Some Quick Notes

First of all, have a great Thanksgiving. If you are traveling or staying at home, remember to be safe. There really is so much to be thankful for and we tend to forget that in our everyday routines. Enjoy your family and friends over this long weekend, for many, and remember that the people you are with are the ones that matter the most.

Second, Drew Martin has invited me to a debate on the Hometown Democracy movement. This will take place on his show next Monday night from 8 to 9 p.m. Those that wonder what will happen with Karaoke - we will just start a little later than usual.

Finally, I will be having another Truth Matters show next Tuesday. I'll be posting more material here leading up to both shows over the long weekend.

Thanks for visiting!

Tonight's City Commission Meeting

Tonight's Commission meeting has a light agenda and I am not sure if my schedule today will permit me to attend. However, for ease of access, I thought that I would post the agenda here. You will notice that under Consent Agenda Item B there is a request from the City Manager to allocate almost $325,000 from other accounts to make up for expenditures that were incurred, checks cut and paid beyond the level authorized by the City Commission. We can only be thankful that these oversights were from a previous administrative staff and that this is part of the cleansing process occurring in the Finance and other City departments.

It makes you wonder about all those years and projects that have taken place before. How much was spent that the Commission and the public were not aware of? How many dollars were spent either in error or due to contractors' lapses and the like - working on behalf of the City? In this request, the most significant overrun was in street improvements - almost a quarter of a million dollars. Let's try and find out why this happened.

Let's hope that this represents the last example of an "after the fact" approval of funds.

SAFETY TIPS FOR THE HOLIDAY SEASON

This was sent out to all the COPs in the volunteer ranks by Joel Morganstern, Lake Worth Police Department, Crime Prevention Specialist:

With the holiday season approaching, here are a few safety tips that parents as well as their children should follow to make it a safe as well as a happy season.

When in a public facility always supervise your child, and ALWAYS accompany young children to the bathroom. Make certain your children know to stay with you at all times while shopping and always CHECK FIRST with you or the person in charge before they go anywhere. It is important to know where your children are and who they are with at all times.

If older children become separated from you while holiday shopping, have them meet you in a pre -designated spot such as the sales counter of the store you were in or the mall’s information booth. For younger children teach them to look for people who can be sources of help within the store or mall such as a uniformed security officer, salesperson with a nametag, the person in the information booth, or a uniformed law-enforcement officer. They should NEVER Leave the store/mall or go to the parking lot to look for you or your car. Make visits to the mall opportunities for your children to practice these “Safe Shopping” skills.

Practice having them CHECK FIRST with you before going anywhere within a mall or store. Leave clothing with your children’s names displayed at home, as it can bring about unwelcome attention from inappropriate people who may be looking for an opportunity to start a conversation with your children.

Parents should not leave children alone at public facilities such as video arcades, movie theaters, or playgrounds as a convenient “babysitter” while they are shopping. If you allow your older children to go to the mall or other activities without you, they need to TAKE A FRIEND. It’s more fun and much safer. Make certain a clear plan is in place to pick them up including where, what time, and what to do in case of a change in plans.

Nothing takes the place of your supervision when you are in a public place with your children. If you are going holiday shopping and feel that you will be distracted, make other arrangements for the care of your children.

It’s easy for you and your children to get distracted with all the sights, sounds and crowds of holiday shopping, so make certain they stay with you at all times.

In Honor of Thanksgiving (and Karaoke)

Florida Hometown Democracy - Beware!

I hope you were able to read the editorial in the Palm Beach Post today entitled "Still Florida's good friend". In it, the editors note that the group 1000 Friends of Florida is not lending its support of the petition drive being put forward by Florida Hometown Democracy. The petition appears below:
It's funny that this editorial came out today since I planned to do a review of petition and its implications this weekend. As you may already know, there are many followers of this movement that are active politically in our community and were the key promoters of the failed supermajority initiative on zoning and land use decisions.

