gulf stream budget - News - The Coastal Star2024-03-29T14:42:32Zhttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/feed/tag/gulf+stream+budgetGulf Stream: Construction of four more homes on tap for Bluewater Covehttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/gulf-stream-construction-of-four-more-homes-on-tap-for-bluewater-2023-10-04T17:47:15.000Z2023-10-04T17:47:15.000ZThe Coastal Starhttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/TheCoastalStar<div><p><strong>By Steve Plunkett</strong></p>
<p>A new wave of building will be coming soon to Bluewater Cove — site plans for four more houses in the 14-lot Gulf Stream subdivision were reviewed by the planning advisory board last month.</p>
<p>Boca Raton-based Courchene Development Corp. wants to build on the four lots just east of three that are already under construction. Each one will have a different style.</p>
<p>The projects are:<br />• 2915 Bluewater Cove, a 5,461-square-foot Gulf Stream Bermuda style residence<br />• 2917 Bluewater Cove, a 5,462-square-foot Anglo-Caribbean style residence<br />• 2914 Bluewater Cove, a 5,464-square-foot Georgian style residence<br />• 2916 Bluewater Cove, a 5,461-square-foot West Indies style residence</p>
<p>All four are one-story, single-family dwellings, each including a two-car garage and swimming pool on its 16,560-square-foot lot. The projects will return to the planning board on Oct. 26.</p>
<p>Additionally, town officials made progress in September in bringing up to code the long-abandoned home at 2900 Avenue Au Soleil, located just south of Bluewater Cove and fronting the Intracoastal Waterway. </p>
<p>At an Aug. 30 hearing, Special Magistrate Kevin M. Wagner gave the property owner, AAS LLC, 14 days to get a building permit and 14 more days to repair “so as not to leak” the roofs of both the main house and an accessory garage. The roofs also needed to be cleaned and painted.</p>
<p>Contractor John Carew had already covered the swimming pool with plywood and installed a pump to make sure stagnant water would no longer accumulate. He also had the grounds trimmed, mowed and cleaned of debris.</p>
<p>Wagner scheduled a fine assessment hearing for Oct. 4 in case the code violations were not remedied. The home’s previous owners racked up $200,000 in code enforcement fines that the Town Commission reduced in 2019 to $20,000 in an effort to get new owners for the property. The property has changed hands at least once since then, according to property appraiser records.</p>
<p><strong>In other business</strong>, the Town Commission was scheduled to give final approval on Oct. 4 to an $18.8 million budget for the year beginning Oct. 1. </p>
<p>Commissioners were originally set to approve the budget Sept. 27 but their vote was delayed for lack of a quorum. Two of the five commissioners had already said they would miss the meeting; two more had “unforeseen circumstances.” </p>
<p>“We went from barely meeting our quorum of three to having only one,” Town Attorney Trey Nazzaro said. Property owners will pay the same rate for town taxes as the previous year, $3.67 per $1,000 of taxable value, or $3,672 for a home valued at $1 million.</p>
<p>The town’s tax base grew roughly 16%, to $1.65 billion. </p>
<p>Notable expenses planned for the new fiscal year include $6.5 million for road and drainage improvements in the Core District. That work will start in January.</p>
<p>Gulf Stream will also buy a $53,000 police cruiser and a $39,000 water valve exercise machine to automate maintenance on the water mains. Town employees will receive a 5% cost-of-living increase in salaries. </p></div>Gulf Stream: Town plans to give raises to all police officershttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/gulf-stream-town-plans-to-give-raises-to-all-police-officers2023-08-30T16:16:44.000Z2023-08-30T16:16:44.000ZThe Coastal Starhttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/TheCoastalStar<div><p><strong>By Steve Plunkett</strong></p>
<p>After giving new police hires a $9,000 raise in June, Gulf Stream town commissioners are penciling in substantial raises for veterans and another raise for the rookies to keep up with other area police departments.</p>
<p>Town Manager Greg Dunham had warned the commissioners to expect the proposed pay hikes.</p>
<p>“Talking about the budget back in July, and even back I think the month before when we raised the starting salary, at that point in time I told you that we weren’t done dealing with the police officers’ salaries knowing what other towns and cities were in the process of doing, and that was developing their own budgets and or completing contracts with their union regarding the police salaries,” Dunham said at the commission’s Aug. 11 meeting. </p>
<p>Chief Richard Jones compared Gulf Stream’s police salaries to those in 16 nearby jurisdictions on starting salaries, for three- and 10-year officers, for five- and seven-year sergeants and for three-year captains.</p>
