Parking at the Lake Worth Beach - just one of the prices to pay

$2 an hour coming soon

When I was in my 20's and 30's, I spent 6 hours every Saturday and Sunday at the beach. Having a dark tan was "in" and when you're young, wasting time was the norm. Parking was free at Singer Island and I remember paying 25 cents for 5 hours at the Lake Worth beach...and those meters never failed us. There was one day when I fed the wrong meter, came back and had a big ticket. At least it felt big at the time. If I were to spend 12 hours every weekend now in Lake Worth, it would cost me $96 a month or $1,152 a year to park just to go to God's beach. I don't think this is what "HE" had in mind.

Times have changed. The City of Lake Worth is hurting for money and they are socking it to everyone who lives here in one way shape or form. Due to past administrations that got us into difficulties by giving the Unions everything they asked, we no longer can have a decent quality of life. And the Unions keep on demanding to this day. Thanks to a few past commissions, services have been reduced or eliminated and the Seniors have been put out to pasture permanently. Everything has been taken away: our pool, our shuffleboard courts, our Museum, the art league, our Trolley, our Senior Center.

The median income for a household in the city is $30,034, and the median income for a family is $35,374 according to Wikipedia. Anyone living on this amount, going to the beach would be a luxury. Yes, they can buy a beach decal sticker but soon, thanks to Jennings and Varela, we will have 55 parking spaces in a designated area in which to park and be forced to park in the lower area and walk up the dune. The upper level parking will be reduced by 164 parking spaces. I continue to get mad when I think about this. Greg Rice was one of the few who approved and he was joined by the "green" people, all friends of Jennings and Varela.

This is now a city of children and illegals and I still have to dial one for English. All of our literature is printed in 3 languages even though English is the official language of the State of Florida. Every year over the past few, we have been "nickeling and dimeing" the people to death because the elected governments have destroyed our city and administrations have refused to negotiate with the Unions.

Susan Stanton has been trying to right the horrendous wrongs of the past but the Unions continue to win this very expensive and losing game. We all have and will continue to suffer as Stanton and this Commission work through the $4.6 million shortfall for this Budget year.

This morning at 9am is the ground breaking event at the beach. And by the way, spending $20,000 on this event is a total waste of taxpayer money.

UPDATE: After talking to city manager Susan Stanton and to Commissioner Jo-Ann Golden this morning, the Commission vetoed the two proposals that were before them and agreed to spend a minimal amount on this event.