Wednesday, August 7, 2013
Ferris Bueller house: Luxury home featured in classic 80s comedy goes on sale for $1.5m | Mail Online
Nice example of Mid-Century Modern architecture. Reminds me of Philip Johnson's Glass House. One of the highlights of my career was meeting with Mr. Johnson in his Glass House. Click title for link to article.
Few People Using Winter Haven's Free Downtown Parking Garage | TheLedger.com
The designers may have been too successful in disguising the building's purpose. But it is a good example of how a parking garage can be made to blend in an existing downtown. Delray Beach has one that fits in well. Click title for link.
Buy your movie tickets today!
Tickets are $7 and benefit LULA, Lake Worth Arts and the Playhouse. They are available at the Playhouse and the CRA offices at 29 J St. Show is at the Stonzek (part of the Lake Worth Playhouse) at 8 p.m.
A production made in Lake Worth!
EXCLUSIVE — Tiger Woods: My House is Sinking!
Foundations are important and so are soil conditions. In fact, if a building is seaward of the coastal construction control line, it should either be on pilings or protected by a seawall. By the way, how is our seawall by the casino building doing these days? Click title for link to article.
Commissioners vote to keep building heights as is in downtown... | www.mypalmbeachpost.com
A reasonably accurate portrayal of what went on last night. Click title for link. This is what I said under public comment. I'll have more videos up later today.
Wes Blackman, 241 Columbia Drive. I consider myself a veteran and a refugee of the master planning process that has gone on here for eight years. Around 1.5 million dollars have been spent in getting us to a point tonight when we can finally adopt a set of land development regulations that make sense and are implementing the city's comprehensive plan. Between these two documents, this is how land use is regulated in the state of Florida.
Is everybody happy? The answer is “no” everybody isn't happy. There are those people tonight who will complain that the city is not properly recognizing the results of the referendum held in March. That somehow the will of the people will not be recognized and incorporated in to this document. The city has a good reason that it is not including that language in that HB 537 made the election “null and void” since the charter change would ultimately result in a change to the comprehensive plan and the land development regulations – since that is how land use is regulated.
I would also like to point out that there was another petition drive, headed up by citizen Christopher McVoy which sought to repeal four ordinances related to the Beach and Casino land use and zoning designation. The petition drive got the required number of signatures, the city refused to put it on the ballot and the city ended up suing the people associated with the PAC. I'd like to point out that the Beach and Casino zoning district that is included in this set of LDRs tonight is the same one that was the subject of that referendum. No one is asking that be changed or repealed tonight.
My message is to understand the trajectory of the city, that not everything in this city has to result in a lawsuit and that we should agree to disagree sometimes so that the city can become the prosperous place it was designed to be. The prospect of maybe having two additional floors in a very limited area of the city – which already has tall buildings there – is not worth more delay and confusion about what you can do in Lake Worth. A question that has been asked, without an answer, for the past eight years.
Tuesday, August 6, 2013
ATTORNEY/CLIENT SESSION CITY OF LAKE WORTH- Part IV - NOVEMBER 14, 2012
ATTORNEY/CLIENT SESSION
CITY OF LAKE WORTH
CITY OF LAKE WORTH
CITY MANAGER'S OFFICE
7 NORTH DIXIE HIGHWAY
LAKE WORTH, FLORIDA
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2012
4:52 p.m. - 6:15 p.m.
IN ATTENDANCE:
Pam Triolo, Mayor
Scott Maxwell, Vice Mayor
Christopher McVoy, Commissioner
Andy Amoroso, Commissioner
Michael Bornstein, City Manager
Glen Torciva, Esquire, Interim City Attorney
Brian Joslyn, Esquire, Outside Counsel
[FORWARD TO PAGE 38, LINE 23]
[People mentioned, other than listed "In Attendance", in order of mention: Susan Stanton, McNamara, McCally, Damon Chase, Cara Jennings, Exline, Lucerne.]
MAYOR TRIOLO: Commissioner McVoy?
COMMISSIONER MCVOY: Yeah. I think as somebody who was involved in one of them I think I might have a bit more insight into who the people were and I think your statement that it was all the same people or kind of the same people is a little bit disingenuous. The only thing that's the same people is your office has been making money off of every single lawsuit all along the way.
MR. JOSLYN: Well we've also won every single lawsuit all along the way.
