Along Florida’s east coast, sand drifts from north to south. Where it comes from and where it goes is ruled by wind and water.
    Sometimes our beaches feel wide and serene. At other times, finding a dry place to walk below a seawall is impossible.
    The ocean has a way of reminding us of nature’s power. Yet, for years we have built homes and condos on the dunes. Now, we search for ways to save them. We are caught in an intractable cycle of putting more sand down and building taller sea walls to keep our property safe.
    Due to the drifting of sand and limited natural dunes, the town of South Palm Beach hopes to build structures along the beach to catch the sand as it drifts south. The town of Lantana hopes to be part of this sand capture, as its public beach is often without sand for the public to park their towels on.
    The Eau Palm Beach Resort and Spa has opted out of the plan to build these structures, as it would have required heavy equipment operating near their hotel guests and would have meant that more of their “private” beach would be required to allow public access since taxpayers are funding the project. For obvious reasons, neither of these things would be desirable for maintaining a five-star rating.
     The town of Manalapan is now poised to join that opposition with concerns that trapping the sand to the north could further erode its beaches to the south. There are examples in Broward County that seem to show this to be a possible outcome.
    At the same time, residents in Ocean Ridge and Briny Breezes are flabbergasted by an unusually tall duplex being built east of the dune between their towns. And Boca Raton is moving a similar structure in a similar location through the permitting process.
    The Coastal Star will be watching and reporting on how this all evolves over the coming months, but the cynic in me suspects lawyers will get rich and sand will continue to come and go until another major hurricane arrives to blow holes in all of our best intentions.
    In the meantime, the sea turtles return this time of year seeking places to nest along our dunes, and on Boca Raton’s newly renourished beaches, least terns are scouting nesting locations for the first time in 20 years — small, quiet acts that remind us of nature’s fortitude and reliance on the drifting of sand.

— Mary Kate Leming, Editor

    City commissioners will select a firm this month to search for a permanent city manager.
    Interim City Manager Neal de Jesus told Delray Beach commissioners in early June that he would serve through the upcoming budget cycle. That should give the commission enough time to find a new city manager, de Jesus said.
    City commissioners have talked about hiring a business executive, a chief executive officer, as the next city manager.
    “It’s not an easy town to run,” Mayor Cary Glickstein said at the meeting. “We have a $150 million budget and five bosses. You have to pay for what you get.”
    The current salary range for the city manager is $127,108 to $203,000. The city needs to advertise a base salary of $200,000 to $275,000, de Jesus said earlier in the year.
    As the interim city manager, de Jesus makes $187,012.80. He received that salary in March when his contract was amended to equal the pay of the former city manager.
 He also receives a $2,000 monthly housing allowance. When de Jesus returns to being the fire chief, he will make $159,515.20.
    Also at the early June meeting, de Jesus withdrew a third amended contract that would have paid him $200,000 and given him 24 weeks of vacation. The contract also would have raised his fire chief salary to equal his pay as interim city manager.

—Jane Smith

    Architect Reggie Cox will serve another four years on the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency board.
    Three new members will join him: Morris Carstarphen, Annette Gray and Allen “Sandy” Zeller.
    It took two meetings to fill the four open seats because Commissioner Mitch Katz missed the first meeting due to a travel delay.
    Cox was Mayor Cary Glickstein’s CRA pick at the City Commission’s first June meeting.
    Vice Mayor Jim Chard and Deputy Vice Mayor Shirley Johnson agreed, but Commissioner Shelly Petrolia did not. She wanted new candidates. The vote was 3-1.
    Johnson’s two nominations ended in tied votes. Then Chard selected Carstarphen, a businessman who used to be a Target Stores manager, as his pick. The three others agreed.  
    At the second June meeting, Katz selected Gray, a real estate broker and entrepreneur who had served on the CRA board previously. The vote was 4-1, with the mayor dissenting. Gray was one of Johnson’s picks that ended in a tied vote two weeks earlier.
    Zeller, a real estate lawyer with municipal board experience, was Petrolia’s selection.
    At the first June meeting, his pick did not receive a second. Petrolia deferred rather than lose that selection. At the second meeting Zeller’s selection received unanimous approval.
    Terms for the new CRA board members begin July 1.

—Jane Smith

    A public outreach campaign for the Palm Beach County Metropolitan Planning Organization’s multimodal study of the U.S.-1 corridor from Boca Raton to Jupiter continues with a workshop from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on July 22 at the Lake Worth Art Center. The study focuses on potential improvements for pedestrians, cyclists and transit along the 42-mile stretch of U.S. 1, including Hypoluxo, Lantana and Lake Worth.
    The Saturday workshop, one of several held throughout the county, includes an introductory presentation, a walking tour to audit existing facilities and needs, followed by group discussion on observed problems and potential solutions.
    The purpose is to develop a comprehensive plan to implement continuous multimodal facilities that connect the communities along the corridor, including upgraded Palm Tran bus service.
    Open studio/charrettes will follow July 24-26 at Lake Worth Art Center, 1121 Lucerne Ave., Lake Worth. For more information, see www.palmbeachmpo.org.

­—Mary Thurwachter

By Mary Thurwachter

    With an anticipated property tax revenue increase of $182,866 this year, Lantana Town Council members may have thought they’d be able to spend money on “want and wish list” items, including building a 6-foot wall to surround the town’s operation center, replacing a police motorcycle and adding a police officer, dispatcher and part-time assistant at the library.
    But the prospect of any of those things happening looks bleak, council members learned during the town’s first budget workshop of the year on June 12.
    Instead, the extra $182,866 will be swallowed by sports complex expenses and pensions for Police Department employees.
    Although the sports complex brought in $40,000, four times what had been projected, operational costs for staff for the complex are about $275,000.
    “So, we’re bringing in $40,000 and it’s costing us a quarter of a million,” Mayor Dave Stewart said. “There goes the $183,000. Gone. History. Sayonara.”
    More bad news came when the council learned that pension costs for police officers jumped about a half million dollars, from about $415,000 to $904,992.
    “I want to know why, because $904,992 is over 30 percent of what we bring in in taxes,” Stewart said. “So, 30 percent of every dollar every person pays in this town doesn’t go to anything except pension costs for the Police Department.”
    Town Finance Director Stephen Kaplan said the state would kick in approximately $115,000 and there are the employees’ contributions to consider, as well.
    “Why did it go up a half million dollars in one year?” the mayor asked.
    Town Manager Deborah Manzo said the soaring increase in pension costs was necessary to comply with state law, mainly relating to a jump from 25 percent to 45 percent in disability costs. The percentage changed because “that’s what the law is and we have not been compliant with the law,” she said.
    Other factors in the increase, Manzo said, included cost-of- living increases, new mortality tables used in calculations, and the addition of two officers to the town’s force in the past year.
    “Now [pension costs] are like double of what it was,” Stewart said. “I can’t accept that.”
    Stewart said he wanted to propose adjusting town employees’ wages so “that out of 90 employees five years later you don’t have only 15 left.”
    “I guess,” Stewart said, “it goes back to the old Mick Jagger Rolling Stones song You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”
    Projected general fund revenues for Lantana also include $560,000 from the 1-cent sales tax increase (although that money can be used only for infrastructure such as roads, bridges and drainage, and amenities such as parks), $568,000 from grants, plus a $100,000 transfer from the town’s insurance fund.
    The town will propose a tax rate during the second budget workshop on July 10. Lantana’s tax rate has been $3.24 per $1,000 of taxable value and is projected to stay the same for the 10th consecutive year, 2017-2018.
    But some council members suggested it may be time for an increase.
    “Everybody else raises it,” said Vice Mayor Lynn Moorhouse. “If [the rate] changed a hair probably a lot of these projects could go away. We’re not talking about a gazillion dollars, not when you’re looking at 3.2395. I know that’s set in stone for you, but things have changed over the past 25 years and this hasn’t. Just a thought.”
    The mayor didn’t respond, but council member Phil Aridas, who has favored a tax rate increase in the past, gave Moorhouse reason to hope.
    “That’s not set in stone for everybody that sits up here,” he said.