This is a dangerous petition for a number of reasons. It would lead to a series of unintended results not thoroughly considered by the movement's followers if it became law.

First of all, it wraps itself in motherhood and apple pie by stressing that our current growth management system is pro-developer. The term "hometown" recalls visions of Norman Rockwell paintings. One can almost smell the apple pies cooling on the window sill. They believe that the only way that "the people" can take charge and slow/stop growth is by requiring a referendum on any changes to a comprehensive plan or adoption of a new one. Thus, one is left thinking "Ah ha! We finally got the developer on the run!" Well, that may be so, but not to where they should be running.

The group here locally that is behind this is the same one that charged the City with being a spawning ground for "over-development". What would happen here locally is that land use plan changes would be put up to a referendum and our army of well-organized door knockers would spread the word and defeat such changes. They are the "hard to beat voting block" that the Post talks about in their editorial. Eventually, this would draw development right to where we don't need it to go - where there is no entrenched population of voters. This would likely lead to the nightmare scenario predicted in the 1000 Friends of Florida report "Florida 2060 - A Population Distribution Scenario for the State of Florida" Here is a graphic from that report which is available in its entirety by clicking the link provided above:Based upon the population projections contained in the report and the typical densities found in various Florida counties, the highlighted portion of the text concludes, "The result of the projected development pattern is an almost continuous urban strip extending from eastern Ft. Myers to West Palm Beach." By developers chasing the "easy way", we would be promoting the exact kind of development pattern that we should be preventing. Meanwhile, the not-in-my-back-yard people would be enjoying their lower density life styles in the already ecologically disturbed area consumed by our already existing urbanized area.

The other point that followers of this movement fail to realize is that comprehensive plans are complex documents. There seems to be the assumption that the status-quo is the ideal and that any change must be looked at skeptically and be subject of a referendum. As someone who has put together many amendments to comprehensive plans, the plan is always a flexible document that needs to change as conditions change. Furthermore, comprehensive plan changes can be, and most times are, voluminous! And, as someone who ran a campaign earlier this year, I know that it is extremely difficult to communicate complex multi-faceted concepts on the doorstep, in fliers, at candidate/issue forums, etc.

If you are adopting a completely new comprehensive plan, you are dealing with a "telephone book"-sized document. How are you going to communicate that accurately and efficiently to a voting population that is already overloaded with distractions of all sorts? Sometimes, communities have individual changes that would appear as separate items on the ballot. How would you like to wade through 100+ proposed changes to a comprehensive plan and make an informed decision on each one? Some of the changes might be the equivalent of taking out an "and" in the text; while others would be more weighty in their consequences. The most important point here is that comprehensive plans have inter-related parts - so if you have multiple amendments and approve three of them, and turn down five of them, and the three that the voters approved don't work without the other five, then where are you?

If all the supporters of this effort want to do is "gum up" the system and spend more money on attorneys, then maybe that is their ultimate goal. But do we really want to dismantle the system? I don't think so.

This would lead, in my opinion, to a system that would be ripe for a sophisticated, moneyed political action committee of either stripe that would interpret the changes for voters in easy consumable sound bites. Is that who we want controlling growth in our communities?

The solution is to promote the existing processes and encourage public participation/understanding at all steps of the process. We have to wake up to the fact that Florida is going to grow in population and where to direct that population growth will be the key to our survival as a state. It is naive to think that growth will stop or that we are doing a service by stopping the redevelopment of Lake Worth or other coastal communities. In fact, the service we should be doing is finding ways of directing responsible redevelopment to communities like ours.

So, beware of petition gatherers and the tales they tell. I am sure you won't be hearing about the unintended consequences of this quaint "hometown democracy" movement from them.

The following is from their website that indicates the number of signatures they have gathered to date:

Meet "Manny the Manatee"

Have you ever seen this public service announcement on T.V.? Found on YouTube. There might be other stuff I find on there. Beware!

