Plea from Concerned Lake Worth Citizen - Wake Up Lake Worth

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I don't know if you can help us or not but the over 600 "seniors" at Palm Beach Mobile Home Park are very upset with the current Lake Worth City Council and Mayor.  It does not appear that they care about what is happening to our city or our specific community.

We have the following concerns:

1. They changed the zoning of the park to Industrial without giving us a chance to voice our opinion.  They used the excuse that they sent out a letter several years ago to the previous owners of the park that the current owners did not know anythings about.  The previous owners objected to their plans but that did not matter to Lake Worth.  A few years back we found out only by having one of our residents being refused a permit to add a Florida room to his home.  He was told that no one could add any square footage to their homes as we were now zoned as industrial.

2. We just found out recently that since we were zoned as Commercial (now they are using this term) that they no longer had to provide us with curbside Garbage pick up.  They would now require the residents to place their garbage in a container that will be placed in the common area of the park.  WE ARE SENIORS IN THIS PARK and to expect people in their 70's, 80's and 90's to haul their garbage to a container and then try to get it in the container is in our opinion elder abuse.  Their excuse is that our streets are too narrow to do safe pick up.  I have lived here since 1982 and they have not had this problem in the past, why is it a problem now.

3. We have a street that the residents used to come in and out of the park (Joyce Street) that is full of pot holes and they state that they have no intention of repairing the street.

4. With their new plan of "building their 'Park of Commerce' there are plans to take some of the property that is now park property to achieve their goals.

5.We have had an increase in crimes in our park as well as the area around us and yet that does not seem to concern them.

We feel that they are trying to take the park away from us.  We live on limited incomes (maybe we don't pay the city enough to live here).  To force over 600 senior citizens out of the park or to take services away from us or to zone this park as Industrial shows us that seniors do not matter to the city.  From their plans it looks like they just want the upper class here.  They treat us like trailer trash.

The city needs to concentrate on decreasing crimes rather than building more useless buildings.  They need to care more about the people of this city and not on how they can make more money to spend it anyway they want or lining their pockets.

I don't care what they say, this city has declined tremendously since I moved here.  It was a safer and cleaner city.  Making Lake Avenue beautiful did not make the city more beautiful.  Making the beach more beautiful only took more of the beach away from the residents.  They took the naturalness away from it and made it look like something from a ritzy resort.  I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

We were a beautiful quaint little town and now we are a town with crime so bad that you can no longer walk the streets and be ensured of a nice evening.  Their vision is obscured by their own personal needs.  Wake up Lake Worth.  Tourists have come here for years.  The Canadians have been coming here and buying property for years.  Now they are selling their properties because of the decline in Lake Worth.  Stop making laws that are pointless and that no one is going to enforce and start fixing the problem.

Thank you for allowing me to vent my concerns that are felt by all of us.

A very Concerned Citizen