Mary Kate Leming's Blog – July 2010 Archive (26)

By Tim O’Meilia

Manalapan Mayor Tom Gerrard resigned abruptly Wednesday, delivering a five-sentence resignation letter to town hall just before 5 p.m.

“Pressing family issues require that I spend extended amounts of time away from the town and the state,” he wrote in the letter.

Gerrard left Thursday for Big Sky, Montana where other members of his family live and where he has a…

Ask Nancy Barnett, managing director…

On a hot summer morning, the temperatures already topping the 80-degree mark at a little after 9 o’clock, key members of the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Flotilla 54 have reported for duty.

Happily.…

By Antigone Barton

A break in the current that could carry oil from BP’s exploded Deepwater Horizon site from the Gulf of Mexico to these shores has added uncertainty to local response preparations.

But a plan for training that will enable…

“On this side of the bridge, people wave with all five fingers.”

I laughed out loud when Ocean Ridge Police Chief Chris Yannuzzi said this to help explain why his department was better suited to provide protection to Briny

Breezes at its June 24 town meeting.

After 25 years with the Boynton Beach police, he knew what he…

Maybe it’s because she was a reading teacher and librarian “in another life.”

Perhaps it’s because she wanted to give back to her small hometown of five

years.

Whatever the reasons, when Joan Bernstein was asked to lead a fundraising drive

to update and refurbish the Manalapan town library, she quickly agreed.

When she started in February, the goal was $75,000 to replace the…

A twin-engine Cessna plane that hit the new Ocean Ridge Town Hall in July 2008 crashed because of a partial loss of engine power due to fuel starvation,

according to a National Transportation Safety Board report in June.

Contributing to the crash, the NTSB report said, was the pilot’s decision to add only a limited amount of fuel before the flight. The…

By Thom Smith

Heads turned. Hands waved. Horns honked.

Motorists and pedestrians from Sebastian to Boca Raton had no trouble recognizing the familiar cyclist during the first week of June.…

By Margie Plunkett

Residents of this usually quiet coastal area have lately raised an assertive voice on two separate issues, urging northern neighbor Gulf Stream to annex them and objecting to the latest development of the Sea Horse condominiums that includes a height much…

By Margie Plunkett

The Ocean Ridge Police Department will begin patrolling Briny Breezes in October after winning council’s unanimous support with last-minute contract concessions in its competition with current provider Boynton Beach Police Department.…

By Margie Plunkett

A dozen kids in sports uniforms fidgeted outside Lantana Town Hall on a night late in June, while many of the 118 residents crammed inside to voice fears that the town’s youth will likewise be left out because the town can’t afford to keep the Lantana Sports Complex open.…

By Thomas R. Collins

Faced with less federal money, and slashes to its own department budget, Palm Beach County has cut back on its surveying of sea turtle nests on a beach that had

been one of the most closely watched.

The stretch of…

Ocean Ridge came a step closer to becoming a bird sanctuary with an ordinance Commissioners passed on first reading at the June 7 meeting.…

By Kelly Wolfe

The U.S. Supreme Court in June affirmed a ruling that said when public money is used for beach re-nourishment, the beach then becomes publicly owned, despite

deeds indicating buyers owned the beach down to the high water mark.

The ruling is confusing to…

By Tim O’Meilia

South Palm Beach voters may be asked to make a nearly irreversible decision on the future of the Palm Beach Oceanfront Inn this fall.

The Town Council voted 3-2 to consider placing a…

By Margie Plunkett

Sea turtles will continue to nest in peace under county regulation after Manalapan commissioners put off voting until year’s end on a turtle lighting ordinance

that moves control to the town. The proposed ordinance is expected to be

resurrected after seasonal residents begin to…

By Margie Plunkett

A recently released study of Delray Beach parking got a stamp of approval — in concept — by the city’s Parking Management Advisory Board, but the panel still

wants to discuss major areas of the proposal before it’s put into…

Two competing nonprofits showed how they would revamp and re-energize WXEL public television and radio at a public forum June 29.

The Delray Beach-based Strategic Broadcast Media Group and the Community Broadcast Foundation are both interested in buying WXEL, despite…

By Mike Readling

The summer has barely gotten under way and already there have been a couple of tragic deaths along the Intracoastal Waterway. Deaths that, with the most basic

of precautions, likely could have been avoided.

The United…

A Mediterranean fruit fly has been found in a trap in the 100 block of Andrews Avenue in Delray Beach. This is the first detection of the pest outside of Boca

Raton, according to the Florida Department of Agriculture.