Exhibit sprouts from fortunate photo find

Nancy, Leila and Dorothy Pierson (l-r) display decorated coconuts at their roadside ‘Cocoanut Stand,’

possibly to raise money for the Red Cross during World War I.

A hand-tinted photograph of what is now State Road A1A.

Photos courtesy of Janet DeVries

Leila Pierson leans against a cocoanut palm in this early 20th-century image.

Her husband, Romeyn Pierson Sr., stands near the boat named for his wife.

Romeyn Pierson Jr. poses with his rifle.

Photos courtesy of Janet DeVries

By Ron Hayes

    You say “coconut.” They say “cocoanut.”
    The Oxford English Dictionary says cocoanut-with-an-a is the “old-fashioned spelling.”
    That’s why local historians Janet DeVries and Ginger Pedersen call their exhibit of old-fashioned Florida photographs, “Cocoanut Dreams.”
    “We spelled it that way on purpose,” says DeVries, without apology. “I actually had one person correct a press release and want to spell it without the ‘a.’”
    “Cocoanut Dreams,” on display through Sept. 14 on the second floor of the Boynton Beach City Library, features 30 historic photographs of Ocean Ridge, Manalapan, Hypoluxo Island, Lantana and Lake Worth, taken between 1912 and 1925, when cocoanut palms were more common than condos and air conditioning was only a dream.
    For DeVries, a librarian at Palm Beach State College and immediate past president of the Boynton Beach Historical Society, finding a crumbling photo album on eBay in 2014 was a dream come true.
    The owner was asking $200 but let her have it for $150. Inside, she found 108 photographs annotated with titles like “Boynton Hotel Cottages,” “Along Lake Worth” and “Manalapan.”
    Three years later, she has identified the photographer as A. Romeyn Pierson Jr., whose family owned a house on the dunes built in 1894 by Elnathan T. Field of Manalapan, N.J.
    Based on the ages of his children and other records, DeVries was able to date the pictures as having been made between 1912, when the family bought “Manalapan Cottage,” and 1925.
    “For the exhibit, I chose the ones that were really idyllic and depicted the area at that time, and also several of those he had hand-tinted,” she explains.
    Here’s Ocean Boulevard when it was only an unpaved road, a Red Cross volunteer selling cocoanut milk for 10 cents a serving, a Naval seaman in his “Cracker Jack” uniform.
    Here’s Leila, the boat Pierson’s father named after his wife, and here’s Leila herself, leaning against a palm tree.
    And there are cocoanut palms, of course. Lots and lots of cocoanut palms.
    “These people were planting cocoanut palms and trying to make money off them,” DeVries says, “and now we have coconut milk and coconut oil and people are touting the health benefits.”
    At 5:30 p.m. June 7, the library will host a reception during which DeVries will discuss her discovery, the Piersons, the photographs and the area as it was a century ago.
    The exhibit is sponsored by the city’s Art in Public Places program, whose manager, Debby Coles-Dobay, promises gifts for some who attend.
    “We’ve got 20 cocoanut palms sprouting in plastic pots that we’re going to give away,” Coles-Dobay said. “We’ll put names in a pot and draw 20, and those winners will take home their own cocoanut palm to plant. We’re sharing the dream.”
    But dreams die in time.
    Romeyn Pierson Sr. and his daughter, Dorothy, died in the flu epidemic of 1919, and his son, the photographer, succumbed to alcoholism in 1929.
    Their granddaughter, Nancy Tilton, inherited Manalapan Cottage, and after her death the house was razed in 2000.
    “It was a dream,” DeVries says, “but sometimes life gets in the way and the dream doesn’t survive the four D’s — divorce, disease, death and developers.”

By Mary Hladky

    Ten years after housing prices began cratering in the Great Recession, taxable property values in Palm Beach County have zoomed past their previous record high set in 2007.
    While the previous peak was $169.4 billion before the housing bubble burst, taxable values countywide jumped 7.1 percent to $176.5 billion last year, according to estimates released May 26 by Property Appraiser Dorothy Jacks.
    This is the fifth year in a row that values have surged, although once double-digit growth has slowed in recent years.
    But increases in the county and municipalities remain generally within the 6-8 percent growth rate considered healthy before the real estate crash. Taken together, city increases averaged 8.81 percent.
    “This (7.1 percent) is a good number as far as healthy growth, but not too heated growth,” Jacks said.
    The recovery in home prices and the completion of large construction projects countywide that are now on the tax rolls have spurred year-over-year gains, she said.
    “New construction continues to be a strong part of our economy,” Jacks said. “A lot of big, signature products came on line. … That is helping our overall values.”
    Delray Beach outpaced other municipalities in south Palm Beach County with taxable property values increasing 9.25 percent.
“I’m happy to see our values continue to increase,” Delray Beach Mayor Cary Glickstein said in an email. “This increase, which exceeds that of any other large city in the county, shows we are on the right track in terms of what we offer as a place to live and do business.”
    Glickstein said he anticipates the City Commission will decrease next fiscal year’s property tax rate somewhat.
    Boca Raton saw a 7.07 percent rise in taxable values, while Boynton Beach was up 7.41 percent.
    The values increased 8.62 percent in Briny Breezes, 3.03 percent in Gulf Stream, 7.84 percent in Highland Beach, 7.22 percent in Lantana, 5.52 percent in Manalapan, 6.18 percent in Ocean Ridge and 6.5 percent in South Palm Beach.
    Briny Breezes Mayor Jack Lee noted his town’s location on the ocean, the ability of homeowners who live along canals to keep their boats outside the front door and the town’s safety as pushing property values up.
    “It is about the location,” he said. “It is a matter of supply and demand.”
    Jack Elkins, a real estate agent with the Fite Group, expects values to increase further.
    “We won’t have the insane growth we have seen in the past, but we will continue to have growth and appreciation,” he said.
Elkins, who concentrates on coastal communities including Manalapan and Hypoluxo Island, said interest in properties there will remain high.
    “The coastal communities are still strong,” he said. “There is only so much land.”
    The municipality posting the biggest gain in the county was Palm Springs, with a 22.32 percent jump, followed by Loxahatchee Groves, up 15.12 percent. Pahokee fared the worst with a mere 0.6 percent gain.
    Elkins agrees with the consensus of real estate experts that U.S., and Palm Beach County, value increases do not signal a new housing bubble.
    “Some people will ask whether passing the 2007 peak means the housing market is in another bubble. It’s not,” the national real estate website Zillow said in a May posting.
    “The fact that it took (median home values) a decade to return to this point, let alone exceed it, is a testament to how far the market fell when it crashed. It’s also a reflection, of course, of how outlandishly high it had climbed.”
    In Palm Beach County, the median home value was $252,600 in April, but that was 21.2 percent lower than the peak, according to Zillow’s data.
    The Property Appraiser’s Office will factor in 2017 data to revise its estimates before a preliminary tax roll is submitted to the state on July 1.
    Local governments use the estimates to begin calculating how much property tax money they can expect in the coming year so they can set their annual budgets and 2017-2018 tax rates.
    That process will end in about mid-September before the Oct. 1 start of the new fiscal year.
    An increase in taxable values means that the county, cities and towns will collect more money from property owners if they keep their tax rates the same as last year.
    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 the rates by small amounts so they can say they have lowered taxes even though their tax revenues rise because of increased property values.
    Last year, only five of the county’s 38 municipalities lowered tax rates enough so that taxpayers did not pay more in taxes.
Officials have said they need the money to pay for increased operating costs and to make up for the lean years during the recession when they cut budgets, left positions unfilled and delayed improvement projects.

Neil and Doris Gillman are sponsoring a program that provides cribs, bedding and other supplies

for newborns of mothers in need at Boca Raton Regional Hospital.

