1000 Friends of Florida - 2060 Study

Do you know that almost 18 million more people are expected to move to Florida by the year 2060? And did you know that most of that growth will be in areas that are not currently developed and much of it is environmentally sensitive or currently agricultural? Do you realize that equates to almost 7 million acres of land in Florida? And did you know that many of the already disturbed/developed urban areas along the coast could accept additional density in order to direct growth away from environmentally sensitive areas? Do you know that the average density in Palm Beach County is between 6 and 7 units to an acre? Do you realize that to have an economically viable mass transit (non-automobile based) system you need to have additional density along major transportation corridors? All this is on the 1000 Friends of Florida website. Click here for the 2060 population study.

Then ask yourself, can we accept the density already established along our major corridors and can we accept the careful redevelopment our City as outlined in our Master Planning process?

I think the answer will be yes.

"Political advertisement paid for and approved by Wes Blackman for Commissioner – District #3"

Campaign Interview on LakeWorthTalk.com

I want to make sure you all know about the interview I had with Jim Stafford recently on "The Live Show". The interview took place last Wednesday night, January 17th. What happens during the interview is that people post questions to the discussion board and you answer them on "air". Only this time, the "air" is over your Internet connection. I am not sure how it works with dial-up Internet service. If you are able, you can go to one of the Internet Hotspots in town and try to be broadband access on a laptop.

Click here to be forwarded to the archived audio page (0117 Wes Blackman).

Anyway, there were a whole series of good questions asked and I did my best to answer them. When you listen to it, it really is a glimpse at the up-coming election season and what you will be hearing on the campaign trail. Thanks to Jim Stafford for offering this service to the community. He received responses from most of the candidates in the various races so be sure to tune in to hear what the other candidates in District #3 have to say, as well as the District #1 and Mayor's races. As always, your comments, feedback and ideas are appreciated.

I hope to find more time to up-date this blog. Time in February will be at a premium, to be sure.

Thanks for your interest in a bright future for the City of Lake Worth and for your support!

"Political advertisement paid for and approved by Wes Blackman for Commissioner – District #3"

Look Here - Signs are on their way!

I thought I'd post my signs here. Feel free to download them and use as your computer wallpaper, etc. The actual signs should be ready by the end of next week, Friday January 26th. Let me know if you would like to put one in your yard or place of business. And you'll have a choice of styles.

I am really happy with how they turned out. Remember...Share the Vision!

"Political advertisement paid for and approved by Wes Blackman for Commissioner – District #3"

Beach and Casino Land Use District

At last night's City Commission meeting (1/16), the Commission voted 3-2 to transmit the Beach and Casino Land Use District and Future Land Use Plan amendment for review by the State of Florida Department of Community Affairs.

Prior to the meeting - the Thursday before -, the following e-mail was sent by Commissioner Jennings and widely distributed:

Please come out and help defend our Public Beach from being Re-zoned:

Ordinance No. 2007-09- create a Beach and Casino land use district & Ordinance No. 2007-10- provide for a Large Scale Comprehensive Plan amendment.

This item will create a new beach zoning district call BAC (Beach and Casino). This was passed by a 3-2 vote in November, but is coming back as the Department of Community Affairs in Tallahassee is requiring us to re-submit it during the 2007 calendar year. This change is necessary for the Greater Bay Group to move forward with their development plan for the beach. I have many concerns about
the plan and I am opposed to a land use change that is being put in place to allow for increased development and increased commercial uses.

My response, sent to all the Commissioners, the City Manager, etc.:

I think, and I hope that you would agree, that it is important to portray the
facts accurately in any matter that comes before the City Commission or
communicated broadly to the public. I have highlighted parts of your
communication that are not correct. First - this action would not create a new
beach zoning district. That is currently being considered and studied by the
Planning and Zoning Board. In fact, the Board held a workshop on the new zoning
district for the beach last Wednesday the 10th of January. It was disappointing
not to see people including commissioners like yourself that I know are
concerned about our beach park not in attendance.

As I have said before, if we are ever going to have a public input process that is meaningful, we need to give meaning to process. The process cannot have meaning if people do not attend and engage in the process, nor if the public is given imprecise information about the process by their elected representatives. \n \nI also want to remind you that the land use change, and any change to our Comprehensive Plan, requires review by the State of Florida. The creation of our zoning district for the
beach does not - it is under the City's control exclusively.

Second - the land use change before the City Commission on next Tuesday's agenda only corrects a long--standing omission in our Comprehensive Plan - having a land use category that is consistent with the long established retail and restaurant uses
found at the beach.

