Feel-good City government: Doing something that doesn’t mean anything and hoping the public thinks otherwise.

The City Commission will be different next Tuesday. Commissioner Ryan Maier (blue shirt) opted not to seek re-election and Chris McVoy (far right) lost to Omari Hardy in last Tuesday’s election.

The new Lake Worth City Commission has a lot of work to do and they can’t waste any time getting down to it. They can’t spend any time “looking over their shoulder” or getting bogged down in senseless, meaningless debates and discussions.

The tone of our new City Commission will be set next Tuesday starting at 5:00 with the Swearing In of Commissioners-Elect Omari Hardy and Herman Robinson.

Next Tuesday at City Hall, 5:00, is the Swearing In of Omari Hardy and Herman Robinson to the City Commission.

Probably the best example of feel-good, meaningless government was the now-famous and terribly embarrassing “inglorious demise of Consent Agenda item 9C” by a soon-to-be former commissioner, Chris McVoy, PhD.

It’s quite common for a city’s elected leaders to voice concerns over an issue, especially one of great concern to the community. But when trying to set a policy is where things go off the rails, so to speak. Like when Commissioner Ryan Maier suggested trying to regulate the volume of train horns: those pitch and volume levels are set by the Federal government. Even the State of Florida cannot regulate the sound levels of train horns.

Below is another example of what happened back in 2015.

If you didn’t know any better you would think the 6-square-mile City of Lake Worth took a major step forward in the protection of the honeybee colonies. Nothing of the sort happened. The first reading of Ordinance No. 2015-17, “to regulate, inspect, and permit managed honeybee colonies” is already regulated by state law and there’s nothing anyone in Lake Worth can do to supersede that.

This was city government doing something that isn’t doing anything at all. But it does play well with certain constituents that can be convinced otherwise. I believe the item below was brought forward by Commissioner Maier. It that is incorrect please feel free to send me the correct information.

Click on image to enlarge:

“To this end, the proposed Ordinance simply acknowledges the State Legislature’s preemption of this area of the law.” Let’s hope with our new City Commission there’s more focus on the things we can control, and less on things we can’t.