stream. The seat originally held by de Haseth was up for election this year anyway, but the seat once held by Wiescholek wasn’t supposed to be up for election for another two years.

Aijala, Hutchins, Pugh and political newcomer Nick Arsali will compete for a pair of three-year terms on the commission and another two-year term.

Pugh acknowledged at the Jan. 8 meeting that he might lose as the commission agreed on a workshop date for training on the new system for town business on April 8 — after the next election.

Minimum flood elevations likely to be repealed — Preliminary FEMA maps adopted in 2019 are likely to be stricken from the town’s ordinances so the rules revert to the 2017 FEMA maps.

The state preempted local governments from using preliminary FEMA maps for any rules for permitting, so the 2019 maps have been left on the town’s books, with no enforcement, while final approval of the 2019 maps remains in limbo.

Town attorney Christy Goddeau said repealing the minimum elevation ordinance for the high-risk zone would be the clearest course for keeping the town out of litigation.

“So that there’s never any argument that we could enforce it,” she said, before the commission agreed to proceed with repealing the ordinance regarding minimum elevations in certain parts of town.

Town history gets fifth printing — Details on the origins of Ocean Ridge shall not be lost to time — Commissioner Carolyn Cassidy funded a fifth printing of the late Commissioner Gail Adams Aaskov’s telling of it. And now the 80-page booklet, “The History of Ocean Ridge,” is available for $1 at Town Hall.

Ocean Ridge, we learn, got its start as Boynton Beach, carved out of Boynton, by a special act of the Legislature in 1931 after a dispute over beach properties.

Problem was, the name was often confused with “Daytona Beach” — to the point mail intended for Daytona came south. So, six years after the town’s founding, an emergency meeting was called to consider a new name. Marion White Bird suggested “Ocean Ridge” and won a $100 prize, “a sizable amount of money at that time,” Aaskov writes. 

— Anne Geggis

Related: Deadly disease taking a bite out of St. Augustine lawns

By Steve Plunkett

Town Hall’s lawn is dying, a victim of the sugarcane mosaic virus, which can be transferred from one lot to another on the wheels of a landscaper’s mower.

“It’s a menace,” said Anthony Beltran, Gulf Stream’s public works director. “If your grass is moist when they cut the grass, it sticks to that mower. And if they don’t blow it off really well and then treat the mower with some sort of a water-alcohol solution and let it dry, it’ll transfer from that yard to the next yard.”

The disease can also be spread from shoes that have walked on infected lawns.

Town staff contacted some lawn management companies to get informal bids for fixing Town Hall’s grass, only to find that it would cost $5,000 to $10,000 more than the $15,000 threshold that calls for Town Commission approval.

Almost 13,000 square feet of sod needs to be replaced, Town Manager Greg Dunham told commissioners at their Jan. 12 meeting.

The virus, which is spread by aphids and is also known as lethal viral necrosis, kills only the popular Floratam variety of St. Augustine grass. Two other varieties, Palmetto and CitraBlue, can harbor the virus but are not killed by it and are used as replacements, Beltran said.

The treatment, he said, “is to remove all the Floratam that’s been infected, treat the ground, which they saturate, wait a couple of days then lay the sod, and then treat it with a herbicide.”

“You can’t kill it,” Beltran said. “There’s nothing that’s going to kill it, nothing. There’s no type of pesticide, herbicide, anything that’s going to kill the virus. It’s a virus. ... And the only way of eliminating it is by removing what they’re used to growing in and expanding in, which is Floratam grass.”

Mayor Scott Morgan worried that the virus might be transmitted to The Little Club next door, but Beltran said the golf course has Zoysia grass, which is immune to the disease.

Commissioner Joan Orthwein was also concerned.

“Is this something that the residents should know about? Because who cuts this grass cuts a lot of people in town,” she said.

“Every time I’ve seen them cut here, they do blow off their equipment,” said Beltran. “Question is, do they do it everywhere else they go? I don’t know. I’m not with them.”

