Growing Strong Again: The City of Lake Worth continues to improve, day after day

The City of Lake Worth has a free Newsletter called Worth Noting you can have sent to your email inbox. The first one appeared in September of last year. To sign up for the newsletter use this link. Over the last 7 months the newsletter has a lot of good news about improvements to code enforcement, street lighting, the electric utility, and many other issues of interest.

Here is the latest news about the City's Department for Community Sustainability which has these five responsibilities:

• Building
• Business Licenses
• Code Compliance
• Planning/Zoning
• Historic Preservation 

Below are just a few of the facts from the latest newsletter concerning community sustainability. The Building Division has:

• Issued 175 commercial permits since October 2015
• Issued 884 residential permits since October 2015

The Business License Division since last October has:

• Issued 3,018 residential business licenses
• 469 commercial business licenses have been processed
• Revenues totaling $413,975 have been collected 

The Code Compliance Division has:

• Resolved 672 cases bringing these properties into compliance
• Inspected 2,007 properties
• Collected $279,718 in fines and fees since October

Boarding up, securing, and demolitions of unsafe structures in Lake Worth along with lot clearings of trash and debris.

Pretty good stuff, huh? And if you're interested in learning more news in the City of Lake Worth use this link.

"Anti-gang program raises hopes at Lake Worth elementary school"

The Post's Hannah Winston has this article which also appeared in the Sunday (5/22) print edition. Here are two excerpts:

     Now in its third year, the [anti-gang] program selects 20 at-risk, fifth-grade students at the elementary school who work once a week for 12 weeks with PBSO deputies building Lego motorized cars. For the past three years, the program helped the students create relationships with law enforcement and build confidence in themselves, with a goal to to steer them away from area gang influences.
     While deputies say they need at least five years of data to track how well the program is working, the results have been positive enough that they’re expanding the program to North Grade Elementary next school year.

[and. . .]

     “If you only had hand-me-down sneakers and you see all your friends with brand-new Nikes you can say, 'Wow (joining a gang) might be a way that I get something.’ ” she [South Grade Elementary art teacher Rebecca Hinson] said. “If your brother’s in a gang, or your cousin is in a gang and your uncle is in a gang, that might be your destiny. Unless an intervention comes in your life like this.”
     [PBSO Cpt.] Baer, who served as a Lake Worth police officer for 12 years before PBSO took over patrolling the city in 2008, said there isn’t a societal issue that Lake Worth doesn’t deal with daily.

Encourage everyone to read the entire article; it's a good read and explains a lot about what the schools, teachers, and PBSO have to deal with on a daily basis.

On a humorous side note it was Hannah Winston who was in Lake Worth last March 15th, election day. She went to polling places and tried to gauge the public mood of the voters that day, and, well, she may have been better off interviewing some different people. The election results later that night proved the City's residents were in a very different mood than the people who were interviewed. Read about that using this link and scroll down to near the bottom of that blog post.

News from NBC5/WPTV's Gabrielle Sarann

West Palm Beach and the Power of One Bike Rack

Subculture Bike Rack Story from Active Towns Initiative on Vimeo.

Joe Minicozzi asks, "What’s the value of a great downtown?"

Many of you in the Palm Beach County planning field will remember Joe Minicozzi. His ideas are written about in the blog, Smart Growth America; here is an excerpt:

     “As a community, if you have a finite limit of land, would you want $6,500 or $20,000, or $634,000 downtown an acre?” Minicozzi told Atlantic Cities. “People understand the cash-crop concept, so why aren’t we doing that downtown?”
     Minicozzi often cites an example from his hometown of Asheville. There, a Super Walmart two-and-a-half miles east of downtown is valued at a whopping $20 million—but it sits on 34 acres of land, meaning that it yields about $6,500 an acre in property taxes. A department store in downtown Asheville (that Public Interest Projects, Minicozzi’s parent company, bought and renovated) that’s now home to a beauty salon, retail, offices, and 19 condos, is worth $634,000 in tax revenue per acre—nearly ten times the property tax productivity per acre. Add sales tax revenue in to the equation and the downtown property is still worth more than six times as much as the Walmart per acre.

