Lake Worth Beach Redevelopment - What a mess

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Deerfield Beach Public Beach
They didn't have to reinvent the wheel

When we got this Bond money from Palm Beach County, we all thought that our beach would look relatively the same. We would use the money to spruce it up: Pavers on the walkways, resurfacing our parking lots, new showers and bathrooms as well as new foliage.

What happens when money is burning in your pocket? Elected officials dream up all sorts of ways to use the money. In our case, it was changing a beach experience to a park experience with actual Jungle Jims. We had one young commissioner who might have been enamored with Disney World or something. Who knows. She never went to the beach; neither did most of the commission. They decided, in all their worldly wisdom, that people didn't come to the beach to go to the beach but wanted other forms of entertainment for little Suzie.

They decided to take out 164 upper level parking spaces saying that the visitors could hoof it for "green" and little Jimmy's play equipment. They, by even accepting the Bond money, lost control of our beach for 30 years. I have heard of people turning their soul over to the devil but losing control for 30 years so developers can get rich? We lost unlimited decal parking and now will be relegated to 55 spaces or so. Who knows what we will really have lost by the time this ever gets figured out.

Now the contractor, Morganti, says that turtle lighting will cost us $2 million. That is over and above the Bond money. Our project manager who took over for the original project manager, Rachel Smithson, who got the heck out of Dodge and moved to Charlotte, has figured out all sorts of cost adjustments by eliminating certain features and materials that total $1.3 mil. Lake Worth Utilities could pick up the cost of the lower parking lot lighting and rent it back to the beach/casino, per the project manager. Also it is planned that the Utility CIP will pay for another $730,000 for water and sewer costs for this redevelopment. There--the $2 mil shortfall was just fixed. This was NOT in the Plan. The taxpayers of Lake Worth were not supposed to pay one dime in extra costs. Again, it is costing us more money for someone's incompetence, or greed, maybe both.

They had previously decided not to go with pavers but monolithic slabs. Do you even know how ugly of an idea that is? The whole project will become a distant cousin of itself. In the project, the wind turbine is still there. Some "green" commissioners love the idea of a wind mill at our beach even though it is a totally impractical idea..."Like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind."

The energy can’t be stored, meaning that 100% backup is needed when the wind doesn’t blow. The majority of our days at the beach are anything but windy and the wind is never constant. For some reason, this Commission is in love with all things "green" whether practical or not and whether we can afford it or not. They hate nuclear and there is no alternative that is economically competitive with fossil/nuclear.

It has been discovered and written that wind power would involve covering huge tracts of land all over the country in order to produce any meaningful power. Even environmentalists are becoming disenchanted with wind power, but Lake Worth must have that wind mill for $100,000. It's cool.

Right now we just need a beach. Let's not re-invent the wheel here. Spruce it up and knock off the bull by kicking them all off our beach redevelopment. Tell Johnny Shortboats to buzz off and close our beach at a reasonable time so that we all can be happy, even the turtles.