Photo provided

By Janis Fontaine

    Neil Gillman said it took his wife, Doris, about 20 seconds to decide to throw her support behind Sweet Dream Makers, a 501(c)(3) charity based in Boca Raton that provides beds and bedding to local people who are sleeping on the floor.
    Sweet Dream Makers’ newest program is called “Beginnings” because it starts at the very beginning of life. It helps moms who give birth at Boca Raton Regional Hospital and who are struggling financially. Moms receive new cribs and crib linens, as well as diapers and formula.
    Doris Gillman, 64, says she and her husband, 65, got involved because of  “what we were providing and for whom.”
    “I was immediately surprised by the basic needs that weren’t being met and inspired by the simplicity of the program,” Doris Gillman said. “Sweet Dream Makers also provides beds for the family members if we find they need them. We also collect gently used furniture, but all the mattresses and bedding are new.”  
    Neil Gillman, who serves on the board of the Boca West Foundation, met Suzanne “Suzy” Broad, Sweet Dream Makers executive director, when she gave a five-minute, informal talk to the board. That talk led to a meeting with the Gillmans, which ended with a pledge for the entire amount needed to fund the first year of the Beginnings program. The Boca West Foundation committed $20,000 and is adding $10,000 to renovate Boca Raton Regional Hospital’s maternity wing.
    But more than money, Broad found an ally in Doris Gillman.
    “She understood the philosophy of Sweet Dream Makers,” Broad said. “We immediately had a rapport, an instant connection. She’s smart, and she has a smile that lights up the room.”
    The Gillmans, philanthropists who married eight years ago, recently sold their home in Gulf Stream and bought a home in the Royal Palm Yacht and Country Club, which Doris Gillman says is perfect for them.
    “Gulf Stream was very peaceful and private, but we wanted a community with lots of people and activities. What makes it special to us is we can walk to everything. We like to ride our bikes and walk the dogs,” Neil Gillman said. He is an avid golfer. His wife likes to work out, and they both play a little tennis. The couple has four children and two grandchildren who visit frequently.
    “We’re down-to-earth and family focused,” Neil Gillman said. Doris Gillman added: “And we love to give back to the community.”

    For more information about Sweet Dream Makers, call 571-7363 or visit www.sweetdreammakers.org.
    For more information about Boca West Foundation, visit www.bocawestfoundation. org or call 488-6980.

By Dan Moffett

    South Palm Beach Police Chief Carl Webb says morale among officers is better now than at any other time during his 28 years with the department.
    “It’s a pleasure now instead of a war,” Webb told the Town Council on May 16. “Historically, through past administrations, it’s been us against them and these officers paid the price for that. We’re beginning the healing process and returning some dignity to these officers.”
    The chief said that healing began in April when the town and union officials reached a deal on a new contract for the department’s seven uniformed officers. They had not received a raise since October 2014 and had worked without a new contract since 2015.
    At their low point last fall, negotiations deteriorated so far that representatives of the Police Benevolent Association spoke at a town meeting, publicly scolding council members — telling them to dissolve the department and hire the Palm Beach County sheriff, rather than continue to underpay the town’s officers.
    According to Florida Department of Law Enforcement statistics, South Palm Beach police have ranked near the bottom in wages among county departments, earning roughly 7 percent less across the board last year than neighboring agencies in Manalapan and Ocean Ridge.
    Webb credits Town Manager Bob Vitas with breaking the negotiation impasse: “He knew how to do it and he got it done.”
    Vitas worked a deal with the union to increase wages in exchange for ending grievance arbitration hearings and replacing them with appeals to a newly created review board. The town saves money on arbitrations, he says, which covers the cost of the raises.
    “There was some stuff in that old contract that really was harmful to relationships, and we’ve taken care of that,” Vitas said. “Now we have what I consider a fair agreement on both sides of the aisle.”
    The new agreement gives officers an incremental 13 percent raise over the five-year period from 2015 to 2020.  The department’s starting salary of $43,500 today will climb to $49,445 by 2020. The top of the range for senior officers is $63,450 in the new contract.
    The council unanimously approved the deal, 3-0, with Councilwoman Stella Gaddy Jordan absent. “I’m glad we’re finally going in the right direction,” Mayor Bonnie Fischer said.
    In other business, the town’s beach stabilization project faces an important test on June 6 when Palm Beach County commissioners decide whether to accept the easements from property owners, which would allow preliminary work to begin.
    “It’s a big day for us,” Vice Mayor Robert Gottlieb said.
    The town has collected 15 of the 16 easement agreements needed, with the Concordia East condominium still refusing to sign on until county attorneys change the contract’s liability language. Vitas said he believes the county and Concordia ultimately will work out their differences.
    Managers of the $5 million project are still hoping to begin constructing concrete groins on the beach in the fall of 2018 and have the system in place by early 2019.`

By Willie Howard

    A Boca Raton-based environmental consulting firm has taken over monitoring sea turtle nests on South Palm Beach, ending decades of monitoring by Robert Schonfeld, also known as the “turtle man.”
    Schonfeld started monitoring sea turtles along the five-eighths-mile stretch of beach in South Palm Beach in 1993.
    Working with other volunteers, such as Mary Lacorazza-Genova, he marked nests to protect the turtle eggs and provided data on the number of and type of nests as well as false crawls — those times when female turtles crawl up the beach but don’t lay eggs.
    The Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission, which regulates sea turtle monitoring on beaches, recently updated its permit requirements and did not renew Schonfeld’s permit for 2017.  Schonfeld, 81, sold his South Palm Beach condominium two years ago and moved to Boynton Beach, four miles from the oceanfront.
    “I had a good run,” he said. “For 25 years, I enjoyed the work I did on the beach very much. But it’s in good hands now.”
    Town Manager Bob Vitas said the Town Council plans to honor Schonfeld for his service.
    Consulting firm D.B. Ecological Services, which monitors sea turtles on Delray Beach and the town of Palm Beach (under contracts with those municipalities related to permits for beach widening), agreed to pick up daily sea turtle monitoring on South Palm Beach at no charge beginning March 1, the start of the sea turtle nesting season.
    “We just picked it up because it needed to be done and we didn’t want to see a hole in the data,” company President Christine Perretta said.
    Meghan Koperski, an FWC biologist who oversees marine turtle permitting, said the November 2016 update of permit requirements was not meant to screen out volunteers.
    Volunteers monitor more than half of Florida’s sea turtle nesting beaches, Koperski said.
     “We have far more volunteers throughout the state than we do paid contractors,” Koperski said. “We greatly value all individuals who are contributing sea turtle nesting survey data, both volunteers and paid contractors.”
Dan Moffett contributed to this story.

By Steve Plunkett
    
    Gulf Stream Town Hall version 2.0 is on its way.
    A 24-foot-wide by 29-foot-deep addition on the west side of the building will provide new offices for the town manager and Gulf Stream’s staff attorney as well as additional space for storage.
    Architect Mark Marsh gave town commissioners a courtesy preview of the plan at their May 12 meeting. The Architectural Review and Planning Board, which had the final say, approved it May 22.
    “It’s going to be a very simple addition. It reflects the symmetry, the balance, the materials of the existing facility,” Marsh said.
    Town Manager Greg Dunham, who took over William Thrasher’s position May 1, will move into the northern half of the addition, while staff attorney Trey Nazzaro will occupy the southern half. Both offices have room for storage.
    “Even though in this age of internet … it’s a fallacy [that computers reduce paper records]. There’s more paperwork, more storage required,” Marsh said.
    Town Clerk Rita Taylor will relocate to Thrasher’s old office, and her space will become a conference room/library.
    “Contractors, subcontractors that want to review plans, they come in [to a space that’s] not really geared to any review of documents or research,” said Marsh, who regularly brings proposals to Town Hall. “Having a conference room of some kind is going to be a huge asset.”
    Marsh’s clients were pleased.
    “I think it looks good,” Commissioner Joan Orthwein said.
    Mayor Scott Morgan said: “It’s not only a good addition, but it’s a better use of space. I particularly like the way you’ve blended the outside elevation with the existing building so it looks like a natural, an original part of the building.”

