The Sun has not Set on Sunset

Unfortunately, the Lake Worth Herald did not attend the joint meeting of the P&Z and the City Commission on April 14 before he wrote his sensational headline yesterday. Mr. Parrish never called Katie McGiveron, Chair of Save Our Neighborhood, for a recent statement but instead used one of hers made in 2007 on zoning that would have protected this neighborhood if it had not been left out of the ZIP. If he had just done these two things, he would have been informed and would have heard what the City’s paid outside attorney said--

1. that what the City did at the time was contract zoning (this is ILLEGAL). The P&Z and certain Staff members continue to ignore this fact.

2. that a rezoning of property is in the police power of the City.

3. that the Amendment is not effective.

4. the owner has not done any further application for site plan approval or any other approvals for that matter.

5. there is no substantial investment of time and money by the owner.

6. and that the Sunset parcel was totally different than the Largo situation in that Sunset did not wait to purchase the property contingent on the rezoning but purchased the property BEFORE it was granted any approvals, including annexation approval.

This entire article was written without the facts. Laurence McNamara, in his letter to the Editor, suggested that the LW Herald should change its focus away from writing about the possibility of every Commission's decision ending up in a lawsuit that is frivolous at best. I suggest that a news reporter be just that, not relying on gossip for supposed news articles.

The presentation by Richard Grosso, an authority in land-use and zoning, would also totally dispute the Herald's scare article regarding the Sunset case and the “probability of a Bert J. Harris law suit.” Anyone can threaten to file a law suit.

When you have two attorneys telling you that your chances of a Bert J. Harris law suit are slim to none, particularly when you have just paid one of them over $3,500 to prove the opposite, I would think that would be fairly compelling.

The Herald said, in a couple of different articles in this week's paper, that the courtS rejected Save Our Neighborhood's argument, inferring that we lost in more than one court. We won in the Circuit Court and the City of Lake Worth pursued the case in the Appellate Court bringing in heavy hitters to help them--the law firm of Gary, Dytrich & Ryan, Corbett & White, Weiss, Serota & Helfman and the City of Boca Raton as Intervenors in their case plus the City's outside counsel of Casey, Ciklin (Boose, the guy who went to prison for 2 years), Casey. We lost in one court, the Appeals, on the State Statute regarding referendum that supersedes local ordinances on the 5 parcel issue.

This is written to set the facts straight regarding the Herald's titillating article and commentary. Obviously, the Herald's article was written in mind to sell newspapers, not reporting on facts.

Members of Save Our Neighborhood, Inc.
Betty Anderson, MaryBeth LaBreque, Katie Mcgiveron,
Jennifer Marchal, Lynn Anderson