RESCUED FOALS AT PURE THOUGHTS SEE STORY, PAGE 3
REP. LOIS FRANKEL VISITS BINKS FOREST SEE STORY, PAGE 7
THE
TOWN-CRIER WELLINGTON • ROYAL PALM BEACH • LOXAHATCHEE • THE ACREAGE
Your Community Newspaper
INSIDE 2019 GUIDE
Volume 40, Number 17 April 26 - May 2, 2019
Serving Palms West Since 1980
ANNUAL WELLINGTON EGG HUNT Page 15
ITID Board Agrees On Format For Executive Director Interviews
The Indian Trail Improvement District Board of Supervisors scheduled Wednesday, May 29 to interview candidates for a new district manager, which they renamed “executive director” to clear up confusion. Page 3
Ceremony At Braman Honors Teacher, School Employee Of The Year
Braman Motorcars presented the 2019 Teacher of the Year and School-Related Employee of the Year with a free twoyear lease on a new BMW on Thursday, April 18. The Palm Beach County School District also presented the winners with a check for $1,500 during the festivities. Page 10
Grace Family Medicine Hosts Grand Opening In Wellington Plaza
Grace Family Medicine held a grand opening ribbon cutting on Thursday, April 18 at 12785 W. Forest Hill Blvd., Suite 8E, in the Wellington Plaza. Grace Family Medicine is a direct primary care office for all ages. They offer free meet-and-greets to get to know the doctor, with an appointment and same day or next day doctor visits. Page 13
Stephen Passeggiata Looks To Make Impact For The Wolverines
Spring football has arrived, and area gridiron enthusiasts await with great anticipation to see what the local high schools have to bring to the turf. The Wellington High School football team returns a diverse weapon in rising senior Stephen Passeggiata. At six foot, three inches and 230 pounds, he hopes to lead the Wolverines back into the postseason. Page 19 DEPARTMENT INDEX NEWS...............................3 - 18 LETTERS.................................. 4 PEOPLE................................... 8 SCHOOLS................................ 9 NEWS BRIEFS....................... 13 COLUMNS............................. 16 BUSINESS............................. 17 CALENDAR............................ 18 SPORTS......................... 19 - 20 CLASSIFIEDS................ 21 - 22 Visit Us On The Web At WWW.GOTOWNCRIER.COM
Thousands of eggs, hundreds of kids and beautiful weather added up to another successful Wellington Egg Hunt on Saturday, April 21 in Village Park. The free family event included music, prizes and vendors. Even the Easter Bunny himself took the time to come out and join the fun. Shown above, Ashlynn Jurgens and Verona Campbell count their eggs. MORE PHOTOS, PAGE 5 PHOTO BY CALLIE SHARKEY/TOWN-CRIER
Wellington Council Pleased With PBSO’s Annual Report
By Gina M. Capone Town-Crier Staff Report Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office Capt. Rolando Silva presented the PBSO’s District 8 annual report comparing statistics from 2018 to the previous year at the Wellington Village Council meeting on Tuesday, April 23. “This report will reveal that we have had a banner year,” explained Silva, commander of the PBSO’s substation in Wellington. “As far as our trajectory with reported crimes, it is continuing to get better.” Silva led the council through a PowerPoint presentation focused on crime statistics. “Person crimes, property crimes and crashes are all down,” he noted. “Arrests are down a little bit with robberies. We had 13 robbery arrests in 2017, and we had one less in 2018, but the arrests for burglaries are up about 14.10 percent.” Mayor Anne Gerwig asked Silva to clarify the difference
between a robbery and a burglary. “A robbery is when the victim is a person. So, if you take something from a person with threat or actual violence, this constitutes a robbery,” he explained. “This is always a felony and is a serious crime because the victim is a person. A burglary is a theft of breaking and entering into a structure or a car.” Vehicle crashes tend to increase slightly during the equestrian season, but Silva said that is not surprising. “This slide shows there was a 13 percent reduction in crashes [in the off season],” he said. “It goes down a little bit during the summer and picks back up during the season. I think that is good news.” Traffic citations and warnings are up from the previous year. “These are up about 15 percent for citations and 25 percent in written warnings,” Silva said. “We went down a little bit in verbal warnings. But we like to think that some of these efforts resulted in keeping
