Fact-checking from 1/17/12 City Commission Meeting

One of the items brought up last night was the length of service by now Commissioner Christopher McVoy on the Planning, Zoning, Historic Resource Preservation Board.  He mentioned his experience on the board in relation to supporting the notion that the newly separated boards remain separate and are not recombined.  A resident from the audience questioned him on his length of service and how it qualified him to make that statement.  This particular resident had thought that it had been "for all of 14 days."  After public comments, Commissioner McVoy responded that he had indeed served for four or five months.

I thought that was easy enough to check, so I went to the City's website and looked at the minutes of the PZHRPB for the year 2010 - the year that Commissioner McVoy was elected to office and also the year that he was appointed to the PZHRPB.

If you look at the head of the minutes from their April 7, 2010 meeting (above), Christopher McVoy was being sworn in, along with Laurence McNamara.

 If you look at the minutes of the August 18, 2010 meeting (above) and then go to the last page (part of which is below), you can read where the board is acknowledging Mr. McVoy absence after he resigned to run for office.

As best as I can tell, there were 11 meetings of this board during this time period -  roughly four months.  From what I could see he had good attendance, but did not read all of those minutes to determine if he left early, came late or whatever.  But that is the record.  At the time, I saw his appointment as a needed "filling out" of his resume in order to run, which is probably the case.  Never say I don't do something nice - like tell the truth - concerning Commissioner McVoy.

On another matter, Commissioner Maxwell made reference to the utility costs being identified in the Interlocal Agreement between the City of Lake Worth and Palm Beach County for the beach improvements.  What appears below is a page from the agreement - the three arrows highlight the location of where utility-related improvements are identified - and all were at one time recognized as being paid for through the $5 million.

Remember back when the costs for the 19 acre beach property were being discussed with Morganti et al?  Someone from Michael Singer's office was in the audience basically "having a cow" while the costs were being explained.  He was certain that all of the work (above) could have been done for $5 million.  Eventually, he was told by our former City Manager to pipe down as this was an un-programmed bit of information that she didn't know how to handle.  After the meeting, they met together in her office.  I am not sure what happened there, but he made it clear he was there on his own time and that he just wanted this project "done right."  Courtesy of Ms. Stanton, we haven't seen him since.