Commissioners voted to let Dunham spend up to $25,000 to replace Town Hall’s affected sod and decided Morgan should include a warning in his annual mayor’s letter to residents.

Commissioners also approved on second reading an ordinance adding further protections to the town’s beloved Australian pines.

“This is in response to some work on A1A that damaged the root structure of a number of Australian pines,” Assistant Town Attorney Trey Nazzaro said, speaking of a construction project.

Anyone doing work within 25 feet of the trees will have to follow industry standards provided by the town’s arborist to get a building permit.

“We have to protect the Australian pines. They’re historic, we preserve them and we have to have something in place to assist the town as it enforces renovations done near the Australian pines to protect their health,” Morgan said.

A lawn with St. Augustine grass shows brown patches that have succumbed to lethal viral necrosis. The grass can be distinguished by its wide, boat-shaped leaves. Photo provided

By John Hughes

If you are among the many coastal residents whose lawns sprout St. Augustine grass, you might have painfully learned that it’s not easy being green in Palm Beach County.

Lethal viral necrosis, a disease first found here about a decade ago, has earned its ugly name, turning verdant lawns dingy, then dead.

Horticulture experts who are on the hunt for a remedy say that any lawn where St. Augustine grass has rooted is vulnerable to LVN.

“Parts of southern Palm Beach County are heavily impacted,” says John Roberts, Palm Beach County Cooperative Extension agent. He says the county is “ground zero” because here is where the disease first appeared, although it has recently been found in other counties.

Roberts was one of the speakers appearing in a Miami-Dade and Palm Beach County extension webinar in December that devoted two full hours to concerns about LVN.

St. Augustine grass was the most common grazing fodder when Palm Beach County was home to large cattle pastures, which are mostly gone now. LVN is a legacy of that era.

Is your lawn St. Augustine grass? One way to find out is to examine the leaf blades. St. Augustine is distinguished by broader leaves up to ¾ inch wide and forming what has been called a boat shape.

There are several varieties of St. Augustine grass. At least two — Palmetto and CitraBlue — have shown resistance to LVN. But Floratam, to which LVN is fatal, is the most prevalent of the cultivars in Palm Beach County.

How do you stop LVN? You don’t. LVN is spread through contact when infected sap gets spread — from mower blades, from soles of shoes. … Essentially, any object or particle that can carry an LVN germ is your lawn’s enemy. Sort of the horticultural world’s COVID-19, minus the social distancing.

The prognosis for LVN is as bleak as its name. An infected lawn will be dead in about three to five years, Roberts says.

Has LVN infected your lawn? If there’s a discolored spot in the lawn, take a worm’s eye view and look for any anomalous yellowing in the leaf grains. In particular, Roberts says to look for a “mosaic-type” pattern of broken yellow lines.

If you don’t trust your eyes, see the report at the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, available here: www.edis.ifas.ufl.edu/publication/PP313.

Concerned lawn owners might also send grass samples to the Rapid Turf Diagnostic Service at the University of Florida ($75 per sample).

“A lot of people get emotionally tied up to their lawns,” Roberts says. “They like coming here, oftentimes from other parts of the country, and having a nice green lawn all throughout the year. It’s very distressing to come in and see that it’s brown and only going to get increasingly brown. …”

Sometimes landscapers are scapegoats for that distress — caught between LVN and clients who simply want the grass to be greener on their side.

“We’re caught in the middle a lot of the time,” says Tyler Reiter, director of Florida Image Landscaping, who is believed to be the first to identify LVN in Palm Beach County. “Often, it’s unfair. People point fingers. They think landscapers transfer it. Well, landscapers might transfer it, but they don’t mean to. It’s like COVID. Nobody’s trying to transmit COVID. …”

Reiter says roughly 30% of his clients are coastal, from Hypoluxo Island to Gulf Stream and Highland Beach.

“I do see a lot of LVN throughout Delray and Boca — however, none that are my customers,” he says.

