Didn't know how close Dennis Dorsey and JoAnn Golden really were, until tonight.

No Photoshop here. Just got back from Bryant Park Neighborhood candidate forum. Videos up tomorrow.

Due to reader feedback: Two big fans of Lake Worth Commissioner John Szerdi at our Street Painting Festival

Left: Lake Worth resident, businessman, jubilant volunteer, Hulett Environmental Services spokesman, celebrity, my friend, and all-around wonderful "big man", Mr. Greg Rice.

Right: Yours Truly, Wes Blackman. 

Letter to the Editor from past President of the NAPC, Mary Lindsey

In the Lake Worth Herald this week is this letter from Mary Lindsey (two excerpts):

    For the last two years, it's been my honor to serve as Chair of the Neighborhood Association Presidents Council [NAPC] with a truly remarkable group of Lake Worth neighborhood leaders. I came to the office with eyes wide in wonder at the bar set impossibly high by the previous Chair, Ryan Anderson and every NAPC Chair before him since 2007.

[and...]

     It's easy to offer my congratulations and my loyalty to our new NAPC Chair, Jon Faust; our new Vice Chair, Greg Rice and our returning Treasurer, Anthony Marotta.
     It's harder to find the right words to express my admiration and my gratitude to every Neighborhood President and Representative on the Council this year, the last two years and every year from the beginning. From the bottom of my heart, Thank You. 

Mary Lindsey
Lake Worth

The Self-Described "Constitution Lady" Goes Screwball on a Lake Worth Festival Volunteer

Before I get to the screwball, a little about the little City of Lake Worth Street Painting Festival and how the volunteers fit into the scheme of things: Without the volunteers there would be no Street Painting Festival. Period. 

I did my part, promoting the event and even hosting for the shuttle bringing guests into our wonderful city. It was an honor. If I wrote a list of people I know, personally, who volunteered I could name 50 people, at least. From the bottom of my heart I thank you all so very much.

Then there are the others—the naysayers like the "Constitution Lady" Squires and The Other Blogger (TOB) who focus on nothing but the bad and try to bring everybody down. (Can you imagine a life like that?) 

The myth that is perpetuated is the Street Painting Festival is "stealing" money from local bars and restaurants. Tell that to the folks at the Dave's Last Resort or the Igot's Martiki Bar. They were packed. All day long. 

Now for the rambling, nonsense rant that was sent to Mr. Waples II:

To accept Squires' premise, you have to believe life is a zero-sum existence. If you get something then I lose something and vice versa. You can't possibly be more narrow-minded than that. 

Thank you again, volunteers, for all your hard work and dedication to our little City of Lake Worth!

Bryant Park Neighborhood Association's Candidate Forum tonight—begins at 7:00

Tonight is the Bryant Park Neighborhood Association's Candidate Forum. The forum begins at 7:00:

Below is the last Candidate Forum on video. This was taken at the South Palm Park Neighborhood Association's Forum:

At this forum on Monday, 2/16, if you were late getting there was standing room only. My guess is there were over 120 people there. Get there early tonight if you wish to have a seat.

Lake Worth Mayor Pam Triolo's State of the City Address tomorrow (Tuesday 2/24)—"Realizing Our Full Potential!"

From our community newspaper, The Lake Worth Herald, is this announcement:

The Honorable Mayor Pam Triolo presents the 

STATE OF THE CITY ADDRESS

Date: February 24, 2015 (Tuesday)

Location: Lake Worth Casino Ballroom, 10 South Ocean Blvd., Lake Worth, FL

Time: 6:00 PM–8:00 PM
Admission: Free
Parking: Free

Come and listen to the Mayor discuss our current and future progress and meet afterwards with select staff to learn more.

Free parking is available at the Casino and Beach Complex premises starting at 5:30 PM. Seating and parking are provided on a first come first served basis.

If you require any special accommodations, please contact Lauren Bothe at 561-533-7395 or lbothe@lakeworth.org.

That pedestrian button you push to cross the street: do you know how it works?

If you think by pushing that button you arrive at your destination quicker, you're wrong. Most people have no clue this is the case. The other day I visited the Walkable West Palm Beach blog and found this article by Jesse Bailey.

This blog is really something you have to read at least once a week if you can. The blog, certainly, is for the more wonkish among us, however if you read the articles many of the ideas are applicable to your daily life and also apply to many cities in Florida, including the City of Lake Worth.