<p>Gulf Stream was near the bottom at all officer and sergeant levels and below the average for captain.</p>
<p>Jones and Dunham proposed moving a three-year officer, for example, to $72,000 a year, up from $66,763 for a $5,237 raise, or 7.8%.</p>
<p>The starting salary, which was bumped to $61,250 from $52,250 in June, would rise to $66,000, also 7.8%.</p>
<p>The chief also proposed incentive pay for officers hired with experience, those who further their education and those who become paramedics or emergency medical technicians.</p>
<p>He and Dunham also recommended that they be allowed to develop a long-range salary plan with steps based on length of service. </p>
<p>“It seems like we have to do this, you know, every two or three years with respect to police departments, but we want to stay competitive with the other cities and it’s been a challenge,” Dunham said. “That puts us basically right in the middle.” </p>
<p>Jones also introduced to the commissioners his latest hire, Vincentina Nowicki, whose first day on patrol was Aug. 7, and Alan Gonzalez, who joined the force in March. Officer Assel Hassan, who started in late June, could not attend the meeting and will be introduced later.</p>
<p>The chief said the promise of a higher starting salary helped motivate the new hires to come to Gulf Stream.</p>
<p>Mayor Scott Morgan welcomed Gonzalez and Nowicki.</p>
<p>“It’s really important that we get to see you in this context and for you to see us,” Morgan said. “I think it brings the Police Department, town staff and the commission a little closer together, so thank you very much, thank both of you for coming.” </p>
<p>Commissioner Paul Lyons praised Jones for doing an “incredible” job: “very comprehensive, thoughtful, logical, persuasive — I don’t know what else to say.”</p>
<p>“One of the things that the last three or four years we’ve been lacking is an adequate number of police officers and you’ve done a lot to cure that problem,” Lyons said.</p>
<p><strong>In other business:</strong></p>
<p>• Commissioners adjusted water rates for town residents, passing along a 6.1% increase imposed by Delray Beach starting Oct. 1. Dunham continues to talk with Boynton Beach about switching water providers.</p>
<p>• Commissioners moved their November meeting to 9 a.m. on Nov. 9, a Thursday, instead of Nov. 10, which is the observed holiday this year for Veterans Day.<br />On Sept. 8 they will meet at 4 p.m. instead of the usual 9 a.m. start and follow that with a budget hearing at 5:01 p.m. The final budget hearing will be at 5:01 p.m. on Sept. 27.</p>
<p>• Dunham said much progress had been made landscaping the entrance to the Blue Water Cove development just north of Place Au Soleil and obscuring the construction there.</p>
<p>“You’ll notice when you go by that wall, the fishtail palms are about 15 feet tall — they were originally going to put 8- to 10-foot ones in there. They weren’t available so they bought the larger ones. And when you’re inside there, you don’t see Walmart,” Dunham said.</p>
<p>Two Place Au Soleil residents, Julie Murphy and Miguel Newmann, complained to commissioners in July that they were living in an unsightly, “eternal” construction zone. </p></div>Gulf Stream: Coming budget year to bring major road workhttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/gulf-stream-coming-budget-year-to-bring-major-road-work2023-08-02T16:07:16.000Z2023-08-02T16:07:16.000ZThe Coastal Starhttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/TheCoastalStar<div><p><strong>By Steve Plunkett</strong></p>
<p>Resurfacing roads and improving drainage in Gulf Stream’s Core District will begin in November as consultants wait for the Army Corps of Engineers to sign off on plans to divert storm water runoff into the Intracoastal Waterway.</p>
<p>The $10.8 million project will end in May 2025, with $8.4 million budgeted in fiscal year 2024, which starts in October, and $2.4 million coming in the second year. </p>
<p>Town Manager Greg Dunham gave broad brushstrokes of his 2023-24 budget at the Town Commission’s July 14 meeting, with the capital improvement plan for roads and drainage being the largest component. Also included was a 60% increase in insurance to $432,000, which he hoped to negotiate down, and a proposed 5% cost-of-living increase for town employees.</p>
<p>Bottom line: Dunham recommended setting the property tax rate at $3.67 per $1,000 of taxable value, the same as this year, which would generate $1.45 million more for the town, for a $6.75 million total. The rollback rate, which would bring in the same amount of taxes as this year ($5.3 million), not including additional taxes from new construction, is $3.20 per $1,000.</p>
<p>Commissioners tentatively approved the $3.67 rate, which they can lower but not exceed at public hearings they scheduled for 5:01 p.m. on Sept. 8, after their regular monthly meeting, and on Sept. 27. The owner of a $1 million house would pay $3,672 in town property taxes (about a $107 increase) in addition to county, school and other levies. </p>
