Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Crossing Guards on 2nd Avenue North railroad tracks

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Yeah, I'm talking about this again because it is one of the petty little annoyances for which our city is so famous that always ends up costing us hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars. Everything we do costs more money than we anticipate because we forget to include something--we just plain over look part of the cost. Don't you think that costing out a project correctly is just part of the job? Think turtle lights. 2nd Avenue North fiasco is no exception. And these people get a retirement from the City...big bucks, paid for by you.

Our City Manager has worked hard to hire top people so it must be very frustrating to her when something of this nature happens. But the free lunch can continue.

We just now began our budget for the new fiscal year 18 days ago and now one of the recommendations is to amend it because someone didn't do his/her job to begin with when the city went ahead to convert this roadway to two lane traffic. They totally left out the railroad crossings in their cost estimate. Forgot all about them I guess. Tonight we will hear all the reasons for this incompetence and it will end up as no one's fault.

There are three alternatives to provide authorization for the FEC railroad crossing upgrade:
  • A budget amendment for the 2011-2012 Fiscal Year could be approved by the Commission to appropriate $235,000 of the available fund balance at this time
  • The Commission can decide to defer some of the budgeted improvements and redirect the funds.
  • The Commission can decide to authorize the project utilizing funds from authorized projects that have not yet begun and amend the Budget in the 1st quarter budget amendment cycle, utilizing available fund balance.
Look for this item under New Business D.

Can we please start getting it right?

6 comments:

  1. The city could have deferred improvements and not tax for a fire pension.

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  2. Whichever staff member came up with the budget for changing Second Ace. North to two - way should be fired. How could that person not realize there was a train crossing on that street. How could that person, assuming they realized there was a train crossing, not realize there would be costs in changing the train crossing to two way and finally how could that person not do any research. Pure incompentence!

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  3. More waste, let Pulbix pay for it since they are doing this 2-way for them.

    Huge waste!

    Personally, I wish they would return it to one-way again, it displaced hundreds of parking spots and people who parked there with no warning to us. I was told last night that it is cheaper to just spend $6K to put it back the way it was than to spend all the money it will cost with the new RR crossing changes.
    Just another example of the poor leadership from Stanton and our politicians.

    Return it to one-way and stop the waste and lack of logic.

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  4. Don't blame Publix people this is a botch job from the city...There is not other explanation, don't discuss just send your phone calls and emails to Stanton direct and tell her that the City F'd up and we are tired of it!

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  5. This is just another example of how our government(the City of Lake Worth) has given in to big business (Publix) and then the taxpayers have to pay for the bill, I am so tired of big business, they control all at our expense, that is what this whole Occupy Wall Street protesting is all about. We must stop the control of big business in this world!

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  6. This was just another example of incompetent government workers that are overpaid. Big Business had nothing to do with this because it was the City that wanted to change everything for Publix, not the other way around. We even gave them $500,000. Unbelievably STUPID. It was lousy government and stupid politics and it has cost the residents close to $1 mil.

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