By Rich Pollack
It finally happened.
After 33 years and two unsuccessful attempts to rid the town of an outdated $350,000 spending limit that couldn’t be adjusted for inflation, Highland Beach town leaders now have the green light to spend more than twice that amount on any one project without having to appeal to residents for permission.
Last month, voters in town loosened the handcuffs on town commissioners, giving their blessing to a charter change that ups the town’s spending cap from $350,000 to $900,000 per project before a referendum is mandated.
“This is a monumental step forward for Highland Beach,” said state Rep. Peggy Gossett-Seidman, who spent five years on the Town Commission before winning a seat in the state Legislature. “This was way overdue.”
Highland Beach Vice Mayor David Stern, who championed efforts to boost the cap to what the $350,000 limit passed in 1991 would be in today’s dollars — as well as an annual inflation adjustment going forward — praised those who cast ballots.
“The voters did the right thing,” he said. “This is outstanding.”
The measure passed, 60% to 40%.
In addition, voters gave the OK to spend up to $3.5 million to line sewer pipes in town. And on a third ballot question, they agreed to give the town the option to allow the county’s supervisor of elections to oversee Highland Beach’s election canvassing board rather than requiring commissioners to serve on it.
The sewer pipe-lining project received 77% approval while the canvassing board issue received 70% support.
Benefits of a higher cap
The change in the spending cap probably will have the most significant impact on the town’s leaders, making it easier for them to tackle more capital projects without having to get voter approval first, which can be a lengthy and costly process.
“This makes the process a lot smoother,” Stern said. “We now have the ability to approve projects with a reasonable cost without having to go to referendum.”
With the town starting its own fire department in May, increasing the spending limit takes on more importance, Town Manager Marshall Labadie said, because of the high cost of replacing equipment and apparatus.
Stern believes the success of the proposal to increase the cap was due in part to the simplicity of the ballot measure, as well as to support from the Committee to Save Highland Beach, a political action committee that opposed raising the spending limit when it came before the voters two years ago.
“This was presented to the voters in a clear and simple way,” he said.
Gossett-Seidman, who was on the commission during the failed 2022 attempt, said the voters’ approval this time will make it easier for town leaders to get things done.
“The cap was set with all good intentions but it outlived itself to the point where it was strapping the town,” she said, adding that portions of the sewer pipe-lining project that voters approved last month could have been done earlier but for the cap.
Problems in the past
The town has had mixed results in recent decades when it came to seeking spending approval from voters — and two previous attempts to raise the town’s spending cap failed.
In 2010, the cap forced town commissioners to go to voters for approval to spend $810,000 for a new fire truck, but they were turned down, with the measure coming 70 votes short.
That vote left the town stuck with a truck that was 15 years old and had cost $135,433 for maintenance and repairs during the previous five years, leaving it out of service an average 11.8% of the time. The truck continued to cost the town thousands of dollars in repairs for several years until a lease agreement with Delray Beach was signed.
In 2012, it appeared that the spending limit would be increased when the Town Commission passed an ordinance raising the limit to $1 million only to discover — after a Palm Beach County Inspector General report two years later — that any change in the limit needed voter approval.
In the interim, the town had begun construction of an $850,000 Town Hall and Police Department renovation project that was permitted to proceed.
A much larger project — $45 million to improve drainage, underground utility wiring, and enhance the town’s Ocean Walk multi-use corridor — went down to defeat in 2019, with more than 90% of voters rejecting the plan.
The town took its second shot at raising the limit in 2022. But that attempt to increase the cap to about $1 million failed to get voter support, in part because the proposed limit was based on a percentage of the overall town budget, which was seen as a complicated formula.
Some projects were OK’d
Over the years, not all of the town’s spending requests were turned down by voters.
Nine years ago, they gave the commission permission to spend $2.8 million on a water main replacement project on six side streets.
And, in 2021, voters over-whelmingly gave the Town Commission the green light to spend up to $10 million on a new fire department, with just shy of 90% of voters approving the proposal. That vote cleared the way for the town to build a new $8 million-plus fire station and purchase needed equipment. The new fire department begins service May 1.
Gossett-Seidman said the original cap was necessary when it was approved, but she sees the new spending limit as a major benefit to the town as it continues to grow.
“The cap was set forth in 1991 to prevent overspending in good times, but you can’t do all the things needed by a town with a limit that was set 33 years ago,” she said.
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