By Tim Pallesen
Remember that fuss about the cabana contract on Delray’s municipal beach? Forget about it.
City commissioners voted 3-2 on Oct. 15 to keep their current vendor and stop debating about competitive bids to rent chairs and cabanas on the beach.
“This whole process has embarrassed the city with the amount of time that’s been wasted,” Mayor Cary Glickstein said before the vote. “It makes us look like we’re Amateur Hour up here.”
“We’re becoming the can’t-get-it-right of cities,” Commissioner Al Jacquet said.
The cabana fuss began after winners in the March city election wanted to end no-bid city contract extensions. Commissioner Shelly Petrolia, for no apparent reason at the time, chose cabanas as the first contract to question.
Petrolia, Glickstein and Jacquet voted to seek competitive bids for the contract on May 14. But after what Petrolia and Glickstein say were mistakes by city staff, only the current vendor Michael Novatka submitted a bid.
Petrolia pushed for the city to seek competitive bids a second time. But then The Palm Beach Post reported last month that Novatka is friendly with aging political powerbroker Andre Fladell, who supported Petrolia’s opponent in the March election.
“I’m embarrassed to have newspaper articles that make us look like fools,” Glickstein said at the Oct. 15 meeting.
“There appears to be a battle going on about who influences whom and I want nothing to do with it,” Jacquet said.
That ended the debate. Jacquet voted with Commissioners Angeleta Gray and Adam Frankel to accept Novatka’s offer to pay $1.5 million to be cabana vendor for five years. The annual payment is a $130,000 increase over the $170,000 that Novatka pays under his current contract.
Petrolia objected when Novatka said he will raise his rental rates to cover his increased cost. “This shouldn’t be on the backs of the people who go down to the beach,” she said.
But other commissioners called a price increase understandable.
“Of course the vendor is going to charge his customers more,” Frankel said. “You can’t hold that against him.”
Glickstein said cabana prices should go up because the city recently spent $10 million to renourish the beach.
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