Berger Bullies Shant? Video

A press release from County Commission Candidate Taniel Shant accuses Mary Lou Berger of censoring and intimidating him at a community meeting that was open to the public.

BOYNTON BEACH, FL – On Wednesday, September 21, the Coalition of Boynton West Residential Associations (COBWRA) held their September delegates meeting which featured presentations from Palm Beach County Administrator Verdenia Baker and Palm Beach County School District Superintendent Robert Avossa, who both spoke in support of the 17% Sales Tax increase that will appear on the November 8 ballot. The COBWRA meeting was advertised as open to the public.

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Taniel Shant, Republican candidate for Palm Beach County Commission District 5, opposes the 17% Sales Tax increase and was present to listen to the presentations. County Commission District 5 includes the areas west of Boca Raton, Delray Beach, and Boynton Beach.
Near the end of the presentations, COBWRA President Glen Harvie approached Mr. Shant and, in a disrespectful manner, told him that he would not allow Mr. Shant to ask a question. Mr. Harvie then attempted to unlawfully remove Mr. Shant, who was standing near the back of the room peacefully listening to the presentations.

Upon his arrival, Mr. Shant witnessed Mary Lou Berger canvass the room and inform her allies that Mr. Shant was present.
It appears that Mr. Harvie, who supports the 17% Sales Tax increase, was acting on behalf of sitting District 5 County Commissioner Mary Lou Berger, who was present at the meeting. In 2014, Commissioner Berger nominated Mr. Harvie to the Palm Beach County Community Advisory Committee.
“Although I was bullied, censored, and intimidated, the real victims in all of this are the residents,” stated Taniel Shant. “The entire meeting was a setup to deceive the residents of West Boynton Beach. They had two presentations in support of the 17% sales tax increase, didn’t have anyone speak in opposition to it, refused to allow public comments, then immediately held a vote for COBWRA to endorse and support the 17% sales tax hike, which unsurprisingly passed unanimously. I don’t know if Mary Lou Berger put him up to it or not, but he clearly was acting on Commissioner Berger’s behalf in an attempt to censor me,” Shant said.

We have previously written about Shant’s campaign and we agree with him in opposing the sales tax. However we did not attend this meeting and have no additional information to verify Shant’s claims. In our experience it is typical for challengers to encounter such tactics. Readers should, of course, use their own judgment.

Taniel Shant Takes On Mary Lou Berger

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Yesterday I met with Taniel Shant, a candidate for the County Commission seat representing West Boca. He’s as local as you can get. As a child he attended Whispering Pines Elementary, Omni Middle, and Olympic Heights High School. He graduated from FAU in 2005 and now lives in Boca Isles.
The seat he’s running for is currently occupied by Mary Lou Berger. The biggest issue in the race according to Shant is her support for increasing the sales tax. Berger told us in February that if the sales tax increase fails she will push to raise property taxes. Shant opposes any tax increases.
As for other issues he thinks his being a true West Boca resident will matter to voters. He said that Berger doesn’t really live in her district at all (District 5 includes parts of West Delray and West Boynton) and is really a creature of Palm Beach. Property records and my own experience with her suggest he might be right about that, though I’m not sure voters care.
I found his third criticism of Berger amusing – that she’s arrogant. I can’t say that’s wrong but Shant himself did not come off as humble in our meeting.

Shant (left) with Paul Tocker (a friend of West Boca News) and others in Kings Point
Shant (left) with Paul Tocker (a friend of West Boca News) and others in Kings Point

Between college and now Shant spent most of the past 10 years working in Washington DC with a non-profit called Armenian Assembly of America. Most recently he worked to get the Obama administration to recognize genocides against Christians in Syria and Iraq.
It’s early in this campaign. Shant appears to be raising enough money to present a credible challenge against Berger. It is an uphill battle running as a Republican challenger against a Democrat incumbent in a Democrat-leaning district in a presidential election year. Shant believes he can win over the independents as well as some Democrats, especially on the tax issue.
Shant’s website is http://www.tanielshant.com/.

Boca Dense: 211 Townhomes Coming to Boca Dunes

6-Unit Exterior - Traditional Boca Elevation - SD04.pdf
Developer K. Hovnanian has been approved to add 211 townhomes in the middle of the Boca Dunes community, replacing roughly 41 acres of golf course in the process. The new buildings will have about six units each, as depicted in the above image.
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As you can see from the images above and below the new structures will be built right in the center of the current area.
P:349349.45LDS AutoCADSite Plan2014-09-23_PSBP&PMP_349.45 P
According to Hovnanian:

Homes will range in price from $314,000 – $380,000. Spacious 2-story townhome designs will offer living space between 1,600 and 2,500 square feet and 2 – 3 bedrooms. This new residential development is planned for 2016.

We’re not sure how realistic that pricing is. In the past year in Sandalfoot Cove (south of Palmetto Park between 441 and Boca Rio), only six townhomes sold for more than $200K around 1600 square feet. Closer to Boca Dunes the highest price in the past year was $161,000, about half of the low end in the proposed project. Condo sales in the community top out around $150K for 1600 square foot units.
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Looking at recently built townhomes in Boca and Delray, ones in the Centra community southeast of Military Trail and Yamato sell for more than this project. The lowest we see for that is $290K for a 1400 square foot 2-bedroom unit, but most were 3-bedrooms selling for over $350K. Four of them sold for over $400K with one over $490K.
In Delray Beach there are two similar developments. 1800 square foot units in Drexel Park are selling for around $300K while similar units in Gramercy Square are generally less with 1900 square footers as low as $255K. All of these have 3-bedrooms.