When rough seas kicked up by Tropical Storm Cindy made it impossible to offer entry-level instruction

as part of the ‘World’s Largest Swimming Lesson,’ Boynton Beach lifeguards decided to give young swimmers

a chance to try surfing and provided education about rip currents. The WLSL event was held globally to help

prevent drowning, the second-leading cause of injury-related deaths among children aged 1-14. Here, lifeguard

Tyler Russell assists 6-year-old Owen Finn as he tries out a surfboard.

Other swim and surf classes are offered during the summer.

Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star

By Jane Smith
    
    Two areas of Delray Beach may soon see new grocery stores in their neighborhoods.
    In the south side of the city, a type of Whole Foods Market likely will open in late 2018 in Lavers International Plaza.
    The Delray Beach location at 600 W. Linton Blvd. could be the first 365-branded store in Florida, according to the Whole Foods website. The 365 stores are smaller and focus on produce.
    In the Set, made up of the Northwest and Southwest neighborhoods along Atlantic Avenue, a Publix store could open in 2019.
    The city’s Community Redevelopment Agency agreed to sell 2.75 acres in the 600 block of West Atlantic to a broker for Publix. The grocery chain has 150 days to allow its real estate committee to review the site. The price will be $2 million for the land, where Publix could construct a 25,000-square-foot store.
    “There’s a whole process this has to go through,” said Randy Holihan, president of Pasadena Capital Inc., a real estate broker in Orlando. “Everyone is putting the cart before the horse.”
    But residents living in the Set have waited more than 30 years to have a grocery store within their community.
    “It’s been in the plans for a long time,” said resident Angie Gray, who is a residential real estate agent and former city commissioner.
    After the CRA board approved the deal on June 8, the meeting room erupted in applause.
    The Lavers Plaza store is further along with its plans. The project’s site plan was approved by the city in May.  
Steve Collins, of S.J. Collins Enterprises of Georgia, represented the project before the city’s Site Plan Review and Appearance board.
    He could not be reached for comment. But other indicators point to the location as suitable for a 365-branded store from Whole Foods. The 365 concept, named after the chain’s private-label brand, was created as the answer to critics who said Whole Foods’ products are too expensive.
    The 365 stores carry one-third of the products of the traditional Whole Foods Market and have more self-service departments, such as for meat and seafood, John Mackey, co-CEO of Whole Foods, said at the Oppenheimer Consumer Conference last year. As a result, Mackey said, labor costs are lower and the 365 stores are less expensive to run.
    The 365 stores also feature a loyalty program and have in-store “grocerants,” food boutiques set up by entrepreneurs.
    The Lavers Plaza 365 store would be approximately 30,025 square feet and offer outside dining.
    The site is less than a mile west of a Trader Joe’s grocery store in Delray Place. Market basket surveys of similar items in Trader Joe’s and 365 by Whole Foods showed that prices in both were similar.
    When announcing its Whole Foods chain purchase in mid-June, Amazon threw the grocery chain a lifeline.
    Its $13.7 billion acquisition, expected to close by the end of the year, came after several quarters of declining sales at Whole Foods stores that had been open at least one year. The declining sales had attracted some activist investors who pressed for a sale.
    The deal could help the Whole Foods chain buy more higher-quality products at lower prices, several analysts have said.
    So far, Amazon has said little about how it intends to run the Whole Foods chain.
— Rich Pollack contributed to this story.

By Dan Moffett

    Ocean Ridge Vice Mayor James Bonfiglio says he’s spent hours in recent weeks trying to figure out what went wrong with the town’s financial record-keeping last year.
    He’s not happy about that. And he’s not happy that Town Manager Jamie Titcomb failed to catch the problems months ago — and then didn’t tell the commission immediately when he found out about the errors.
    “When were you planning on telling us that our books didn’t balance?” Bonfiglio asked Titcomb during the June 5 town meeting. “It’s the manager’s job to catch this. Your hair should have been on fire.”
    Titcomb accepted responsibility and told the commission he’s been taking a forensic approach to finding the source of the technical problems.
    Bonfiglio said he has talked on the phone for hours with the town’s auditor and a data consultant the town had to hire to undo the damage caused by an apparent software glitch.
    About a year ago, Bonfiglio said, something went wrong with transmission of the town’s monthly financial statements. Incoming revenues were not recorded in the data collection.
    This went on for nearly a year, the vice mayor said, until the town’s auditor, Ron Bennett of Nolan, Holt & Miner, caught the problem in February during his annual review of the town’s books.
    Bennett advised Titcomb to hire the data retrieval consultant to find the glitch and reconstruct the missing data.
The consultant charged the town roughly $7,000 to straighten out the mess — a bill Bonfiglio and Commissioner Steve Coz think the town would have avoided had Titcomb been more vigilant.
    “Nobody was balancing the books,” Bonfiglio said. “Nobody was reconciling the monthly statements to the general ledger.”
Commissioners said they were also annoyed the manager kept them in the dark about the consultant’s hiring until it came up as a surprise during a budget workshop in May.
    Titcomb has said he thinks the data loss was caused either by a lightning strike in March 2016 or by an appending glitch that occurred when two employees tried to work in the system at the same time.
    He also said reassignment of some staff duties and outdated accounting software have contributed to problems.
    The vice mayor said only Titcomb and Town Clerk Tracey Stevens are authorized to reconcile the monthly statements, so the blame shouldn’t go to office staff members.
    “It really doesn’t have to do with software or changing assignments,” Bonfiglio said. “This should have come to somebody’s attention in March [2016].”
    The commissioners and Titcomb do agree, however, that the town has received all the money it was supposed to receive, and the problem does not go beyond record-keeping.
    “To me, it is my responsibility,” Titcomb told the commission. “You hired me to fix and evolve and modernize legacy systems in this town. I have taken the approach of trying to forensically understand why certain things aren’t working properly and gone about trying to break them to fix them.”
    Mayor Geoff Pugh told Titcomb: “You are the finance manager and the budgetary manager. You should have seen those zeros and figured it out.”
    Titcomb said the problem is obvious in hindsight but was not as apparent last year.
    He told commissioners corrections made to the system will prevent problems going forward.
    The manager said he expects Bennett to give the town a clean bill of health when he makes his audit report this summer.
    Said Bonfiglio, “Frankly, I’m disappointed.”
    In other business, commissioners directed Police Chief Hal Hutchins to put up a “No Unloading or Loading” sign at the east end of Beachway Drive and to work with Titcomb to develop a plan for changing the traffic pattern on the street.
    The commission wants to consider the plan at the July 10 meeting.

