Our Village Manager Paul Schofield: Wellington Will Work Hard To Remain A Great Hometown Story by Ron Bukley Photo by Abner Pedraza
After 20 years of incorporation, Wellington’s next 20 years will be a time of redevelopment to make sure the village remains a great hometown.
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tion is about half of what the county average is, but it’s growing. Over the last decade, it has grown, and we will continue to see it grow.” Schofield said Wellington gives strong support to its schools, although they are under the jurisdiction of the Palm Beach County School District. “Great schools are always one of the top five things people look for,” he noted. Financial stability is a major, ongoing concern. wellington the magazine | september 2016
20 YEARS OF EXCELLENCE
ties over the next 20 years,” Schofield said. “If you want to come into Wellington and buy a $300,000 house, you’re also going to put $50,000 to $100,000 into it. How do we make sure that people are still coming into Wellington? I think we do that by emphasizing the things that have kept us where we’re at.” Schofield believes that Wellington has done a good job maintaining roads and landscaping during the recent economic downturn, when other communities cut back. “Part of the reason that we went to the four-day workweek was so that we could save money and put it into the roads,” he said. “Part of the reason we did the staff reductions — we didn’t let anybody go, but as people left, we didn’t replace them — is because we knew that in the long term, we must put that money back into the community, and we need to continue to do that.” Wellington also devotes a lot of time and effort to keeping residents involved, Schofield said. “We spend a lot of money on parks because we’re a family-oriented community,” he said. “There has been a lot of discussion about seniors in Wellington. Well, Wellington’s senior popula-
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Wellington has been in development mode for the past four decades — dating back to the mid-1970s. That puts the first homes, commercial developments and aging infrastructure in store for rebuilding, explained Village Manager Paul Schofield, who has been a senior manager at the village since 2001 and held the top spot since 2008. “Wellington is 95 percent built out,” Schofield said. “As a municipality, we’re 20 years old, but as a community, we’re closer to 45 years old. The approval was in 1973. There are actually some homes out here that are older than that. On average, homes in Wellington are about 30 years old.” Wellington is predominantly residential, and Schofield does not see that changing much in the next 20 years. “Wellington is different from a lot of communities,” he said. “Only 3 percent is commercial and industrial, and in a community our size, that number is typically 20 to 25 percent, so we really are a bedroom community, and we have to focus on things that keep us that way.” A big challenge will be to encourage owners of older developments built for markets in the 1970s to reinvest to appeal to the modern market. Part of that will involve reworking the building code to make this process easier. “When you look around us, there’s something on the order of 20,000 units that are going to be built around Wellington and the western communi-
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