Let's all try to be as clear and accurate as possible when we make declarations to the public.

Thank you.

Wes Blackman

At the meeting, I added the following comments:

At the November 7 City Commission, the Beach and Casino future land use district language and change in the future land use map were approved for transmittal to the State of Florida Department of Community Affairs (DCA). This was done a vote of 3-2. The Planning and Zoning Board unanimously recommended approval at its 10/19 meeting.

In last December, DCA turned the transmittal around since we did not have our EAR completed. Other municipalities are in the same boat. There are no changes in the text and the map since that date.

Regardless of the Greater Bay project, the inconsistency with the PROS land use (which does not permit commercial uses) at the beach needs to be corrected to reflect actual conditions – we have had and will have commercial retail operations at the City’s beach.

By voting against this Beach and Casino land use language, you are essentially saying that you do not want commercial uses at the beach – whether there is a Greater Bay project or not.

Parallel to this, the Planning and Zoning Board has been reviewing new language for the Beach and Casino Zoning District. The first Planning and Zoning Board
meeting where the Beach and Casino Zoning District was discussed was October
19th. We had a well-attended meeting in December that gave further public direction to the effort and there was another workshop on January 10. There will be a public hearing on February 7th at the Planning and Zoning Board for additional public discussion and possible recommendation.

The City Commission will meet in the future to consider any recommendation.

I encourage everyone who is concerned regarding re-development of the beach property to attend the meetings where the zoning district is being discussed. That is where the action is – not with these land use amendments being discussed tonight.

"Political advertisement paid for and approved by Wes Blackman for Commissioner – District #3"

Lake Worth MLK Events

More to come..

"Political advertisement paid for and approved by Wes Blackman for Commissioner – District #3"

In Honor of Martin Luther King, Jr....

Please click here for full text of the August 28, 1963 "I have a Dream" speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. Also there is an original television broadcast of the speech and the events surrounding it on the same page.

Detailed Bio

Wes Blackman was born in Lansing, Michigan in 1961 - He graduated from Alma College with honors in 1983, majoring in Business Administration. He studied the Spanish language for eight years and studied in Madrid, Spain. He visited many cities in Spain experienced the architectural wonders of Toledo, Granada and Barcelona. His travels also took him to Avignon and Paris, France, with a final stop in Amsterdam. The Spanish/Moorish architecture of southern Spain made quite an impression, especially the Alhambra in Granada. These influences became important factors in Wes’ future.

Wes also was an accomplished player of the baritone horn, playing in many honor bands throughout his high school and college career. He continued his interest by participating in community bands in every area in which he lived.

He began his career working for the State of Michigan, Department of Commerce in Community Development. Working as a staff analyst for economic development grants and loan programs to Michigan cities experiencing economic impacts from the downtown of the automobile industry, Wes assisted communities in the establishment of revolving loan fund programs and infrastructure improvements. Many of the infrastructure improvements related to the extension of public water lines. These projects provided safe drinking water for families that drank water from nitrate tainted wells from fertilizer use.

Wes continued his work in the private sector by being a Community Development Specialist at Wilkins and Wheaton Engineering in Kalamazoo, Michigan. In this role, he assisted communities in assembling grant applications and packaging economic development loan programs to create needed jobs. Comstock Township, outside of Kalamazoo, Michigan, benefited from Wes’ expertise in securing grant monies for the expansion of their public water supply system. While in southwestern Michigan, Wes helped the City of Allegan complete an historic structure survey and establish the City’s first historic districts. He also helped area communities complete recreation plans for better access to State of Michigan recreation grant programs.
Wes then returned to his hometown to work at the City of East Lansing as Economic Development Specialist. His work there expanded to include working as staff person for the City’s Economic Development Corporation, Downtown Development Authority and the Central East Lansing Business Association. He was also active in the Regional Economic Development team – a consortium of local communities that worked to promote targeted economic development projects. This is where Wes first entered the world of site plan and zoning review, specializing in projects in the downtown East Lansing. He was part of the team that brought a major mixed-use project, including a public parking component, to the downtown. His specialty was parking system utilization and rate structure analyses.

Wes’ move to Florida came in 1989, primarily in search of a warmer climate and a new set of professional opportunities. He relocated to the West Palm Beach area and worked for the City of West Palm Beach as an Urban Planner. This was at the time that state-mandated Comprehensive Plans were being prepared by all local governments in Florida in response to Florida Administrative Code 9J5 and Chapter 163, Florida Statutes. Wes was put in charge of the transportation and infrastructure elements of the City’s Comprehensive Plan, along with other responsibilities including site plan and zoning/land use reviews. He became known as the City’s traffic planner. In 1991, Wes completed his certification in the American Institute of Certified Planners.