A couple of years ago Reiter moved into the West Lake community — designed to have about 4,500 homes. He found LVN in his neighborhood and thinks that eventually every lawn will need to be resodded with an LVN-resistant species. Currently, lawn owners could expect to pay about $2 per square foot.

“Homeowners associations are superspreaders,” Reiter says.

He is often called in as a consultant when the grass starts to fade.

“I talk about LVN every week,” Reiter says. “I empathize with people.”

The mayor is head of the Town Council, which has five members who serve staggered three-year terms.

By Anne Geggis

A technical glitch that set off sticker shock for hundreds of Delray Beach water customers prompted the City Commission to move to forgive bills out of whack with those customers’ average water usage.

City staff said the glitch — some resulting in bills thousands of dollars more than water customers’ normal bills — was due to a technical problem on a vendor’s part that will take three months to fully repair.

About 2% of the city’s 20,000 water customers — 488 accounts — received erroneous bills in November and December, according to city staff. It’s because the city’s automatic meter reader has stopped working on about 30% of the water accounts throughout the city, staff explained.

“It’s been recently determined that a number of the encoders had actually malfunctioned,” City Manager Terrence Moore said at the Jan. 4 commission meeting.

If the meter couldn’t be manually read, the glitch prompted estimates for some water customers’ water usage, he explained.

“That’s resulted in some customers, not the majority, but some customers having to experience higher-than-expected bills,” Moore said.

Mayor Shelly Petrolia said she’s gotten an earful from city residents, including one who received a $5,700 water bill.

“I’m a little upset because I’m the one who gets blamed for this and I have absolutely no knowledge of it,” Petrolia said, noting that water billing problems have occurred in the past.

Staff is available to talk to any customers who have concerns that they were overbilled, Moore said. The City Commission unanimously agreed that affected customers will be billed based on the average usage for the past 12 months.

Resident Evelyn Dobson said that she was one of those people who got a $1,000 water bill, quite a bit more than her usual bill of $100 to $120.

“I was royally upset,” Dobson said, before praising the commission’s decision to average out recent, higher-than-normal bills.

The glitch was because radio devices in each meter that transmit the information from individual meters to the city have increasingly started to fail, city staff said. And, luckily, it happened within the 10-year warranty with the city vendor, Badger Meter. Talks with the Milwaukee company have started. And repairs are in the offing.

“So this was just a fluke on behalf of Badger and there’s nothing we can really do to prevent this sort of thing?” Commissioner Rob Long asked.

Moore responded that the initial focus is to get the repairs squared away.

An answer as to the total amount billed in error was not available from city staff.

But Petrolia said she thinks the problem is more than just a technical glitch — and that more erroneous utility billing would be brought to the city’s attention sooner rather than later.

“There’s no responsibility and no accountability,” she said, recalling that the same problem emerged in 2020, when there were reports of $100,000 water bills.

At the Jan. 16 commission meeting, Petrolia proposed moving the utility billing out of the city Finance Department’s purview and back to the Water Utilities Department, where it was before. But none of her colleagues offered support for the idea.

Bright hues on the way — North Federal Highway is getting more colorful: The first mural to go up along that thoroughfare received approval from the City Commission.

Four sides of the old gas station at 302 NE Sixth Avenue will be enlivened with the Cubist-inspired art of Craig McInnis of West Palm Beach as the station is transformed into the Subculture Coffee shop.

But it didn’t happen before some controversy.

The Downtown Development Authority had nixed the design, while the Public Art Advisory Board had approved it.

Restaurateur Rodney Mayo, who’s opening the coffee shop, said he’s unapologetic about eschewing pineapples and flamingos for this mural.

“I personally hate it when people say they don’t like a piece of art,” Mayo said. “It’s not for you to like — it’s a piece of art.”

Mayor Shelly Petrolia was concerned mainly about how it appeared the painting started before the approvals came in.

The proposal passed 3-2, with Petrolia and Vice Mayor Ryan Boylston voting “no.”

Gauff, city win  — The U.S. Open victory of Delray Beach’s homegrown tennis prodigy Coco Gauff means that the city is scoring a $60,000 refurbishment of the Pompey Park tennis courts.