<p>Dunham was still working on how much to change police salaries, a month after commissioners boosted police starting pay to $61,250 from $52,250. The new number still left Gulf Stream in the bottom third of other municipal departments in Palm Beach County “with no chance to make the playoffs,” he said.</p>
<p>Commissioner Joan Orthwein repeated her discomfort about the low ranking.</p>
<p>“Maybe we can go up a notch instead of being in the middle,” she said.</p>
<p>Dunham and Police Chief Richard Jones credited the higher starting salary for bringing about two police hires and a third who is undergoing background checks. </p>
<p>The latest hire is Vincentina Nowicki, who has military and U.S. marshal experience as well as having spent 20 years as a Delta Air Lines flight attendant. She is Gulf Stream’s first female police officer, Jones said. </p>
<p>Jones also reported that in its first 30 days, the town’s new license plate recognition cameras counted 17,000 vehicles going into and out of Gulf Stream and issued 350 alerts, or about 12 per day, mostly from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.</p>
<p>Officer Alex Gonzalez, who gained experience with LPRs during his 20 previous years with the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, has been “very, very diligent in being proactive” with the data from the license plate cameras, “and also initiating individual contacts with vehicles that are suspicious,” resulting in three nighttime pursuits, Jones said.</p>
<p>No arrests were made, but “it avoided us being hit by any kind of criminal activity,” Jones said.</p>
<p>A final camera was to be installed in Place Au Soleil by the end of July, he said.</p>
<p>Resident Bob Ganger praised the department’s quick handling of a robbery — he called police in mid-afternoon and the suspect was in jail that evening — but asked that a camera also be installed on State Road A1A since the existing ones in the Core District did not record the getaway.</p>
<p><strong>In other business: </strong></p>
<p>• Orthwein asked whether the Gulf Stream School will be opening a campus in the west part of Delray Beach.</p>
<p>“I would prefer to sidebar that if we could and not make it a matter of public record at this time,” Dr. Gray Smith, head of the school, responded.</p>
<p>Mayor Scott Morgan had also heard the news and said he spoke with Smith about it.</p>
<p> “He and I have agreed to meet should anything become more concrete in connection with that plan,” Morgan said.<br />Orthwein said more students at the school, even at a remote campus, would mean more traffic in Gulf Stream. The town recently allowed the school to boost its enrollment to 300 children.</p>
<p>Smith was at the commission meeting for approval of his plan to construct a 25-by-25-foot building in the school’s parking lot to store food so he can offer families onsite lunches.</p>
<p>• Commissioners approved on first reading a change to the town’s code to allow artificial turf in side and back yards provided it cannot be seen from a street or waterway. </p></div>Gulf Stream: Commissioners talk tax increase after cost of road project balloonshttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/gulf-stream-commissioners-talk-tax-increase-after-cost-of-road-pr2022-08-03T17:31:31.000Z2022-08-03T17:31:31.000ZThe Coastal Starhttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/TheCoastalStar<div><p><strong>By Steve Plunkett</strong></p>
<p>A whopping $4.4 million increase in the estimate to fix roads and drainage in the town’s Core district led Gulf Stream commissioners in July to propose raising property taxes for the first time in seven years.<br />The new price for the Core part of the capital improvement plan is $11.1 million, up from $6.7 million a year ago and equal to the originally envisioned cost of the entire 10-year CIP.<br />“We certainly hope to fine-tune that and have the cost come down when we get into the finer points of the design,” Rebecca Travis of Baxter & Woodman consulting engineers said. Travis presented her firm’s preliminary design of the project on July 8 and said it was on schedule to start construction next July.<br />But commissioners that day also had to set a proposed property tax rate for the budget year that starts Oct. 1. They settled on keeping the rate the same as this year’s $3.67 per $1,000 of taxable value. That will bring in an additional $551,000 in revenue, an 11.8% tax increase.<br />The rollback tax rate, which would have generated the same revenue as the previous year, was $3.28 per $1,000. Gulf Stream had adopted the rollback rate or gone below it every year since September 2016.<br />“As long as the residents, you know, are getting what they want — and the scope of the project, the CIP, the paving and drainage is something everyone’s been after us about — we keep it the same,” Vice Mayor Tom Stanley said of the tax rate.