    Two south county coastal cities continue to see rising numbers of drug overdoses along with increasing fatalities.
In Boynton Beach, police responded to 398 overdoses in 2016 resulting in 35 deaths.
    As of May 22, Boynton Beach police responded to 240 drug overdoses with 25 fatalities this year. If the overdose pace continues, the city will see 2017 overdoses eclipse last year’s number in late August.
    Delray Beach also has an escalating problem with overdoses. Many occur in its central core, between the interstate and the Intracoastal Waterway, according to police data.
    City police responded to 690 drug overdoses in 2016 with 65 of them fatal. As of May 18, police responded to 289 overdoses with 26 deaths this year. If the overdose pace continues, Delray Beach will see 2017 drug overdoses pass last year’s total in late November.
    As more powerful synthetic drugs are mixed with heroin, police in both cities don’t expect the overdose numbers to decrease.

Delray Beach

By Jane Smith

    Two Delray Beach city attorneys unveiled their consultant’s study of group homes to a rapt audience in mid-May at the Palm Beach County Sober Homes Task Force meeting.
    The study calls for mandatory certification of group homes and a distance requirement of 660 feet between them to avoid a clustering of the homes in a neighborhood. If both can’t be met, then the group home operator would have to apply for a special permit from the city to open for business.
    “The time is right for this,” said Terrill Pyburn, a special attorney hired by Delray Beach. “We now have data from the Task Force and all of the arrests. … It’s not just people crying wolf.”
    The State Attorney’s Task Force was formed in July. Its law enforcement subgroup has arrested about 30 treatment center and sober home operators on patient brokering charges.
    Delray Beach, called the “recovery capital of America” in 2007, has been fighting that branding for years.
    In 2012, it settled a federal discrimination lawsuit filed by the Caron Foundation. Caron wanted to open a recovery residence in an oceanfront mansion, but the city’s rules at the time denied it. Under the settlement, Caron was able to open the seaside sober home.
    “The goal of the zoning regulations as they are being drafted is to protect residents of sober homes from abuse, mistreatment, exploitation, theft and fraud — and to ensure the support needed to achieve long-term sobriety,” Mayor Cary Glickstein said in an email.  “The proposed regulations are being drafted to save lives.”
    Plans call for the group homes ordinance to be reviewed this month by a city board, then onto the City Commission in late July or early August.
    In January, Delray Beach commissioners hired a longtime planner, Daniel Lauber from the Chicago area, to study group homes in the city.
    His 57-page study was finished in early May. He found the city had many more than its share of group homes.
    City planning staff identified 183 sober homes, said Tim Stillings, planning director. “We have a list of all those properties which have applied for reasonable accommodations,” he said. “All are sober homes.”
    A sober home is a type of group home where residents are protected by federal discrimination laws when they live together as a family and maintain sobriety.
    Lauber also recommended mandatory certification for group homes in Delray Beach. For sober homes, the state recognizes the Florida Association of Recovery Residences as the certifying body.
    The consultant also helped Prescott, Arizona, draft its group homes ordinances with an 800-foot buffer between the group homes.
    The ordinance was twice investigated for violating the Fair Housing Act by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. One complaint was dropped in 2015 and the other forwarded to the Justice Department. In February, the Prescott city attorney said he had received a letter saying the Justice Department dropped its investigation, according to news reports.

    At the Task Force meeting, moderator Al Johnson, assistant chief state attorney, said, “I wish the Prescott investigation had resulted in a court case. We need that to convince the state Health and Human Services Department in 2018 that certification of sober homes should be mandatory.”
    Delray Beach City Attorney Max Lohman replied, “The biggest win as a municipal attorney is Justice saying it is closing the investigation.”
    But attorney James Green, who represented the Caron Foundation, said, “A sober home operator is not required to exhaust administrative remedies by filing a HUD complaint first.
    “The distance requirements generally do not pass judicial muster under the Fair Housing Act. If you want to live in a predominantly sober home neighborhood, you have the right to do it.”
    Green said Delray Beach already has the tools to regulate group homes: “Fair application of its zoning codes.”

Boynton Beach

By Jane Smith

    The proposed group homes ordinance in Boynton Beach passed its first hurdle in late May when the city’s Planning and Development Board unanimously approved it.
    That approval put in place a “zoning in progress” situation, ending the city’s legally questionable moratorium on group home applications and banning new applications while the new rule is considered.
    At the May 23 meeting, the city’s Planning and Zoning director handed out updates to the board members.
    “We’re up against the moratorium deadline” of June 4, said Mike Rumpf, the director.
    David Katz, the board chairman, asked, “Why not do another moratorium of three or six months?”
    Rumpf said it wouldn’t work, “given the subject matter.”
    The City Commission will have its first reading of the ordinance on June 20, followed by the second reading and a public hearing on July 18, Rumpf said.
    The big changes in the ordinance are: mandatory certification for a new group home unless it has a charter from a nationally recognized group; existing group homes will have until Oct. 1, 2018, to become certified; a 300-foot distance requirement between the group homes; and new parking regulations for the entire neighborhood that require at least one space per bedroom.
    Vehicles must be parked in the driveway, if the home has one. The city bans using the front lawns to provide extra parking.
    Group homes provide housing for people with a range of disabilities. They can include homes for blind people and for drug and alcohol abusers.
    The issue came to the forefront in the past few years as the number of sober homes grew in residential neighborhoods.
 Sober homes are a type of group home where more than three unrelated people live together as a family and are protected by federal anti-discrimination laws as long as the residents maintain their sobriety.
    In Palm Beach County, rogue sober home operators have given the business a bad reputation with patient brokering charges and illegal marketing ploys.
    “We want to preserve the neighborhood character for all,” Rumpf said.
Sober homes want to be in neighborhoods to help their patients re-engage with the community, he said.
    Boynton Beach has 50 sober homes and another 14 assisted living facilities, all operating as group homes, Rumpf said.
    Of those, seven are certified by the Florida Association of Recovery Residences, the only certification recognized by the state. John Lehman, CEO/chairman of the association, said another 11 Boynton Beach sober homes had applied for certification.
DCF licenses substance abuse treatment centers statewide where addicts first go for inpatient rehab.
Boynton Beach may see court challenges to its distance requirement. Rumpf said 300 feet was included to prevent clustering of the group homes and creating an institutional-like setting.
But some anti-discrimination attorneys disagree.
“Most courts ruled that separation requirements are not legal under the Fair Housing Act,” said James Green, a West Palm Beach lawyer who has successfully sued local cities for housing discrimination against substance abusers.
    Boynton Beach also wants to collect annual business tax receipts from the property owner who rents the home and from the group home operator.

