Sunday, October 23, 2016

Latest news about the Blueway Trail: Minutes from September meeting at South Florida Water Management District headquarters

To learn more about this exciting project read the blog post following or use this link: You'll learn where this project is located, an excellent video, and how the finished project will likely look like.

To see the location yourself go to Spillway Park in the City of Lake Worth. Take Maryland Ave. off Federal Hwy. and the park is at the end of the road. Maryland Ave. is the first road heading west in Lake Worth along the C-51 Canal that separates the cities of Lake Worth and West Palm Beach.

Below are excerpts from this meeting held on September 28th:

1. Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council
Kim Delaney reported that the Request for Qualifications (RFQ) solicitation had been completed and a final selection and award had been determined. There was an advisory selection committee made up of the following individuals which assisted TCRPC [Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council] in their evaluation and interviews of the respondents. The advisory selection committee was:
  • Dan Clark, Manager, Lake Clark Shores
  • Sally Channon, PB County Environmental Resource Management
  • Chuck Collins, Director, PB County Marine Industries Association
  • Mark Hightower, Director, West Palm Beach Fishing Club
  • Brian Shields, Director, Lake Worth Utilities 
     TCRPC adopted and ratified the recommendation at their most recent Board Meeting, and although the official Agreement has not been finalized and signed by all Parties, the winning team, with Taylor Engineering as the lead, was introduced to the Coalition and invited to make a presentation. [use this link for presentation]

[and. . .]

2. Boat Lift & Fishing Piers Working Groups
     It was recommended to invite a representative from the Florida Inland Navigation District (FIND) to the next Blueway Trail Coalition meeting to discuss and answer questions regarding possible grant funding opportunities that may be used to rebuild the fishing piers located at the C-51 flood control structure. [emphasis added]
3. Communications and Community Outreach
     It was determined that due to the role of TCRPC as contract administrator for the engineering design and draft permitting Agreement, which will cause the project to have a greater exposure to the public, TCRPC should serve as the first referral contact for inquiries from the general public regarding the project.

[and. . .]

ATTENDEES:
Jonathan Armbruster, Taylor Engineering
David Bernhardt, Rep. Dave Kerner
Dan Clark, City of Lake Clarke Shores
Chuck Collins, MIA PBC
Laura Corry, SFWMD (by phone)
Lucine Dadrian, SFWMD
John D'Agostino, Town of Lake Park
Kim Delaney, TCRPC
Felicia Goldstein, Cong. Lois Frankel
Glenda Hall, Boynton Beach
Elaine Higgins, Rep. Dave Kerner
Comm. Shanon Materio, West Palm Beach
Jean Matthew, PBC Parks Dpt.
Richard Pinsky, Akerman, LLC
Melissa Santoro, Sen. Jeff Clemens
Brian Shields, City of Lake Worth
David Stites, Taylor Engineering
John Studdard, Achieve Agency
Brian Whitfield, A.D.A. Engineering
GUESTS:
Jessica Fontaine, Spark Group
Bill Snow, Aecom
Trent Swift, Swift Law Group

The date of the next meeting was set for Tuesday, November 15, 2016, starting at 3:00 PM.