A Snowball in Hell - The Greater Bay Fiasco

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It's very disgusting to sit down at my dining table, open up the Palm Beach Post and read a horrendous article such as I did today on the Greater Bay lawsuit...particularly when I think of Peter Willard laughing his ass off. Here we have outside counsel blaming his failure to do his job for Lake Worth, a job he took willingly and wanted from day-one.

Greater Bay was to pay for and submit a site plan. They never did. They were to pay for all the financing. They never paid one dime for anything. All they did was stall and stall and eventually screwed up our pool when they finally did something.

The Development Agreement had a provision that essentially said that all government zoning land-use approvals had to be in by June 30, 2007, and if they weren't, either side could terminate the contract within 15 days notice.  The City attempted to make a Comprehensive Plan change but it was challenged by Tallahassee.

The McCauley/McNamara law suit challenged the Lease agreement of 20 years minus a day plus a sub-lease of 20 years minus a day and a development period with NO time limit or cap.  The Court agreed the suit had merit. The City knew that the charges in the suit were correct and went ahead and made an amendment to the Lease Agreement with Greater Bay. That suit was not dropped until Greater Bay was off the beach and rightfully so. Citizens formed a PAC to preserve the beach as Public Recreation and Open Space and to keep it from becoming more commercial. There was to be a referendum and the signatures on all petitions were certified as the citizens believed that they had a right to vote on what happened at their beach. Then the City, bending over backwards for Greater Bay, sued the PAC. The PAC, much to my dismay, bowed out of the process because of politics, not the threat of a law suit. Our outside counsel, Brian Joslyn, was behind that.

Joslyn says that there were several  beach redevelopment plans over the past 20 years that had fallen apart for one reason or another. To straighten out that perception, there was a plan for a General Obligation bond, pushed by then mayor Rodney Romano, of $19 million to redevelop our beach in 2002. That failed overwhelmingly at the polls. The residents did not want to be obligated for that much money. No other suggestion for the beach got off the ground.  Then Greater Bay answered the RFQ and presented a public/private partnership that would have tied up our beach for years with the city making no money other than $500,000 a year that would not even have paid for the lifeguards and have caused the City an annual loss for 20 plus years.

This was such a deal, that Greater Bay had no money, never had done a project of this magnitude, never got its bank financing and never even had opened up a bank account until years later when it was going to suit. Greater Bay charged that there was a government conspiracy to get rid of them from our beach even though they never performed, not once. People will say anything for a buck.

The biggest problem with Greater Bay was when the commission agreed to allow them to renovate our Olympic Pool before the Grant money expired. This was the biggest mistake of the city--allowing Greater Bay to appear to be a hero. I believe that this was the turning point. City attorney Larry Karns, at the time, told them not to go ahead with GB; they did anyway.  If someone is not performing and jerking you around, you don't let them proceed on another aspect of a project.

Now Scott Maxwell and Pam Triolo want to get "to the bottom of the Greater Bay lawsuit' and what got us to this $1.6 million settlement. What got us here, commissioner, was Lake Worth being too trusting; they never even did a background check on the principal, Peter Willard, and never even bothered to see first-hand one project that Greater Bay constructed. The main reason was trying to get something for nothing with a partnership with a company that was going to pay all of the bills.They naively believed the bull because they wanted to and because as Retha Lowe had always said, "We have been trying to do some thing with our beach for 30 years."

It would be her legacy when this beach was finally renovated. She was one of the top reasons why we are where we are today as well as the rest of the majority commission (Vespo and  Burns) who went along with the insurrection--she initialed the contract without reading it, every single page of it, not the mayor, Marc Drautz. Of course no situation tests us more than the urge to get something for nothing. That's what happened here. Everyone is tempted by "something for nothing."  In this case, elected officials made a political decision to sign the contract without understanding it, without even reading it, and the snowball just kept rolling down the hill.

With every bad thing that happens sometimes there is a silver lining.  In this case, the settlement is a good deal for Lake Worth considering we would have had a loss at our beach of several hundreds of thousands a year over 20 years while Peter Willard and Greater Bay originally wanted to sue us for $40 million, or make an estimated $2 million profit every year for 20 years. We are now in control of our beach, not them, and with good management, we will be making the money.

Supposedly in February, Scott Maxwell, the most political commissioner who has ever held the office in Lake Worth, will have a public workshop to bring out all the reasons that he wants the citizens to believe as to what occurred here. This is being done to justify this commission handing over $1.6 million of our money to the biggest scam artist who ever hit town and of course, to "hit" his political opponents right between the eyes.  The sad part of this is that there will be a certain percentage of people who will believe the politics here and not the facts.

It has been a snowball in hell that has not yet melted.