Related story: Two municipalities strengthen group-homes ordinances

By Mary Hladky

    New laws and funding are in place to crack down on the addiction treatment industry and fight the opioid crisis in Florida.
    Gov. Rick Scott on June 26 signed into law wide-ranging legislation introduced by state Sen. Jeff Clemens, D-Lake Worth, and state Rep. Bill Hager, R-Boca Raton, intended to halt patient brokering and deceptive marketing.
    Provisions of the legislation, consolidated under Hager’s version of the bill, 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 the state Department of Children and Families to regulate treatment centers. DCF will draft rules on administrative and clinical standards by January, and licensing fees will be increased substantially to pay for the increased regulation.
    “I’ve seen firsthand the deplorable conditions that some of these (sober home) residents live in, which cause havoc in their neighborhoods,” Hager said in a statement. “With this new legislation, law enforcement will have more tools in which to arrest and subsequently prosecute bad actors.”
    Scott also signed into law tough penalties for possession of fentanyl, a painkiller as much as 100 times more potent than morphine, and similar synthetic opioids. Heroin is often cut with fentanyl, making it far more deadly. Synthetic opioids are added to the list of drugs that can result in a dealer’s being charged with murder if the buyer dies.
    Another bill that is now law enhances collection of overdose data by allowing emergency medical technicians and paramedics to report overdoses to the Florida Department of Health. In addition, it requires hospital emergency departments to establish overdose policies.
    Also signed into law is a bill that requires prescriptions filled for controlled substances be entered into a state prescription monitoring database by the end of the next business day. One of its original provisions that would have limited the initial amount of opioids prescribed to a five-day supply was stripped from the final bill.
    Three legislative appropriations survived a fierce battle between Scott and legislators over the state budget.
    The Sober Homes Task Force, launched last year with $250,000 in state funding by Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg to investigate allegations of fraud and abuse within the drug treatment industry and propose solutions, will continue its operations for another year.
    Lawmakers appropriated $300,000 to keep the task force in business.
    Many key task force recommendations were incorporated into the legislation drafted by Hager and Clemens. The task force’s law enforcement arm has been responsible for the arrests of nearly 30 people on charges of insurance fraud or patient brokering.
    “The task force is now on track to continue its work through June of 2018,” said Chief Assistant State Attorney Al Johnson, who heads the task force.
    The Legislature also appropriated $500,000 for the county’s Opioid Abuse Pilot Program launched early this year. The program offers people who overdose support services after they leave the emergency room at JFK Medical Center in Atlantis.
    The Florida Association of Recovery Residences, a nonprofit that oversees voluntary inspection and certification of sober homes for the state, was not fully funded.
    The Legislature appropriated $100,000, but FARR had requested $275,000. Last year, lawmakers allocated no money to FARR, forcing it to seek donations and loans.
    “The question is, how do we fulfill the mandate properly without adequate financial support?” CEO John Lehman asked in an email.
    FARR was expected to move its offices from Boca Raton to Lantana on July 1 to save money. Supporters, including addiction treatment centers Treatment Partners of America in Boca Raton and Hanley Center in West Palm Beach, are planning to host fundraising events, Lehman said.
    That will help FARR bridge the gap until it becomes self-supporting through fees charged for certifications.

    Two south county coastal cities are reining in rogue sober homes by strengthening their group homes ordinances.
Boynton Beach will hold a public hearing July 18 on these proposed changes:
    • Have at least 300 feet between group homes. In June, city commissioners asked whether the distance could be greater. Planning staff members said they would check on that.
    • Require that new group homes, including sober homes where drug users stay while going through rehabilitation, be certified. The Florida Association of Recovery Residences offers the only program recognized by the state, and it is voluntary. Existing sober homes will have until Oct. 1, 2018, to become certified.
    • Group homes must obey parking regulations in neighborhoods.
    Delray Beach’s community residences ordinance passed through the city’s Planning and Zoning Board in mid-June. Commissioners will vote this month on these changes:
    • Have at least 660 feet between the group homes, if they are new.
    • New sober homes will have to be certified by FARR. Existing sober homes will have until April 1, 2018, to become certified.
    • Group homes must obey parking regulations in neighborhoods.
    Addicts who maintain sobriety while living together are a protected class under federal laws.
—Jane Smith

By Jane Smith
    
    Boynton Beach’s long-awaited Town Square project received a cash infusion in mid-June.
    City commissioners began the June 12 meeting in their usual places on the dais.
    Midway through the meeting, they adjourned and switched name plates to their Community Redevelopment Agency positions. After voting on the agency contribution, they ended that meeting and reopened the City Commission meeting.
    When all was said and done, they agreed to pay $4.36 million in the first phase of the Town Square project. About $1.5 million of that will go toward restoring the city’s historic high school.
    In addition to the high school renovations, the money will be used to create plans for the new police headquarters and fire station, and to cover other costs such as architectural, engineering, surveying and permit fees.
    Members of the public will be invited to meetings in late July and early August, said Colin Groff, assistant city manager, to say what they think about uses for the high school and where the project’s parks should be.
    Groff said he hopes to have a contract that the City Commission can vote on in November.
    Town Square’s total estimated cost is $94.5 million, Groff said. The amount will be reduced by land sales to the developer, projects that are already in the budget for the next few years and CRA contributions, he said.
    The 16.5-acre project will create a downtown-like area with a hotel, apartments, condos, townhouses and shops, just south of Boynton Beach Boulevard and between Seacrest Boulevard and Northeast First Avenue.
    A new City Hall, updated city library, renovated Schoolhouse Children’s Museum and restored high school will be part of the mix. Outside of the project area, a new police headquarters is tentatively set for city land on High Ridge Road, while a new Fire Station 1 will sit just east of Northeast First Avenue.
    During the agency portion of the meeting, board members learned from the CRA director that the agency’s share of Town Square will come from the sale of the Magnuson House, leftover dollars from the Marina project and the unused money for a proposed dog park that was not approved.
    “This project is going to take a significant portion of the budget for the next four to five years,” said Michael Simon, agency director. “Then it will be multiple years of payments.”
    The city and CRA expect to pay for their shares of the project by selling land and issuing bonds. The bonds would retire on Sept. 20, 2044, to coincide with the date the CRA sunsets, Simon said.
    “This is sticker shock when you look at the CRA budget,” said Justin Katz, CRA board member. “But the alternative would be to raise taxes.”

Lyn Tate with her dachshunds Sir Charles, 12, and Duke, 4, outside her Hypoluxo Island home.

Tate is a community activist for the island and the town of Lantana.

Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star

    Getting Lyn Tate to sit still for even a short time is no easy feat.
    With her years in retail (including a stint working closely with legendary lingerie designer Eve Stillman at Saks Fifth Avenue on Worth Avenue in Palm Beach), plus raising two children to adulthood, and her current role as community activist in Hypoluxo Island and Lantana, Tate seems to always live her life in overdrive.
    “My husband (Rock) watches old Westerns or sitcoms on TV on weekends and he says to me, ‘Can’t you relax?’ I can relax, but I look around and it’s not going to get done unless somebody does it.
    “I’m like Mrs. Kravitz from the old Bewitched show. If anybody needs a question answered they don’t bother calling the town, they just call me. And that’s fine. I know the people to call and I’ve gained their respect. I’ve worked with them for three or four years now so they know who I am.”
    Tate, 58, lost her mother at a young age and moved from Port Washington, N.Y., to South Florida with her father when she was 12. A 1980 graduate of Florida State University, she split time between retail positions and being a homemaker until son Rock graduated from college in 2013.
    Then Judy Black, former president of the Hypoluxo Island Property Owners Association, pushed her until she joined the HIPOA Board, where she quickly became treasurer.
    Since then it’s been one add-on after another: Planning Commission for the town of Lantana, chairwoman of the Lantana Education Council, chairwoman of council member Malcolm Balfour’s election campaign, chairwoman of traffic calming for Hypoluxo Island.
    “So it’s funny,” she said with a grin, “I’m just sort of getting real big.”
— Brian Biggane

    Q. Where did you grow up and go to school? How has that influenced you?
    A. I’m definitely a New Yorker. From Port Washington, N.Y. My mother passed when I was 10, so I had my father and my older brother raising me from that point. My father retired and came to Florida when I was in eighth grade, so I had to retire, too, which is what brought me to Florida.
    Because of my superior New York education, I wound up in the advance classes down here.
    I put myself financially through college, worked from when I was 16, mostly in retail. I spent 10 years with Saks Fifth Avenue, which was pretty cool. That influenced our family in a big way, because both of our children went North to go to college. So I really believe in having that kind of exposure. I love Lantana and South Florida, but there’s more than that.
    But it sort of backfired, because our son opened his business in New Jersey. But we love going back to visit. And Linda, our daughter, was there a long time. She went to Rutgers and stayed three or four years up there after graduation, but now she’s back here.

    Q.  What professions have you worked in? What professional accomplishments are you most proud of?
    A. In retail I got to know Eve Stillman, a famous designer with whom I worked a lot toward the end of my career, so that was a big deal. Lingerie was big with her. There are other designers, but she liked me a lot and we had a great relationship. That was primarily in the Palm Beach Saks Fifth Avenue. I trained in Bal Harbour, moved to Atlanta, opened a variety of stores, came back to Boca Raton, they transferred me to Palm Beach, and then we decided to raise a family.
    In my second profession, motherhood, I’m just proud of the people my kids turned out to be. They’re hardworking people, they give back to society, so I’m proud of that.
    In the community part, they call me MacGyver now. I get things done. I’m sort of creative in my approach, and I have zest, and I guess I’m just really proud that I can stand on my own at 58 years old now and say, “Hi, I’m Lyn Tate.” It’s a little more about me right now.

    Q.  What advice do you have for a young person selecting a career today?
    A. Find your passion. When I went to Florida State I picked a program that had a 100 percent graduation rate and job placement. I got sort of cookie-cuttered in. My husband has been with the same firm for 34 years now. That’s not what it’s about today. We were loyal to our trade. Now you just don’t stay 34 years with a company. You better be passionate about what you do now.
    And find something that gives back. My children — Linda is great, she’s a mentor with a program that gives back to athletes, and our son has taken high school kids under his wing and given them internship programs.

    Q.  How did you choose to make your home in Hypoluxo Island?
    A. My husband and I were renting in Delray and we decided to buy a home. We looked for over a year, and just couldn’t find anything we could afford. So the woman who gave him his college loan to go to Brown University called and said she was selling this house. I came over and looked and said no way. The trees were overgrown. It wasn’t what I wanted.
    Two weeks before she left she was going to give it to a Realtor and called and said, “I’m out of here,” and we were exhausted from looking. We came, got a hot dog over at the old Hawaiian, and we looked, and I said, I can’t believe I’m going to buy this old house.
    Then I started thinking about the crown molding in the living room, about the character. We had to do a lot of work on it. My father worked like 20 hours a week, we painted it, cleaned everything, tiled everything, carpeted everything. We moved in and I was laying tile on the floor a month before my daughter was born, and I couldn’t get up. I said, “OK, I’m done, you have to finish.”

    Q.  What do you like most  about Hypoluxo Island?
    A. I was taking a bike ride today and helped a blue crab across the street. That’s what I like. The butterflies, the birds, the blue crabs. We used to have red foxes, and still have one come by every now and then. But it’s really the nature. It’s so beautiful. We feel like we’re on our own little island.
    And as far as safety goes, we’ve really educated people on the island that if they see something, say something. We have a camera at the entrance and exit of the island, so that’s good, but the people have really become aware that we need to look out for each other.

    Q.  What book are you reading now?
    A. See Me, by Nicholas Sparks. He’s amazing. I’ve read every one of his books.
    Q.  What music do you listen to when you need inspiration? When you want to relax?
    A. I have everything from the Monkees to Frank Sinatra, and I have the same music for stress relief or to relax. Whatever it is, it’s my go-to. And if ’70s music comes on we start dancing, my husband and I. Typically, though, other than the morning news, I try to listen to the noise of the island. I’d rather listen to the birds and whatever.

    Q.  Do you have a favorite quote that inspires your decisions?
    A. “Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass, it’s about learning how to dance in the rain.” (Anonymous) That’s really my mantra. I was probably always like that because of different times in my life when it wasn’t so easy.

    Q.  Have you had mentors in your life? Individuals who inspired your life decisions?
    A. With my mother passing when I was young, definitely my brother, Andy, and my father, Andrew. Also my husband. My father taught me everything, which is why they call me MacGyver, because I can fix anything. My brother never let me say no. He was like, “You will go to college, you will get a job.”
    
Q.  If your life story was made into a movie, who would you want to play you?
    A. Helen Mirren. She’s a timeless, ageless beauty who’s smart, witty and strong.

By Rich Pollack

    BOCA RATON — Even in retirement, Dr. Pinghui Victor Liu remained a scientist.
    A microbiologist, physician, and tenured professor at the University of Louisville, Dr. Liu was a leader in his field and in the 1960s discovered two kinds of exotoxins from a common type of bacteria.
    Those toxins led to sometimes-fatal illnesses in patients.
     “This was a bug that would kill people,” said his daughter, Dr. Nancy Liu, a Boca Raton physician.
    Her father’s research led to the development of treatments for illnesses from the toxins created by the bacteria, with his work resulting in the publication of more than 40 of his scientific papers.
    A resident of Boca Raton following his retirement in 1997, Dr. Liu was 93 when he died on June 6.
    While living in South Florida, Dr. Liu — known by friends and neighbors as Victor — enjoyed gardening and was always searching for ways to improve his plants and fruit trees, testing a variety of fertilizers and alternative growing techniques.
    “He was always a scientist and always experimenting,” his daughter said.
    Born in Taiwan in 1924, Dr. Liu trained in Japan at the Tokyo Jikei Kai Medical School.
    He was in Japan during World War II and following the war was able to find one of the few jobs available, working as a technician at a U.S. Army microbiology lab in Tokyo.
    He wrote his first research paper while working in the lab, but one of the Army officers removed his name and took credit for the work.
    He wrote his second paper on his own time and was able to get credit for the work.
    Encouraged to move to the United States to continue his research by those who believed he had a bright future in the field, Dr. Liu landed an internship in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where he would endure anti-Asian sentiment. There he encountered patients who refused to be seen by him, his daughter said.
    He would later do his residency at the University of Kentucky Medical School and, also armed with a Ph.D., became a tenured professor there, continuing his research and teaching microbiology classes.
    Internationally recognized for his scientific work, Dr. Liu lectured all over the world and continued to travel for enjoyment after his retirement.
    “He had an interesting perspective on life because he had lived in three different cultures,” his daughter said.
    Dr. Liu is survived by his wife of 58 years, Chiameng Judy Liu; his son, Albert Liu; his daughter and her husband, Dr. James Houle; as well as granddaughters, Camille Houle and Lauren Houle.
    A memorial service for Dr. Liu was held on June 17. Contributions in his memory can be made to the Boca Raton Regional Hospital Foundation at brrh.com.

