Tyranny – Alive and Well in Lake Worth? By Wes Blackman, AICP

In the United States of America, we enjoy many freedoms made possible by our form of government. These freedoms spring from our Constitution. Being part of this representative democracy, we have the freedom to chose the degree to which we participate and engage in the process of governing ourselves. There are many that are so involved in the day-to-day activities of life, raising a family, pursuing a career or just getting by that choose not to involve themselves in the on-going affairs of civic life. This freedom allows those that chose not to engage the ability to let others take on the responsibilities of self-government.

It is therefore the rare individual that chooses to emerge from a group of people being governed and desires to take a role in creating an environment of how we will be governed. When this happens, it is something to be celebrated and encouraged.

Recently in Lake Worth...

For more of this article, pick up today's Lake Worth Herald - available at newsstands in Lake Worth.

Last night's CRA meeting (7/28)...

What a surreal experience!

Here we were reviewing and commenting on next year's budget - of which the CRA has been accused of spending "like a runaway train" - and six of the seven board positions are open due to the snafu in eliminating staggered terms years ago. So we are reviewing this budget and the priorities it represents knowing that some or most of us may not be on the CRA board during the next fiscal year. With the Commission interviewing the 29 applicants for the open positions on August 31st, it is entirely possible that the first act of the new board - at its first meeting - would be the adoption of the budget. How crazy is that? I made a point that, for the sake of communication and some possible form of continuity, we make an extra effort to inform the group of applicants that were turned away at the door on the day of their scheduled interviews of the possible three meetings the CRA may have in August. Suggestion was even made of a joint City Commission/CRA meeting during the month to review the budget - we had one like that last year. I see the likelihood of that being low.

To their credit, at least three applicants who do not sit on the board presently were in attendance on their own accord. No one from the City Commission was present - so much for concern over our budget and encouraging communication.

I thought we came up with some good ideas to trim another $500,000 from the proposed budget - which assumes that the Commission will not make a contribution to the CRA in that amount to make up for the fact that the CRA cannot capture the MSTU millage (County fire department tax) next year. One of the groups of items staff will be looking at is money approved but not spent by the city or grant recipients, another is scaling back the time frame on the 800 block N. Dixie parking lot and reducing the amount of money allocated to workshops and entrepreneur training.

We did get an update from Vince Burkhardt of Burkhardt Construction on the status of 10th Avenue North. Here are the highlights.

Work Completed:

• Underground utilities complete.
• Gutter and sidewalks 95% complete except for areas where utility poles remain, balance complete when poles removed, Comcast the only utility left on poles at this time, about a week to finish.
• Streetlights, except for two, are installed and working.
• Powerlines are off utility poles west of tracks, east of tracks in the next two weeks.
• Signal poles in.
• Third week of August planting live oaks.

Work Not Completed

• Uplighting for landscaping
• Installation of four medians
• Final asphalt
• Pavers at intersections

Eventhough March is the official end of contract, work expected to be complete in December of 2009.

Lake Worth votes for lower preliminary tax rate, but residents' tax bills will probably rise

The complexity of it is enormous. Click title for link to PB Post article. More on the CRA budget later.

Advertisement Language for the Beach Charter Amendments

ORDINANCE NO. 2009-18 OF THE CITY OF LAKE WORTH, FLORIDA, CALLING FOR A REFERENDUM OF THE QUALIFIED ELECTORS OF THE CITY OF LAKE WORTH TO BE HELD ON NOVEMBER 3, 2009, AS TO WHETHER TO SECURE PUBLIC RECREATION AS THE PRIMARY USE OF THE LAKE WORTH PUBLIC BEACH; PROVIDING REQUISITE BALLOT LANGUAGE FOR SUBMISSION TO THE VOTERS; PROVIDING A SEVERABILITY CLAUSE; PROVIDING THAT CONFLICTING ORDINANCES ARE REPEALED; PROVIDING AN EFFECTIVE DATE.

The above is part of the advertisement that went into today's Palm Beach Post for first reading at the City Commission meeting of August 4, 2009. This is not the actual ballot language, that apparently is being crafted now by outside council at the request of Commissioner Jennings. That is next Tuesday's regular Commission meeting.

One question: Look at the aerial photo - courtesy of Google Earth - of the beach property. What is the primary use of the Lake Worth Public Beach?

