The problem with hurricanes: Eliot Kleinberg's excellent article gets pushed to the 'B' section

The article by Eliot Kleinberg in the Sunday's Post (8/23) is a MUST READ. If it weren't for Hurricane Danny it probably would have made the front page of the paper. Hurricanes, or even a possible hurricane, always gets the front page as well it should.

Talk is ramping up to dissolve the city of Pahokee. The fallout over the Guy Harvey Outpost Resort fiasco is still resonating. That resort, if it were built, would have been the answer to so many of the city's problems. Ends up Guy Harvey got wooed by Okeechobee and off he went along with his $19.5 million. An opportunity lost forever. Sadly South Bay is also in serious trouble according to the article.

Here is a list of Florida cities in a state of a financial emergency:

• Caryville, Town of
• Eatonville, Town of
• Gretna, City of
• Hampton, City of
• Hawthorne, City of
• Indian Creek Village
• Noma, Town of
• Pahokee, City of
• Paxton, City of
• South Bay, City of
• Wausau, Town of
• Webster, City of
• Westville, Town of

In the article you'll learn that dissolving cities in Florida is nothing new. Eleven have been dissolved since 1977 and the reporter has a list.

Here is an excerpt from the article:

     Asked if people on the coast leave Pahokee, Belle Glade and South Bay off their personal radars, Pahokee resident Dashonda McPherson told a Palm Beach Post reporter, “Ain’t no kind of. They do. We ain’t even on the map. We ain’t even on the news when they do the weather.”
     Every work day, she leaves her 5-year-old daughter, Adrienne, at Pahokee’s Head Start center and drives more than an hour to work at a McDonald’s in West Palm Beach.
     Twenty minutes away, Belle Glade has fast food joints. But Pahokee has none. Just a few gas stations and diners. One night club. And a half-vacant Main Street that, historic photos show, once packed sedans whitewall-to-whitewall.
     Founded in 1922, Pahokee went from 2,000 residents in 1930 to fewer than 6,000 now. In comparison, Boca Raton went from 447 to nearly 84,000 in that same time span.