<br />Mayor Scott Morgan also argued against using the rollback rate.<br />“We don’t want to be shocking the residents next year or two years from now with a much larger tax increase should that become necessary,” he said.<br />Public hearings on Gulf Stream’s fiscal 2023 budget and property tax rate are scheduled for 5:01 p.m. on Sept. 9 and Sept. 21 at Town Hall.<br />The proposed operating budget is $9.3 million, up 8.1% from $8.6 million in the current fiscal year.<br />Town Manager Greg Dunham said his budget includes a 5% cost-of-living pay raise for employees. The consumer price index for South Florida in April was up 9.6%, he said.<br />Morgan shot down an idea to also give town workers an “inflation correction” to their pay. Instead, he asked Dunham and Rebecca Tew, the town’s chief financial officer, to compute giving employees a sum to offset the higher gas prices they pay to commute to Gulf Stream.<br />“I guarantee that the employees will appreciate anything that can help pay for the gas and the food bills,” Dunham said.<br />He and Tew will come back to the commissioners in August with figures on the fuel offset. Dunham, Town Clerk Rita Taylor, Police Chief Edward Allen and Police Capt. John Haseley, who already receive car allowances, would not get the offsets.<br />Travis said fears of persistent inflation and shortages of road building and drainage materials forced the engineers to use a 30% contingency for the cost estimate instead of the typical 20%, adding $855,723 to the bottom line.<br />“The materials availability has really become a problem recently,” she said. <br />Engineers plan to use “valley gutters” on both sides of the roads in the Core to channel stormwater to outflow pipes. The gutters, which the company recently used in Jupiter Inlet Colony, are concrete, 2 feet wide and slightly V-shaped. They are considered drivable space in the roadway.<br />Travis’ colleague Jeff Hiscock said he is working with The Little Club to expand one of its lakes to filter more stormwater before it reaches the Intracoastal Waterway. The South Florida Water Management District has indicated it will approve the Baxter & Woodman drainage plan if a lake is enlarged by a quarter-acre.<br />But the club, Hiscock said, wants to see if the district will OK expanding multiple lakes by smaller amounts equivalent to a quarter-acre instead of adding all the new water surface to just one lake. </p></div>Gulf Stream: Town to fit road, water main work into most of 2023https://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/gulf-stream-town-to-fit-road-water-main-work-into-most-of-20232021-09-29T17:58:34.000Z2021-09-29T17:58:34.000ZThe Coastal Starhttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/TheCoastalStar<div><p><strong>By Steve Plunkett</strong></p>
<p>Roads in the town’s core district won’t be torn up in 2022 or 2024, but get ready for detours in most of 2023.<br />Gulf Stream commissioners decided on Aug. 13 to make improvements to streets, drainage and water mains on both the west and east sides of the core area of town instead of spreading the work out over three years. Construction will begin in January 2023 and end 11 months later.<br /> Commissioners were pleased to be told that they might save 5% on the roadwork construction costs by combining the core-area projects and that the town has enough money to pay for the work without borrowing.<br /> “We’ve got a very healthy fund balance in the general fund. We have the money,” said Rebecca Tew, the town’s chief financial officer.<br /> At their Sept. 10 meeting commissioners learned that motorcycle companies are seeking a zoning change in Delray Beach to allow dealerships east of Federal Highway and north of George Bush Boulevard, where automakers already have showrooms backing up to Place au Soleil.<br /> Assistant Town Attorney Trey Nazzaro said the chosen area, if approved, would have minimal effect on Delray Beach residents.<br /> “Therefore it’s going to impact us the most,” he said, promising a vigorous lobbying effort against the change.<br /> In other business in August and September, commissioners:<br /> • Adopted the rollback rate, $3.67 per $1,000 of taxable value, for fiscal 2022, which began Oct. 1, meaning the town will take in the same amount of property taxes as it did the previous year. Gulf Stream has adopted the rollback rate or below for the past six years.<br /> • Rejected an appeal from 3247 Polo Drive to not have to replace a 25-foot gumbo limbo tree. New owner Graham Conklin said the tree was cut down before he bought the property in January. Town staff said it was removed Jan. 14. The Architectural Review and Planning Board had ruled he must remove a stump and plant a suitable replacement.<br /> • Approved a request by The Little Club to build two pickleball courts 600 feet from the nearest neighbors. An earlier application for courts only 50 feet from residences had been denied. </p></div>