I always drive up the north end of our beach park and enter the resident decal parking. I never drive down the south end of our beach. Who would have known that 23 spaces were moved from our original and dedicated decal parking lot? It was never confirmed at City Hall that this was decided. It was never voted on. Is this not policy? I don't particularly have an objection to this other than it was never discussed at City Hall. As I recall, this was brought up by Mr. Bornstein, casually and not in depth. No details were given at all other than he wanted to move some of our decal parking to the south end.
My concern was whether the County had to give Lake Worth permission to move these spaces as our resident decal parking lot was part of our 30 year agreement with them in order to get the $5 million in bond money. I asked Juan Ruiz our Leisure Services Director and he said, "NO," as long as we have 613 spaces for the general public. There have been complaints from some residents that there were no decal parking spaces at the south end near Benny's and the pier. The city made a good compromise.
I think this move sucks, all for one person that wants parking down south near Benny's. This causes great confusion now for decal parkers, driving in circles back and forth to try to find a parking spot, it is all easier when it is all clumped together in one area since there are only 50 spots of like over 1000 decals sold. I am not happy with this and I wondered if the commission had voted on this, thanks for letting us know the truth. This city has gone to hell.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous at 9:10--I was all set to have the same reaction until I actually looked at it. I agree that it was probably one person complaining but that person will still have to walk up a hill. There will always be people who are unhappy. Personally I think they should have left it all alone.
ReplyDeleteI think its a decent compromise, but its confusing both to permit holders and non permit holders. The lower lot on the north end now consists of both decal spots and public spots. The lay out is bad in that lower lot already with no exit, now with two groups going in an out of it, it will be more complicated and confusing.
ReplyDeletewhen its busy, I can see this back and forth and two spots being a major problem, but I do think it makes sense to have spots in the south end as well as there are actually many people who patronize Benny's, the pier and the surf area.
I thought it was utterly stupid not to post some signs for permit holders, they just made the change with no explanation.
This was discussed at a commission meeting. There were good reasons given to have some decal parking down at the other end of the parking area closer to the pier. Lee Lipton the owner of Benny’s pays a lot of money to the city to rent the pier location, a lot of residents enjoy going there or just swimming south of the pier. Why shouldn’t we have some resident parking closer to there? Don’t know if it was voted on but many of those reason were discussed, not for an hour but certainly discussed. Was it voted on to give up control of our beach park parking area to PBC for over 20 years (a violation of our city’s charter) for $5 Million Dollars of taxpayers money. Now for 30 years residents can only park in 50 places where we use to be able to park anywhere with a paid decal. Was that voted on? IMO this is better. Good move.
ReplyDeleteBenny's is getting favorite treatment--the NAPC has even sucked up to them holding a post raft race party there. Also a few residents got special consideration. It was NOT discussed at least while I attended a meeting. It might have been after I left. Please provide the meeting(s) date. As said, it was casually brought up by the CM. This is a policy decision. It should have been subject to discussion, public input and a vote...just my opinion. It's our beach, not just staff's. What's done is done. Let's see how it all works out.
ReplyDeleteI believe that it is a good compromise.A better outcome for the residents would have been telling the county to stick their (really OUR) bond money up their butts and keeping the whole beach for the residents-You know the people who have paid for it's upkeep for the last 90 years or so. But oh well, too late.
ReplyDeleteCan we PLEASE go back to a one way traffic pattern?!? This two way crap is chaos.
Sign me "Lake Worth year round resident taxpayer,not an undeserving,cheap snowbird carpetbagger who we all just wish would keep going south to Miami-Dade."
I'm a fan of Benny's but this Lee Lipton has a sweetheart deal with the City. Just like always the City bends over backwards and expands the hours of operation without getting much in return. I could have negotiated a better lease for the City, but they are so eager to trip over themselves to accommodate this guy. We should in every lease agreement being getting a cut of the receipts with an escalation clause (we failed at the golf course, I though the city learned to do better but they failed with benny's as well). It is great to see businesses doing well in our city, but if they are using city resources, like the golf club house or our pier, they need to be sharing the profits with the City.
ReplyDeleteAlso, Lee says our pool is an embarrassment, clearly he's never used it as its anything but an embarrassment and we just paid tons of money to redo it.
Lee is looking out for his own wallet, I don't begrudge him for doing so, but to assume he cares about anyone but himself is stupid.
Agreed, 12:25. His tables are getting farther and farther out on the sidewalk. he must be making his money off of the booze because the food has taken a turn for the worst. prices too. Ugh.
ReplyDeleteI also noticed that the City posted a pool survey on the web site. I'm sure they are not advertising it so they can point to the lack of responses and say, see no one cares about the pool.
ReplyDeleteThey have a newsletter with mostly useless information. If the city really wanted people to know of this survey, they would tell us. They want it to fail.
ReplyDeleteIt was discussed Lynn, you chose to leave shortly before tea discussion was had... At the urging of a couple citizens.
ReplyDeleteSplitting up the locations of spaces makes sense as some people want to access different parts of the complex.