COMMISSIONER MCVOY: Maybe so but there is an issue there that is somewhat of concern.
MAYOR TRIOLO: He didn't file the lawsuits.
COMMISSIONER MCVOY: Whatever.
MR. JOSLYN: I take a Koranic view of this. I'm at the sword of my master.
MAYOR TRIOLO: The first question I asked when we came to these meetings from the very, very beginning when I spoke with Susan Stanton when she was the City Manager is why are we retaining the same lawyer to proceed further, I'm sorry, I've said this to you before, why are we retaining the same lawyer to represent us in these cases that is the same lawyer that told us to make the decision we made way back when. And that's the first conversation I had with Susan and Elaine years ago but here we are today.
COMMISSIONER MCVOY: Here we are today and I think we're getting a little side tracked but I'd like to be clear that I, the PAC had five people to it. To my knowledge and I think my knowledge is pretty accurate none of those people had any involvement or any overlap in any form with Save Our Neighborhood. Thay had no involvement with the contract suit that McNamara and McCally brought and I forget what the other groups were.
MR. JOSLYN: I'll tell you this, though. People you had out there that were getting signatures were involved in all these other cases.
COMMISSIONER MCVOY: Not to my knowledge but, you know, there may be some people.
MR. BORNSTEIN: Mayor?
MAYOR TRIOLO: Yes.
MR. BORNSTEIN: I know that all we're saying is related to our thought process in terms of settling this case, and I don't want to get far afield at all, let me maybe bring you back to -- Mike just stepped out a minute but I think that his comment earlier and my thoughts, I'm not sure what the Mayor's is, when you sit in these sessions and for your attorney to tell you his thoughts on the case, the pros and cons of the case, that's one thing. But when you sit in a mediation session and you hear both lawyers and you've heard the mediator and you're spending hours and hours analyzing it kind of intensely, and I took the same approach as Mike did. I was the jury. I was sitting there as a juror hearing Brian's presentation, hearing Damon's presentation and we had a similar, I think the Mayor had a similar reaction.
MAYOR TRIOLO: I did as well.
MR. BORNSTEIN: We're in trouble on this case. All those other cases I know play into it, but the concern that I think all three of us had is that there's a better than 50/50 chance, and two mediators as he said and the jury consultants that we're going to lose. And then the question is how much could we lose. And it's again hard to quantify but I think the consensus was we had a realistic shot at getting hit with 5 and 7 and a half million dollars. That in my mind was the range. So if you've got a 60 percent or 70 percent chance of losing 5, 6, 7, $8 million then it comes down to well, how do we minimize that risk? What can we do? And one of my goals was to get whatever that bottom number was going to be and it took us a long time to get them to that number.
MAYOR TRIOLO: We came in at --
MR. BORNSTEIN: We started at 300,000.
MR. JOSLYN: Bumped to 5. But I'll say this. In the first mediation session we had with these guys before we had done the discovery to take the depositions of all their consultants who hadn't been paid and all of that other stuff that we're going to use to bloody them up at trial, they weren't going to come below $10 million.
MR. BORNSTEIN: Right. I think the team, Brian and everybody else, did a good job of getting down from -- the only conversation I had with Damon Chase was with Brian a few weeks ago and he was adamant, adamant that they would never ever take less than $3 million. We got them to half, almost 50 percent of what I thought was their bottom line. So really the question today is strategically litigation-wise do you avoid the risk of a 5, 6, $7 million judgment and additional attorney's fees because you'd have some cost of somewhere between 3 and 400,000 going forward.
MAYOR TRIOLO: Plus an appeal.
MR. BORNSTEIN: Plus the appeal or do you pay that difference, that 1.1 or $1.2 million difference? That's really what you're paying because you're going to pay 300 to fight the case or pay an additional 1.1 or 1.2 to resolve the case and avoid the risk.
MR. JOSLYN: In terms of my fees, my normal hourly rate is 400, four and a quarter an hour. I'm doing this 275 an hour and have been from the beginning. So it's not that I'm sitting here got you guys hooked up to the milking machine and full hourly rates.
MR. BORNSTEIN: It's not attorney's fees either. It's expert fees.
MR. JOSLYN: The jury simulations cost us $55,000 to get it done just for example.