By Steve Plunkett
    
    A proposed three-story garage that Place Au Soleil feared would bring unwelcome noise and light will instead be a concrete reminder of good-neighborliness.
    Eleventh-hour negotiations between Gulf Stream and Gunther Volvo resulted in a series of concessions just before Delray Beach’s Site Plan Review and Appearance Board gave the project its final OK.
    Four members of the public commented at the May 10 SPRAB meeting — Gulf Stream Mayor Scott Morgan, Place Au Soleil Homeowners Association President Chet Snavely, resident Julio Martinez and Ann Bennett, a Place Au Soleil resident and vice president of the town’s Civic Association. All were in favor.
    “I figure that we are going to be looking at this garage for the next 50 to 100 years, so it was important to us that we get a project that was digestible. I think, I hope that we’ve gotten to that point,” Snavely said.
    How the car dealership will control lights on the garage’s upper level, where its employees will park, led to the breakthrough of using motion sensors. Gunther lawyer Matthew Scott said it was too soon to say whether such devices would do the job.
    “We just had an aha moment about motion sensors today,” he told the review board.
    If the sensors will not work or if Delray Beach police do not approve the idea, Gunther will turn off half of the top-level lights at 9 p.m. and the remainder at 10. Delray Beach code would have allowed the lights to stay on until 11.
    Morgan, who called Gunther’s efforts “very reasonable,” sent a letter to town residents detailing changes the dealership would make. Among them:
    • Adding black honeycomb grilles to openings in the walls to cut noise and light, and recessing interior lights in the ceilings.
    • Moving the site for offloading vehicles from the east side of the property, next to Place Au Soleil, to the south side and restricting offloading to 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. weekdays. (“There will be no weekend delivery and it will not be at night,” Scott told the board.)
    • Adding a dense tree line to the 20 existing oaks on the east property line.
    • Making the perimeter berm higher and adding a wall on top, effectively making a 10-foot sound barrier.
    • Buying new car washing equipment designed to minimize noise and putting it inside the garage to make it even quieter.
    • Relocating the trash bin from the east side to the south side.
    • Not installing a public-address system outdoors.
    Review board member Linda Purdo-Enochs complimented both sides “for working together and finding a happy medium.”
    Gunther will also plant three more sabal palms at the southeast corner of the garage to screen it from the Delray Preserve apartment complex.
    The dealership’s current showroom is showing signs of age, Scott said. “It’s not exciting. It’s not fresh,” he said.
    Volvo is rebranding itself to get away from a historical emphasis on safety and become cool, Scott said. Gunther’s dated furniture inside will be replaced with a modern, warm, Scandinavian design.
    Under Delray Beach’s comprehensive plan, auto dealerships are “specifically directed” to the east side of Federal Highway north of Delray Preserve, city senior planner Amy Alvarez said. The garage, which will be 65 feet away from Place Au Soleil at its closest, could have been 10 feet away and met code, Scott said.
    Fort Lauderdale-based Gunther paid AutoNation $13.5 million in 2012 for the Volvo and neighboring Volkswagen dealerships.
Snavely said letters he and the HOA overnighted to Joseph “Jay” Gunther Jr. and Joseph Gunther III were game changers. The older Gunther emailed back that he wanted “to work with you folks. You are our neighbors,” Snavely said.
    Relations between the car lot and Gulf Stream were less cordial in the months leading to the garage-showroom’s OK.
    As recently as mid-April, Snavely said the dealership was intransigent. “Volvo was not interested in spending any money for any redesign,” he said.

Related Story: As overdose numbers soar, cities seek sober home regulation

By Mary Hladky

    Previous efforts to crack down on unscrupulous drug treatment centers and sober homes have largely languished in the Florida Legislature.
    But that changed in the session that ended in May, when significant legislation was passed that cracked down on some of the worst practices of the addiction treatment industry, empowered the state Department of Children and Families to regulate treatment centers, and imposed stiff penalties for possession of fentanyl, an opioid painkiller.
    The skyrocketing death toll arising from the opioid crisis focused legislative attention on the problems. Gov. Rick Scott declared the opioid epidemic a public health emergency last month.
    Deaths in Palm Beach County jumped from 305 in 2015 to 592 last year, according to the Medical Examiner’s Office. Delray Beach, the reputed epicenter of the crisis in the county, had 77 overdoses in April, with six resulting in death, city police said last month. That was up from 57 in April 2016.
    Another important factor was the work of the Sober Homes Task Force, launched last year with $275,000 in state funding by State Attorney Dave Aronberg to investigate allegations of fraud and abuse and propose solutions.
    The task force and a grand jury issued reports on the vast scope of the problems and recommended new legislation. They found rampant deceptive marketing, insurance fraud, patient brokering, sexual abuse and forced labor.
    Chief Assistant State Attorney Al Johnson, who heads the task force, traveled frequently to Tallahassee to press legislators to take action. Although he could not lobby, Aronberg joined him for the final week of the legislative session.
    “We did better than we hoped,” Johnson said. “It was a barnburner.”
    Speaking of wide-ranging legislation introduced by state Sen. Jeff Clemens, D-Lake Worth, and state Rep. Bill Hager, R-Boca Raton, Johnson said, “We didn’t know it would pass until the day before the session ended. I’ve got more gray hairs than I used to have.”

Industry recognizes issue
    While there was some opposition to the bills, which were consolidated under Hager’s version, Johnson said the addiction treatment industry generally knew that better regulation is needed.
    “The problem is so severe that the industry realizes it will implode if corrective action isn’t taken against these bad actors,” he said. “If we don’t get a handle on the bad actors and bad practices in the industry, parents will stop sending their children to Florida for treatment.”
    Most of the young addicts treated in Florida come from out of state, and word is spreading that there are problems here.
    Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey issued a warning in April, after receiving many reports of state residents being recruited to “so-called” treatment centers in Florida, Arizona and California. She urged anyone receiving an unsolicited referral to out-of-state centers to be wary.
    John Lehman, CEO of the Florida Association of Recovery Residences, a nonprofit that oversees voluntary certification of sober homes for DCF, praised Aronberg and Johnson for their efforts.
    “All credit for successfully accomplishing that push at the last hour goes to Aronberg and Johnson,” he said. “They did a phenomenal job.”
    Delray Beach Mayor Cary Glickstein said legislation alone won’t solve all the problems. Yet “the new law, if adopted by the governor, represents more effective tools in how we combat exploitation and abuses of vulnerable people within a wholly unregulated industry that has thus far produced little tangible evidence of success while it enjoys impunity and huge profits predicated on human suffering, “ he said in an email.
    Provisions of the Clemens/Hager legislation include:
    • Prohibiting service providers and sober home operators from engaging in deceptive marketing and enacting criminal penalties for violations.
    • Increasing penalties for patient brokering and adding patient brokering to the list of offenses that the Office of Statewide Prosecution may pursue.
    • Giving new powers to DCF to regulate treatment centers. DCF will draft rules on administrative and clinical standards by January, and licensing fees will be increased substantially to help pay for the increased regulation. Effective July 1.
    Other notable new laws include:
    • Creating tough penalties for possession of fentanyl, a painkiller as much as 100 times more potent than morphine, and similar substances. Heroin is often cut with fentanyl, making it far more deadly. The substances are added to the list of drugs that can result in murder charges for the dealer if the buyer dies. Effective Oct. 1.
    • Enhancing collection of overdose data by allowing emergency medical personnel to report overdoses to the Florida Department of Health. The law also requires hospital emergency departments to establish over-dose policies. Effective Oct. 1.
    • Limiting the initial amount of opioids prescribed to a five-day supply. Prescriptions filled for controlled substances must be entered in a state prescription drug monitoring database by the end of the next business day. Effective July 1.

Task Force will continue
    The work of the Sober Homes Task Force will continue for at least another year, provided a $300,000 appropriation by lawmakers to fund it is not vetoed by the governor. Scott, angered that lawmakers ignored some of his top legislative priorities, was considering a state budget veto last month.
    FARR, however, was not so fortunate. Lehman had requested $275,000, but the Legislature appropriated only $100,000. Even that amount is uncertain with the possibility of a budget veto.
    That comes after the Legislature last year appropriated no money for FARR’s operations, leaving Lehman to subsist on donations and loans.
    At the end of May, Lehman was scrambling to come up with additional money. “We’re hopeful that we can raise the $175,000 and the governor won’t veto our $100,000,” he said.

County pilot funded
    The Legislature also appropriated $500,000 for the county’s Opioid Abuse Pilot Program launched early this year.
    The concept is to offer people who overdose support services after they leave the emergency room. People treated at JFK Medical Center in Atlantis can volunteer to enter the program. They are treated with Suboxone, a drug that curbs withdrawal symptoms. After release, they are visited at home, administered tapering doses of the drug and offered counseling.
    As of May 30, Scott had not made a decision on the state budget and had not signed the drug-related legislation into law, although it is widely believed he will do so.
    Although those pushing for stricter regulation of the addiction treatment industry are well pleased with their victories in the Legislature, they agree there is more work to be done.
    Plans for additional proposed legislation are in the very early stages, but the Sober Homes Task Force again will have a leading role.
    One priority, Johnson said, is getting more funding for FARR. “It is important FARR be adequately funded,” he said.
    The task force also will be active in helping DCF create rules to regulate treatment centers.
    DCF funding may become an issue. The agency was given a huge mandate, but increased funding is limited to the revenue from higher licensing fees.
    “The success of the DCF legislation will depend on adequate funding,” Johnson said. “If you don’t have full-time employees to do the job, all the laws and rules are meaningless.”

