Tonight's (1/18/11) City Commission meeting:

The absolutely most important item on this agenda is Item E under 11-New Business.  It is a proposal to hire a consultant to study and recommend how the city provides and pays for police services.  As many of you know, the city entered a contract for the Palm Beach County Sheriff Office (PBSO) to provide police services within the city - eliminating the city's own police department.  You need to read the back-up (begins at page 155 -lengthy) or at least the city manager's transmittal memo on the item.

The most telling portion of the transmittal memo comes in the portion called city manager's recommendation.  Here is most of it:

Not only does this attempt to find other alternatives to the widely popular professional police services that are provided by PBSO indicate, yet again, that the city of Lake Worth is difficult to deal with any contractual relationship - it is yet another attempt to pull a major plank from the house that makes the city a livable place. Things are bad enough as they are with PBSO - can you imagine the alternative?  Will the study address potential increases in crime rates, loss of lives and property and continuing decreases in property values?

By the way, I am tired of this "city as a victim" mantra coming from the administration and the electeds of the dais.  WE ARE DOING NOTHING TO MAKE LAKE WORTH AN ATTRACTIVE PLACE TO INVEST - IN FACT WE ARE DISCOURAGING IT FROM HAPPENING.  So, then we go to the union and everyone else we have an agreement with and say that "We are poor, getting poorer and in fact we are losing more property value than any other Palm Beach County municipality."  Why are WE not to blame for this?  Face the fact that the current city administration and the majority on the City Commission - by not having an unchallenged Comprehensive Plan, land development regulations that don't agree with that Comprehensive Plan and by a history of being hostile to commercial redevelopment (see Gulf Stream Hotel among other examples) - is doing everything it can to lower property values more.  

All this scheme about saving money by getting rid of the PBSO or reducing services or re-establishing our own police department is just one more thing "out of the way" to allow property values to plummet further.  If we don't have contracts to honor, suddenly the city doesn't have to rely on revenue from property taxes.  I know many people that lost value in the homes over the past four years - a friend of mine did some research recently and found 300 residential properties in Lake Worth that had less than $50,000 in assessed property value.  That means, if the home is actually owned by someone living in it and has a double homestead exemption, they are paying the minimum property tax per year of $333 - period.  There are more properties on the verge of going under $50,000 as well.  

We have a group of people that are figuratively laying in the middle of the road blocking progress related to the city's $23 million Neighborhood Stabilization Program grant and the Cultural Renaissance Program because they FEAR RISING PROPERTY VALUES AND THE POSSIBILITY OF PEOPLE WITH MONEY (read the former middle-class - not the wealthy) FINDING LAKE WORTH AN ATTRACTIVE PLACE TO LIVE.  

Can we honor our obligations and conduct ourselves in a way that befits the inherent strengths of Lake Worth?  Can we stop the race to the bottom?  It's a race we are clearly winning - but guess why.  There is no one else consciously heading in the same direction.  We get the prize!  Considering getting rid of PBSO would hasten the fall.