If Chutzpah could fill a Pothole...

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You’ve got to give it to her – Strong mayor Lois Frankel has a lot of chutzpah…a non-conformist with gutsy audacity.

West Palm Beach had applied for a Stimulus Grant, never received. She decided to go to the top and speak with President Obama and plead her case for $50 million. Afterall, the money was not going to be used this time as an ode to herself but to help a poor neighborhood. Fox News picked up on her visit to Washington and yesterday she was interviewed by Neil Cavuto. Great publicity for her city.

Several years ago she was the one who plowed ahead building a huge new City Center for $154 million (her own private bathroom cost $13,323) in spite of a certified referendum to vote on the project. Opponents said that she had over-stepped her authority—that it should have gone out for a vote. There were law suits that went all the way to the Florida Supreme Court where the people won. Also, the PB Post had revealed that the original contractor she hired had put a city commissioner on its payroll, a definite conflict of interest. This resulted in a grand jury investigation and pay-to-play was on everyone’s lips.

This time she was thinking about her taxpayers. Instead of West Palm Beach picking up the entire bill, she would see if all of America would pay it. The President said, “no, we have a big pothole out there and not enough asphalt to fill it.”