"Visionaries" Rule the Roost

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Even if the Vice Mayor does appear to be sleeping on the job

With 65 resumes received for Interim City Manager, we still don't have a cut-off date until February 17. The job originally was separate from the Permanent City Manager position thus the separate advertising in order to be legally correct. However, the Interim City Manager position and the Permanent City Manager job has "morphed" into one, per Kurt Bressner. "When we have an Interim city manager in place, he/she can apply for the permanent position," said Mr. Bressner when I stopped him in the hallway.

This is all such a waste of time as Kathleen Margoles should have been appointed as Interim and the City should have immediately gone out for a Permanent City Manager. Now it will be months of delay with June as the estimated time for a new city manager to be hired and five more arduous months for Steve Carr to play the duel role of Acting City Manager and Director of Finance.

Vice Mayor Scott Maxwell, insisted that an ASPA designation be of importance and part of the desirable requirement for a city manager even though Range Rider, Kurt Bressner, said that it should not be part of the equation, that it was academia based and no where close to the stature of the ICMA certification...not important. ...it has nothing to do with what is important for the job of city manager.

Commissioner Mulvehill strongly requested that the new city manager have city manager experience. This should be a "given" as far as I am concerned. This was "dumbed down" by Maxwell (my favorite word now that someone in the public accused me of this recently on a blog post when the commission rated the requirements for city manager). As Joe Kroll, former Public Works Director has applied for the job, has an ASPA designation with no city manager experience, it is not difficult to see where Maxwell is heading. Kroll is the darling of the politicos in Lake Worth. Kroll always was there to do as they requested and now I have been told that he is blaming all of his screw-ups in his former departments on Susan Stanton.

It wasn't a three strikes and you're out sort of night. At 9:00pm, a motion was made by Maxwell, seconded by Amoroso to vote down the fire assessment. McVoy and Mulvehill dissented. Taxing is never a solution and is the easy way out. Reducing costs is the best solution.

Fiesty little ole lady
The Mayor stayed true to her campaign promise. Mulvehill and McVoy did not change their course in spite of nearly every resident and business opposed to this fire assessment other than one little lady on S. Palmway who agreed with Commissioner McVoy to tax us and one vocal man, who was not present last night, who lives on North O street. As I got up to the lectern to speak, the little lady declared for all those in the Chamber to hear, "She doesn't pay any taxes." (To clarify, she meant property tax advalorem going south due to the recession and commissions still ga-ga in attracting low-cost housing). After I sat down I told her not to be personal. She then turned around and said, "Go to hell." She ran for office in 2009 and got slaughtered. Sometimes the people actually get a lucky break and get it right.

City departments reduced their budget and came up with the money needed to repeal the fire assessment. New resolutions will be brought back to the Commission.

I would wager to say that neither McVoy nor Mulvehill will be running for office again as neither one took the popular vote. It was the Trio that asked for a solution and the city departments cooperated. One up for the Visionaries.

Prior to this vote, Maxwell, Triolo and Amoroso have voted strangely and politically by 1) firing the city manager without cause and 2) screwing up the beach leases, driving off Barry's Tees, a tenant for 26 years, and changing the beach operating times to suit a bar. Of course, it all isn't over. The beach leases come back up on January 31. That could be the third strike as we watch their manipulation as to whom goes into the anchor spaces.