By Steve Plunkett
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Commissioner Joan Orthwein repeated her discomfort about the low ranking.
“Maybe we can go up a notch instead of being in the middle,” she said.
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.
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.
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.
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.
No arrests were made, but “it avoided us being hit by any kind of criminal activity,” Jones said.
A final camera was to be installed in Place Au Soleil by the end of July, he said.
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.
In other business:
• Orthwein asked whether the Gulf Stream School will be opening a campus in the west part of Delray Beach.
“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.
Mayor Scott Morgan had also heard the news and said he spoke with Smith about it.
“He and I have agreed to meet should anything become more concrete in connection with that plan,” Morgan said.
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.
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.
• 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.
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