Wes always enjoyed spending time in the City of Lake Worth since moving to Florida. He respected the layout of the City, the charm of its downtown area and the abundance of public land on the water. He moved here in 1992 and lived in a duplex near 7th Avenue South and H Street. Hardly the garden spot of the world back then, but it fit the bill for about 5 years. His interest in planning and neighborhood improvement were stimulated due to the property to the south which was a "bombed out" former lodge building (which is now converted to a church and came out rather well). In the parking lot adjacent to his house, there was an out building that housed an Ambulance dispatch office, complete with ambulances that would go out at all hours of the day or night, lights flashing - with a siren here or there for extra effect. Some previous "Organ of the City" approved this use for the property without any regard for the neighborhood around it - it was around this time that he started thinking about getting involved and using his planning experience to better the conditions of the City.

He loved the proximity to downtown - loved to go to Rosie's for their lobster specials, went to the beach often, enjoyed the various events at Bryant Park, etc. It was while he lived here that he served on the City's Leisure Services Board - got to know Babara Aubel and Lynnette Romano, the Webbers, among others.

A big change in Wes’ life occurred in 1993 when he spoke in favor of the Mar-a-Lago property becoming a private club. This lovely example of Mediterranean revival architecture in South Florida was patterned after portions of the Alhambra in Spain. He was concerned that the National Historic Landmark would be subdivided or follow the fate of other large residential estates in Palm Beach. Mar-a-Lago was the last of a breed – all the other large estates had either been bulldozed or were subdivided in response to changing socio-economic factors. The owner of the property, Mr. Trump had sued the Town of Palm Beach over the right to subdivide the property. The proposal to establish a private club and keep the property intact was offered as a way to allow a use that was kind to the historic nature of the property and allow the lawsuit to be withdrawn. Wes offered his opinion of the traffic and historic preservation impacts of the proposal at a public hearing in May of that year. In September, he was asked by Mr. Trump to come on board and help meet the conditions of approval to establish a private club.

Over the next ten years, Wes secured approvals for the sensitive changes necessary to accommodate the new use of the property. This meant many presentations before the Landmarks Preservation Commission and the Palm Beach Town Council. Wes also had significant interaction with the National Trust for Historic Preservation and took many trips to Washington, D.C. in pursuit of permissions for the addition of tennis courts, spa, beach cabanas and ballroom for the Mar-a-Lago Club. As the Club grew more successful, Mr. Trump established a championship 18 hole golf course on County property south of the Palm Beach International Airport. Wes directed the efforts of a team of professionals in completing the golf course and did the same when it was time to construct a luxurious 40,000 square foot clubhouse on the property. He also assisted in gaining approval of an adjacent 9 hole course northwest of the 214 acre golf course property. With the projects completed, Wes left the Trump Organization in 2003. His experience here led him to understand all aspects of project management, critical path analysis, negotiation of contracts and the supervision of a team of professionals. He also gained valuable experience in construction management and his efforts garnered an award from the Florida Society of the American Institute of Building Design to Donald Trump for the Mar-a-Lago Club restoration and the innovative special construction techniques applied to the Clubhouse at Trump International Golf Course.

After working briefly for a local consulting firm, Wes went out on his own and established his own planning and zoning consulting firm. He recently resigned from his positions as Chairman of the Planning and Zoning Historic Resource Preservation Board, the Nuisance Abatement Board and as member of the Stakeholders Advisory Committee in order to run for the District #3 Commission Seat for the March municipal election. He has recently attended classes at Harvard concerning retail development in traditional downtowns and mixed use development. He is still a member of the Palm Beach County Planning Congress, where he served 2 times as its president, and is Chairman of the Land Development Regulation Advisory Board of Palm Beach County. He is also a board member of the Palm Beach County Historical Society.

Wes has lived in College Park for the past 6 years with his two dogs, Venus and Mars. He enjoys antique automobiles and hosts karaoke at a local Lake Worth establishment.

"Political advertisement paid for and approved by Wes Blackman for Commissioner – District #3"

New Flier!

Gerald R. Ford

Quotes in honor of the passing of our 38th President:

I have had a lot of adversaries in my political life, but no enemies that I can
remember.

