Maxwell to Landlords: Get This Place Cleaned UP!




Commissioner Scott Maxwell went on a tear at tonight's city commission meeting about "nuisance properties" and their negligent owners saying we have to cut the grass, get the couch off the front lawn, and get the farm animals out of the backyard!

"We've got to light a fire, no pun intended, under some of these landlords' rear ends," said Maxwell, adding that he and the other commissioners get half a dozen complaints from residents of the city every day about derelict properties.

What's wrong with farm animals??

There are 16,000 properties in Lake Worth, and 13,828 households, 7,243 of which are owner-occupied and some 5,000 of which are rentals.

Many of the rental properties have out-of-town landlords, said Williams Waters, the city's community development director. Some of these, he said, are hard to reach, by phone or letter, making it difficult for Lake Worth's code enforcement department to notify property owners of code violations and, if the violations are not resolved, bring the owners before a special magistrate.

The city took the bold step of demolishing a nuisance property for the first time ever last month. It was a home on the 700 block of South Lakeside Drive that had been neglected for so long that it was actually falling apart. The lot is now cleared.

SUN Editorial: Did Bucher 'Win' This for Clemens?

As I wrote right before the August 14 primary election, Susan Bucher is way too political to be the Supervisor of Elections. My concern was heightened by the events of this past weekend, when Bucher organized and supervised the State Senate District 27 recount that resulted in Jeff Clemens squeaking out a 17-point win only because many ballots were tossed due to poll worker error. The poll workers, of course, work for Bucher.

Bucher is a former Democrat State Representative who was elected Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections four years ago and was just re-elected on August 14. This spring, she refused the state's request to send notices asking people on the voter roll in Palm Beach County who once self-identified as non-citizens to confirm that they are now citizens and therefor eligible to vote.

Susan Bucher, Supervisor of Elections

She wants non-citizens to remain on the voter roll, clearly. But that's for general elections, when most non-citizens will happily vote Democrat.

In the Clemens-Bernard race, there's something even more interesting going on, however.

The race seems to have all boiled down to the issue of education, with one candidate, Clemens, siding with the teachers -- doing whatever is necessary at all times to put more money in the pockets of teachers and their union organizers and expensive lawyers....and the other candidate, Mack Bernard, supporting prayer in schools and vouchers so that people stuck in horrible school districts can still arrange for their children to have a decent education.

In the legislature, Bucher was a staunch opponent of vouchers. Maybe the staunchest. Here she is in March of 2003 railing against a bill that would have given educational vouchers to children of military veterans (as quoted in the Brevard County newspaper Florida Today):

"A voucher is a voucher is a voucher, whether it's wrapped in a flag or in a corporate scholarship. This is pure and simple, stealing from our public school dollars."

And now here is Susan Bucher, managing a very tight recount that has many probable Bernard votes discarded to keep Clemens on top. So it's all very suspicious and very disturbing considering the state of schools in Florida, and in Palm Beach County in particular, where kids who can't do basic math or write decent sentences are given high school diplomas and sent on their way.

Did Susan Bucher rig the Clemens-Bernard race? I don't know. She was spending quite a lot of time at the recount last Saturday conferring off to the side with the Clemens lawyer, Ron Meyer, who is also the attorney for the Florida teacher's union, which will go to war to make sure teachers are assured of keeping their jobs no matter what.

And I see that Susan Bucher has a history of manipulating facts (see link below) to achieve a desired result: It seems she lied about her place of residence every year she was a member of the Florida House in order to qualify as a candidate. Yes. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigated. Yet voters chose her to be the one to count the votes. This just proves we need a different sort of press around here.

Meanwhile, if I were Bernard, I'd challenge this election result in court.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/elections/sfl-officialresidence,0,3403791.flash


                                                                                              -- Margaret Menge, Editor

Crime and Pulling PBSO Teeth

The latest crime blotter is posted at right, with a Robbery early this morning on the 100 block of South C Street. I've requested more information because...I'm assuming people want to know: Was the guy armed? Is he running around on our streets? I also have requests in for more information on the Theft, Burglary and Assault. But haven't heard back yet. I have also heard nothing related to the status of my request of one week ago for a list of calls for service and all reports of crimes completed for the month as of August 14. PBSO says they're operating at a "bare bones" staffing level here. So maybe that's the reason. I don't know.