Something to think about when you're strolling the finite number of acres in our Lake Worth Dixie Hwy. corridor and along Lake and Lucerne avenues.

Horse Drawn School Bus: West Palm Beach—1911 from Florida on Florida

Vote for McMow Art Glass and Shanon Materio in the FedEx Small Business Grant Contest

Use this link to vote for McMow Art Glass located in Lake Worth. From the FedEx Grant website:

How would you use the FedEx Small Business Grant money to make a significant impact on your business?

As many small business, we took a hit from the recession. We made it through & now we are focused on our growth. Real advertising for something as visual as art glass means real dollars. A portion of this money would be designated for advertising and marketing. A portion of the funds would also go to training & hiring. Training, creating new jobs, & marketing are just a start. This grant would go along way and mean real stability.

NBC5/WPTV's Alex Hagan interviewed The Mary in Lake Worth but there's more you need to know

This is a real good news segment that focused on the proper response to an increase in the crime rate in any area or neighborhood. This report is the opposite of what you would see on CBS12/WPEC and ABC25/WPBF: they're both experts on focusing on the negative, especially as it relates to Lake Worth if you've followed them over the years. Not all of their reporters, there are exceptions, but certainly most of them.

Here is an excerpt from the text of the news segment by Alex Hagan, an interview with The Mary:

     "Recent incidents raise new concerns. Mary Lindsey is with Neighborhood Association Presidents Council [NAPC; also on Facebook]. This weeks she's pushing crime watch programs throughout the city.
     Putting up yellow signs and handing out flyers with a number to call if you see something suspicious.
     'That is a huge deterrent to crime. So hopefully these latest incidents will inspire more people to sign up for COP program as well,' says Lindsey.
     She says there are currently 8 neighborhoods with crime watch programs and is looking to add more."

The Citizens On Patrol (COP) program isn't explained in any way, which is very important to explain further. Here is an excerpt from the link above from the City's newsletter, Worth Noting:

"Captain Todd Baer has a vision to help make Lake Worth a safer place and it starts with every resident. Over the next year, he would like to grow the Sheriff’s volunteer program, Citizens on Patrol. While the program has existed a few neighborhoods, Baer envisions a city-wide effort. He would also like to educate all residents about 'Making the Call' about suspicious behavior."

Here is the video from WPTV:

The actual front page of The Palm Beach Post on Sunday, May 3rd, 2015

The headline could have been, "Leaders Urge Calm" without the question mark.

Of all the headlines the Post could have chosen. . . And right next to the "LINE OF FIRE" graphic. Frankly, if you're in the news business a riot can be great for a career. Think about all the exposure and there's also the possibility of being a special guest on CNN, quoted in The New York Times, and your image spread far and wide on the TV news.

Kind of makes you wonder, doesn't it?

Very Important! Get ready for Hurricane Season and news about Vegetation Amnesty Week

For more information on Vegetation Amnesty Week call the Public Services Refuse Department at 561-533-7344. Please check the City's Refuse Division website to learn more. From the City's press release:

The City of Lake Worth’s Refuse Division will be having a Residential Vegetation Only Amnesty Pick-Up Service beginning Monday, May 23rd and will be picked up on the following days:

• Zone 1: Monday, May 23rd
• Zone 2: Thursday, May 26th
• Zone 3: Friday, May 27th
• Zone 4: Tuesday, May 24th

The vegetation amnesty week is designed to allow residents to dispose of large amounts of vegetation prior to the commencement of Hurricane Season (not to exceed 12 cubic yards per residential property). Please place all vegetation curbside on your regular scheduled day and the City of Lake Worth’s Refuse Division will remove it at no charge.
 
Vegetation items are as follows:

• Includes bagged leaves, grasses, and tree or shrubbery cuttings incidental to the care of your lawn and garden that are capable of being containerized (please use green container for all vegetation that will fit inside the container).
• Tree branches less than 2″ in diameter, branches and palm fronds less than 4′ in length, and stumps less than 15″ in diameter and/or less than 50 pounds.