down the crash numbers.” Silva compared how Wellington measures up to other similar communities in terms of crime. “Population-wise, we are in the middle between Boca Raton, Delray Beach and Palm Beach Gardens,” Silva said. “When it comes to residential burglaries per 100 residents, or per capita, we are down at the absolute lowest. So, I think that is remarkable. When it comes to vehicle burglaries, we are still the lowest.” Vice Mayor Michael Napoleone was impressed by how well Wellington stacks up against its peer municipalities. “This is a remarkable slide. It reflects what a great job you are doing keeping our crime rate the lowest,” Napoleone said. Village Manager Paul Schofield, however, noted one item that is way up. “One thing that was up dramatically was traffic stops,” he said. “The PBSO has been making more See PBSO REPORT, page 18
ITID To Hold Public Hearing May 1 On Next Year’s Budget
By Ron Bukley Town-Crier Staff Report The Indian Trail Improvement District Board of Supervisors has set Wednesday, May 1 to hold its first public hearing on the budget for fiscal year 2019-20. “At this point, there are no proposed increases,” ITID President Betty Argue told the Town-Crier on Wednesday. The board was able to add another culvert crew and add a district executive director, as well as create a road improvement fund, relying on carryover from this year for a proposed budget of $18,576,613. “The budget has increased, but the assessments have not,” Argue said. ‘The reason for the budget increasing is because we’re creating those additional pots of money for future planning, like the road repaving of the existing R2 roads
[and] the drainage improvements needed.” The unused budget amounts from this year will cover increases, plus create contingencies to cover capital improvements in its fiveyear plan. “We’ve proposed that there be an increasing amount appropriated each year to go into a pot to do the road repaving plan,” Argue said. “We will be at $2.8 million from this proposed budget. That’s how much money we would have set aside for the road repaving project. I don’t think it’s going to be enough, but we’re working toward it, so that when it needs to be done, we don’t have to have a huge tax increase to cover it. That’s why it looks like a budget increase, but it isn’t really because we’re still staying within the assessment dollars that we have.” Argue noted that the district
did have an assessment increase for the 2018-19 budget year in anticipation of capital projects, including paving and drainage improvements, culvert replacement and swale renovation, responding to residents’ complaints about bad conditions. “It was for increased funds that we needed for infrastructure improvements like the culvert crew and equipment that we would need to do that,” Argue said. “We’re finding that it is far more affordable for us to go this path with [the] amount that we have to do, rather than contracting each individual one out.” Argue said that the implementation of a second culvert crew will cut the total completion time about in half, from the year 2050 to 2030. “It’s still 10 years away from being complete on that, but we’re See ITID BUDGET, page 18
Loxahatchee Farm Growing Sod For Miami Dolphins
By Ron Bukley Town-Crier Staff Report Loxahatchee Groves has a new neighbor, on an 80-acre site, growing sod for the Miami Dolphins and the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens. Matt Tacilauskas manages the facility, located north of North Road between B and C roads. He said that the first planting of sod is now growing. “That’s the first field we planted,” Tacilauskas said. “We’re hoping it will be ready for use during the football season this fall.” Tacilauskas was a golf course superintendent for 20 years, most recently at the Palm Beach Country Club, before he started working for the Dolphins, first as a consultant and then taking over the sod operation. The Dolphins organization bought the site last year and has
been busy preparing the land and transplanting more than 1,000 native sabal palms that were on the site to the front to act as a buffer. The Dolphins previously were using independent contractors in Alabama, Georgia and North Carolina to haul in sod. The franchise saw the opportunity to source the sod locally, keeping the business in Florida and cutting down on the environmental footprint to transport it. The site includes 100 percent water retention to ponds located on site. “We’re injecting a lot of their ways into this place in regard to how it’s set up environmentally,” Tacilauskas said. “One-hundred percent of this property is selfcontained. Right up to the perimeter, all the water comes back to these ponds.” The site includes a maintenance See SOD FARM, page 7