In all my public and private acts as your president, I expect
to follow my instincts of openness and candor with full confidence that honesty
is always the best policy in the end.

It's the quality of the ordinary,
the straight, the square, that accounts for the great stability and success of
our nation. It's a quality to be proud of. But it's a quality that many people
seem to have neglected.

Truth is the glue that holds government
together. Compromise is the oil that makes governments go.

All my
children have spoken for themselves since they first learned to speak, and not
always with my advance approval, and I expect that to continue in the future.

"Political advertisement paid for and approved by Wes Blackman for Commissioner – District #3"

Last PZHRPB Meeting...

Above is a picture of the Planning and Zoning, Historic Preservation Board, less Anne Hoctor and Lisa Maxwell. December 20th represented my last meeting as a member of the Board. We squeezed this picture in as we were walking out the door after the meeting. From the left are Vicent DeVito, Jamie Foreman, Phil Spinelli, Wes Blackman, John Paxman, Don Skowron and Ed LeBlanc. Thanks to everyone on the Board for the time you devote to the continued improvement of our City. I wish you all the best and hope that I will be working with you in a new way after the March election. In the meantime, I will do my best to attend your meetings and balance the demands of the campaign. The PZHRPB will be the focus of much important work over the next year in the completion of the Master Plan related documents - Comprehensive Plan changes and new Land Development Regulations - not to mention completion of the Beach and Casino Zoning District. Good luck to you all!



I want to wish you all the best for this holiday season.

We had an extremely full agenda that evening - review of the Evaluation and Appraisal Report, a rather complicated variance request from a property owner on Wingfield and some changes to the historic Gulfstream Hotel. John Paxman was elected Chairman (see picture above) with Phil Spinelli keeping the Vice-Chairman spot. John and I switched seats and I participated as a regular board member through the meeting. Before the meeting, we had a reception that was prepared in my honor - thanks everyone! - but it seemed just like a nice holiday gathering among friends.

Here are some of the pictures from the reception - Thanks to Mary Lindsey for retrieving her camera to catch a few memories.

And here is a scan (below) of the nice "Going away" card from the group. Thanks for all the kind sentiments. Remember, each ending is a new beginning...

"Political advertisement paid for and approved by Wes Blackman for Commissioner – District #3"

Up-dates...

Hey folks. I am fired up about the real election process. This is going to be a first for me and I am doing it with all the joy that I can muster.

My last meeting on the Planning and Zoning Board will be this coming Wednesday - our meeting on December 20th. The election of Chairman will be the first item on our agenda - an unusually long agenda, by the way. Please visit the City's website under "Volunteer Boards" for more detail. See link on the right side of the page. I plan to conduct the election portion of the meeting and then I will take a seat as a regular voting member and let the new chair run the meeting.

Before the meeting there will be a reception in the conference room at 5 p.m. before in honor of my last meeting - it's been eight years on the board and five years as Chairman. You are welcome to come by and say "Hi" - I'd like to visit with you.

There is a new website in the works - it will go LIVE in about a week or so and you will be able to sign up to volunteer, find out what events are planned and contribute to the worthy cause via PayPal. Stay tuned - I will provide a link here too. I will maintain this as a blog and chronicle my appearances and other issues as they come forth. And, of course, you can post your own opinions under the comments section at the end of each post.

Enjoy the Holiday season and look forward to coming discussion of issues by all of the candidates after the beginning of the new year - the year of Lake Worth!

"Political advertisement paid for and approved by Wes Blackman for Commissioner – District #3"

Food for thought...

A good friend of mine sent this via e-mail and I am sharing this here. There are some ideas that apply to our situation in Lake Worth, and elsewhere - sort of our current human social milieu.

The piece below is excerpted from Rob Brezsny's book
"PRONOIA IS THE ANTIDOTE FOR PARANOIA:
How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings"

WELCOME HOME

Let me remind you who you really are: You're an immortal freedom fighter
in service to divine love. You have temporarily taken on the form of a
human being, suffering amnesia about your true origins, in order to
liberate all sentient creatures from suffering and help them claim the
ecstatic awareness that is their birthright. You will accept nothing less
than the miracle of bringing heaven all the way down to earth.

Your task may look impossible. Ignorance and inertia, partially
camouflaged as time-honored morality, seem to surround you. Pessimism
is enshrined as a hallmark of worldliness. Compulsive skepticism
masquerades as perceptiveness. Mean-spirited irony is chic. Stories about
treachery and degradation provoke a visceral thrill in millions of people
who think of themselves as reasonable and smart. Beautiful truths are
suspect and ugly truths are readily believed.