Are sober homes commerce?
    One matter under consideration is whether sober homes are commercial businesses, and therefore not exempt from mandatory regulation. The Fair Housing Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act recognize addiction as a disability, which has made it difficult for government to regulate sober homes.
    “We need to get rid of the flophouses,” Johnson said.
    The task force also is looking at whether it is possible to provide rent subsidies. Health insurance pays for substance abuse treatment, but does not cover the sober homes that provide beds to those getting treatment.
    This is a difficult issue because the task force does not want open-ended subsidies that would create cycles of relapse, Johnson said.
    Another matter drawing task force attention is the prohibition against working at or owning a drug rehab facility if the person has a prior felony drug conviction. People who want to help addicts many times are former addicts who have insight into how to break the cycle of drug use, he said.
    “There is more we can do,” Johnson said. “We are not going to prosecute our way out of this.”
    Jane Smith contributed to this story.

By Dan Moffett

    The landlords of Manalapan’s Plaza del Mar hoped to be knocking down buildings to make way for a new Publix by now.
    They’re not, for two reasons: The supermarket chain’s architects haven’t been able to design a sign that is tasteful enough to satisfy the taste-conscious town commissioners. And a lawsuit against the project filed by Lantana resident Barbara Federico is still wending its way through the courts.
    Matt Buehler, retail vice president with plaza landlord Kitson & Partners, says demolition won’t begin until the two obstacles are removed.
    “People don’t realize this is a $10 million project,” Buehler said. “We can’t risk it.”
    Buehler and Publix have been trying to sell town commissioners on a sign design for six months now — a design that is far more understated than the familiar green-and-white logo that marks hundreds of the company’s storefronts throughout the Southeast.
    The latest failure came during the May 15 town meeting, when commissioners rejected a white-and-black, non-illuminated version they criticized as discordant with Manalapan’s unique sense of itself.
    Two newly seated commissioners, promoted from the town’s architectural board in March, led the opposition.
    “The discussions I participated in at ArCom, we focused on the fitness, charm, the compatibility with the overall ambiance of the town,” Commissioner Jack Doyle said. “While this sign may be perfectly nice and utilitarian, it does not in my view add to the overall character and ambiance of the town.”
    “Six months later, we’re still where we were,” Commissioner Hank Siemon said, asserting that Publix has ignored design suggestions from town officials. “Personally, I think we should look at the Eau sign and use that as a template. That’s a beautiful sign.”
    Across the street from the plaza, the Eau Palm Beach Resort & Spa has a metal sign with raised lettering that casts shadows when softly illuminated. Doyle said the Eau’s design is “classy and speaks to the character of the town.”
    Buehler said the town had given him a list of seven design requests at the last meeting on signage, and Publix had addressed all seven. Mayor Keith Waters agreed but said the commission is “a house divided.”
    Waters told Buehler to bring back a revised version of the white-and-black sign, along with an Eau-inspired design, to the town’s June 13 meeting and the commission will choose between the two.
    “We will approve one or the other. You have the commitment of the town,” the mayor said. “I don’t want to continue kicking this can down the road.”
    Meanwhile, town officials are hopeful a ruling on the Federico lawsuit will come this month. Federico, who lives about 500 feet from the plaza, objects to the size of the store, claiming it is too large for the space.
    Her suit also alleges the town did not follow its own rules in approving building plans for the supermarket.
    “It is inappropriate for the community and incompatible with the area,” she says.
    Town Attorney Keith Davis has said the plaza plan complies with the town’s code and commissioners acted lawfully in approving it.
    Though demolition is on hold, officials believe work still can begin this summer and the Publix can open early next year.

By Dan Moffett

    The prospect of lower rates and improved customer relations was enough to persuade Hypoluxo council members to end a decades-old relationship with Manalapan and switch to Boynton Beach for water services.
    On May 17, the Town Council unanimously approved a plan to negotiate an early end to the current contract with Manalapan and work out the final details of a deal to join Boynton’s fast-growing utility system.
    “We heard proposals from both of the competing water utilities, and they were pretty clear to understand,”  Mayor Michael Brown said. “I think, without a doubt, Boynton Beach’s offer was much more beneficial to the town of Hypoluxo.”
    Boynton has offered in-city rates to Hypoluxo, the same prices that Boynton residents are paying. The roughly 550 Hypoluxo customers who get their water from Manalapan can expect an immediate 25 percent decrease in their bills, Boynton officials have said.
    “Our rates are low because we have great economies of scale,” said Colin Groff, Boynton’s utilities director.
    With more than 110,000 customers, Boynton’s system is about 12 times larger than Manalapan’s. “We just can’t compete with what they’re offering,” said Linda Stumpf, the Manalapan town manager.
    Boynton also provides automated billing and meter reading to its customers, services Manalapan doesn’t have.
    Still to be resolved are  Hypoluxo’s buyout terms with Manalapan. The contract between the two municipalities is scheduled to expire in 2020. Boynton officials have told Hypoluxo they will cover some of the town’s costs to get out of the Manalapan agreement. Brown said he hopes the switch can be completed by this summer.
    “We’ll move as quickly as we can to get council’s approval,” Brown said. “It could be 30 days, it could be 60 days, it just depends how quickly we move through the process.”
    With Hypoluxo’s exit, Manalapan’s utility loses a significant cash stream — roughly $1.3 million in revenue — that could affect its operation over the long term. Stumpf said the town is exploring other options for the utility.

By Steve Plunkett
    
    A new potential for heavy growth on Federal Highway at the Woolbright Road and Ocean Avenue intersections has the barrier island-based Florida Coalition for Preservation sounding the alarms.
    Boynton Beach has changed its comprehensive plan, future land use map, zoning and all its land development regulations to permit much denser growth than before at the bases of the bridges to the island, said Kristine de Haseth, the coalition’s executive director.
    All four quadrants at Woolbright and Federal are zoned “multiuse high,” which allows buildings up to 150 feet tall with 80 units per acre. By comparison, she told Gulf Stream town commissioners at their May meeting, Gulf Stream’s single-family neighborhoods have about 1.5 units per acre.
    “So 80 units per acre is quite a difference,” de Haseth said.
    The situation is more congested at Ocean Avenue, which is part of a “transportation overlay district” that gets a 25 percent bonus on density.
    “So rather than having 80 units per acre, they could have 100 units per acre,” de Haseth said. “Now we’re talking real urbanization. … Those are the type of numbers you see in Fort Lauderdale and Miami.”
    A new developer recently bought Las Ventanas apartments for $109 million. “He could add an additional five stories to the five-story buildings that he has. And he could also increase his density, which is now 33, up to 80,” de Haseth said.
    The same thing could happen at the foot of the Woolbright Road bridge, where the “functioning obsolescent” Bermuda Cay rental development and neighboring, 60-year-old Snug Harbor Gardens Villas are probably the next parcels to be redeveloped, de Haseth said.
    “That doesn’t mean that is what will happen. But that is what Boynton has said their 20-year planning operation is moving toward, and that’s what they would like to see there,” she said.
    Architect Mark Marsh, at the Gulf Stream meeting for another issue, shared de Haseth’s pessimistic outlook. “What’s ahead is pretty scary,” said Marsh, who lives in Ocean Ridge.
    De Haseth said the main concern is access to the barrier island for emergency vehicles. Boynton Beach fire-rescue’s Station 1 across the Ocean Avenue bridge responds to the northern end of Ocean Ridge, while Station 4 across Woolbright covers the southern end of Ocean Ridge and Briny Breezes.
    “So it’s one thing to have increased traffic; it’s one thing to have increased foot traffic over your bridge maybe not being respectful to your dunes or your beaches. It’s one thing to have petty crime that increases because of increased density and pressures from the west to the east,” de Haseth said. “It’s another thing if you have a heart attack, God forbid, and the fire-EMT station can’t get to you, and then furthermore, it can’t get back to the other side.”
    De Haseth said the coalition will pursue three initiatives to unite the island from Manalapan to Delray Beach: a unified fire-EMT department, a contiguous license plate recognition system and a barrier island traffic study.
    The idea of a unified fire-EMT department won’t gain traction until the municipalities do the second phase of a study and determine how much it will cost, she said.
    “There’s been talk of putting a heliport on top of St. Andrew’s [beachside club]; there’s been a bunch of different, really interesting ideas that are out of the box,” de Haseth said.
    The license plate recognition program was dealt a blow when Briny Breezes ended its fire-rescue agreement with Ocean Ridge, which had planned to put cameras at the town’s south border, she said.
    Delray Beach has instituted a program, Ocean Ridge is budgeting for it and Manalapan has had one for years, she said. Briny Breezes’ town marshal, Chris Yannuzzi of the Boynton Beach Police Department, told the Briny council several months ago that he would explore the feasibility of tying into Boynton Beach’s tag-recognition system.
    “It has to be a continuity with all the municipalities, not just one or two,” de Haseth said.
    And with Ocean Ridge talking about making some streets one-way and Briny Breezes taking ownership of its section of Old Ocean Boulevard, the island towns should undertake a comprehensive traffic study, she said.
    “I think there has to be a realization that each of these municipalities — whatever one does affects the other obviously,” de Haseth said.
    De Haseth made a similar presentation in Ocean Ridge.
    She also said the coalition will sponsor lunches for barrier island mayors and town managers at least once a quarter “to get everybody together outside the League of Cities … and just sit down and talk about what is happening in their municipalities. Chances are it’s happening in the one right next door.”

