Lawsuit filed against Lake Worth Beach and the CRA

Lake Worth For All files lawsuit

Kimberly Stokers, Former Lake Worth Beach Commissioner and the above group filed a lawsuit this week that takes aim at the WMODA deal and the machinery behind it.

The City and the Lake Worth Beach Community Redevelopment Agency are misusing nearly $2 million in penny sales tax money for the WMODA project. We've asked them over and over again to stop this madness. They've refused.

Lake Worth For All says, help us win this lawsuit by donating to our legal fund for fighting bad development plans like WMODA. (If you've already donated, thank you! Please share this with others who may as well.)

Here’s the core of what LW4A is putting in front of a judge: Palm Beach County voters approved a one-cent infrastructure surtax for schools and public infrastructure. Our complaint says Lake Worth Beach received its share and then transferred portions to the CRA under interlocal agreements that tightly restricted what that money could be used for — specifically, to buy designated downtown parcels and develop public surface parking.

Those agreements weren’t vague: the funds were to be “strictly utilized” for that surface-parking purpose, and if the parking lots weren’t built, the parcels were to be transferred back to the City.

“This is a blatant abuse of the penny sales tax funds that the voters approved for education and infrastructure only. The voters absolutely did not contemplate that their hard-earned tax dollars would be used to fund a development of market rate housing,’’ attorney Robert Hartsell, who is representing Lake Worth for All, said in a statement.

The city and CRA sidestepped protections in our City Charter that require a public vote before parcels in this downtown public land can be sold. The remedy is simple: put it on the ballot.

We want to stop this bad development before further irreparable damage is done. Historic buildings and a community garden have already been demolished to make way for WMODA. Last month, utility crews began moving power lines to make way for the WMODA project. We need to stop this before it goes any further.

Your donations make this fight possible.

The lawsuit

Kim Stokes, Lake Worth for All president