Reciting Facts:

These are my responses to a series of questions and mis-statements of fact as it relates to important issues facing our city. This post was made by yours truly on another local Internet forum. I thought you would be interested. Apparently, that which is not possible or highly unlikely is still being proferred as truth. Myth-making is a fine art and well-established in our humble city.

Person A - I am surprised with you. You are an intelligent person and should be able to separate fact from fiction. But I will give you credit for helping create the myths that propel some of the decisions being made in this City - on both sides of the dais.

Re the Smith property, per the latest Judge's ruling, the property has not been rezoned and retains it County zoning designation. Had it been rezoned to the City category of MF20, doing the math results in the possibility of 80 units. That was not an acceptable outcome. The P&Z and the Commission also required that the property owner enter into to an agreement with the City to limit development to 10 units an acre, along with other very important conditions. Those conditions run with the land. Without that agreement, they would not have had my vote. Nothing has been built there. The property owner still needs to come back and go through the site plan review process and ask for a special exception to build townhouses. That is not likely to happen in this market and may be years off. My prediction: The property will be de-annexed into the County and we will have less control over what happens on the property over the long term. We have already seen the confusion possible with public safety calls in your neighborhood where it is not clear, in panic situations, what is in and out of the city limits.

You know, I would really like to sit down with you and go word-by-word through the Beach and Casino zoning district. Whatever is NOT identified as a permitted use cannot be built - period. The proposed zoning for the beach is not broad at all. It is one of the most restrictive in the city. People look to you as an informed person and it concerns me that you could easily mislead people through material misrepresentation of the facts.

The city has turned down variance requests before. If you like, I can look up as many examples as it takes to satisfy your curiosity.

Greater Bay cannot "flip" the property to anyone without the approval of the City Commission. The City Commission and the Department of Community Affairs would have to approve any further change in the future land use or zoning for the property - if the project were to be transfered to another entity and they wanted to do something different than what the zoning would allow. By the way, nothing like that has been proposed.

We would not have to acquiesce to anyone regarding the zoning of the property. There is no "dirty little secret."

The City has turned down condos and hotels at the beach. The proposed Beach and Casino zoning district doesn't allow either of them. The former Mayor that you mentioned was the FIRST one to rule out a hotel at the beach as part of those proposals when it got to the City Commission. I have a copy of a Palm Beach Post article if you would like to read it that says so.

No one will be able to build a condo or a hotel, period.

Person B- At one moment you suggest that the CRA should expand its boundary to include the beach and in the next accuse the CRA of wasting money. I believe the reason that the beach was not included in the CRA was that it wasn't a source of a significant tax base generation for use in tax increment financing.

I agree that the City Commission and Mayor take the easy way out on many issues in our city. Unfortunately, the millions in waste you talk about (and I have no doubt that the figure is higher) is just that - wasted. Unidentified and uncontrolled spending has set this city back in many ways - but that mis-spent money cannot be retrieved. It's gone. I had an idea that we identify all the "savings" from instituting a special fund we could dump this "found" money into, but that just is not how city budgeting works.

Have a nice day.