At end of this blog post. Video of last night’s Lake Worth City Commission Work Session: 2019 ballot question(s).

But first, let’s address a topic that came up last night: About long, narrow tubes.

Not a long, narrow tube like a microscope for examining things closely. Or a long, narrow tube like a telescope for examining things far away. But more like looking through the long, narrow tube of a plastic straw.

It would seem the “Plastic Straw Ban Platoon” is still twisting the arms of our elected officials here in this City. Apparently, and have not watched the entire video yet, there is talk of putting some sort of plastic ban initiative or plastic straw ban language on the ballot next year, the municipal elections to be held on March 12th, 2019.

If you recall, the Straw Ban Platoon followed in the steps of the ‘Balloon Police’. A political distraction in this little City of Lake Worth but it did frighten the bejesus out of little children thinking their parents would get thrown in jail for “possession of a balloon”.

The Plastic Straw Ban Platoon (PSBP) is myopically-focused looking at the world like looking out the tube of a straw whilst the rest of this City is looking at our issues and problems like using a microscope or a telescope. A microscope can help. And so can a telescope. That straw won’t help much except if you enjoy walking around in circles and bumping into things.

The real focus of course for members of
the PSBP is the Lake Worth Beach.

For some, for some reason, the Lake Worth Beach holds great significance on Planet Earth. But when looked at in perspective — at just 0.26 miles, just 1,280 feet long — our Beach is relatively insignificant. For example, the Lake Worth Beach makes up 0.072 of all Atlantic coastal beaches and just 0.032 of all Florida beaches.

Using the all-important March 2019 ballot to address an issue this City cannot regulate takes away from the substantive issues that truly need to be addressed.

The following issues have been mentioned publicly by the Commission as well as during individual discussions with the City Manager as potential ballot questions. These include, but are not limited to:

• Authorization to sell City owned property(ies) per City Charter.
• Change the name of the City of Lake Worth to include “Beach” [or name this City “Jewell”, or “Jewel” or “Lake Worth City”? For background click on this link.]
• Authorize a long term lease with County for the Jewell Cove/Steinhardt properties.

And there could be other questions on the ballot too. Like as suggested on this blog, eliminating run-off elections.

Hopefully the ‘plastic straw ban platoon’ will reconsider and take their all-important issue somewhere else for the voters to grapple with. For example, here is a question being dealt with now as reported by Larry Barszewski at the Sun Sentinel:

“Are you willing to pay price to reverse Broward’s dramatic drop in recycling?”

But anyhow. . .

To the video. Last night’s Commission meeting was a Work Session meaning no official action or votes were taken. Commissioner Scott Maxwell was absent so the topic of abandoned shopping carts was probably not discussed.

But if the Plastic Straw Ban Platoon is looking for something helpful to do they can go grab all those abandoned shopping carts and fill them all up with water bottled with light-weight plastic, just in case we get hit by a hurricane or a major storm this year. The PSBP can hand out plastic-bottled water to everyone in need.

And, of course, warn everyone not to use a plastic straw.

Enjoy watching this meeting courtesy
of Lake Worth Beach!