Last night's ridiculous meeting on the Lake Worth General Obligation Bond

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Last night's meeting nearly ended before it began. It was a "work" Session to discuss the neighborhood streets project, or so we all thought. Other than Commissioner McVoy attempting to have any discussion whatsoever, there was none and none was allowed.

McVoy said that the approach we have as a commissioner should be incumbent on us [the commission] to give the public as much information as possible, that the last bond that lost at the polls and its results showed no confidence in the city as the vote was 50/50. He further stated that the big issue is the $40 million price tag and the community deserves a robust discussion.

Scott Maxwell shot him down by calling a Point of Order (his favorite thing to do when one of the minority commissioners has the floor) and when he doesn't like hearing what they have to say. A point of order may be raised if the rules appear to have been broken. Maxwell just didn't want to listen to any thing that might detract from getting this bond passed. No rules were broken. This meeting was for discussion. There was no vote on anything and the bully vice mayor was allowed to raise his ugly head once again. Can we please get a Parliamentarian?

Brent Whitfield, an engineer with ADA Engineering, gave a brief PowerPoint presentation on road repairs and resurfacing. The city passed out back-up (it was still not on-line at 5:30pm according to the assistant city clerk and still fully not on-line as of this moment) of all the roads that will be repaired under this new 30 year General Obligation Bond of $40 million, a bond for which they have never told us the final cost with interest.

As Whitfield did in 2013 on the LW 2020 bond, he emphasized the fact that our city roads are not being maintained and that we needed to increase the maintenance and repair budget. Roads last only about 15 years max. Bornstein piped in that they haven't increased the budget due to budgetary constraints. In 2007, our budget for street maintenance was $1.4 million. Through the years, especially 2013, our budget was lowered to $439k. The 2017 budget is within a half million lower of where we were ten years ago. As the city NEVER maintains anything, what can we expect going forward?

We have no idea how long this project will be in effect but we do know that we will keep paying for 30 years. The following are the projected costs for the road repairs in the various districts:

District 1: $11,729,678
District 2: $ 7,365,269
District 3: $14,930,914
District 4: $ 5,474,139

To see the roads with potholes without the cost breakdown, Click here. This is not what was passed out last night.

Some residents in the chamber were hopeful that they would be allowed to speak and turned in blue cards. It didn't happen. This is how this Trio wants to inform the public--no discussion and no public input. Maxwell made a motion to adjourn the meeting and the vote was 3/2 with McVoy and Maier dissenting. We all left the packed chamber after a 40 minute meeting with our heads shaking.

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