Here is part of the article I referenced about "that button"—material from Jeff Speck's Walkability Study presented to the City of West Palm Beach:

     A survey of the most and least walkable cities in America reveals a clear correlation: walkable cities rarely have pushbutton signal request buttons [emphasis added]. Called “beg buttons” by pedestrian advocates, these signals are alternately annoying and confusing to pedestrians, most of whom do not understand how they are supposed to work—and many of whom end up jaywalking out of sheer frustration.
     Here is how these signals work in downtown West Palm Beach: A pedestrian approaches a crosswalk, pushes the button, and waits for the light to change. Typically, a long time passes before the light changes—sometimes more than two minutes. After perhaps 30 seconds, the pedestrian assumes that the light is broken, and jaywalks.
     What the pedestrian does not realize is that the pushbutton is not designed to cause the light to change. Rather, it is designed only to lengthen the eventual red light, so that the pedestrian has more time to cross. Given the tremendous amount of jaywalking that these signals cause, these lengthened crossing times are, at best, irrelevant. This dangerous behavior is perhaps the clearest example of the vast difference between traffic safety theory and traffic-safety reality in Palm Beach County, and should be of grave concern to County engineers.

And that's why you see so much jaywalking in places like the little City of Lake Worth. Pedestrians either think the button is broken or cannot justify having to wait so long.

Pleasant surprise at the Street Painting Festival...

As you can see from a previous post, downtown Lake Worth was packed with people enjoying the Street Painting Festival. They were enjoying the temporary art in the streets, but some were also enjoying the murals along K Street, on the west side of Dave's Last Resort. In fact, there was line in front of them with people taking selfies and others having pictures taken with the murals in the background.

These are the ones I am talking about. I thought this was great!

I heard this was also happening all weekend long on the west side of Bruce Webber's building on Lucerne Avenue (across from the Post Office).

Journalism or Censorship in the little City of Lake Worth?

Would you consider these two events in Lake Worth to be newsworthy:

Number 1: A candidate forum that was attended by over 120 people; this occurred only 23 days prior to a municipal election here in Lake Worth.
Number 2: Notice of Mayor Pam Triolo's State of the City Address to the citizens of Lake Worth.

Now, would you consider the information below to be more important for a Lake Worth 'journalist/editor' to inform her readers of:

Only one person in the entire City of Lake Worth is capable of such nonsense, and that would be 'editor/journalist' Margaret Menge. 

Whatever Menge is doing, it's not journalism; more resembles censorship and keeping the citizens uninformed. Does the story she published above have more public value than one of the most well-attended candidate forums in recent history and Mayor Pam Triolo's State of the City Address? The answer, of course, is "No".

If you cannot attend the forum tonight and want to know more about what happened you have two choices: visit my blog or wait for The Lake Worth Herald which comes out on Thursday.

And again, thank you for visiting my blog.

Video of the art from the second day of the Lake Worth Street Painting Festival 2015

Music from Verdi's Rigoletto.

Just crowd pics of the Lake Worth Street Painting Festival, Sunday at 2:30 p.m.

My experience as host on the Lake Worth Street Painting Festival Shuttle...

I volunteered and was assigned for the 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. time slot yesterday, (Saturday). There were two shuttles. Both dropped festival attendees off at City Hall. One went in a loop from Tri-Rail to downtown and the other went from Palm Beach State College to the downtown. Both were well utilized throughout the day. The one stopping at Tri-Rail was a larger shuttle-type bus; the one to the college was smaller and more the size of an airport rental car bus. Yes, you can say we rode the "short" bus, which is how many referred to it in a good-natured way.

Since I happened to be there during that part of the day, there were more people leaving than coming. I introduced myself and the driver and thanked them for coming to the festival. There was a genuine positive response from the group when I asked them if they had a good time. Interestingly, when I asked if the brief rain in the afternoon bothered them, they said that it didn't. Many said it was an opportunity to go in to the shops and they then held up packages of things they had purchased in our downtown! Good news here.

I took questions after giving a brief overview of the city. Every group of passengers coming from the festival, we did probably 15 rounds during the two hours, asked if this shuttle bus ran every day. I responded to that with a hearty "I wish!" We have always talked about the potential transit link between the downtown and the college, perhaps even to the beach. So, I thought that was interesting that others recognized the opportunity that represented. And it really does need to be a priority to better link to our existing, thriving college on the western flank of the city.

