News

By Dan Moffett
    
Delray Beach commissioners’ campaign to tighten up their business dealings has grown so heated that even a contract for beach chairs can raise emotional warnings about extortion, loss of integrity and “whoring the city.”
    The commission voted 3-2 on Aug. 6 to seek bids from companies for leasing chairs and cabanas on the city’s beach — despite the fact that Oceanside Beach Service already has a contract to do it and came to the meeting offering commissioners a $45,000 payment if they’d give up on the bidding idea.
    Mayor Cary Glickstein called the offer “extortion” and said “some people would call it whoring the city.”
    “What is the fear of bidding?” Glickstein asked. He said the payment offer was an attempt at “circumvention of our city’s process” and warned that Delray’s image is already tarnished enough: “The city’s reputation is that it’s for sale.”
    Commissioners debated the matter for two hours during the stormy August meeting, after considering it for two hours during the July meeting when Oceanside brought in dozens of satisfied customers to help plead the company’s case.
    The commission has gone back and forth over the contract for months — twice voting to bid it out — since Glickstein and Commissioner Shelly Petrolia won their seats in March after campaigning to make city dealings more transparent.
    The argument against Oceanside isn’t over service, but the way the contract was signed. Former City Manager David Harden renewed the deal in 2012 without getting the commission’s approval and without getting bids.
    Petrolia says that way of doing business has to stop. “What message was sent when we allowed an unauthorized city employee to unilaterally renew a contract when we knew full well there was another vendor waiting in the wings waiting to pay more?” she asked. “What message did we send taxpayers of this city?”
    Petrolia said that allowing the contract to stand “will further tarnish the image” of the commission. “Our integrity is at stake,” she said. “This is no witch hunt. It is righting past wrongs.”
    Glickstein and Petrolia persuaded Commissioner Al Jacquet to side with them and vote for putting the beach contract out for bids. Commissioners Adam Frankel and Angeleta Gray dissented, arguing that seeking bids on an existing contract without cause for termination sends a bad message to the business community.
“The city manager at the time, Harden, is no longer here,” Gray said. “We can’t punish him. I don’t know why we’re punishing the vendor. Some would say we’re making things right. I don’t believe we’ve done anything wrong.”
    Over the course of two meetings, Jacquet had openly negotiated with Michael Weiner, attorney for Oceanside, over the size of the payment the company might make to keep the contract, saying he wanted a “win-win situation” for the city and vendor that would “bring some money into the city’s coffers.”
    But Gray called the idea “extortion,” and Glickstein and Petrolia agreed. The mayor said Oceanside could participate in the bidding like any other vendor, but the process would determine how much the contract was worth.
    “Why do you think he’s offering $45,000?” Glickstein said of Weiner’s proposal. “He’s offering it because he knows, or he thinks he knows, the competitive bidding process will produce bids much higher than that.”
    Weiner has suggested that Oceanside might sue if the commission decides to hire another vendor and warned that the company’s customers, who have seasonal contracts to rent chairs and cabanas, will be left in limbo. The company has been working on the beach since 2002.
    “There will be a consequence to pay if you end it early,” Weiner said. “It’s just not going to be a pleasant situation.”
    Anger over no-bid contracts helped carry Glickstein and Petrolia to office after trash hauler Waste Management landed a $65 million extension deal in 2012 without competition. Jacquet, Gray and Frankel were on the commission that let the controversial trash deal go through. “I would agree that the city has a history of cronyism that we need to address,” Jacquet said.
    Minutes later, he tried selling Weiner’s $45,000 offer to commissioners again, calling it “a decent number” and an improvement over the $30,000 offer he made in July.