Addison Mizner designed the Boynton Woman’s Club building, which opened 91 years ago.

Woman’s Club members praised the proposed $110,000 sale of the building to the city.

Photo provided

By Jane Smith
    
    The grand old dame will be in good hands with the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency.
    Board members agreed in June to pay $110,000 for the 91-year-old Boynton Woman’s Club building, designed by famed architect Addison Mizner.
    The club will use the money to continue its 40-year-old scholarship program for high school seniors to further the memory of Major Nathan S. Boynton.
    “Our building belongs with the city,” said Pat Waldron, the club’s historic preservationist. “We are delighted an agreement has been made where the site will remain a memorial to Major Boynton, the founding father of the city, and the future leaders of the community will benefit through the scholarship trust.”
    Boynton Beach city commissioners sit as CRA board members. They all were enthusiastic about the deal.
    “Thank you for the opportunity to let us have the building,” said Steven Grant, board chairman.
    “Thanks for taking care of it for us,” said Joe Casello, a board member.
    The agency had the Mizner building appraised in May by Anderson & Carr. That appraisal valued the property at $2.4 million.
    That amount went over well with board member Christina Romelus because the agency is often criticized for selling properties at a loss.
    In 1925, Boynton Woman’s Club members used $35,000 from Boynton’s heirs to construct the two-story building with hardwood floors, French windows and doors, and curved arches. Mizner agreed to donate his plans and supervise the construction as long as quality materials were used and the building’s worth was more than $50,000.
    The next year, the structure opened. It serves as a fine example of the Mediterranean Revival style of architecture with original wrought ironwork. The 16,262-square-foot building sits on the National Register of Historic Places and the city’s register of historic places.
    “It’s a nice piece of property,” said Warren Adams, the city’s historic planner. “It’s better than letting it go to a private owner.”
    The ideal thing is to keep using the building, Adams said, and to keep up with the maintenance.
    “This is a win-win situation for the community and for the club membership,” Michele Walter, the club president, said after the meeting. “The historic building, which was built in 1924-1926, will continue to serve the community while having its historic value and history remain for future generations.”
    The building houses a ballroom, library and dining room and can be rented for both community and private events. The Woman’s Club will continue to hold its monthly luncheons and business meetings from October through May.
    The historic building sits on the eastern side of Federal Highway, just north of Woolbright Road. The agency will close on the building later this summer. Initial plans call for short-term rentals to be done by agency staff and then seeking a professional management company to operate the building.
    The Woman’s Club volunteers will continue to lease the property until the agency takes ownership. They have booked $23,750 worth of events for the rest of the 2017-18 period. Annual operating costs are estimated to be $90,000.

By Emily J. Minor

    GULF STREAM  — Walter Helmut Baum, a well-known lifeguard at Delray Beach’s Anchor Park S5 beach lifeguard station for nearly two decades, died June 17 from complications of a stroke he suffered five days earlier. He was 55.
    Jill Baum, his wife — whom he met on the beach, at that very station about 15 years ago — said it was all quite a shock.
    “He had no history of heart trouble, high blood pressure, cholesterol. Nothing,” she said. “He was a stud.”
    Mr. Baum was also quite the character.
    He loved to be called by all sorts of names, which he often pulled from nowhere. Among his favorites? Rocket Wildcard, Perry, Waldi, Wally, Helmut and Papa.
    He often dressed like a caricature of himself — maybe a soccer cap, a Dolphins jersey, and sports socks pulled up to his knees. And he often carried a to-go cup when he walked out of the house, a sweet cottage the couple bought in 2014 several years after their daughter, Juliet, was born.
    Mr. Baum was born in Graz, Austria, on July 23, 1961, the only child of Walter and Gerda Baum. After living through the war, the couple left Austria, eventually ending up in Washington, D.C. Mr. Baum, only 3 years old at the time, spent the rest of his youth there, his wife said, and attended the German School Washington D.C.
    After high school, he moved to Florida to study hospitality at Florida International University. It was then that his love affair began with the ocean and surfing.
    After a decade or so of working in hotels, Mr. Baum decided to go for his dream — ocean rescue. He worked out, schmoozed the beach-patrol secretary, worked out some more, and made the Ocean Rescue Lifeguard/EMT team.
    And he was loved.
    When his boss visited him in the hospital a few days after his stroke, as he was very much slipping away, he came to for a moment and winked at her, his wife said. “Walter was a character,” she said, simply.
    But while he was usually the life of any party, Mr. Baum was also extremely emotional, she said. After his mother and stepfather were killed in a car accident about five years ago, “he was a mess,” she said.
    His own father lived nearby and — oddly, in retrospect — suffered a stroke during a family birthday celebration about a year ago. He then lived five days, just like Mr. Baum.
    Through all that sadness, Mr. Baum latched onto the two big loves in his life: his wife, Jill, whom he married in 2004, and their daughter, Juliet, now 6. About two years ago, he even left beach patrol and took a lifeguard position at a city pool so he could spend more time with family.
    His wife said he was hit hard in 2014 when their daughter was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, a chronic disease that requires insulin delivery. Indeed, the family is asking that memorials for Mr. Baum be made in his name to: Juvenile Diabetes Research, 1641 Worthington Road, Unit 340, West Palm Beach, FL 33409.
    “He was a sensitive guy,” his wife said. “But he was so handsome and he had such charisma.”
    Services were June 21 at the family’s church, First Presbyterian Church of Delray Beach. Besides his wife and daughter, he is survived by longtime family friend Marguerite Rosner, whom he called his ”fairy godmother.” His dog, Brandy, also survives him.

