The "Agreement" with the South Beach Civic Association:

Over the years there has been much talk about the "Agreement" approved by the LBTS Town Commission on August 8, 2000, without any prior circulation to citizens of the Town or public hearings.  The Agreement has often been cited as a commitment by the Town to fund sewer and storm-drain construction in the old Intra-coastal/Beach Area, but few in the north or the south have ever read the agreement.

In fact, the document specifies that it is only valid "consistent with [the Town's] legal authority" to enter into agreements.  (No Commission has legal authority to commit future commissions to specific financial actions.)

Moreover, it is clear that only the "excess revenues generated by the Town from real and personal property located within the Intra-coastal/Beach Area" are to be dedicated to capital improvements in that area.  Also, each year the Town's proposed budget for such expenditures is to include those "anticipated excess revenues."  All that is clearly spelled out in paragraph 7 of the Agreement, which may be read by clicking on the link below.  But we were told by the previous Town Manager that such estimates were not being prepared, at the specific request of the South Beach Civic Association (SBCA) Board of Directors.  Baldwin added that he even doubted there WAS any actual surplus at that point in time.

Our exposés of the great South Beach Civic Association (SBCA) BOD Scam began by explaining how a tiny group of politicians, developers, and ambitious beach-front property owners had set up a non-representative corporation with only six voting members, elected a secretive pro-developer board of directors who passed themselves off as representing residents of the whole “Intracoastal/ /beach area” and struck a “sweetheart” deal with the mayor and other members of the old LBTS Town Commission.  That deal furthered their own pro-developer and anti-height-limit agenda at the expense of a majority of residents of old-town LBTS and of the annexed area. 

Part II showed how that same SBCA BOD crew insisted, for the annexed area, on continued county fire support they assured us the property owners of that area would “happily” pay for (never intending that would actually happen).  It tells how - under the leadership of their anointed commissioners Kennedy and Clark, and with the full complicity of former BSO official Bob Baldwin and Ken Jenne’s new-found buddy Oliver Parker (who swore in 2000, “Over my dead body do I want Sheriff Jenne to come in and take over our Police & Fire Departments!”) – they made county fire suppression in the north the “tail that wagged the dog” resulting in the imposition of BSO fire service also on the totally unwilling residents of old-town LBTS and, in November 2006, in the arbitrary termination of the LBTS Volunteer Fire Department (VFD) on trumped-up, unsubstantiated, even unevaluated charges, without EITHER the popular referendum OR the fair, impartial evaluation of the VFD’s ability to provide  safe, highly cost-effective fire service to the entire Town, BOTH OF WHICH voters had been promised along the way by Parker and his old-guard buddies as sops to quiet the public, never intending to implement either of those fiducially responsible, democratic procedures. 

A proposed final Installment of our exposé of the “Great SBCA BOD Scam” would consider the genesis of the SBCA BOD’s annexation demands, the “deal” former SBCA President Chuck Clark said was cut to appeal both to single-family homeowners and to condo dwellers in the north, what the MAIN objective of the pre-annexation demands probably was, and why LBTS old-guard commissioners went along initially – and are still going along today!  Hint:  In every municipal election since annexation the SBCA BOD has supported Mayor Parker and incumbent commissioners, while the Mayor and the incumbent old-guard commissioners have routinely voted for Town funding of all capital improvements the SBCA/NBCA has asked for.

Click on the links below to read each of the three exposés of the S/NBCA.

  

Recent "Reality Checks"  The S/NBCA continues to try to deceive LBTS citizens -- including those north-beach residents it claims to represent -- as to its basic political nature.  In April 2007 the copy-cat, pro-developer, pro-BSO publication that serves as the S/NBCA’s propaganda organ, with current S/NBCA President Mark Brown on its editorial board, issued a so-called “reality check” of the above exposés.  Click on the link below to have a look!