Wednesday, July 26, 2017

In hindsight: Voting for Commissioner Hardy last March — instead of the incumbent — was a “no-brainer”.


While watching the Lake Worth City Commission Work Session on the proposals for the ¢1 County Sales Tax proceeds last night (use this link or scroll down), couldn’t help but wonder what would be happening right now if the former commissioner in District 2 won his re-election bid — he didn’t — it probably didn’t help very much when the editor at the Post, in the endorsement for Mr. Omari Hardy called the incumbent a “gadfly”.

Commissioner Hardy’s first time through the recently started budget process as an elected official, his ideas for important acronyms like CDBG money, explaining what the PCI is, his coordination with the TCRPC and Dr. Kim DeLaney, the condemned pier in the C-51 that SFWMD is so concerned about and. . . well, you can see in hindsight why electing Hardy was a “no-brainer”.

For example, let’s take a look back to August 2016: the embarrassing and “Inglorious Demise” of an agenda item.

Last August the then-District 2 commissioner and now Mr. Chris McVoy, PhD, had an item placed on the City Commission agenda to “Send It [water discharges] South!” from Lake Okeechobee. A little problem with this agenda item (see below) is McVoy didn’t give Belle Glade Mayor Wilson, Pahokee Mayor Babb, South Bay Mayor Kyles, or Mayor Roland in Clewiston a courtesy call and say, “Hey, I think your cities should be wiped off the face of the Earth.”

Another problem with McVoy’s item on the agenda was this: septic tanks were not cited as a factor in algae blooms last year, a fact he conveniently left out. And the dike surrounding Lake Okeechobee which needs serious repairs? The Herbert Hoover Dike was also not cited as one of McVoy’s concerns either.

Around the same time last year, the Palm Beach Town Council also dealt with this issue, but in quite a different way. They had a resolution about Lake Okeechobee and below are three short excerpts from this article by reporter Aleese Kopf at the Palm Beach Daily News (aka, The Shiny Sheet):

     Town Council members agreed this week to adopt a resolution urging federal and state officials to spend more money on and speed up work to store, treat and move clean water to and from Lake Okeechobee.

and. . .

     Specifically, the resolution urges lawmakers to speed up planning for water storage reservoirs south of the lake in the Everglades Agricultural Area, to speed up repair of the Herbert Hoover Dike and to eliminate septic tanks in the region. [emphasis added]

and. . .

     Council members unanimously passed the resolution. Council President Michael Pucillo said it’s worded in a way that is not “particularly controversial.”
     “We’re talking about expediting planning,” added Councilwoman Bobbie Lindsay. “We’re not asking them to buy land.”

The ingloriously deleted Consent Agenda item C at the Lake Worth City Commission:

Resolution No. 38-2016 - implement a solution to long standing water discharge issues plaguing the City
“Plaguing the City”? The Commission meeting had barely started last August when, at the 2:00 minute mark, Consent agenda item 9C is pulled from the agenda. Gone. Erased. Wiped out. Which raises some interesting questions:
  • Why did McVoy put the item on the agenda in the first place?
  • A sizable group of people showed up (or were invited) to support the resolution. Did he wave goodbye to them on their way out of town?
  • The vote was unanimous to delete it from the agenda. That’s right. McVoy voted to delete his very own agenda item. Why would he do that?

The text of the brief that accompanied this item:

AGENDA DATE: August 2, 2016, Regular Meeting
DEPARTMENT: Commissioner McVoy
EXECUTIVE BRIEF
TITLE: Resolution No. 38-2016 – implementing a solution to long standing water discharge issues plaguing the City
SUMMARY: The Resolution urges the Federal and State governments to implement solutions and fix the problems of water discharge from Kissimmee River Valley, Lake Okeechobee, and areas west of the City into the C-51 Canal.
BACKGROUND AND JUSTIFICATION: The current plumbing in South Florida allows for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to, at times of high water and for reasons of human safety, discharge waters from Lake Okeechobee into the Lake Worth Lagoon through the C-51 Canal. The discharged waters degraded quality and elevated nutrient status of Lake Okeechobee causes undesirable and widespread algal blooms.

Has anyone seen any “widespread algal blooms” in Lake Worth? Has the water been “plaguing” us? The “current plumbing”?

Not exactly the language or terminology one would expect from a PhD, is it?