I used the opportunity to talk about the Lake Worth Cottages group. It turns out that for most of the people on the shuttle, it was their first Lake Worth visit. This was so even though most lived in western Palm Beach or northern Broward County. That should tell us all something—like we remain outside the
collective consciousness of our region. I took advantage of the ample supply of Cottage brochures, which have car, biking and walking routes and pointed out that most of the cottages are immediately north and south of the downtown—where the festival was. So I encouraged them to come back when a festival was not taking place and check out one of the more unique and attractive parts of the community. NEARLY EVERYONE TOOK A BROCHURE!

And it was surprising how few people knew about Tri-Rail, especially from people who have lived in south Florida for a while. There were some surprised looks from those who didn't know you could hop on the train to Miami and most didn't know about the $5 per day fare to go anywhere, as long as the trains run, on the weekends.

Everyone seemed to enjoy the festival and street paintings—all ages, races, types and many families with small children. I'm glad that people took advantage of storing their car somewhere else, other than our crowded downtown streets. I left feeling good about the city and its future.

The Big Joke: The Common Ground (no 's') Church "Story"

"So, all they have to do is go through the conditional land use process to make sure the impacts have been assessed...if they're a small church, it shouldn't be a big deal."
--Lake Worth City Manager Michael Bornstein, 2/20/15, in the very last paragraph of another ridiculous 'news' story by Margaret Menge.

Ms. Menge wrote a story about the Common Ground (no 's') Church in Lake Worth and there was no apparent reason for it. It's a non-story. But, it ended up being a story totaling 34 paragraphs and a Case Narrative of 18 paragraphs. A total of 52 paragraphs. Then add to that three color pictures (2 of which were very large) and THEN an editorial on the same subject. This is not the most important story of our times.

Margaret's World?

Consider this, if the Common Ground Church story began with the quote by City Manager Michael Bornstein, there would be no need for the other 51 paragraphs. But you have to get to the last paragraph, the quote by City Manager Bornstein, to discover that. How many readers managed to get that far?

[Which is nothing new. We were treated to the same thing in the Tribune's very first edition. Remember the "art ship" at Bryant Park? You can read about that long non-story here.]

Here is the entire 'Common Ground Church' story summed up in three sentences (18 words): Pastor Mike Olive, like every other responsible downtown establishment, has to follow the rules. Period. End of story.

Meanwhile, on Monday (2/16/15) of this week, the Parrot Cove Neighborhood Association held one of the most well-attended candidate forums in Lake Worth in a very long time. Margaret Menge was there. She didn't write a single word about it in her 'newspaper', though. However, she puts hours and hours in an effort that was not even necessary, as City Manager Michael Bornstein explained in the opening quote above.

Here is a picture of the front page with the long, pointless story:

Note the subtitle: "Is the City of Lake Worth cracking down on Christianity?" This appears on the front page, above the fold. A little hysterical, are we?

Here is a picture of page 4 of her paper:

Note the pull-quote from Pastor Mike Olive of the Common Ground Church: "The thing Lake Worth needs is common ground, and that's the thing they're trying to destroy." Pastor Olive, is that the proper tone for a pastor seeking the "common ground"?

Now for the News in Lake Worth this week

So, to find out what happened at the last Candidate Forum you need to get The Lake Worth Herald or read this blog. Here are three stories I posted about the Forum—here and here and here.   

People can speculate why the Tribune chose to not inform its readers about the Parrot Cove Candidate Forum. She was there and taking notes (a page and a half). Is there something Ms. Menge is trying to hide from her readers? Like maybe a candidate lying about his past experience on a "City board"?

The lesson here is this: If you are a citizen in Lake Worth and news, including the upcoming election on March 10th, is important to you then Ms. Menge's paper is worthless (redundant; it's free anyhow). You need to pay attention to the Lake Worth Herald or this blog. This is a sad commentary on 'journalism' in the little City of Lake Worth. 

First day of the Lake Worth Street Painting Festival 2015...

The Street Painting Festival continues today. It's a beautiful day in the little City of Lake Worth. I'll be serving cold tap beer from 1:00 to 3:00 in the downtown Cultural Plaza. See you there!

Video Montage from the John Szerdi Campaign Fundraiser at the Lakeside Castle from last week...

Political Advertisement paid for and approved by John Szerdi non-partisan for City Commission