County Takes a Shot at Panhandlers – and Misses

Update: The County Commission passed the ordinance at its meeting on June 23rd. Here’s the pdf of the agenda item:
[gview file=”https://westbocanews.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/4C.pdf”]

The Palm Beach County Commission is getting closer to an ordinance that would ban panhandlers and others from standing in roadway medians. On the agenda for May 19th is a “preliminary reading” of the proposed ordinance. The full ordinance is at the bottom of this article.
We’ve taken a thorough look at the proposal. It’s a good try but falls short of what’s needed. There are two key sections that matter the most. First is the “Prohibitions” – what’s going to be made illegal:

In short it will be illegal for people to go on the “road” to display information, distribute materials or goods, or solicit business or charitable contributions.
The second key detail is in the definition of what’s a road:

The definition includes medians and traffic islands, which is where we mostly see panhandlers and others who might create traffic hazards.
This proposal has some things right but it also has some misses. For one thing it does nothing about people panhandling or otherwise disturbing traffic from sidewalks. While panhandlers will probably move from the medians, they’ll just go to the corners. That’s an improvement but it’s not a complete solution.
It also does nothing about someone who might stand in the median with no apparent purpose. This creates a problem for prosecutors who will have to prove that the defendant was engaged in one of the prohibited purposes. It may not be easy to prove that.
Back in October we wrote about how the City of Boca Raton deals with this, and at the bottom in an update we added a court decision that showed how Pembroke Pines does it. The Pembroke Pines approach included sidewalks and any other area within 200 feet of intersections.
The other thing Pembroke Pines did right, and this new proposal appears to get wrong, relates to a legal and constitutional concept called narrow tailoring. First, their ordinance focused on “right of way canvassers and solicitors”:

any person who sells or offers for sale any thing or service of any kind, or who seeks any donation of any kind, or who personally hands or seeks to transmit by hand or receive by hand any thing or service of any kind, whether or not payment in exchange is required or requested, to any person who operates or occupies a motor vehicle or any kind

It specifically exempted the mere display of information:

The term shall not apply to any person who merely holds or displays a sign lawfully permitted to be displayed by a person as long as there is no entry by such person or sign into any portion of the roadway or its median.

The Pembroke Pines ordinance was also limited to specific intersections which amounted to less than 10% of the city’s roadways. As the court put it in that case:

[T]he Ordinance is narrowly tailored …. It regulates only canvassing and soliciting, and it does so with regard to only six of the City’s roadways, or less than 10% of the City’s public roads. Significantly, only after “City staff analyzed each of the major roads within its jurisdiction” did the City identify the six streets “where canvassers could pose a particularly increased danger on traffic flow, driver safety and safety of the canvasser.”

It would have required some work, but the county could have followed Pembroke Pines by identifying specific intersections where pedestrians are at greatest risk and limiting the ordinance to those intersections. No one is worried about this problem at Glades and Cain, or at 441 and Atlantic. But there have been numerous accidents with pedestrian fatalities at key intersections on 441 including Sandalfoot and SW 18th, and we have personally observed pedestrians creating traffic problems at Glades and 441.
Based on these weaknesses, it is likely that the ordinance will be challenged on constitutional grounds and the county will lose. As taxpayers we will waste a lot of money on lawyers, knowing that we’re going to lose. And as residents we will continue to face traffic safety issues caused by this problem. More pedestrians will die because our county commission is getting it wrong.
It’s frustrating because I tried to get our commissioners and the county attorney’s office to at least read the Pembroke Pines decision. See my two e-mails below:

If all goes according to plan the hearing would be set for June 23, 2015. If it passes it will then take a month or two before deputies get the word out and really start enforcing it. And then within a year we should see constitutional challenges to the ordinances.
The full proposed ordinance is below.
[gview file=”https://westbocanews.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/5B1.pdf”]

Roadwork Coming on Cain and Glades

The County Commission recently approved two road projects west of US-441. First up, they’re spending $322K to mill and resurface Cain Blvd from Glades to Yamato. Cain runs parallel to 441, north-south between Boca Isles and Boca Greens.

Cain Blvd between Glades and Yamato. Map data Google Maps.
Cain Blvd between Glades and Yamato. Map data Google Maps.

Next up they will spend $517K milling and resurfacing Glades between Ponderosa and State Road 7 (aka US-441).
Glades Road between Ponderosa and 441. Map data Google Maps.
Glades Road between Ponderosa and 441. Map data Google Maps.

From what we can see in the documents, each project should take no more than 30 days. We haven’t heard of a start date yet for either of them.
Once these start we anticipate significant traffic impact, though fortunately both sections of roadway are not as heavily traveled as busier roads like 441 and Glades east of 441. Drivers may divert from these creating more traffic on Palmetto Park Road, Yamato, and 441.
The documents for each are below. First for Cain:
[gview file=”https://westbocanews.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/cain-glades-yamato.pdf”]
And next for Glades:
[gview file=”https://westbocanews.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/glades-ponderosa-7.pdf”]