By Dan Moffett

    Ocean Ridge is 86 years old, essentially built-out and with a population that has stayed largely stable through the past two decades.
    But this doesn’t mean the town can avoid growing pains.
    Town commissioners are finding that out as they begin to put together the budget for fiscal 2018.
    Increased traffic to the beach from across the bridge has brought calls for more police presence and road improvements. A surge in home renovation and new construction has exposed a need for more administrative staffing. More police, more building and more office activity are bringing complaints about the town’s outdated computer systems.
    These were some of the problems the Town Commission confronted at its first budget workshop on May 22. It will be July until commissioners get hard numbers on taxable values from the county Property Appraiser’s Office and make detailed decisions on spending and property tax rates.
    Until then, here are some of the issues commissioners are considering:
    • Adding two police officers to help deal with growing numbers of beachgoers from outside the town. Police Chief Hal Hutchins told commissioners it will cost roughly $156,000 in salaries and benefits for the two hires. Hutchins said the department also needs another dispatcher, at a cost of about $47,000.
    The chief said it would take about $27,500 to provide Tasers for all his officers and $50,000 to equip them with body cameras. “I’m bringing up everything you’ve asked for,” Hutchins told commissioners.
    • Town Manager Jamie Titcomb is proposing to add a full-time position to the administrative staff to handle increasing requests for building permits and do code inspections. Revenues from permits are on track to double from five years ago to about $400,000 annually. Titcomb said the increasing revenue warrants overhauling the staff to add a full-time building inspector and a part-time clerk. He said providing services in-house, rather than hiring outside contractors, would be more efficient and less costly. With some reassignments of existing staff, the overhaul could cost around $200,000.
    “The intent is to enhance service and get you more bang for the buck,” Titcomb said.
    • Both Titcomb and Hutchins said the town needs to upgrade its information technology systems. Titcomb told commissioners that last year the administration’s accounting software crashed, zapping data and complicating what was a torturous budget process that dragged on for five months. Titcomb said the town had to hire a specialist to retrieve the lost data. The cost of new software and upgrading the system is undetermined.
    Hutchins said his officers need to upgrade laptops, operating systems and office computers. He recommended spending $27,000 annually for three years to bring the department up to speed.
    • Town Clerk Tracey Stevens told commissioners the town is receiving about $9,000 a month from the penny sales tax increase that voters approved in November. The law requires that the money be spent on infrastructure, which is generally defined as installed devices or constructed improvements that are designed to last at least five years.
    Commissioner Steve Coz has proposed using the money for traffic calming devices, and Commissioner Don MaGruder suggested using it to rebuild the Woolbright Road detention/retention pond.

By Steve Plunkett

    Ocean Ridge officials have an outside attorney standing by to defend them in case former Vice Mayor Richard Lucibella makes good on his threat to sue the town for alleged police brutality.
    Lucibella’s lawyer, Marc Shiner, said fellow West Palm Beach attorney Andrea Amigo represents the town “in anticipation of litigation that has not been filed.”
    Lucibella, 63, is charged with battery on a police officer and resisting the officer with violence, both felonies, as well as a misdemeanor count of using a firearm while under the influence of alcohol. He has pleaded not guilty; his trial is set to begin July 21.
    Shiner scheduled depositions on June 7 of Police Chief Hal Hutchins, Town Commissioner Steve Coz and Town Manager Jamie Titcomb. The next day he plans to question police Lt. Richard Jones, who handled the department’s internal investigation of Lucibella’s arrest, and current Vice Mayor Jim Bonfiglio.
    Shiner also asked Circuit Judge Charles Burton to bar Amigo from attending the depositions because she is a “nonparty” attorney in the case. A hearing was scheduled for June 2.
    Amigo’s firm was retained by Ocean Ridge’s insurance company, Town Attorney Glen Torcivia said. Amigo, whose legal specialties include government agency liability, declined to talk about Lucibella.
    “We cannot discuss potential litigation,” she said.
    At the commission’s May 22 budget workshop, Bonfiglio spoke of setting aside money for “the Lucibella matter—that’s not pending yet but I know it’s threatened.”
    Shiner has also scheduled depositions for July 11 of Kim Hutchins, the chief’s wife, Mayor Geoff Pugh and police Sgt. William Hallahan, now retired. He will depose arresting officers Nubia Plesnik and Richard Emeri the following day. Hallahan, Plesnik and Emeri went to Lucibella’s oceanfront home Oct. 22 after neighbors reported hearing gunfire. They confiscated a .40-caliber handgun and found five spent shell casings on the backyard patio.
    With Lucibella was one of the officers’ supervisors, Lt. Steven Wohlfiel. Both men were “obviously intoxicated,” the police said.
    During the arrest, Lucibella was pinned to the patio pavers and suffered injuries to his face and ribs. Shiner has said the police overreacted.
    Officers later determined the confiscated handgun belonged to Wohlfiel, who was fired for his role in the incident Jan. 4.  
    Wohlfiel is appealing his dismissal. His position has not been filled.
    Lucibella resigned his vice mayor and town commissioner positions Dec. 7.
    Burton has set aside four weeks for the trial.
Rich Pollack contributed to this story.

Smoke-free zone signs are in place at Oceanfront Park.

Tom Warnke/The Coastal Star

By Jane Smith

    Boynton Beach has created a voluntary smoke-free zone at its Oceanfront Park.
    “People will still be able to smoke in designated areas of the park. It’s more of a courtesy thing,” said Mayor Steven Grant. “I want to promote a family-friendly city where respect for others is important.”
    The idea came from an unnamed resident, Grant said.
    The city’s Parks Department purchased portable ashtrays using a Keep Palm Beach County Beautiful grant, said Colin Groff, an assistant city manager. The ashtrays are given to smokers to use in the parking lot and on the boardwalk. That way, butts might not end up on the ground.
    Cigarette filters contain man-made products that take years to break down, according to the PreventCigaretteLitter.org website.
    In early May, the city posted three signs about the voluntary program at Oceanfront Park. Each sign cost $10 to make because Boynton Beach has its own sign shop. The signs read: “Breathe freely. Voluntary smoke free zone. Please smoke in parking lot and on boardwalk.” The no-smoking program is voluntary and won’t be enforced, Groff said.
    Florida does not have an outdoor clean air act that bans smoking in public spaces, said Groff.