PILOT WINS GAUNTLET
The Pilot Polo Team won the CaptiveOne U.S. Open Final, defeating Las Monjitas 12-7 at the International Polo Club Palm Beach in Wellington on Sunday, April 21. Completing a perfect season, Pilot captured the inaugural Gauntlet of Polo. Shown above, Pilot team members Facundo Pieres, Gonzalito Pieres, Matias Gonzalez and Curtis Pilot celebrate their victory. MORE PHOTOS, PAGE 14 PHOTO BY GINA M. CAPONE/TOWN-CRIER
Bridge Opening, Charter School Among Concerns At Tuttle Royale
By M. Dennis Taylor Town-Crier Staff Report The Royal Palm Beach Village Council last week reaffirmed its commitment to a charter school being built as part of a large development at the village’s southern end, and also expressed a desire to have the new bridge at Southern Blvd. and Tuttle Road open as soon as it could be. Developer Brian Tuttle is leading the Tuttle Royale project along the south side of Southern Blvd. just west of State Road 7. It will include a variety of residential and commercial uses on the site of the former Acme Ranches community. Included will be a K-12 charter school with a STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art and math) theme. Tuttle said that be-
cause of the Sunshine Law, he felt it was best to bring the matter up at a public meeting to ask the full council about their current attitude toward a charter school at the site. “My question is, in general, is the council excited about seeing the charter school or, in general, is the board leaving it up to the developer,” Tuttle said at the Thursday, April 18 meeting, adding that the land could also be used for other options, such as office and medical space. Tuttle also asked if the council really felt they needed the charter school, given that there are several in Royal Palm Beach already. Councilman Richard Valuntas said that he liked the idea. “One of the things that is inSee TUTTLE, page 4
Retired Marines Organize To Serve The Community
By Denis Eirikis Town-Crier Staff Report The Marines are ready to land in Royal Palm Beach, which is great news for area nonprofit organizations as squads of retired Marines and other veterans act as a free cavalry, showing up to provide manpower and skills, ready for hard work. Unified Dream, a nonprofit organization headquartered in Royal Palm Beach, is made up of about 50 local veterans. Under the command of retired Marine Corps Sgt. Jake Hampu, Unified Dream partners with local organizations in need of help. Their mission is that of serving organizations needing manpower, while providing disabled Marines with the therapeutic value of
working hard alongside others on a detail of cooperation for mutual benefit. Helping other nonprofits and thereby helping themselves, they bring light where lives may have grown dark, lost in the shadows of time after active duty. “We breed warriors, send them off to battle, bring them back, give them a DD 214 and handshake,” said Hampu, who explained that society too often writes these service men and women off and forgets them as they return, broken by war. Hampu recounted heartbreaking stories of loss as he described that some veterans with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) are so underserved, sometimes so broken, that they have started to commit suicide at startling rates. “Vets
come home, often disabled, and we are forgotten,” Hampu said. He explained that the objective of Unified Dream is to provide veterans with a good mission, a sense of camaraderie, and the wonderous, therapeutic value of working together as a team to advance worthy causes. Their service has been greatly appreciated in the 18 months since the organization began. “Jake and the veterans are the real deal. This is almost too good to be true,” said Christina Nicodemou, executive director of the Delray Beach Children’s Garden. The veterans have been deployed to the Children’s Garden at least monthly for a year. “Jake and a squad teach carpenSee VETS GROUP, page 18
Unified Dream founder Jake Hampu works with children on a carpentry project.