Horse Trading in Lake Worth

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Everything is about politics especially in the City of Lake Worth. Politics is involved even when some don’t realize that they are playing the same old political tune. And what they criticize someone of doing, they do themselves. It happens over and over again. I am not sure if it is because we just don’t see it or because our convictions are only honest to us. Instead, we choose to believe that what we think is not political is just good old common sense and observation. Nevertheless, it happens over and over again, to all of us, and it happened last night.

Ryan Anderson, President of the Neighborhood Association Council but speaking as "only" a private citizen, gave a ten minute speech on the Board applicant process citing that in many respects the process did not follow our code. You really can't divorce yourself from what you are-- President of a neighborhood association and President of the NA Council. Just those distinctions make you "political."

I concur with Ryan's assessment, however. The process did not follow the Code. It was said that the Commission should have ranked the applicants. If there are three openings on a Board, then the Commission needs to pick its top three choices. There is no other ranking necessary here and that's what the Commission did but rankings were manipulated after the count. In spite of the Mayor saying there was a lot of “horse trading” going on over the two nights of interviews, it was more than that in spite of the excuse of an intentionally broad Ordinance.

Mr. Anderson was right on the money until he dragged in the casino architect process into his mix. Scott Maxell did that too. The process of choosing the casino architects was entirely by ranking even though there were three commissioners who, overall, ranked Living Designs as their choice (another political vote…more on this later this morning). REG came out on top, ranked in several categories, with 13 votes. Living Designs was cut out by 1 vote in the rankings. If any process was by rankings and above board, it was the beach architects. This was a bad comparison. Politics.

The truth of the matter is that this Commission circumvented the process on the Volunteer City Board interviews. Drop dead proof of that was when Leah Chaloub was appointed to the CRA, a person who did not interview and was out of the country and never called in. She applied to the Tree Board and to the CRA. Her appointment was not based on an honest process.

These interviews should be spread out over four days if needed. The vote needs to be taken on the night of the interview, not held over when there is a chance of corruption to the thought process. Applicants should be allowed to apply for more than one Board but the number should be limited. We had a lot of highly qualified volunteers and to be cast aside for someone who did not even interview, for whatever reason, is bad policy if nothing else.

Board appointments will always be political but they should be at least open, honest and transparent and the applicant who gets the most votes should be appointed, not horse-traded.