TRAFFIC HAS TOWN, COUNTY AT ODDS SEE STORY, PAGE 7
TOP WATER SKIERS AT OKEEHEELEE SEE PHOTOS, PAGE 9
T H E W E L L I N GTO N
TOWN-CRIER
Wellington’s Hometown Newspaper
INSIDE Opinion
Volume 30, Number 33 August 14 - August 20, 2009
BANK SCHOLARSHIP WINNERS
Back To School A Good Time For A Driving Lesson
As students get back into the routine of the school season, many of them now have their driver’s license. This creates a new level of responsibility for their parents, who must set an example. Nothing makes a more lasting impression than parental behavior. Don’t let your child pick up on your bad habits. Page 4
News
Cancer Scare Puts A Damper On Acreage Real Estate Market
Real estate appears to be the most recent victim in an ongoing investigation into a possible “cancer cluster” in The Acreage. According to an area official, Realtors have been required to add notice of the investigation into their sale contracts. Page 2
Christ Fellowship Salutes Community Heroes In RPB
Christ Fellowship Church in Royal Palm Beach hosted “Community Heroes Night” last Saturday. Police and firefighters were on hand to make citizens aware of all the resources that local law enforcement and firefighters use. Page 5
State Rep Takes Aim At Aronberg’s State Senate Seat
State Rep. Kevin Rader (DDistrict 78) has declared his candidacy for State Senate District 27 because he believes it will give him greater opportunity to pass legislation. Page 7
Riverside Bank recognized two local high school graduates with $1,000 scholarships at its Wellington branch Tuesday. Jayne Branstrom of Wellington (above left), a graduate of the Dreyfoos School of the Arts, will attend the University of Florida. Julia White (above right), a Palm Beach Central High School graduate and also a Wellington resident, will attend the University of Miami. STORY & PHOTOS, PAGE 5 PHOTO BY CAROL PORTER/TOWN-CRIER
Apply Now For The PBSO’s Citizen Academy In RPB By Ron Bukley Town-Crier Staff Report Starting in September, the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office will coordinate a citizen academy for residents of Wellington and Royal Palm Beach interested in learning more about how local law enforcement works. Hosted by the PBSO substation in Royal Palm Beach, the academy will be a collaboration between PBSO District 9 (Royal Palm Beach) and District 8 (Wellington). Though the Wellington substation has held citizen academies in the past, this will be the first offered to Royal Palm Beach residents. “This is an opportunity for participants to look behind the scene to see what their tax dollars are paying for,” District 9 commander Capt. Eric Coleman said. “It will show them our capabilities as well as some of our limitations that we have in performing our duties.”
Classes will begin Thursday, Sept. 10 at the District 9 substation and run ten consecutive Thursdays until Nov. 12. The purpose of the program is to bring residents and business owners in the community “behind the badge” to see the inner workings of the sheriff’s office. “They’re going to do things like learn about road patrol, see the equipment and sit inside, asking questions in a non-adversarial situation,” District 9 Public Information Officer Diane Smith said. “If someone is stopped by law enforcement, he or she might not understand the procedures or the equipment. It’s basically opening the lines of communication with law enforcement.” Participants will learn the role of the PBSO in homeland security, which has taken on greater relevance since Sept. 11, 2001. They will also meet members of the K9 and mounted units.
“That’s always a wonderful opportunity for individuals, because they get to pet the dogs and the horses,” Smith said. “They will get to meet members of the SWAT team and find out what their functions are within the sheriff’s office.” Also of interest, Smith said, will be look behind the PBSO’s DUI (driving under the influence) procedures. “That’s always pretty interesting to people that I meet, but they don’t know the procedures and what takes place when someone is stopped for a DUI, and the equipment and technology that’s out there now that assists law enforcement,” Smith said. One of the most important aspects of the academy will be learning about community policing, the concept in which residents work closely with law enforcement to improve the community. It is a key focus that Capt. ColeSee ACADEMY, page 16
Budget Forum Set For Aug. 20
Serving Palms West Since 1980
Wellington Delays Awarding Bid For New Village Hall By Mark Lioi Town-Crier Staff Report A decision on the builder of a new multi-million-dollar village hall for Wellington will wait for at least two more weeks. The Wellington Village Council tabled a vote to select a bidder on the project Tuesday due to questions about equity in the bidders’ proposals. At issue are the stated requirements for the proposed municipal complex, which would gather village offices in one place for the first time after operating out of scattered locations for a decade. Council members raised concerns about the selection process because the topranked firm, the Weitz Company, had incorporated only half the emergency generator equipment called for in the bid packet, potentially lowering their overall expense estimate. A June bid invitation to design and build the municipal complex on Forest Hill Blvd. near the Wellington Community Center attracted bids from 12 firms. The village requested plans for a complex having about 54,000 square feet of indoor space with at least two stories, a clock tower feature, impact-resistant windows and architectural consistency with an adjacent playground and amphitheater that have already been designed. The village also asked that the council chambers and building department be located on the ground floor for ease of public access, and that the design satisfy requirements for “Silver” certification by Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) for environmentally friendly construction. Project Manager Rick Greene, who along with Assistant Village Manager John Bonde and Operations Director Jim Barnes sat on the selection committee for the project, told the council the ranking process was weighted heavily on overall design and total cost. He also noted that the bidding firms had some flexibility as to how much money they proposed to allocate to the various components of the project. “Some of the contractors may have put some of the money into communication where others put it into equipment,” he said. “So while you won’t see consistency between some of the numbers, we were looking at the bottom-line dollar numbers that you see here.” In April, when the council approved advertising bids for the project, village staff estimated the complex could be designed and built for within