Gauff, 19, who was born in Atlanta but grew up mainly in Delray Beach, picked the park to benefit from a grant that the U.S. Tennis Association distributes to the winner’s choice.

Pompey Park, 1101 NW Second St., is also where the famed Williams sisters trained.

The grant will pay for court resurfacing, new chain link fencing, new awnings and a general sprucing up.

Planning and Zoning Board chairwoman dies — Julen Blankenship’s service to the city was saluted from the dais at the commission’s Jan. 16 meeting. She had served on the

Planning and Zoning Board for five years and been reappointed in November.

“It’s a tremendous loss to our city and our community,” Commissioner Rob Long said, recalling how she always came “super-prepared.”

Commissioner Adam Frankel said that Blankenship, who was in her 50s, had received a cancer diagnosis in December.

“Delray is definitely a better place because of Julen,” he said.

— Anne Geggis

By Anne Geggis

If Manalapan property owner Billy Joel gifted town commissioners concert tickets — as the piano man did for commissioners years ago — accepting them wouldn’t be a problem, Town Attorney Keith Davis explained to a Town Commission filled with new faces.

But doing it within the dictates of the law is not as simple as saying “thank you,” he added.

That little dose of honesty was one of many for-instances Davis covered during a Jan. 23 workshop on the new life that five commissioners are about to embark on.

One newly minted commissioner, David Knobel, gave Davis high marks for keeping things interesting.

“I was expecting this to be very boring, but he did a great job,” said Knobel, who was sworn in to replace Commissioner Kristin Rosen, representing Point Manalapan, in December.

The commission’s ranks thinned to two sitting members after four commissioners and the mayor opted to resign instead of meeting new state requirements for disclosing personal wealth.

Not all the replacement appointments are official yet.

At January’s workshop, Elliot Bonner was seated, fully sworn in to replace Richard Granara. So was Orla Imbesi, who is filling the seat once occupied by Chauncey Johnstone.

Sometime in the next few months, a vote is expected on Vice Mayor John Deese’s slide into former Mayor Stewart Satter’s chair, as is Cindy McMackin’s appointment to move into Deese’s seat. Dwight Kulwin will be representing the ocean district that Aileen Carlucci once filled and is expected to be sworn in along with McMackin soon.

Got that?

Davis had a lot for the new commissioners — at least four who have never served on an elected board before — to remember as he briefed them for more than an hour. He covered the functions of the town staff, the town charter’s requirements and, perhaps most intricate, the new standards that they must meet when it comes to everyday activities such as sending emails, accepting gifts, chatting with each other and even commenting on social media posts.

Being active on social media is fine, they heard. But it should not be about town business unless certain precautions are taken, Davis said. And posting online when they are making public decisions should not be done without thinking about it, because they might be creating a public record subject to a request, Davis said.

“Social media is really the challenge these days,” Davis said. “There are elected officials who ... want to reach out to their constituents through that.”

Imbesi said she’s not one of those: “I share with my close friends and children, so I can see all my grandkids.”

She would definitely fill out a form in order to legally accept those Joel tickets, too.

“Then, I think he had just moved in and thought it would be a nice thing to do,” Imbesi said.

However, she expects serving will be its own reward.

“I don’t think there’s going to be anybody wanting to gift me for anything,” she said.

After no one filed in November to run for a seat up for election this year on the South Palm Beach Town Council, and still no candidate stepped forward when a special second filing period took place in January, it’s now up to the council to appoint someone to the seat.

The council passed a resolution that it would formally accept applications for the seat vacated by the resignation of Council member Robert Gottlieb until Feb. 12. It plans to interview applicants at its Feb. 13 meeting and expects to appoint the new member the same day.

As of Jan. 24, Town Clerk Yude Davenport reported three residents had applied: Elvadianne Culbertson, who resides in the Southgate building; Dr. Jennifer Lesh, of Palm Beach Villas; and Arnelle Ossendryver, also of Southgate.  

