News

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.