Anatomy of the first CRA takeover attempt - 2008

The big issue at the CRA back in 2007 and early 2008 was the lease that it had related to the Pugh property.  This property, at the southeast corner of 6th Avenue South and F street, was slated for a mixed use development that would include affordable rental housing.  At the February 5, 2008 regular meeting of the City Commission, Vice-Mayor Lowe asked that they not appoint anyone to the CRA for now as she wanted to talk about the possibility of taking over the CRA functions due to her concern about the Pugh project.  Click here for the highlighted minutes from the February 5, 2008 meeting.

Then, a special meeting was called to discuss the CRA on February 13, 2008.  Click here for a highlighted set of minutes.  While Vice Mayor Lowe was still concerned about the Pugh project, she seemed more concerned about whether the Commission had the time and could apply the effort the CRA does.  Towards the end of the meeting, it was Commissioner Golden who made two motions to takeover the CRA, seconded by Commissioner Jennings.  Those motions were eventually replaced by one made by Commissioner Vespo and seconded by Vice Mayor Lowe to have a workshop with the CRA to discuss accountability and the Pugh project.

Here are the minutes from those two workshops.  Click here for the first and click here for the second one.

They agreed to have better communication and they went on with the way things were without any changes in responsibility.

A couple of side notes about researching specific items on the city's website.  It is very laborious!  This is something I do from time to time being a planner researching property history in other communities.  The city of Lake Worth's website is not searchable so you have to guess and poke around based on date and read the agendas first and then the related minutes - on a different page.  This period in 2008 was when the Commission did public comment before the Commission discussion of an item and then you had to comment on them all together under each large heading on the agenda.  Trying to decipher public comment based upon agenda item number - before the item is introduced and  recorded later on in the minutes - is confusing and maddening at the same time.  I guess we don't have to worry about that now since they aren't recording public comment in the minutes anymore.

What I do now is download the WHOLE packet and keep it on my hard drive so that I can search it easier in the future.  That is the only way to deal with this information retrieval issue.

This is transparency?