There are people behind the scenes who are working diligently to stop the casino restoration. There are others who secretly hope or will tell their friends that Peter Willard has a case and will successfully sue us for $40 million dollars. Willard has no case but it doesn’t dispute the fact that there are those who are putting up barriers for us to move forward with what the people want at their beach. Some of those people are city employees who are not taking direction from the Commission.Last night was a prime example of evil in action. It showed that we still have the “old” regime leading this commission around by the nose. We have a contract building inspector who says the building is about to fall down. Now he says that we must spend more money shoring up the building. We have six past engineering reports and those that I read say differently. What does staff do? They hire, once again, another engineering firm to analyze past engineering reports to see how they compare as to the structural analysis of the buildings. Do you think this next company will finally get it right in the eyes of the City of Lake Worth and recommend demolition? Who gave them this authority? It was not the Commission. How do they spend our money without approval?
Last month Staff was told to come back with a Request For Proposal and expected that to come back to them within a month. Staff revealed last night that it is not even close to getting out an RFP. They are still working on Letters of Interest. What do they do all day long?
Mayor Clemens was correct when he said that they voted on refurbishing the Casino and that he knew that restoration would probably be more expensive than a brand new building. This was revealed in two engineering reports that I read that were received by the City that suggested that. According to Straticon, this building would be totally gutted with nothing left standing but the foundation and outer walls. Everything else would be new. So, we would be getting a NEW building but it would still be considered a restoration. Therefore, there should be no concern from the citizenry or any Commissioner that this building will be anything but built to today’s codes and standards. We know without a doubt that we can restore our existing building. We do not know that we can build a new one.
This process has been bogged down and it was done so on purpose. Mayor Clemens was correct again last night when he said that Staff was pigeon holing the RFP process. Direct Staff to get it done and get it done quickly or give them a pink slip. The Commission needs to get a whole lot more assertive and not allow Staff to continue ignoring its requests and going beyond their authority. The citizens of Lake Worth deserve a whole lot more as well.