$12.5 million, Greene said. The top five bidders, in order of committee ranking, were the Weitz Company with a bid of $10.54 million, Royal Concrete Concepts at $11.48 million, Balfour Beatty Construction at $12.75 million, WG Mills at $10.82 million and Suffolk Construction at $12.97 million. The staff report recommended accepting the bid from the Weitz Company, which all three members of the selection committee ranked as their favored bidder. But while the village had requested the complex incorporate a 1,000-kilowatt emergency generator system, the Weitz proposal included only 500kw of generator power, as the company’s designers calculated that to be what the complex would need. The audience at the council meeting was full of employees and principals of the various bidding firms, who used the public comment portion of the review to make last-minute pitches for their proposals. Royal Concrete Vice President John Albert, a Wellington resident, asked the council to make a fair, “apples to apples” comparison between bid proposals. “We did not qualify our bid, we did not provide allowances,” he said. “We put what you asked for; that was our approach. You asked for a 1000kw generator, that’s what we put.” On questions from Councilman Howard Coates, architectural consultant Steve Knight, who prepared the bid packets, confirmed that Weitz had made a provision for a 500kw generator while Royal had provided for 1,000kw, but couldn’t offer any estimate of how that would affect bid totals. “You’re telling me something that bothers me a little bit,” Coates said, “because you approved the bid and said it complied with the specifications, yet I’m hearing that on something as important as an emergency generator, that it was half of what the specification was supposed to be. How does that equate to compliance with the bid specs?” Knight said his company did not approve the bids, but did provide a cursory review and comments to assist the selection committee. He said that bidders often offered justification for deviations from the specifications. “There were other aspects of the criteria that were not complied with, that again we categorized as, for lack of a better term, were not deal-breakers as far as making the building functional,” he said. Vice Mayor Dr. Carmine See BIDS, page 16
Kim Breier started teaching science at Wellington High School 15 years ago. Some years later, she helped create and write the program for the Equine Pre-Veterinary Academy at WHS, the only one of its kind in Florida. Page 16
By Mark Lioi Town-Crier Staff Report The Village of Wellington has scheduled a one-time public forum on Thursday, Aug. 20 to allow residents to weigh in on the village’s budgeting process. While the public will get a chance to comment when the Wellington Village Council reviews the finalized budget in September, the workshop was scheduled after Councilman Matt Willhite requested it at the council’s Tuesday meeting.
Online Poll
Pafford: State Must Fund Subsidized Childcare
How Would You Rate The State Of The U.S. Economy? A. Things are looking up! B. I haven’t seen any improvement. C. Things are still getting worse! Cast your vote by visiting www.goTownCrier.com and scrolling down to the poll question at the bottom left of the page.
By Ron Bukley Town-Crier Staff Report State Rep. Mark Pafford (D-District 88) visited the KinderCare Learning Centers location in Royal Palm Beach on Tuesday to stress the benefits of subsidized early learning/childcare services. Pafford said about 60,000 children of low-income families under the age of five in Florida are on a waiting list to be enrolled in subsidized programs, 6,000 of them in Palm Beach County. “The big deal, as I understand it, is the parents need to go to work,” Pafford said. “They make $17,000 or less a year, and we continue not to budget to get these kids in, yet the parents are forced to struggle.” KinderCare provides subsidized childcare on a sliding scale based on a family’s income or specific needs
Features
WHS Features Popular Equine Pre-Vet Academy
THIS WEEK’S INDEX NEWS ........................ 2 - 9 OPINION ......................... 4 CRIME NEWS ................. 6 BUSINESS .................... 10 PEOPLE ................. 12 - 13 SPORTS ........................ 14 CALENDAR ................... 15 COLUMNS ..................... 17 Visit Us On The Web At WWW.GOTOWNCRIER.COM
“I’d like to do a public workshop, even if it’s only with our staff, to allow the public to come out and speak before it goes to the regular budget meeting of our regular council,” he said. “We talked about having public input into our budgets, but we haven’t given them a chance to speak about it.” Councilwoman Lizbeth Benacquisto said she would not be opposed to the idea if it were scheduled in conjunction with another public meeting, in order to minimize
through funding from state and federal agencies, Center Director Stefani Duelfer said. It gets its subsidized funding from the non-profit Family Central Inc. “We ourselves are not a provider of childcare for lowincome families, but we are a Family Central subcontracted provider,” Duelfer explained. “They are the organization that provides subsidized childcare for low-income families, at-risk or foster children, and teen parents in the state.” Duelfer said about 20 percent of the children at KinderCare in Royal Palm Beach are enrolled in the low-income program, and that other KinderCare centers have higher low-income enrollment rates. Subsidized childcare is a boon for unemployed parents who cannot seek employment because they have to
the staff workload. She suggested attaching the forum to the village’s the next foreclosure symposium. “If that is your direction, then we’ll be happy to do it,” Village Manager Paul Schofield said. Mayor Darell Bowen suggested the meeting serve to answer questions from residents. Vice Mayor Dr. Carmine Priore noted that the public could comment on the budget when the council does its See BUDGET, page 16
care for their children, Duelfer said. “If you have your child all day, you can’t go on a job interview,” she said. “It is a fulltime job these days just finding a job.” KinderCare District Manager Yvonne Wolliston said the center has not received the amount of funding it had expected this year and has not been able to provide childcare services to as many children as originally thought. Pafford said legislators in Tallahassee should prioritize the allocation of funding that will allow children to get into early learning so the parents can work. “There’s no such thing as welfare any more,” he said. “Basically, if you become unemployed, you have to go get another job. It’s really the rock and a hard spot, if you look for a job and find someSee PAFFORD, page 4
State Rep. Mark Pafford at KinderCare in Royal Palm Beach with caregiver Pramee Harripersaud and one of the infants in the nursery. MORE PHOTOS, PAGE 5