Saturday, December 2, 2006

More Good News and a Funny Story...

Yesterday was an interesting day. I happened to be part of a meeting that including State Representative Mary Brandenburg and we were talking about legislative priorities and the effect of current conditions on the residential housing market. Others that were part of the meeting talked about ways to make the property insurance burden less and other affordability factors affecting the housing market. What the market is anticipating is the eventual portability of the Save Our Homes initiative (limiting the increase of taxable value to 3% annually for homesteaded property) and that is keeping people in their current place of residence. Instead of moving up in their housing to accommodate a growing family, etc, they are choosing to stay put and improve their own homes. That is good news for our existing housing stock and it also underlines the importance of having a responsive Building Department (one that does not lay blame at the foot of the homeowner).

But that's not the real good news. The good news is that one of the people that was in attendance was Mr. Robert J. Kanjian, a member of the Palm Beach County School Board. We were chatting about various things and he did not know of my association with Lake Worth. And he volunteered that he likes what is happening in downtown Lake Worth and that he really likes taking his family to Lake Avenue. He recommends coming here over Delray and West Palm Beach. He then commented that on Thursday night on Clematis Street the police had to use mace.on a group of teenagers. And he went on to say that despite our very public political in-fighting, we are out-pacing our surrounding communities. It was then that I told him about my association with Lake Worth. A nice guy and I couldn't agree more with him. We all know, however, that we still have work to do.


"Political advertisement paid for and approved by Wes Blackman for Commissioner – District #3"