Lake Worth Utilities
Waste Meter

$50,000
... for an arc flash study that Mr. Reyes was qualified to do in house and at no cost to taxpayers.
$200,000
... the estimated engineering cost of the express feeder which could also be done in house at no cost to taxpayers.
$591,898
... wasted when insurance requirements were circumvented by the city manager and utility director.
$123,098
... wasted when plant manager Dave Mulvay’s first attempt at writing a scope of work contained a defect that cost taxpayers an extra $123,098 for tainting the bidding process and giving unfair advantage to one bidder over another. - April 2009
$64,000
... wasted when the Matrix organizational study to save taxpayers money was scrapped in favor of higher cost outsourcing by city manager Stanton.
$450,000
... wasted engineering design cost of water piping and tanks (original county water deal) that will never be built.
$59,975
... wasted when additional costs were incurred for not following insurance procedure on transformer repair.
$82,620
... wasted when the commission unanimously voted to order transformers when we had equivalent replacements already in stock since the upgrade. - 15 Sep. 2009

Total Taxpayer Dollars Wasted:
$1,621,591

This is a citizen volunteer board with goals of mitigating noise problems around PBIA but also can include Lantana Airport issues. As the meeting got underway, members of the board including Chairman Paul Agnew and Ms Pullum from "Good Neighbors," voiced their concerns over the Department of Airports (DOA) lack of follow through and willingness to provide necessary information in a timely fashion.

When a resident complaining about helicopter noise over his home near Gun Glub Road, asked ‘if the problem at Lantana Airport had ever been resolved,’ the Chairman, Paul Agnew, replied that complaints had dwindled to a few over the years and those complaints seemed mostly related to seasonal residents. He added that Palm Beach Helicopter’s Debbie Sparks had gone a long way to satisfying resident needs and had successfully adjusted their flight patterns to accommodate the public.

So Mr Agnew was quite disturbed to learn otherwise. He and the entire Citizen Committee, heard for the first time what the NOISE ABATEMENT PROCEDURES for Lantana Airport actually were and why it was that Palm Beach Helicopters, and others were in fact, in complete NON COMPLIANCE with these PROCEDURES which were characterized as reasonable requests made by the County Commission to the tenant training schools.

So Mr Agnew asked to see the document at which time he learned that the Department of Airports (DOA) had withheld that information from the public. Then in defense of the DOA, Mr Agnew spoke out and said… that as a helicopter pilot himself, he wouldn’t be looking on the web for the NOISE ABATEMENT PROCEDURES anyway so it wasn’t important that they be on the NOISE ABATEMENT website. This was precisely the answer given by Casandra Davis, the DOA rep who refused to post the NOISE ABATEMENT PROCEDURES on the NOISE ABATEMENT website.

Of course, they both neglected to consider that if the public had known all these years what the County Commission had entitled them to… that helicopters in fact, SHOULD NOT be flying over their homes …that in itself might explain the absence of complaints and why it may appear that ‘everything is wonderful in the neighborhood’ at Lantana Airport. It would also explain why My Agnew might conclude that the training schools are doing a great job… when in fact, they are in complete non compliance with the County’s wishes for the public.

And it might explain why the public, deprived of this critical information for FIVE YEARS, lapsed into despair, fully accepting what the DOA told them… that there was nothing they could do to stop the repetitive training operations over their neighborhoods.

LWM has interviewed nearly a hundred residents and activists including the President of the Lake Osborne Civic Association. And not a single person was aware of the protective measures the County had taken to give the communities relief. Nor has the DOA advised the County Commission that the County’s tenant(s) helicopter training schools the object of DOA and CCAN praise… have in fact been in total non compliance with the County Commission’s repeated attempts to protect the public from further harm. And this has been going on for over a decade now.

Mr Agnew looked for and got agreement from board members that the Lantana Airport issue should be reopened and asked for further input from Lantana residents.