By Steven J. Smith

    BOCA RATON — Bernell Stein lived a remarkably self-sufficient life marked by successful forays into retail sales, the founding of several businesses and ultimately a devotion to community service, according to her daughter, Elodie F. McAllister.
    “She was fiercely independent and really lived life on her own terms,” McAllister said. “Some might say she wasn’t exactly a people person. She went down a lot of different roads, but she always looked out for my brother Arlen and me.”
Ms. Stein died in her Boca Raton home May 17 following several years of declining health. She was 82.
    McAllister said her mother always embraced life, asserting, “it was never dull.”
    Born in St. Louis on June 23, 1934, Ms. Stein excelled at U-City High as a senior year delegate for Junior Achievement. Although she attended Washington University for only one semester before opting to get married at 18 to start a family, her daughter said she found her calling in retail sales after her 1969 divorce and later in developing her own businesses.
    “She worked at a department store in St. Louis and later founded the dating service Zodiac Introductions,” McAllister said. “She was always interested in astrology and felt it was relevant in matching people romantically by their birth signs.”
    McAllister said her mother founded another business, Creative Professional Marketing, before moving the family from Creve Coeur, Mo., to South Florida in 1971. It was here that she got into real estate and joined the Boca Raton Chamber of Commerce.
    “She loved the sand, the water and the warm weather,” McAllister said. “She hated the cold and the snow. Florida was paradise to her with the palm trees, banana trees, orchids and roses she surrounded herself with.”
    In the last 20 years of her life, Ms. Stein enjoyed donating her time to the Boca Raton Library, the Children’s Museum and the Gumbo Limbo Nature Center, to name a few.
    “That was when she was in her 60s and 70s and was retired,” McAllister said. “She always wanted to stay involved with the community.”
    Ms. Stein also liked to travel alone, visiting such places as China, Bali, French Polynesia, Europe, the Galapagos Islands, South America and Canada’s Yukon Territory, to name a few.
    McAllister said for many years she and her mother were very different people, but in the end she realized how alike — and connected — they were.
    “That was actually the theme of my eulogy,” she said. “We didn’t always understand or appreciate each other when I was young, but as I got older I realized that in my own way I was a lot like her — bucking trends, not caring so much what others think, shunning popular fashions. She was very independent minded, which takes courage in our society.”
    In addition to her daughter, Ms. Stein is survived by her sister, Marilyn (Lou) Salini, of St. Louis; son, Arlen (Patti) Fischlowitz; grandchildren, Elyssa (Ben) Holzer, Andrea Fischlowitz (Brandon Weiss) and Ross B. McAllister; and great-grandchildren, Jude William Holzer and Mika Priscilla Weiss.  In lieu of flowers, the family requested donations to Trustbridge hospice in West Palm Beach or M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

Property Matters, a real estate company with an Anglo-American team, has launched its first office

in Boca Raton with plans to expand into locations along the coast from West Palm Beach to Miami Beach.

Property Matters was founded by partners Ted Brown, Simon Isaacs and Paul Ross. The office is in The Monterey,

Suite A, 5499 N. Federal Highway, Boca Raton. Here, Paul Ross (left), Simon Isaacs (center)

and Ted Brown pose in a British telephone booth, signifying the Anglo- American roots of the company.

Photo provided

Most 90-year-olds could use a little TLC. For only the second time in its history, the 1926 Colony Hotel

on Atlantic Avenue in Delray Beach was tented for termites in June and reopened June 16.

The grand old dame is recognized by the city as a historic landmark

and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star

By Christine Davis

    Cathy Balestriere, board chairwoman of the Greater Delray Beach Chamber of Commerce, announced the installation of an interim leadership team following the recent resignation of Karen Granger as president and CEO.
    “We are grateful for Karen’s accomplishments and years of dedicated service to this valuable organization. We wish her well in her future and look forward to her continued participation as a valued member of our community,” said Balestriere.
    The new leadership team, Vin Nolan and Donald S. Schneider, will serve as interim co-CEOs until a permanent replacement is in place.
    Nolan comes to the chamber from the Florida Small Business Development Center at Palm Beach State College, where he was regional director and managed staff that provided consulting services to small businesses throughout the county. Prior to that, he was economic development director for the city of Delray Beach.
    Schneider is a business executive who had global leadership roles at corporations that included General Electric, Bertelsmann, The New York Times Co., AON and ADVO, with particular emphasis on financial services, technology, start-ups and turnarounds.
    “Together, they will oversee the chamber’s day-to-day operations, as we initiate a search to find a new CEO,” Balestriere says.
                                
    More than 45 vendors and 250 guests participated at the Greater Delray Beach Chamber of Commerce’s annual Delray Business Expo in May. The event was sponsored by The Conde Center for Chiropractic Neurology, CenterState Bank and Signarama.
                                
    Sarah Pearson was promoted to executive vice president of the Boca Chamber in May. She has been with the chamber since 2011, previously serving as the senior vice president of external relations.
                                
    During September, diners can enjoy bites of the Big Apple through the Boca Chamber’s inaugural Boca Restaurant Month, which will have a “Boca Loves New York” theme. Participating restaurants will serve three-course meals at reduced prices and offer at least one New York-inspired dish or cocktail.
    Lunches will be priced at $21 through $25, and dinners will be priced at $36 through $40. For a list of participating restaurants visit www.bocarestaurantmonth.com.
                                
    Glenn Jergensen, executive director of the Palm Beach County Tourist Development Council, is scheduled to be the featured speaker at the Greater Boynton Beach Chamber of Commerce’s networking luncheon at 11:30 a.m. July 12. It will be held at Benvenuto Restaurant, 1730 N. Federal Highway, Boynton Beach. Cost is $35 for non-members. Call 732-9501.
                                
    The Festival Management Group’s Sizzlin’ Summer Social Series offers three evenings that combine craft cocktails, activities and food pairings.
    “Rum, Rhythm & Rumba,” from 8 to 10 p.m. July 8, will feature a Fred Astaire dance program, along with pineapple rum punch, spiced-rum Planters Punch, Cruzan Apple craft cocktails and light bites.
     At “Vodka Riot,” 7 to 9 p.m. Aug. 12, vodka-infused dishes will be offered by chefs Joey Giannuzzi of the Farmer’s Table, Blake Malatesta of MIA Kitchen Bar, Eric Baker of Max’s Harvest, Jessie Steele of Death or Glory and Thomas Op’t Holt of 50 Ocean.
     At “Bottomless Bloody Mary & Brunch on a Stick,” 1-3 p.m. Aug. 27, meals on a skewer to go with each Bloody Mary will be prepared by chefs from Ceviche 401, Harvest Seasonal Grill & Wine Bar, Death or Glory, and Pizza Rustica.
     These events will be held at the Old School Square Fieldhouse, 51 N. Swinton Ave., Delray Beach Tickets cost $45 and must be purchased at least two days before each event.
                                
    BizBash ranked the South Florida Garlic Fest third among the most popular Food & Restaurant Industry events and ranked Delray Affair second among the most popular Parades & Festivals in its 2017 list of the Top 100 Events in South Florida. BizBash considers the event’s influence, innovation, reach and economic impact.
                                
    Eric Gordon, chairman of Akerman LLP law firm’s Labor & Employment Practice Group, was installed as president of the South Palm Beach County Bar Association on June 10 at the Association’s 56th Annual Installation Gala at the Woodfield Country Club in Boca Raton.
    Gordon will serve a one-year term. For two decades, Gordon has represented employers in labor and employment matters across a range of sectors, including telecommunications, hospitality, health care, retail and financial services. His work has earned him recognition in “The Best Lawyers in America” for employment law and Florida’s “Super Lawyers” for employment and labor and business litigation.
    Gordon previously was the managing partner of Akerman’s Palm Beach County offices. He formerly served on the board of directors for the Economic Council of Palm Beach County, the Education Foundation of Palm Beach County, and as a trustee for the Greater Boca Raton Chamber of Commerce. He also is a past president of the Human Resource Association of Palm Beach County.
                                