Lake Worth Bridge Closed

FDOT will be closing the Lake Worth Bridge on Wednesday, November 14, 2007, from 9:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. to perform an inspection, per city announcement.

Did a YouTube search on Lake Worth Bridge and found this:

Nice Letter from City of Lake Worth re TOD Charrette

Update on Status: 431 N. L Street

Apparently the demolition request never came back to the board and the recommendation from the PZHRPB was to not include the property on the surplus list as one that could be used for affordable housing. (Oh, and please excuse the typos in my message to Sandi.)

LW Kiwanis - Nite Golf Event

I spent most of last evening at the 4th hole, Lake Worth Municipal golf course serving ribs and sweet potato fires from the Rum Shack to night golfers. A little over 40 people came out.

With my camera at the ready, I was able to take some videos of the fun. Not too visually stimulating, but the audio is amusing. And you can definitely tell that the weather report was right when it called for increasing darkness after 6:30 p.m. It was severely dark last night! The players used transparent golf balls that had small glo-sticks inserted in them for "visibility". Proceeds from the event went towards various Kiwanis charitable causes for local children.

More from the Veteran's Day Parade

Veteran's Day Parade

This is the first successful upload of a video. I took this with my digital camera as the batteries were wearing out and I think that affected the quality. We'll try again on some other subject matter. There was a good crowd out today and a nice showing in the parade. Lots of participation.

THANK YOU VETERANS FOR ALL THAT YOU HAVE DONE FOR OUR NATION!

Check this out!

FreeRice.com lets you improve your vocabulary while helping others:

For every word you get right, we donate 10 grains of rice through the United Nations to help end world hunger

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A couple of other things that I'd like to mention...

Just following up from the last post, during the question and answer session following the presentation, the Mayor seemed very interested in the concept of establishing a shuttle along the Lake Worth Road corridor - between the beach and Palm Beach Community College. This would also take care of Lake Worth Towers and trips to the grocery, as well. The key point made by the group that came here was that the time between shuttles would have to be less than 10 minutes and it would have to be marketed well to capture the Community College traffic. These vehicles could use bio-diesel or hybrid technologies for less environmental impact. This idea was echoed by none other than Drew Martin at the last Commission meeting.

I really like the concept of bike lockers and a bicycle "fix-it" station as part of the transit oriented development - another one of the ideas brought forth. We could even have some downtown and at the beach. The bike locker pictured here is just one of the styles available. You can do a Google search to see the other varieties.

Look for more posts coming up that summarize other presentations made last Wednesday. It's been a while since we've had a "Truth Matters" show so look for one this coming Tuesday from 8 to 9 p.m. I will also be joining Jim Stafford for the "Live Show" on Lake Worth Talk next Tuesday and Thursday from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

Summary Presentation - Rail-Volution Conference Lake Worth Tri-Rail Charette

These are selected slides from the presentation made in the Commission Chambers once the group completed their work during the day. I will also add some explanation to the various slides and amplify on the some of the highlights. Remember to click on the image for a more detailed view. Thanks go to Jeff Tumlin of Nelson/Nygaard for putting together this excellent presentation.

Jeff Tumlin made the point that the common thread for successful transit oriented development is pedestrian friendly design. That is, design the public space with shade trees, ample sidewalks, street furniture, appropriate scale lighting and interesting pedestrian level architecture. Through location within half a mile of transit facilities, you encourage regional connectivity without dependence on the automobile - for access to shopping and residential opportunities that might not have been as readily available in other locations. And by doing so, you create a new project that has additional value to the community - as well as a return on investment. The traditional parking lot next to the station is something to avoid as it does not add value in the same way as transit oriented development (TOD). Note that if you live within half a mile of a transit station, you are five times more likely to use transit than you are if you are outside that radius. More on that later.

The pie-charts above are interesting. They break down common household costs and separate "Location Efficient Environments" (another name for TODs) and "Auto Dependent Exurbs" (Wellington, Palm Beach Gardens, the Acreage, etc.). The red slice of the pie represents the portion of income devoted to transportation. Living in close proximity to transit and using it as a mode of transit reduces your cost of transportation significantly - leaving more disposable income or freeing up additional money for housing.