By Mary Thurwachter

    Cynthia Cain goes to the beach every day.
    “I’m not much of a sunbather type of girl, but I like to walk along the shore and swim,” the Lantana resident said. “I have six grandchildren 10 and under and I like to take them, too.”
    But by the third weekend in May, Cain wasn’t loving the beach so much. She said she was “totally disgusted with all the seaweed” that was covering the beach. It has been bad for a while, she said, but that weekend, she had seen enough.
    After sending several emails to the Town Council and Town Manager Deborah Manzo asking for the beach to be cleaned of the seaweed, she attended the May 22 town meeting. Mayor Dave Stewart had her complaint added to the agenda for discussion.
    There was discussion, but no action was taken, at least not the kind Cain wanted.
    “Seaweed cannot be removed,” said Stewart. “It’s a Town Council policy.”
    Vice Mayor Lynn Moorhouse added: “I don’t think it’s legal.”
    Seaweed, Moorhouse said, is essential for marine life. It keeps replacement sand on beaches, offers crucial delicacies such as crabs and snails to seabirds, and provides nutrients to plants on dunes.
    And not removing it is what Dan Bates, deputy director of the Palm Beach County Department of Environmental Resources Management, recommends, according to Stewart.
    “A month ago, I was on the beach for the Earth Day cleanup and I didn’t see a problem with it,” Stewart said.
    Not complying with what Bates recommends could cost the town millions for beach restoration, council members suggested.
    Council member Ed Shropshire said: “I know it’s not pretty and doesn’t smell good, but it’s part of the environment. In three weeks it’ll be gone, washed back into the sea.”
    Council member Phil Aridas said he wasn’t in favor of moving the seaweed. “You can always kick it aside and lay down your beach blanket.”
    But Cain wasn’t buying it. “Quite honestly, we have the worst beach around,” she said, “and I’m not the only one saying it. The lifeguard hears about it all day.”
    A beach stabilization project has been delayed by a year because project managers don’t have all the easement agreements and government permits they need to begin work.
    In other action, the council:
    • Authorized spending $4,658 from the town’s Law Enforcement Trust fund for enhanced ballistic body armor for the Police Department.
    • Heard a report on the Greater Lantana School Community Education Council from Chairwoman Lyn Tate.
    • Set its first budget workshop for 5:30 p.m. June 12.

By Dan Moffett

    The Briny Breezes Town Council is moving forward with plans to create an administrative position and to hire a part-time manager to fill it before the end of the summer.
    Council President Sue Thaler said she hopes to assemble a volunteer committee of several residents during the June 22 town meeting to help define the job description for the new manager’s position.
    Thaler will provide much of the background information for the committee to consider. She says she is working between 20 and 25 hours a week for the town without pay, handling administrative duties no one else is willing to do. Thaler said she won’t continue doing the work much longer.
    “I’m not going to leave the town in a lurch, but I’m not going to keep doing it on an unpaid basis,” she said. “It’s too time-consuming.”
    Briny Breezes is the only municipality of the 39 in Palm Beach County that does not have some version of a paid administrator. That includes even towns that are smaller than Briny, such as Glen Ridge and Cloud Lake.
    “We needed this a long time ago,” said Alderman Bobby Jurovaty, saying that running the town is much more complicated today than decades ago. “Sue is just doing too much as a volunteer, and it’s not right. We need a professional in that seat helping us.”
    Council members set aside $50,000 in the 2016-17 budget to pay for a combination clerk-manager position. They filled the clerk job in November, hiring Jackie Ermola, but could not find qualified applicants for the part-time manager’s role. The council hopes to use the unspent money set aside last year to hire an experienced manager soon. Thaler said a couple of promising candidates have come forward in recent weeks.
    In other business:
    • Corporate board member Tom Oglesby gave the council a revised version of the Green Sheet, the town’s building permit application and rules, that the corporation has been working on for more than a year.
    Oglesby said the overhauled form is more concise, clearer and updated to include recent changes in flood zone requirements. It also explains what work requires permitting and what doesn’t.
    “It’s not perfect,” Oglesby said, “but it’s a lot better.”
    The town’s Planning and Zoning Board is scheduled to review the new form at 1 p.m. on June 22. Board Chairman Jerry Lower said the panel is prepared to move quickly to advance the form to the council for final approval.
    • The Florida Department of Transportation has rejected the town’s plans for putting a golf cart crossing at A1A and Cordova Avenue.
    FDOT officials told the town it must either turn Cordova into a two-way street or widen sidewalks to earn state approval.
    “Those aren’t our first choices,” Thaler said. “This is not the response we were hoping for.”
    The council is scheduled to hold a workshop at 1 p.m. on June 8 to discuss possible changes to the crossing plans.

Workshop members in Boca Raton take a walking tour of U.S. 1, also known as Federal Highway.

Workshops are set this month for Delray Beach and Boynton Beach.

Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star

By Rich Pollack

    As it stretches 42 miles from Camino Real in Boca Raton to Indiantown Road in Jupiter, U.S. 1 crosses through 14 municipalities.
    In some places along the stretch, you’ll find bike paths and sidewalks, in other places you’ll see sidewalks on only one side.
 You might also find intersections that need better lighting or improved traffic signals.
    Now, the Palm Beach Metropolitan Planning Organization is working on a study that will create a blueprint for coordinated improvements along the east Palm Beach County corridor.
    “We’re creating a unified vision, but one that is feasible,” says Valerie Neilson, principal planner and multimodality manager for the organization’s U.S. 1 Multimodal Corridor Study. “We’re trying to create a plan that connects all of the communities.”
    The study, which began in February, is scheduled to wrap up by next spring and will include recommendations on what improvements can be made along the corridor. Once that is completed, the design phase can begin, setting the stage for implementation of the recommendations.
    Since U.S. 1 is a state road and falls under the jurisdiction of the Florida Department of Transportation, the MPO planners will be working closely with FDOT on the project to coordinate all efforts.
    While there will be a focus on bike paths and sidewalks and the “complete streets” concept, which addresses needs of pedestrians, bicyclists and motorists, the MPO study goes much further and looks at several areas of improvement.
    There’s a public transit element to the study, where teams will be looking at the stops along the way as well as schedules to ensure they’re both meeting the needs of the riders. Data show that U.S. 1 serves about 8,600 bus riders per day, making it the busiest bus route in the county. “We’re looking at how we can improve existing service,” Neilson said.
    The study also could identify bus-stop facilities to upgrade and recommend ways to improve the branding and images of buses along the corridor.
    Safety is a major focus of the study, as planners look for ways to reduce crashes.
    Between 2011 and 2016, there were 12 pedestrian fatalities and three bicycle fatalities along U.S. 1, all at night. The three bicycle fatalities took place in Boca Raton north of Glades Road.
    In that same time frame, there were 321 pedestrian or bicycle-involved crashes, with 82 percent of the bicycle crashes occurring in areas where there are no bike lanes.
    As part of the study, engineers and planners will look at traffic flow to see whether lane reductions might improve safety. They’ll also be looking at signals and speed limits.
    An innovative part of the study will include a health-impact assessment, in which planners will explore issues such as how difficult it is for people without cars to reach grocery stores safely.
    Funding for the $775,000 study is provided by the MPO, a collaborative organization governed by Palm Beach municipal and county elected leaders designed to identify and prioritize transportation projects.  
    As part of the process, the MPO team has been holding meetings with community members, the first of which took place last month in Boca Raton. During that meeting and a walking audit, the team heard from residents and community leaders who offered suggestions to improve safety and mass transit.
    A series of meetings will be held this month for Delray Beach and Boynton Beach residents and community leaders.  A combined workshop, which will include a walking audit, will take place 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. June 24 at the Boynton Beach Library, 208 Seacrest Blvd.
    In addition, there will be open-studio charrettes for both cities from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. June 27-28 at the Boynton Beach Clubhouse, 2240 N. Federal Highway.
    A workshop for Hypoluxo and Lantana will be July 22 at a location to be announced.
    The MPO will also have open-studio charrettes July 24-26 at a location to be determined. Workshops are 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. and open-studio charrettes are 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
    For more information, visit www.us1pbcorridorstudy.com.