    In May, members of the Realtors Association of the Palm Beaches voted to merge with the Greater Fort Lauderdale Realtors. This merger will form the third largest local Realtor association in the nation in becoming the Realtors of the Palm Beaches and Greater Fort Lauderdale, according to the National Association of Realtors.
    “The merging of these two boards represents more than 25,000 association members and 30,000 MLS subscribers. The merged association’s multiple listing services will carry more than 40,000 on-market listings, totaling over $21 billion in inventory,” said John Slivon, president of the Palm Beach County association.
    Dionna Hall will be installed as the CEO of the merged association and MLS.
                                
    Holliday Fenoglio Fowler announced June 15 that it had closed the $59.75 million sale of Peninsula Executive Center, 2381 and 2385 Executive Center Drive, Boca Raton. HFF marketed the 187,784-square-foot, Class A office property for the seller and found the buyer, C. Talanian Realty Co.  Also, HFF worked on behalf of the new owner to secure $33.5 million in financing through Principal Real Estate Investors.
    Peninsula Executive Center consists of two four-story office buildings and a 742-space parking structure. The property is 97 percent leased and is anchored by Newell Brands. The HFF team was led by senior managing directors Chris Drew and Hermen Rodriguez, director Ike Ojala, associate director Brian Gaswirth and associate Matthew McCormack.
                                
     “Mar-Cielo,” a home at 701 S. Ocean Boulevard, Delray Beach, sold for $13.375 million on May 16, according to public records. The 1948-era, five-bedroom house, with 7,000 total square feet, sits on over an acre with 120 feet on the ocean. Bradford Miller of the Corcoran Group represented the seller, 701 S. Ocean LLC, which lists Thomas J. Campbell as the registered agent and manager.
    Previously, the property sold for $12 million in 2015.

The Palm Beach Kennel Club’s greyhound adoptions received assistance from (l-r) Theresa Hume and Sherri Carter

of the kennel club; Elizee Michel of Westgate CRA; Carolee Ellison (with Stretch) of Awesome Greyhound Adoptions;

Duane Meeks of Potentia Academy; Dick Busto of Autism Project of Palm Beach County; Pat Rooney Jr.

and Alexis Barbish of the kennel club; Lynelle Zelnar of Forgotten Soldiers Outreach, and Jon Buechele Jr.

of Pathways to Independence.

Photo provided

                               
    The Palm Beach Kennel Club’s sponsoring of free adoptions resulted in 56 greyhounds finding homes during National Greyhound Pet Adoption Month in April.
    Palm Beach Kennel Club works with Awesome Greyhound Adoptions, Elite Greyhounds, Forever Greyhounds, Greyhound Pet Adoptions/Florida Southeast and Greyed A Greyhounds.
    The Kennel Club will also sponsor free adoptions in October. The adoption groups offer applications online and will interview potential families. Once applicants are approved, the pets are placed and the groups offer continued support.
                                
    “Guess you could say I flunked retirement,” George Kientzy laughed as he described the overwhelming, heartfelt response from customers and friends that led him to forgo the idea of closing his jewelry store, Kientzy & Co.,  on east Atlantic Avenue in Delray Beach.
    “The outpouring from the community was amazing, so we have decided to scale back our hours instead of closing,” Mary Kientzy added.
    The store’s hours will be Tuesday through Thursday, 10am-4pm while the summer sale continues. Stop back in to say hello again, 1053 E. Atlantic Ave., Delray Beach, 561-272-4545.

Send business news to Christine Davis at cdavis9797@gmail.com.

By Mary Hladky

    Boca Raton was the fastest-growing city in Palm Beach County last year, adding 2,570 residents.
    Boynton Beach and Delray Beach also showed strong population increases from 2015 to 2016, according to U.S. Census Bureau statistics released in May. Boynton Beach gained 1,676 residents, or a 2.3 percent increase, while Delray Beach grew by 1,178, or 1.8 percent.

    Taken together, South Palm Beach County’s growth rate outpaced that in other parts of the county. But all cities and towns countywide have posted gains since the 2010 census, and the county’s total population increased 9.4 percent.
    “Boca is obviously a place a lot of people want to live in,” said Deputy Mayor Jeremy Rodgers, whose city grew 2.75 percent last year.
    New residential construction, including The Mark at CityScape, Palmetto Promenade and Via Mizner, have bolstered the downtown population, while expansion of major employers such as Florida Atlantic University, LexisNexis and Cancer Treatment Centers of America have created jobs, he said.
    “We are the affordable Palm Beach,” said Boynton Beach Mayor Steven Grant in explaining his city’s 10.8 percent population growth since 2010.
    Boynton Beach’s three-bedroom, two-bath housing prices are considerably less than those in Delray Beach or Boca Raton, attracting people to his city even if they work elsewhere, he said.
    “Developers are building in Boynton,” he said, citing residential projects such as 500 Ocean at Ocean Avenue and Federal Highway and Cortina on Congress Avenue at Old Boynton Road. Others include the huge planned Town Square redevelopment in “downtown” that includes apartments and condos, a hotel, retail and a new city hall and police and fire station. “We do not feel they are building buildings to be vacant. Residential units will be filled.”
    And that means his city will continue to grow, Grant said.
    Delray Beach Mayor Cary Glickstein said the blossoming of Atlantic Avenue and a trend of people moving out of suburbs and into coastal urban areas have benefited his city.
    “Atlantic Avenue has become an amenity for northern Broward County and essentially all of Palm Beach County,” he said. “We aren’t the seasonal town we used to be.”

Census does not account for seasonal changes
    The city does not rely on census data to plan for the future because seasonal residents are not counted, Glickstein said. While the census shows the city growing by 11.3 percent since 2010 to 67,371 residents, Glickstein believes it is closer to 100,000 during the winter season. The city, he said, must be able to provide services to that many.
    By adding 263 residents since 2010, tiny South Palm Beach’s population has grown to 1,434 for a 22.4 percent gain that is the second highest in Palm Beach County.
    While no new residential units have been built in the town since 2010, Town Manager Bob Vitas said the number of full-time residents has grown as more people decide to live in South Palm Beach permanently.
    “You are seeing a transition between former units used exclusively by snowbirds acquired by people establishing permanent residences,” he said.
    The same dynamic has boosted Manalapan’s population to 457 residents, up 12.5 percent since 2010.
    About 15 new homes have been built in the town in recent years, most occupied by younger couples, said Manalapan Mayor Keith Waters.
    “We are seeing a lot more families with children in school,” using their homes as a primary residence rather than a second or third home, he said. “It has been an enormous growth over the past few years.”
    The growth won’t continue since the town is nearly built out, Waters said.
    The quirkiest fact in the census data is that Briny Breezes grew by just one resident last year and by three since 2010 to a total of 604.
    Elsewhere in South County, Gulf Stream’s population rose 1.7 percent last year and 8  percent since 2010, Highland Beach’s was up 0.9 percent last year and 6.2 percent since 2010, Lantana’s increased 0.8 percent last year and 5.7 percent since 2010, and Ocean Ridge’s jumped 1.1 percent since last year and 7.7 percent since 2010.