Is it recreation, is it building or is it parking? My vote is that the primary use of the beach property is parking - around 500 spaces worth of it. Even with a total building square footage of +64,000 square feet, that is a small part of the total 19 acre site. If the entire building area were on one floor, the total building coverage of the 19 acres would be 7.7 percent. If part of it is a second story, the ground coverage created by building would be even less. So, if you want to get technical, it is not the "primary" use of the beach property. Is recreation the primary use, really?

This ballot initiative is an apparent backlash to the Beach and Casino zoning district which calls the casino building and activities therein a principle use on the beach property. This does not set well with Commissioner Jennings and Vice Mayor Golden's ardent supporters. The wording of the ballot measure will have to be very exact or we could end up with a beach that doesn't provide parking spaces. Which, in my mind, wouldn't be that bad as it would set us firmly in place as a community that is not going to encourage travel to our most desirable public space by private automobile. Think of a large, centralized parking facility in the downtown that would house the steel carriages for beach visitors while they come and go - walking in front and into our downtown shops.

However, I don't think many agree with me on this issue. I also don't think the proponents of this approach and ballot measure realize that the principle use of the beach is a parking lot.

Below is the associated language related to blocking access to dredging and the actual act of dredging to and from our beach:

ORDINANCE NO. 2009-19 OF THE CITY OF LAKE WORTH, FLORIDA, CALLING FOR A REFERENDUM OF THE QUALIFIED ELECTORS OF THE CITY OF LAKE WORTH TO BE HELD ON NOVEMBER 3, 2009, AS TO WHETHER TO PROHIBIT DREDGE AND FILL BEACH RENOURISHMENT PROJECTS WITHIN THE MUNICIPAL BOUNDARIES OF THE LAKE WORTH BEACH AND TO PROHIBIT THE USE OF THE LAKE WORTH BEACH AS A MEANS OF INGRESS OR EGRESS FOR ANY BEACH RENOURISHMENT PROJECT ON OR FOR BEACHES ADJACENT TO THE LAKE WORTH BEACH; PROVIDING REQUISITE BALLOT LANGUAGE FOR SUBMISSION TO THE VOTERS; PROVIDING A SEVERABILITY CLAUSE; PROVIDING THAT CONFLICTING ORDINANCES ARE REPEALED; PROVIDING AN EFFECTIVE DATE.

Safeguarding the Smart Grid: Cyber-terrorism Implications

Interesting article by Garry Brown, Chairman, New York State Public Service Commission. He talks about the potential pitfalls of the "smart grid" being talked about - this would allow real time monitoring of your energy use but would also open up potential windows into the electric grid for more malicious security breaches.

By the way, the City has applied for CDBG money for "pay as you go" metering and the ability for homeowners to access their usage data. This will be for a small pilot project within the city - clearly the way the industry is headed.

Click title for link to article.

Updated Calendar for August City meetings...

Note that interviews for potential CRA board members to fill six open positions is scheduled for August 31. That means that the first meeting of the new board will be adoption of the 2009/2010 budget. Not the best idea, in my opinion.

CRA Workshop Meeting - Tonight - 7/28 - 6 p.m.

Click title for back-up.

One local blogger doesn't this think that the highest joint priority of the City Commission and the CRA, as determined at the joint February and April meetings, addresses the key reason for the CRA's existence - addressing slum and blight conditions. The Cultural Redevelopment Program is part of the leverage provided for in the CRA's 23.2 million dollar application for Federal Neighborhood Stabilization funds - and includes much more than just soft costs related to the promotion of Lake Worth as a cultural and artist destination. This is called making a small amount of local money do much more, especially in the grant's target area. Let's hope it's successful.

Also on the agenda is the review of a reuse of a building at in the 200 block of S. Dixie. This is one of the city's more attractive examples of Art Deco and Art Moderne architecture. Originally built as a motel, as seen in the post card below, it has been under-utilized as an office building in recent years.

This is the first redevelopment project I will have reviewed in the year since I've been on the CRA board. This was a process that I helped establish when I was chair of the Planning and Zoning Board in order to encourage communication between the CRA and P&Z. The fact that we have had nothing to review for a year speaks volumes about the state of our local and national economies. Not only is Lake Worth fighting the economic tide, we are still competing for redevelopment and investment dollars with other local communities. No physical changes to the building are forecast for this project, but it will propose a re-use of the building as a school. Since it is being leased, it will remain on the tax role. The CRA will not be voting on it tonight, just offering comments and suggestions that will eventually be incorporated into the the P&Z's review of the project.

This is the site plan that is part of the back-up material.

It's important to point out that this existing building, built sometime in the 40s + or - exceeds the currently required front setback by 2 feet. Not that it matters much, but it's an example of the built pattern already established here.