Transit oriented development employs a lower rate of required parking than traditional developments. The two slides above show the impact of the cost in providing parking for a variety of developments over a range of densities. You can see the impact of reduced parking requirements in terms of fixed costs that the revenue producing development must carry. It should also be noted that no where in the City is a density of over 40 units an acre allowed. So Lake Worth is clearly at the left side of the above graph.

In the State of Florida, we have state mandated concurrency which means that public facilities have to be in place at the time the impact of a project happens. Many public facilities are covered by this law, but the one that gets the most is transportation and traffic level of service. In each community's Comprehensive Plan, level of service standards are adopted. When a project comes through the development review process, it has to prove that its traffic impact does not exceed the adopted level of service standards. In Palm Beach County, traffic studies for development in municipalities is covered by the County's Traffic Performance Standards ordinance. The first and second bullet points above identify the need to adjust traffic generation figures as it applies to TOD project since they inherently generate less traffic than traditional auto-oriented development. The last bullet point deals with the need to look at level of service for all modes of transit- including buses, shuttle vehicles and bicycles in this sort of development scenario.

The above slide is particularly interesting. The red line represents the typical "park and ride" parking lot operation - much like we have now at the corner of Erie Street and Lake Worth Road. What is shows is that the lot fills up in the morning as people are parking to commute to work and remains full the rest of the day - essentially restricting the amount of parking available and passenger volume on the transit line is reduced because of this. Managed parking, the blue line, represents parking that is regulated through a pricing structure, a maximum length of stay provision or other method. It does a little better than the typical "park and ride" situation. However, look at the difference in the amount of parking available with a mix of uses (retail, office and residential) along with a managed system of parking - the green line - or the characteristics of a TOD project. Same size of parking facility, but a more efficient utilization over time and a more reliable generator of ridership for the transit system.


This is an aerial of the study area, with the half mile radius around the station shown by the red circle.
This is the "overlay" to the aerial showing the uses that are transit supportive and those that are not. Notice that all the areas indicated in black are not transit supportive. One universal recognition of the group was that I-95 is a tremendous visual and physical barrier. The gray areas were thought to be mildly transit supportive, but the low density of the current land uses within the Park of Commerce and the high school are not great source of transit demand. The lower density residential uses (light green) are somewhat supportive of transit. But the big contributor would be the downtown area and the multi-family zoned area north of Lake Worth Road - as well as Palm Beach Community College, but its impact is less since it is outside the half mile radius. Thus the need for a shuttle, which will come up later in the various comments from the study groups.

The following slides are comments from the four groups and each had a different take on the issues, but shared much in common as well. I think they speak for themselves. Remember you can see more detail by clicking on the image. You can even save it by right clicking on the image and then select save as, then choose an appropriate place on your hard drive to save it.

One of the concepts the Canadians present offered was that of "ECO-density". This is a whole movement that is being promoted by city of Vancouver, British Columbia. You can see mention of it under the comments offered by Group 2. I am preparing an upcoming post that will include some samples of information from Vancouver. There are a lot of things that we can capitalize on here, given their lead. And it happens to be consistent with my approach on redevelopment within Lake Worth. So look for more information on that soon. If you want to get a start on it, you can click here and that will take you to an informative .pdf booklet on the concept of eco-density.

Group 2 Comments

• Broader range of housing
opportunities to match
demographic changes

• “Eco Density”: Enough people
living close enough together to
reduce ecological footprint and
need to drive. Includes high
quality of life, local services within
walking distance

• “Invisible Density” – increase
housing without changing
neighborhood character:
Secondary units, smaller units,
better managed parking

(Note: For some reason the slide with the above information did not translate well to a jpeg format. If you would like a copy of the whole PowerPoint presentation, please e-mail me or we can meet up and I can let you download from a thumb-drive.)