Growth adds to tax base
    Growth is a good thing for cities and towns, since it translates into a growing tax base.
    “It is the economic lifeblood of any city. You can’t survive without net growth,” Glickstein said.
    But it also creates a need for more municipal services, including police, fire rescue and trash pickup.
    In one example of what that means for Delray Beach, Glickstein noted the city launched a three-year plan last year to boost the number of first responders.
    In Boca Raton, growth has strained trash and recycling services, and officials are considering whether they should raise fees or contract out those services if that would reduce the cost to the city and ultimately to its residents.
    Rodgers said the City Council will weigh the options over the next two months.
    “We have already exceeded capacity,” Rodgers said. “If we do privatize, it is calculated to save money for all residences.”
    Because their growth is relatively small compared with big cities, Manalapan and South Palm Beach officials said they have not felt budget pressure.
    “The demand on town services remains constant,” Vitas said. “There is no spike in that demand.”
    The census data shed light on the nature of population growth in South Florida.
    While Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties continue to grow, the year-over-year population changes show that growth is slowing down, especially in Miami-Dade, said Maria Ilcheva, senior researcher at the Florida International University Metropolitan Center.
    Population growth in Miami-Dade and Broward is fueled mainly by international migrants rather than people moving in from other parts of the United States.
    Domestic migration is the bigger contributor to growth in Palm Beach County. Last year, 12,473 people migrated here from elsewhere in the U.S., while 8,443 were international migrants.
    That may be changing, Ilcheva said, but it is too soon to tell for sure. Both types of migration peaked in Palm Beach County in 2015, and not enough time has elapsed since then to see a clear trend.
    The Miami-Dade numbers are especially stark. International migrants totaled 41,830 last year, but 30,560 local residents left. Those leaving are white non-Hispanics, Ilcheva said.
    She points to two primary reasons for the local outflow: the high cost of housing and traffic gridlock.
    “They are not necessarily changing their jobs, but changing their place of residence to Broward or even Palm Beach County,” she said.
    Of the three counties, Miami-Dade’s median household income of about $43,000 a year is the lowest. For those earning that amount, housing “is not only not affordable, there is just no housing produced for families,” she said.
    The Hispanic population is growing faster in Palm Beach and Broward than in Miami-Dade, she said. In Palm Beach, the Hispanic population increased by 19 percent between 2010 and 2015 to a total of 300,776. Broward saw a 20.3 percent increase while Miami-Dade’s was up only 10.2 percent.
    While Palm Beach County’s traffic congestion may seem less severe to a Miami-Dade driver, it is a big issue locally. The same holds true for housing prices.

Price of housing a crisis
    Hundreds of people attending a Palm Beach County Housing Summit in West Palm Beach in May heard experts say that the county’s median home price of $327,000 is unaffordable to 75 percent of households.
    The county’s median gross rent of $1,900 is out of reach for 80 percent of renters, said Edward “Ned” Murray, associate director of the FIU Metropolitan Center. About 30 percent of renters spend more than 50 percent of their income on rent.
    Attendees were told that more affordable housing must be built if the county wants to keep existing businesses and jobs and attract new ones.
    Glickstein described housing costs as “one of the most intractable public policy issues we face as a city, state and country.”
    “Affordable housing is a national crisis,” he said. “The market is driving these prices. There is very little local government can do unless it wants to get into the business of rent control and other price suppression measures. Those things have never really proven effective.”
    While Delray Beach, like other South Florida cities, requires developers to build affordable housing, the amount produced is insufficient to meet demand, Glickstein said.
    “I would like to see the development industry reinvent the housing model,” he said, although the way to do so is not obvious.
    Developers “can make the economics work, except for the fact land is so scarce in the tri-county area. Lack of supply is driving land prices so that the affordable model doesn’t work anymore.”

An adult least tern offers food to a young juvenile on the beach in Boca Raton near the south edge

of Spanish River Park in mid-June. Based on the size and color of feathers, a Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission

biologist estimated the youngster was about 3 weeks old and capable of flight. Least terns are unique

in that they nest on bare beach sand and rooftops; it has been more than 20 years since successful beach nests

have been recorded south of Lake Worth. A nest near this location was destroyed by predators in May.

Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star

Highland Beach Police Officers Dwayne Fernandes and Paul Shersty

helped rescue four people in a sinking boat on one of their days off.

Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star

A tow boat arrives to haul in a boat that took on water about a mile off the Boynton Inlet.

Highland Beach police officers assisted with the rescue.

Photo provided

By Rich Pollack

    Paul Shersty and Dwayne Fernandes had planned a quiet Friday morning fishing on one of their days off last month.
    Instead, the Highland Beach police officers ended up saving four people — and four stowaway kittens — in a daring rescue full of surprises.
    “I don’t know what we would have done if they weren’t there,” said Richard Bengal, a passenger on the boat owned by his friend Joe Trebbe. “We would have been in serious trouble.”
    Shersty and Fernandes arrived about 9 a.m. at a popular fishing spot about a mile off the Boynton Inlet when they heard people shouting and saw waving passengers on a boat about a half mile away.
    At first the two thought the people were cheering because they’d caught a big fish, but it became apparent they were in trouble.
    As Shersty and Fernandes got closer, they were taken aback to see two men standing in almost a foot of water on the boat. Shersty was also surprised to see Bengal, a friend with whom he had grown up.
    On the sinking boat, that wasn’t the only surprise.
    As the water rose, Bengal, Trebbe and their rescuers heard meowing under the boat’s console. Soon, four soaked black-and-white kittens, apparently stashed there by their mom while the boat was in storage, emerged.
    “They had no idea there were kittens on the boat,” Shersty said.
    While the passengers on the boat were panicking, Shersty and Fernandes relied on their police training and experience to remain calm and develop a plan.
    Although the seas were only moderately choppy, the waves were big enough to keep Fernandes from getting his boat close enough to pick up the boaters. Instead, they devised a plan to tow the boat to shore while calling for a tow boat designed for similar missions.
    The challenge, Shersty said, was to use their small boat to tow one that was getting heavier by the minute as it was taking on more water than could be forced out by a barely functioning bilge pump.
    Eventually, the tow boat arrived and took over the rescue operation, taking the stricken boat through the Boynton Inlet with the help of marine patrols from the Boynton Beach Police Department, the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office as well as the U.S. Coast Guard.
    Shersty, an experienced boater and angler, says he had some doubts the rescue that morning would be successful.
    “If any one of several things had gone wrong, the people on the boat would have been swimming,” he said. “I told [Fernandes] they must have had a guardian angel looking after them.”
    After the boat reached shore, Boynton Beach police turned the kittens over to Palm Beach County Animal Care and Control.
    Shersty said he and Fernandes were just happy to be in the right place at the right time as water came over the transom of Trebbe’s boat and shorted out the electrical system.
    “If we had come five minutes later, there would have been nothing there,” Shersty said. “That boat would have sunk.”
    He said that the rescue made him decide to double- check the equipment on his own boat.
    “I went out and bought two new bilge pumps and a battery,” he said.