Downtown Hollywood, Florida on a Saturday afternoon

The "Blog Jam" that I went to was held at a restaurant in downtown Hollywood, one of our sister beach cities on the east coast of Florida. You can tell that there weren't too many people around. We didn't stray too far from our location, but it looked like we were pretty much in the center of it. Most of the spaces were either restaurants or marginal small retail shops - but as many or more vacancies as we have in our city. I wish someone could have taken pictures around the same in our downtown Lake Worth - I am sure there would have been more of a pedestrian presence here.

Anyway, FYI. If you have any other pictures of downtown environments, send them to me and we can start a collection.

Click here for a link to Hollywood CRA's website.

Amtrak may return passenger service to South Florida's most eastern tracks

Click title for link.

How our municipal neighbor to the north is celebrating its centennial...

Click title for link.

How will we recognize our centennial?

What do we have to celebrate?

Will we recognize it at all?

IMPORTANCE OF PLACE: Note to Environmentalists: Become New Urbanists

IMPORTANCE OF PLACE: Note to Environmentalists: Become New Urbanists

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Bridge Homeless Shelter Cuts Neighborhood Crime by 18%

Click title for link - silver LEED certification building in the middle of a Dallas brownfield.

"Blog Jam"

Jim Stafford and I were invited to take part in "Blog Jam" yesterday. The Society of of Professional Journalists (SPJ) and SouthFloridaMediaJobs.com were the sponsors - treating the group to a nice lunch at Sage Cafe in Hollywood, Florida. The SPJ is full of dyed-the-wool print journalist types. Apparently this "blogging" thing has raised their curiosity to such a high level that they issued a grant to host a group of blogger types to chat about it. This was by invitation only - which I consider an honor. Most likely, I appeared on their radar screen due to this blog garnering the award of Best Blog of 2009 by New Times magazine.

Besides lunch, we enjoyed a round table discussion with about twenty other bloggers - independents along with those employed by newspapers, large and small. We shared information on how to boost traffic to our blogs, common problems and technical issues. A good group of people and one that I think will meet again to exchange information. I found it very informative and am anxious to realize the results of some powerful recommendations.

One thing that I received universal confirmation of is that politics and planning at the local level do not get the coverage that they deserve due to traditional print and broadcast media biases and priorities.

Meeting with City Manager Susan Stanton Rescheduled

Some of you may know through my FaceBook status that the appointment to meet with City Manager Susan Stanton was postponed. Apparently there were multiple crises going on at 3 p.m. Friday afternoon and she was in a closed door session to address them. I've provided a link to her city manager's report by clicking on the title. In it you will read the following:

So this sounds like the city will take action to revert back to the Palm Beach County previous zoning designation - and not a "SF" land use designation and a "SF-7" zoning district - which are city designations. This puts the property in sort of a regulatory purgatory, which I have yet to completely decipher. I'm guessing that it will allow the city to go ahead and get the Comp Plan to be found in compliance by the DCA - subject to the other information and submittals identified above. What will likely happen is that the city will come back with a subsequent amendment to assign a Lake Worth designation for both land use and zoning - albeit at SF. Which, as I have discussed here is not a 7 units to the acre - it's more like in the 4 to 5 units per acre range.

It also looks like the Comp Plan will appear on the August 19th Commission agenda, with or without Commissioner Jennings' amendments and changes? More investigation is necessary.

Report from the Small World Department:

Long time readers of this blog might recall the days of the "Truth Matters" streaming Internet show. Many of those shows included my friend Greg Vannier. It turns out that I bumped into Greg last night and hadn't seen him for what seemed to be a long time. We chatted and he related a story you might find interesting.

He, along with many other people including yours truly, have discovered the power of FaceBook and its ability to reacquaint you with long lost friends, especially from your high, junior and elementary schools. Well, it turns out he connected with one of his first "girl friends" from the 7th and 8th grade. As they started communication, they found out that they live three blocks away from each other, right in our beautiful city of Lake Worth! They had no idea and apparently this has been an undiscovered fact for many years. As they got to talking, Greg's friend asked if he knew Wes Blackman -it turns out she is a devoted reader of this blog!

So, a big huge shout out to "N" - hope to meet you sometime soon!

By the way, if you're on FaceBook, shoot me a friend request. From my "Blog Jam" experience yesterday, I am going to delve into Twitter more too. I put a button for that on the lower part of the right hand column. Clicking on that will take you to my Twitter profile and you can begin following me. My Twitter address is WesBlackman.

Better living through technology!