News

By Jane Smith

    The Boynton Beach City Commission is trying to take control of its Community Redevelopment Agency board by ousting the two appointed members, James “Buck” Buchanan and former Mayor Woodrow Hay.
    Vice Mayor Joe Casello brought up the issue on Sept. 15 during a discussion about making the CRA board independent, a topic raised during the city’s strategic planning sessions in June. He has supported that idea in the past.
    Instead, Casello made a motion to have the CRA board comprised of elected officials only. He said he changed his mind at the Sept. 8 CRA board meeting. That’s when Buchanan and Hay disagreed with Casello and Commissioner Mack McCray about the performance of the CRA’s executive director and gave her a 3 percent salary increase. Casello and McCray had wanted to remove Vivian Brooks from that position.
    “The problem is not with Vivian, not with the city manager and not with the staff. The problem lies with the leadership of the city,” Hay said at the Sept. 8 CRA meeting. “I really wish there was an evaluation for each of us by the city for the way we behave up here on the dais.”
    Casello countered at that meeting that he gets “evaluated at every election.”
    The City Commission voted 3-1 to return the CRA board to having only city commissioners serve on it. Commissioner David Merker was absent because the Sept. 15 meeting was held on the eve of Rosh Hashanah. Commissioner Mike Fitzpatrick voted against the change, because “it helps to have a broader experience of other people to help with the decisions and direction of the CRA.”
    Mayor Jerry Taylor initially was against the change, saying “developers like to know who they are dealing with and they don’t like to see changes in the process.”
    Later during the meeting, he said, “If that’s the way the commission wants to do it, I won’t fight it.”
    To make the change final, a resolution to remove the two appointed CRA members will be brought back to the Boynton Beach Commission for approval this month.
    In Delray Beach, which has an independent CRA board, city commissioners want to reduce the amount of property taxes given to its CRA to be able to spend that money citywide. As a last step, they would replace the CRA board with the City Commission.
    The Boynton Beach CRA, created in 1981, has a budget of $10.4 million. Since its start, the board has had various combinations: city commissioners only, city commissioners plus two appointees and an independent board.