By Jane Smith

    The long-awaited iPic deal closed on May 16.
    The developer paid $3.6 million to the Delray Beach Community Redevelopment Agency for 1.6 acres between Southeast Fourth and Fifth avenues, just south of Atlantic Avenue.
    When complete in 2020, the iPic complex will boast 497 luxury seats in eight screening rooms with a total of 44,979 square feet and a 42,446-square-foot office building where iPic has agreed to move its corporate headquarters and occupy 20,000 square feet for five years.
    The development also will include 7,847 square feet of retail space and a multilevel garage with 326 spaces, providing 90 public parking spaces.
    The deal, originally signed in December 2013, was controversial because the CRA didn’t notify nearby landowners of its intentions to sell the land. The agency relied on a change in state law that no longer required the notification.
    Over the years, the agreement was amended seven times, with the latest closing set for Jan. 31.
    As part of the closing, iPic was supposed to provide a parking plan for its construction workers and for customers in the 400 block of Atlantic while building its complex. The theater developer provided a draft version of its parking plan. Its development order from a city board called for iPic to use “best efforts” to find the temporary parking spaces for customers until the garage is finished.

James Blumenfeld, co-owner of Meridian Art Experience in Delray Beach’s Pineapple Grove,

displays works mainly from local artists and offers services for collectors.

Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star

    James Blumenfeld and business partner Susan Romaine learned from their first meeting in 2014 that they had a mutual love of art, and their combined efforts since culminated in the Feb. 2 grand opening of Meridian Art Experience in the Pineapple Grove neighborhood of Delray Beach.
    The gallery aims to make the middle-art market affordable and approachable.
    “Our vehicle is to invite people in to experience original artwork,” said Blumenfeld, a St. Louis native who enjoyed great success in the corporate world prior to this venture. “Our tag line is ‘The fine line of living with art.’ Really just to be able to integrate all the different forms of art — anything you happen to love — into an environment that works for you.”
    While it’s been more by happenstance than by design, local artists have played a prominent role in the gallery at 170 NE Second Ave. Romaine, an artist herself, has used her connection in the South Florida community to feature up-and-comers largely ranging from Boca Raton to West Palm Beach.
    “I always had a passion for art,” said Blumenfeld, 54. “It started with becoming an art history major in college, probably even before then. I took art history as a survey course to fulfill a humanities requirement. I didn’t really know what I had stepped into, but I just fell in love with it.
    “It really was the history of the world, with visual arts as your looking glass. That, to me, was attractive. I love history and I just loved the idea of studying history with a visual connection. So that was the beginning of my love of art. I’ve been an admirer and collector of art ever since.”
    A Cardinals fan, Blumenfeld said he also has a passion for baseball. “Most people would never guess by meeting me, with my background and all that, that I’m a big baseball fan.”
    Meridian Art Experience is sponsoring a Delray Beach art walk from 6 to 9 p.m. the first Friday of each month.
— Brian Biggane

    Q. Where did you grow up and go to school? How did that influence what you’re doing now?
    A. I grew up in a suburb of St. Louis and went to school at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and then moved back and got my MBA from Washington University in St. Louis. I fell in love with art after taking an art history class in college.

    Q. What professions have you worked in? What professional accomplishments are you most proud of?
    A. I had my own company for a short time and then went on a corporate track for a good stretch of time. I went to Ralston-Purina, which owned what was then Continental Baking, which was comprised of Hostess and Wonder. I helped develop Mini-Muffins, Brownie Bites, all of that, and that was great fun. I went to Nabisco from there, helped them introduce some Healthy Choice snacks and crackers.
    Then I moved on to Coca-Cola in Atlanta, where I was in the global marketing group and really learned the essence of branding. I was there for several years, traveled the globe and really learned about culture.
    Then, for family reasons, I moved back to the Northeast, up to New York, and went to work for Citibank in the late ’90s, when everybody was doing something in the Internet. I was leading a marketing group to create the virtual bank, which ultimately became Citibank.com.
    Then I went to work for Ameritrade for a while as chief marketing officer. Then the bubble burst, and the people from Ameritrade wanted me to go to Omaha, Neb., to run their marketing, and I said no thanks. … I took a [severance] package from them and ended up starting my own marketing consulting firm in Connecticut.
    My husband joined us a year later and we adopted a son, then decided to move to Central Florida to increase our son’s educational opportunities. He was 6 at the time. At that point I took some time away from the business.
    When I went back I ended up running our nonprofit piece of the business. We’ve done work in the areas of equality, education, autism, etc. I’m very proud of my efforts in that area.
    I’ve introduced a lot of new products along the way, which has been really fun. I did a Super Bowl commercial for Ameritrade.

    Q. What advice do you have for a young person selecting a career today?
    A. I believe people should be sponges; that’s how I’ve operated. You learn from everything, and where there’s an opportunity to take on assignments, there’s an opportunity to learn. And if you do that, it opens up your listening, it changes how you deal with people, if you sort of take that approach.

    Q. How did you choose to make your home in coastal Delray Beach?
    A. The big reason was my son, who will be 15 in July. He’s gifted in math and science and we were looking for the right place for him to move forward in his development. Having my own marketing firm made us fortunate enough to be able to live wherever we wanted.
    The move to Delray also proved to fit nicely with my own move toward the arts scene in Central Florida. One of the things we got involved with in Orlando was the Flying Horse Editions. Flying Horse is a fine-arts studio sponsored by the University of Central Florida; it’s part of their curriculum. They created a program where they had about 25 or 30 families who paid money, and that would fund three or four artists through the course of the year. Then at the end of the season each family got one piece from each of the artists. So you would get three or four pieces, a numbered print. It’s a phenomenal program. They’ve started doing art fairs and all of that, and I was on their board for a while. That was the early engage for me. I was involved with the arts to some degree up in the Northeast, but not the way I got involved in Central Florida.
    I was also one of the members of the patrons committee for the Winter Park Arts Festival.

    Q. What is your favorite part about living in Delray Beach? 
    A. The weather. I don’t like the cold. I’ve lived in St. Louis, New Jersey, and I don’t miss any of that. My favorite part about living in Florida is watching winter on TV. And I believe summer is the best-kept secret in South Florida. We never get as hot as St. Louis. They have 10-, 15-day stretches of 95- to 105-degree weather. That doesn’t happen here. If it gets to 92 that’s a hot day here, and then it rains.

    Q. What book are you reading now?
    A. I’ve just started Captivate by Vanessa Van Edwards. It’s all about social engagement. How to work a room, how to be social, how to engage people. It’s fascinating. 

 
    Q. What music do you listen to when you need inspiration? When you want to relax?
    A. I like country, I like pop, I like rock ’n’ roll, I like my old ’80s music. Any sort of rock, pop, contemporary, country genre. I like the anthem songs as well, especially if I’m trying to be moved or inspired. But I’m generally more moved by the performance than by the music itself. So if I’m at a concert, or if I’m watching TV and somebody is doing a performance, it’s like, wow. So I’m more visual.

    Q. Do you have a favorite quote that inspires your decisions?
    A. Two. One I wrote in my high school yearbook. It’s from James Thurber and reads, “Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness.” That to me is how I wish the world truly operated. The other is something I say all the time, an expression I picked up from a friend in Winter Park: “It’s all good.” Not sure who first said it, but it works for me.

    Q. Have you had mentors in your life?
    A. Professionally I’ve had them in almost every place I’ve worked. Whether it’s a boss or a peer, usually the boss that has helped and guided me through any career situation I might have in front of me, good or bad. Personally, one of my greatest mentors is my husband, Chris Cooney. We’re good for each other that way, in being able to coach each other. And of course, my parents; they did a lot for me. Family means a lot to me.

    Q. If your life story were made into a movie, who would you want to play you?
    A. I’d love to have Brad Pitt do it, but more realistically it’s probably Stanley Tucci.