Lake Worth and Solar Energy

Lots of talk about solar in Lake Worth and many residents spoke to it at the last regular commission meeting.

Ten years ago, Mark Parrilla and his partner installed solar at their house on South A Street. They believed that it would be paying for itself in just a few years. The solar installation was $55,074 not including the rebate from the State for $20,000 and the 30% tax credit they  received from the federal government on the original cost.

The Electric Utility Advisory Board could not meet recently as there was no quorum. Peggy Fisher, a prominent member of this Board, resigned last month.because of lack of support by Staff and their decisions bypassing the Board.

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Quotes of the Day - From the Lake Worth City Commission

The Consent Agenda is abused and should only be used for housekeeping items, not major expenditures. With thirteen items on the Consent Agenda, (did I mention that the Consent Agenda totaled $2,594,263 in expenditures?) there was only one item to be voted on Tuesday night. Thus, I decided to give you some quotes of the night.

Other than the presentation to our great linemen who won two trophies at the recent lineman's rodeo in Lakeland, the meeting did not become interesting until the end under the City Manager's Report when he asked the commissioners whether they wanted him to follow through with their previous idea to change two minutes of public speaking to three minutes. His second point that he brought up was when members of the public ask a question and there is no place for a commissioner to respond. I will leave that for another time.

What your elected representatives said:

Mayor Pam Triolo
First suggested moving public participation to the end of the meeting and leaving it at two minutes. "It's our job to conduct business," said the Mayor. She later said she would leave it up to the rest of the dais to decide, that she was just throwing out ideas. The public should be your priority, Mayor.

The MOST WILD COMMENT OF THE NIGHT
And just when I was beginning to believe he ran to work for the people--

Commissioner Omari Hardy
Hardy jumped on the mayor's statement and said, "Sometimes people come up at the beginning of the meeting and say things that are incendiary and they do this on purpose and it gets everyone a little bit off kilter and it sets a tone for a meeting that doesn't have a business atmosphere and so I think it is a good idea to rob these people of  the opportunity to throw a monkey wrench and the harmonious working of the commission...I love the first amendment but I think three minutes is overkill. I think we could do well with two--what we have."

He said this knowing that every nearby city gives three minutes and even trying to compare us to PB County that has a trillion items on their Agenda.

Commissioner Herman Robinson
Presentations should be held to ten minutes.  We need to allow free speech and we need to be responsible enough to not pontificate for too long.

The 2nd MOST WILD COMMENT OF THE NIGHT - Hardy has no clue--what a guy! Contempt for the people who elected him.
Commissioner Omari Hardy
He's now thinking for other commissioners and interpreted Commissioner Robinsons' comments, wrongly I might add, by stating that he thinks what Herman was saying is that "we would love not having people introduce negative feelings...move that to the end of the meeting and [by doing so], at the same time we are undermining the effect of their speech.

Commissioner Andy Amoroso
"Let's hear the people whether good or bad."  Give three minutes and keep public speaking at beginning of the meeting.

Vice Mayor Scott Maxwell
We're all for free speech.

The BEST COMMENT OF THE NIGHT
She reminds the commission who they work for
Peggy Fisher, Resident
As a member of the public sitting here with duct tape on my mouth (the best comment of all), I don't appreciate it. This was said to begin with to come back as an agenda item...then it comes back tonight under the City Manager's report..Please have the courtesy to put this on an agenda item so that the public, who you work for, can express their thoughts.

It will be coming back as an agenda item.

Lake Worth Resident, Peggy Fisher, was honored with PBSO Good Samaritan Award

Lake Worth resident Margaret Fisher was at the intersection of Jog Road and Lake Worth Road on Valentine’s Day when she noticed an elderly man drive by. Fisher thought she recognized the 84-year-old as a “silver alert” she read about on www.PalmBeachPost.com and followed the vehicle while calling police. It turned out the man was disoriented and had been missing for nine hours.

Read more...

Lake Worth is Full of Them

Comment Up

And they don't even have to write a blog! 

Try something original. And I don't mean pounding your fist on the trunk of someone's new car. 

They're Baaaaaaack!

Comment Up

Around Summer of 2014 when this PAC was stumping for the City of Lake Worth including (Scott Maxwell, Pam Triolo and Andy Amoroso), they raised over $19,950 to get the General Obligation Bond passed, part of Lake Worth 2020.  Money helps but it isn't everything--Lake Worth YES Pac thinks it is. $50,000 wasn't enough for this group back then, money used by the City to "educate" the voters on why we needed to vote ourselves into debt.  The PAC raised $19,950,00 more.  It has to make everyone sit up and take notice--spending $70,000 to win an election is not about potholes. It's too bad that at the time every voter did not know about this obscene amount of money to put the property owners in debt for 34 years. But all we needed was one vote to defeat them and we got 25.

Then on top of the insult, the City made a big deal out of the vote trying every attempt they could muster to dishonor it.  This commission, to this day, says we lied. We beat them on principle with little money.

Some of their contributors back then were:

• $5,000: Marty Welfeld, Parrot Cove resident. He and his wife, still in the game, have given to all three incumbents for the March 15, 2016 election of $2,000 each.

• $1,000: Friends of Mark Foley, former Congressman who sent suggestive emails and sexually explicit instant messages to teenage boys who had formerly served and were at that time serving as Congressional pages. He's still in the game too and the last I heard, trying to reinvent himself...he has given $500 each to all three incumbents running in March, Maxwell, Triolo and Amoroso.

• $2,000: Southern Waste Systems, the company that dumped all sorts of questionable stuff on our landfill and was involved in suspicious campaign contributions to a resident who was fined by the elections commission for accepting them. Still in the game--Mayor Pam Triolo accepted a $500 contribution from one of their companies for her March re-election.

• $1,000: Weiner, Lynn and Thompson LLC in Delray, municipal and county land development zoning regulation lawyers. Who knows what their claim to fame is but they are from DELRAY, that should tell us something.

• $1,500: Hudson Holdings Lake Worth LLC, an investment holding and development company in DELRAY that had recently bought The Gulfstream Hotel at that time. We know that they're still in the game, waiting in the wings to see what happens on March 15. They still want our beach complex and this trio of Maxwell, Triolo and Amoroso want to give it to them.

• $1,400: In-kind contribution from a community affairs manager for printing.

• $2,000: Committee for a Prosperous Florida PAC--Jeff Clemens...who the heck knows what he's doing.

Back in 2014 when this PAC was formed the following were the members:

1. Chair Herman Robinson who is also a political appointee by the Mayor to the Historic Resource Preservation Board and acts as Chair
2. Treasurer Nadine Burns
3. Greg Rice, Public Relations for the PAC and a political appointee and now Chair to the Planning & Zoning Board.

The interest of this PAC at that time was "Advocacy for passage of the Lake Worth Ballot Question of 08/26/14." Don't know what it is now but I am sure it fits their bill like getting these incumbents re-elected.

Today, the Chair and Treasurer is Peggy Fisher, the always serious looking woman who usually sits in the back row at city commission meetings and screamed in my ear one evening at city hall. She too is a political appointee of Scott Maxwell's to the Electric Utility Advisory Board. At the time of the bond election, Ms. Fisher filed a complaint with Tallahassee against the opposing PAC, Citizens Against Unfair Taxation because it did not have a registered agent. Of course, the Palm Beach County Supervisor's office never told them that they needed one.