The council appeared set to make the appointment continue through March 2026; no town election will take place March 19 because no one qualified to run for Gottlieb’s seat or to challenge Council member Raymond McMillan, who thus won another term automatically.  

Gottlieb, who had served on the council for 18 years, announced his resignation at the council’s December meeting.

He cited a combination of factors including his health as well as Form 6, which requires elected officials to make a detailed list of their financials, which is then made public.

— Brian Biggane

No word on grant status — While Town Manager Bill Thrasher made no report at the Town Council’s Jan. 25 meeting about the town’s application for a $14 million grant to improve its sea walls and drainage system, that didn’t bother former Alderwoman Sue Thaler.

“It was well explained clearly at the last meeting that we haven’t gotten the grant and we haven’t not gotten the grant,” said Thaler, who attended the meeting as a member of the public. “As far as I know, we’re still in contention for this grant.”

— Steve Plunkett

By Anne Geggis

In response to Delray Beach residents’ complaints about how the downtown vibe is disrupting their lives, a proposal is advancing to add four new police officers to the area’s current team of 10.

The City Commission, meeting Jan. 23 as the Delray Beach Community Redevelopment  Agency, appeared mostly in agreement when discussing the addition of $640,000 to the agency’s budget to put more police downtown. The actual vote will come at the next CRA meeting, scheduled for Feb. 27, said Commissioner Adam Frankel, the CRA chairman.

It would be the first expansion of downtown police personnel in 10 years, Frankel said. That dates back nearly to a time when he said the city was still known as “Dull-Ray.”

“If you look at 10 years ago versus today, there’s a big difference in the number of people who live downtown, come downtown,” Frankel said.

But Arlen Dominek, a downtown resident who led a parade of neighbors complaining about club and street noise at a Jan. 18 City Commission meeting, doesn’t think there’s much of a mandate from city leadership to quiet the hubbub that’s disrupting the peace and enjoyment of their homes.

While some residents think the added police might help with disturbances attributed to panhandlers and others on the streets, Dominek doesn’t expect the new personnel will address the traffic issues he and his neighbors find most vexing.

“There’s someone who zips down the avenue at 12:45” every night, said Dominek, who came to the city as an IT worker for a health care software company in 1997. “This has been an ongoing pet peeve of mine for a very long time. I don’t think the City Commission has any real conviction to see that its noise ordinance is enforced.”

Claudia Willis, a resident of the downtown’s Marina Historic District for 40 years, says the vaunted “vibe” of the area is giving her a headache.

“Particularly bothersome are the motorcycles that gun it and the cars that seem to be drag racing on Federal Highway at night,” she said.

She said she really doesn’t want to see taxpayers’ money going to fix the problem, though, and is unconvinced that more police will make a difference.

Frankel said noise is just one facet he sees improving with more police dedicated to downtown. He recalled an evening in October spent dining at an outdoor table. Within the space of 30 minutes, he said a stranger aggressively approached him demanding money, another passer-by took the drink from his restaurant table and he witnessed what he believed was a drug deal in progress.

By Steve Plunkett

The Town Council filled its fifth seat on Jan. 25, turning to a resident who tried but failed to qualify to run for mayor.

The council chose Keith Black, the only person to send in a letter of interest in serving as an alderman, to fill the seat vacated by almost 12-year veteran Sue Thaler at the end of December. Black is the council’s third recent addition, with Mayor Ted R. Gross and Alderman Jeff Duncan being appointed in December.

Council members hesitated in making Black’s appointment because Black was not in attendance — even though they had appointed Duncan in absentia at the previous meeting. Town Attorney Keith Davis assured them they could go ahead.

“Unlike most raffles, you don’t have to be present to win,” Davis said. “He does have to be here to be sworn in.”

Duncan, already appointed, took his oath of office at the January meeting.

Black had planned to run for the mayor’s position but complained at the December council meeting that the county supervisor of elections rejected five of the 23 signatures he had collected to support his candidacy. Mayoral candidates in Briny Breezes must have 20 signatures.