MR. BORNSTEIN: From a risk standpoint at least my two cents are it's worth it for the City Commission to think about seriously putting this case behind you and as the Mayor said the parade at trial would give the City a black eye. The other side is going to make Cara Jennings and by implication the City look horrible. It was very disturbing when they talked about deposition transcripts and comments. I don't really know Cara Jennings that well. I've only met her once at a conference. But the image that they're going to portray, we'll have media coverage for a week that will be negative to the City and I don't know what the cost is of negative media coverage, but the jury is going to hear that too and I think the biggest concern I felt out of that was this was a political decision, it wasn't a legal decision by the City Commission. They politically wanted to end the Greater Bay case and we shouldn't be punished for the City's politics. That's what Damon, if I'm on the jury I'm like yeah, you're right, you shouldn't be punished because they made a political decision. We'll argue legally we had the right to do it and everything else, but if the media keeps coming back to the smell test, it doesn't smell right. Commissioner gets elected, a week later you pull the plug. What happened in that one week to all of a sudden change the vote? And there wasn't anything on the record to change the vote. So I think we legally had the right to do it, but the emotional part of a jury I think they're going to say maybe you had the right to do it but these guys got screwed. I think that's the word somebody used, they got screwed. And they will award payment for that.
MAYOR TRIOLO: Commissioner Amoroso?
COMMISSIONER AMOROSO: Real quick. Brian, I didn't understand that you were part of all these other lawsuits too. If you had to estimate what kind of money we spent on these other lawsuits, where would we be?
MR. JOSLYN: Oh, my gosh.
COMMISSIONER AMOROSO: Just an estimate. We could look back to get clarification.
MR. JOSLYN: I think the two lawsuits in the middle while this was going on with Greater Bay was around $40,000. Exline was actually a summary judgment argument after depositions. Really, I'm not sure.
COMMISSIONER AMOROSO: Hundred thousand, 200,000?
MR. JOSLYN: The other couple of lawsuits, the attorney's fee award on Lucerne was $36,000 split in half between Mr. McNamara and his attorney. Around 40 for the two lawsuits going on while this was going on. Save Our Neighborhood we got involved real late on that so I just attended the final hearing and attended the appeal, 50 maybe. And this the last bill I just sent a bill today for $98,000 including costs of about 10 and we have billed to date $687,000.
COMMISSIONER AMOROSO: 687 plus we would add our own attorney to that and in-house staff because our attorney was working with you and in-house staff for public records and all that.
[ENDED TRANSCRIPTION AT PAGE 46, LINE 3]
Cities surprised by responsibility for paying for rail... | www.mypalmbeachpost.com
It just so happens that the city is paying for an upgraded crossing at 2nd Avenue North today that is costing north of $300,000. The street was supposed to be two-way at the time of the Publix opening. No one at the city during this period knew exactly what that meant and signalization at 2nd Avenue North and Dixie was installed as the street being one-way, but only one-way west of Dixie. By act of Susan Stanton, city manager back then, she demanded that 2nd Avenue North become two-way and the city went ahead with the stripping accordingly. In the meantime, FDOT and the FEC were screaming about the fact that the crossing and safety equipment at 2nd Avenue North for eastbound traffic was non-existent, since it had been taken away when 2nd Avenue North had been made one-way back in the late nineties. All this should be sorted out tonight and we will finally, and legally, be able to enjoy at two-way 2nd Avenue North.
And let's hope it will also meet the new standards that we are reading about in this article. Click title for link. Apparently, Lake Worth has 9 such crossings which may require up-grading at the city's expense. Perhaps we can get a report on that tonight.
Monday, August 5, 2013
Lake Worth height opponents say March 12 referendum is valid | www.mypalmbeachpost.com
Read it and weep...as I weep over 8 years of this being "in process" and it is has come to this - another lawsuit? Leave it to Laurel and the gang. Click title for link.
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![Dr. W. H. Cotton’s ode: “Oh, My Lake Worth, Florida!” [circa 1920].](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUL75cv6zJQFjX15ojOIIz9AjnbqH4asHJTYSDhnGnYr7rJZRha1NcNTirj2xPcId158vkz5Hw-wXgOfrlztj8Zr8jLFFCfuEN6PyV44ZlpMRmJ68xbtFL9vzxNiG7xDs_HJvm/s1600/LakeWorthPioneers.JPG)