[Worth Another Look, Part 1] Sober Home Crisis: Representative Frankel urges action on U.S. House floor

Congresswoman Lois Frankel took to the House floor on May 12th and urged her colleagues in Congress and the President Obama Administration to join her in addressing the sober home crisis in South Florida and other communities across the country: 

“I urge this Congress and the President to work with folks in my area and around the country to find the proper balance between protecting the rights of addicts and getting them recovered, and keeping the integrity and character of our neighborhoods,” Frankel said. For an example of how badly misinformed some are about the sober home crisis use this link or proceed to the next blog post.

[Worth Another Look, Part 2] From the 'Only in Lake Worth' file: "I got to know my sober home neighbors, and I'm glad I did"

On drug addicts and sober homes the downtown resident continues: ". . . some relapse. Others hang themselves. Still others have friends who cause noise and traffic. Some relapsers die with needles in their arms or need an ambulance in the middle of the night, or police intervention to calm disturbing behavior. All are troubled, or they wouldn’t have become addicts in the first place."

This scratch-your-head-in-disbelief headline and text appears in a "Point of View" in The Palm Beach Post print edition on Friday the 13th (5/13), a timely and appropriate day for this mythical piece to appear in the newspaper. Now you can see why this problem of sober homes is going to take so long to solve.

As long as people stay complacent about South Florida, and specifically, cities like Lake Worth, being a dumping ground for families and insurance companies in other parts of the country with drug-addicted kids who they can't deal with, then, well, we deserve sober homes up and down every street in town.

But the problem goes deeper than that. Probably every single person in Lake Worth who is paying attention knows what one of the biggest problems is with sober homes. . . except for a handful it would seem:

"I did not realize that there was no on-site 'house mother' or manager in these homes. . . There must be more oversight." Hello! Where have you been? Spending too much time worried about a County park?

Have you started coming up with ideas for the July 4th Raft Race?

The official 15th Annual 4th of July Raft Race T-Shirt. Artwork courtesy of Roberta Millman-Ide from the South Palm Park Neighborhood Assoc.

Have you started your raft yet? As of today, May 22nd, the big day is only 44 days away. Just a simple reminder. Here's a video from 2014 for your enjoyment:
The sponsors this year are: Amore's, Brick Oven Pizza, Callero's, CJ's Island Grill, C.W.S. Bar and Kitchen, Ellis and Gritter, Kavasutra, The Mad Hatter, Paws on the Avenue, Potty Doctor and Suri's Tapas Bar.

The astonishing power of nature to eliminate blight. . .*

[The most viewed blog post of the week!]

Ladies and gentleman, the wolf is not at the door and really never was. You now have permission to take these signs down. Time heals all wounds, real or imagined. Please follow this poignant example from natural world. Thank you.

*To learn more about this look in the right-hand column of this blog for, "Is Lake Worth selling its BEACH! Of course not. That's just silly."

From Wonkblog: "The states people really want to move to — and those they don’t"

Wonkblog is affiliated with The Washington Post and it's a site you should check out every now and then for a big picture view on what's happening in the country. This article is a very short one but sums up the situation here in south Florida quite well: Florida is once again the place to be for many Americans seeking another place to live. Note when you read the excerpt below, these numbers do not include those immigrating to this country, only those Americans moving from other states.

What's lagging is the amount of housing available and, predictably, those costs are going up. Here is an excerpt from the article in Wonkblog that should give policy-makers and political leaders a good reason to be very concerned:

     When the U.S. economy slowed during the recession, so did one of the major demographic shifts of the last several decades. For a brief respite, the Northeast and Midwest stopped shedding quite so many residents to the burgeoning Sun Belt. That trend, though — which has big consequences for politics, among other things — has been picking back up. 
     New census data shows the trend accelerating back to its pre-recession pace. Florida, which actually lost more domestic movers than it gained right after the housing bubble burst, picked up about 200,000 net new movers between 2014 and 2015 [emphasis added] (this number includes people who move between states, not immigration into the United States from abroad). Illinois, meanwhile, had a net loss of about 105,000 residents, its largest one-year population leak in the 21st century.

Locally, here in Lake Worth, we're seeing an uptick in new residents, new apartments and condos being built, along with the inevitable hand-wringing about things like "growth" and "over-development". The Great Recession was just down tick on the overall upward trend of the U.S. population moving from places like the Northeast to places such as south Florida and there's no sign this trend is going to change any time soon.