To grapple against these odds, you have to be both a wrathful
insurrectionary and an exuberant lover of life. You've got to cultivate
cheerful buoyancy even as you resist the temptation to swallow
thousands of delusions that have been carefully crafted and seductively
packaged by very self-important people who act as if they know what
they're doing. You have to learn how to stay in a good mood as you
overthrow the sour, puckered hallucination that is mistakenly referred to
as reality.

What can we do to help each other in this work?

First, we can create safe houses to shelter everyone who's devoted to
the slow-motion awakening. These sanctuaries might take the form of
temporary autonomous zones like festivals and parties and workshops,
where we can ritually potentiate the evolving mysteries of pronoia. Or
they might be more enduring autonomous zones like homes and cafes and
businesses where we can get regular practice in freeing ourselves from
the slavery of hatred in all of its many guises.

What else can we do to help each other? We can conspire together to
carry out the agenda that futurist Barbara Marx Hubbard names: to
hospice what's dying and midwife what's being born. We need the trigger
of each other's rebel glee as we kill off every reflex within us that
resonates in harmony with the putrefaction. We need each other's
dauntless cunning as we goad and foment the blooming life forces within
us that thrive on the New World's incandescent questions.

Here's a third way we can collaborate: We can inspire each other to
perpetrate healing mischief, friendly shocks, compassionate tricks,
blasphemous reverence, holy pranks, and crazy wisdom.

What? Huh? What do tricks and mischief and jokes have to do with our
quest? Isn't America in a permanent state of war? Isn't it the most
militarized empire in the history of the world? Hasn't the government's
paranoia about terrorism decimated our civil liberties? Isn't it our duty to
grow more serious and weighty than ever before?

I say it's the perfect moment to take everything less seriously and less
personally and less literally.

Permanent war and the loss of civil liberties are immediate dangers. But
there is an even bigger long-term threat to the fate of the earth, of which
the others are but symptoms: the genocide of the imagination.

Earlier I cited pop nihilist storytellers as vanguard perpetrators of the
genocide of the imagination. But there are other culprits as well: the
fundamentalists. I'm not referring to just the usual suspects—the religious
fanatics of Islam and Christianity and Judaism and Hinduism.

Scientists can be fundamentalists. So can liberals and capitalists, atheists
and hedonists, patriots and anarchists, hippies and goths, you and me.
Those who champion the ideology of materialism can be the most
fanatical fundamentalists of all. And the journalists, filmmakers, novelists,
critics, poets, and other artists who relentlessly generate rotten visions of
the human condition are often pop nihilist fundamentalists.

Every fundamentalist divides the world into two camps, those who agree
with him and like him and help him, and those who don't. There is only
one right way to interpret the world—according to the ideas the
fundamentalist believes to be true—and a million wrong ways.

The fundamental attitude of all fundamentalists is to take everything way
too seriously and way too personally and way too literally. The
untrammeled imagination is taboo. Correct belief is the only virtue. Every
fundamentalist is committed to waging war against the imagination unless
the imagination is enslaved to his or her belief system.

And here's the bad news: Like almost everyone in the world, each of us
has our own share of the fundamentalist virus. It may not be as virulent
and dangerous to the collective welfare as, say, the fundamentalism of
Islamic terrorists or right-wing Christian politicians or CEOs who act as if
making a financial profit is the supreme good or scientists who deny the
existence of the large part of reality that's imperceptible to the five
senses.

But still: We are infected, you and I, with fundamentalism. What are we
going to do about it?

I say we practice taking everything less seriously and less personally and
less literally. I suggest we administer plentiful doses of healing mischief,
friendly shocks, compassionate tricks, blasphemous reverence, holy
pranks, and crazy wisdom.

"Political advertisement paid for and approved by Wes Blackman for Commissioner – District #3"

In anticipation of Post Article on EAR and Impact to Land Use Plan Change re Beach and Casino District

The Department of Community Affairs (DCA) has said to all communities in the State of Florida that they need to have approved Evaluation and Appraisal Reports (EARs - due every 7 years and EARs evaluate how a community meets the goals, objectives and policies in their current Comprehensive Plan) before they review any Future Land Use changes or text amendments. This is a result of recently changed procedures at the State level. We have close to a finished version of the EAR from the Master Plan consultants in our possession now. If you are interested in getting a copy, you can call the Planning Department and they can prepare one for you. I am also working on getting an electronic copy for distribution. The Planning and Zoning Board will be reviewing this document as part of its regular meeting on December 20th (not January 10th - January 10th is the date set for further Planning and Zoning Board special meeting to review of the beach rezoning and creation of the new Beach and Casino zoning district regulations).