To show that Black had not been singled out, Alderwoman Kathy Gross held up the petition she signed supporting her husband’s run. Her signature also was rejected.

“So I want you to know it’s not” the town clerk’s fault. “It is through the supervisor of elections that this happened. There was no underlying anything going on. I just wanted to let you know that,” she said.

Ted Gross took an opportunity at the January meeting to deliver his first speech as mayor.

He focused on the power of home rule and recalled that before the state Legislature granted it to municipalities, “if we wanted to do something, like we wanted to put up a stop sign for instance … we would have to get state permission.”

He also displayed a pie chart showing that almost half of Florida’s 411 towns and cities have fewer than 5,000 residents, Briny Breezes included.

“We can be influential,” Gross said.

An instance of that came up at the meeting. Davis told the council that Briny Breezes back in October was the first municipality in the state to pass a resolution opposing the Form 6 requirement mandating elected town officials make a more detailed disclosure of their personal wealth. The resolution also authorized Town Manager Bill Thrasher to spend up to $5,000 to challenge the new state requirement.

Davis advised the council that the influential Miami-based law firm Weiss Serota was preparing a lawsuit seeking a judge’s declaration that the requirement is unconstitutional and invalid.

“I can’t tell you if it’s going to be a winner or a loser. I don’t know,” Davis said.

The law firm wants its clients to pay $10,000 each to be part of the lawsuit, he said. So far most of the plaintiffs are cities and towns in Broward and Miami-Dade counties. Briny officials asked Davis to bring a Weiss Serota lawyer to their February meeting. They hope they can get a reduced legal fee if they participate.

Elected officials had to resign by Dec. 31 to avoid making their net worth, income and other personal financial details public.

Thrasher has said Form 6 prompted Thaler and previous Mayor Gene Adams and Council President Christina Adams to resign their seats.

By Steve Plunkett

Town commissioners took less than three minutes to fill an empty seat on their own dais and two domino-like vacancies on the Architectural Review and Planning Board.

For the Town Commission spot, which Paul Lyons Jr. vacated in December, Mayor Scott Morgan looked to the ARPB “as we typically do,” he said at the commission’s Jan. 12 meeting.

Morgan said the three most experienced ARPB members declined his invitations, and Michael Greene, the newest, agreed.

Commissioners endorsed Morgan’s recommendation, and he moved swiftly to fill the new ARPB vacancy — with Lyons. Lyons joined the advisory panel for its Jan. 25 meeting, reuniting with former Commissioner Thom Smith, who resigned from the commission in November and was appointed to the ARPB in December.

Several times in the past year commissioners have sent back to the ARPB site plans that the panel had approved, complaining that the proposed homes had too much “massing” for the parcel or did not fit in with the given neighborhood.

They also tasked the board with suggesting ways to amend the town’s design manual to solve the massing issue. Smith and Lyons both chaired the planning board before becoming commissioners, as did Morgan.

Lyons’ appointment caused a wrinkle in filling the last seat, for an alternate ARPB member. Lyons’ daughter, Olivia, was next in line of those who had submitted letters of interest.

“But I’ve spoken to her, and because of Mr. Lyons’ being appointed, she has stepped back,” Morgan said.

Morgan said Lyons will stay on the ARPB to help resolve the massing issue and then will resign, making room for his daughter to be appointed.

Next to be considered was Brian Coulter, who lives on the Intracoastal Waterway around the corner from Commissioner Joan Orthwein.

“I think he’ll do a great job. (He’s) into the real estate world, too,” Orthwein said.

Coulter was a managing partner at one of the largest mixed-use development firms in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area for more than 35 years. He attended his first planning board meeting as an alternate member on Jan. 25.

Greene and his wife, Betsy, live on the west side of North Ocean Boulevard and have three adult children. He moved his investment firm, AE Industrial Partners LP, to Boca Raton in 2014. He joined the ARPB as an alternate member in July 2022 and became a full board member in November.