Old news published nearly three years ago in the Post about Greenacres, “City inches close to merger with PBSO”.

A lot has happened in the City of Greenacres since July 2015.

Much of what follows in this blog post
is not new news by any means.

But what is new news is effective May 1st,
Gatehouse Media has taken over the operations
at The Palm Beach Post and Shiny Sheet.

So maybe some time soon we’ll finally get that update about what happened in Greenacres 2½ years ago,
that the decision to merge with PBSO in hindsight was the right decision.


The news about Palm Beach County’s Sheriff Office (PBSO) and the City of Greenacres (see below) is from when The Palm Beach Post used to have a beat reporter covering that fine city. But following the merge of the Greenacres Police Dept. with PBSO in late 2015 is about when that paper decided to stop covering much of any political news and public safety news from municipalities west of Lake Worth with the exception being the villages of Royal Palm Beach and Wellington. For example Greenacres is one city that, unless it was news about a vehicle crash a fire or a crime, hardly received any coverage at all in the Post’s “Local” section.

And it was about three years ago when the Post began their Lake Worth Very Very Special Monday Collector Print Edition (LWVVSMCPE), published every single Monday. That’s right. Our little six square mile City has been one of the “Six Special Cities” for almost three years now in the print edition. Every Monday. Every week. For almost three years.

And also each and every week since 2015 in the LWVVSMCPE are the phone numbers for the parks dept. and sewer dept. for City residents who don’t know how to save phone numbers and others who don’t know how to use the Internet. Phone numbers published in the Post every single week. Every Monday. For nearly three whole years. Isn’t it about time to publish in the print edition the phone numbers for the parks and sewer dept. in another city here in Central Palm Beach County? Like maybe Greenacres?

However, the City of Lake Worth being so special
came at the expense of other municipalities like Greenacres, the Town of Lake Clarke Shores, and
the Village of Palm Springs.

One of the theories was the editor(s) at the Post picked municipalities with established and trusted local newspapers (in print and online) to try and draw away advertising revenue and force them out of business. If that theory was indeed true, the plan didn’t work here in Lake Worth.

Now back to Greenacres, when “City inches
close to merger with PBSO”.

There are a lot of parallels to what occurred in the City of Lake Worth back in 2008 vis-à-vis the tremendous increase in crime, out of control gangs, the inefficiently equipped police dept., and lack of essential public safety services. It was former Mayor Jeff Clemens in August 2008 who then made the decision to merge the LWPD with PBSO.

Then seven years later, in July 2015, came this news from Greenacres:


     The city is considering having the sheriff’s office patrol Greenacres mostly because of the additional services it would get, some of which include a drug task force, fuller staffs, police dogs and updated radios and laptops. [emphasis added]
     “If we had to buy these additional services, the dollars and sense would go through the roof,” [emphasis added] said Vice Mayor Jonathan Pearce [now District 4 Councilman Pearce]
     The city would also get a citizen’s patrol, something the city doesn’t have, a program in which the sheriff’s office trains volunteers to be the eyes and ears of a neighborhood.
     “That’s a tremendous boon to us in keeping the neighborhood safe,” Gauger [PBSO Chief Deputy Michael Gauger] said.
     Councilwoman Lisa Rivera [no longer on Council] pointed out how the number of homicides are on the rise. Greenacres has six, ranking it second in the county. That’s one more than Greenacres has had in the past four years combined, according to a Palm Beach Post homicides database.


In November 2015 Greenacres made the decision to merge with PBSO becoming District 16. The City of Lake Worth is PBSO District 14.

The trajectory for crime in Lake Worth in 2008 was trending up very quickly. Late in 2008 PBSO took control and by mid-2009 the impact was clear to those who were paying attention and looking over the data. Every year crime continued to drop, some years more slowly than others, but the trend of outrageous crime rates prior to PBSO taking over was a thing of the past.

The revisionists in Lake Worth who claim that the LWPD was effective and met the needs of the community is a myth, a notion easily disproved. Proven false innumerable times on this blog over the years.