The Planning and Zoning Board will review and may make a recommendation to the City Commission, along with whatever suggested changes/edits to the EAR at the meeting on December 20th. The consultants will make any recommended changes between that meeting and the City Commission meeting on January 16th. They can then approve the EAR by resolution. They may also re-affirm their previous action on the two land use plan change requests (beach and Amanzi properties) and then transmit those to DCA. There is no material change to the request, the land use plan change requests just have to be found consistent with the EAR. There is nothing in the EAR which is not consistent with the two land use plan changes (beach and Amanzi properties) and vice versa.

This actually represents a concession on the part of DCA as they usually put off review of an amendment request until it is ultimately adopted - pushing it out to the mid part of next year. They are willing to review the land use plan change requests with submittal (not upon approval) of the EAR..

The EAR eventually will lead to the future adoption of or new Comprehensive Plan that will have the results of the visioning and other community meetings that has been part of the Master Plan process over the past two years.

It's important to realize that even if the EAR had not been raised as an issue by DCA, the second reading on the land use plan change by the City Commission would have been after the March 13th election. By the way, once the Planning and Zoning Board makes a recommendation to the City Commission on the rezoning - subject of its January 10th meeting - the first reading of the rezoning could actually happen before the March 13th election. The second reading of the re-zoning would happen later, at the same time as the second reading of the land use plan change.

Now, about what happens when DCA receives a Comp Plan or Future Land Use plan change. It reviews the change request and issues what is called an "Objections, Recommendations and Comments - ORC" report. Since the land use plan change for the beach represents the inclusion of commercial uses, a traffic study should accompany the request as part of the back-up material.

When the land use plan change is sent up after the Commission's meeting on January 16th, we have an opportunity to send a completed traffic study which shows the effects of the land use plan change with it. Greater Bay or the City needs to contract with a Traffic Engineer now in order for this to be included in the eventual re-submittal. We need to encourage this and emphasize the importance of this to the overall timeline. If the EAR had not been an issue, the lack of a traffic study may have caused a delay in the timeframe to respond to the ORC report issued by DCA - again pushing it farther out in time from the March 13th election. This is an opportunity to address the traffic study now and save time on the critical path.

I have tried to be as detailed and as accurate as possible regarding this complicated and intricate process. If you have any questions, please call me and I can clarify the above. To review, the critical dates are as follows:

December 20th - Planning and Zoning Board meeting to review EAR

January 10th - Planning and Zoning Board meeting to review new draft of the Beach and Casino zoning district

January 16th - City Commission meeting - adoption of EAR by resolution and first reading of beach and Amanzi land use plan changes - transmittal to DCA with traffic study as contracted by Greater Bay or City.

March 13th - Municipal Election

"Political advertisement paid for and approved by Wes Blackman for Commissioner – District #3"

Catch the essence of my 8 year tenure on the Planning and Zoning Board...

...on the archived "Live Show" hosted by Jim Stafford on Lake Worth Talk.com. Click here to go directly to the feed. I reviewed the major highlights in anticipation of my last meeting on December 20th. Thanks Jim - you are a fine host.

Oh, come by before that meeting - around 5:30 or so - and I understand there will be a reception in the Conference Room in honor of it being my final meeting. Stick around for the meeting too - we have an unusally long agenda and will be dealing with some important issues - including the Evaluation Appraisal Report for our Comprehensive Plan. We will also be deciding the new Planning and Zoning Board chairman - film at 11. Check the City's website for the agenda at the end of the week.

Thank you City of Lake Worth for the opportunity to serve!

"Political advertisement paid for and approved by Wes Blackman for Commissioner – District #3"

Thanks to Colleen and John Rinaldi...

...for hosting my first "meet and greet" today at the Sabal Palm House Bed and Breakfast. What a nice assemblage of people concerned with the future of our City of Lake Worth! We settled into about a 2 hour discussion about the issues facing our City. There are no shortage of issues and I hope those in attendance got a feel for how I would address them as Commissioner. I think we all came away with the conclusion that there is no lack of work to do. You provided some great direction. Thank you for the opportunity and it is through this dialogue that we become the future Lake Worth that we all want to see. I brought my camera, but it stayed in its case - this time. I'll have to come back again and we'll capture some memories.

"Political advertisement paid for and approved by Wes Blackman for Commissioner – District #3"