April 2018
The COASTAL STAR
Letters to the Editor 7
Letters to the Editor
Second Time Around
Luxury Consignment Boutique Estates & Cash Buyouts
In many European cities, crossing gates keep people from walking in front of trains. Almay photo
Trains have become an unbearable nuisance
I consider myself to be a very tolerant and easygoing person, but living by the railroad tracks in Delray Beach has become unbearable. First, it should be part of Urban Planning 101 that you do not have a freight train and an express passenger train pass right through the center of our beautiful downtown, where people live and go out in the evening to enjoy themselves. If public officials really cared about the design of our urban environment, they would have used eminent domain to move the freight train and Brightline to the Tri-Rail tracks along I-95. Anyway, this letter is not supposed to be about that, because that would make too much sense and, with big
business in the picture, it is not likely to happen. Therefore, let us deal with the problem at hand, which is twofold. First, people are being killed by Brightline! Second, those of us who live near the railroad tracks — probably hundreds of thousands of people if you factor in every city in southeast Florida — are having our lives disturbed by being woken up eight to 10 times a night by trains that continually blast their horns throughout the night. What’s so frustrating to me is that finding a solution should not be difficult. In Germany and the United Kingdom, for many years they have had such trains, and nowhere do the trains blast
their horns. Yes, their gates are better and practically impossible to get through. As you can see in the photo, it is possible to make the gates in such a way that you cannot crawl under them or sneak your bicycle through. There should obviously also be a wall or fence along the tracks so that no one can walk around the gates. Now as far as the train horn goes, it really serves no purpose because any person who is not severely hearing-impaired hears the bells from the gates as they are closing. The bottom line is, it is time for city officials to show some urgency!
Lars Heldre Delray Beach
Petrolia more than earned mayoral win
Welcome to Florida smalltown elections, where many of us subscribe to the notion that what happens locally will affect us the most. If our country is honoring women for the first time since we got the vote almost 100 years ago, then maybe Delray Beach, which just elected its third female mayor in 100 years, can be considered contributing to this effect. Now look at our situation. Commissioner Shelly Petrolia, a five-year veteran of the commission with a track record that should have deterred anyone from running against her: saving the city/residents approximately $9 million from a no-bid Waste Management contract, a $1.6 million garbage
cart refund, a development bankruptcy resulting in $4 million in tax grant money, another $3 million refusing to give alleys and an avenue to a developer for nothing in return — and the list goes on and on. Instead, a man who was on the dais for six months when he declared his candidacy for mayor, with all the developer big-money backing, challenged her. Still, she won by a mere 5 percentage points when her accomplishments should have given her a landslide. Clearly we women are still bumping our heads on that glass ceiling. Our qualifications and experiences can help break it, but we better be darned determined to work the hardest of anyone.
And that was certainly true of Petrolia, who went door to door for months, meeting constituents and finding out what mattered to them — while she was simultaneously running a successful real estate business with her husband and caring for a household of four boys and two doggies. Who says we can’t have it all? Back in the ’80s, when I was an advertising rep in NYC, another female worker told me in order to succeed in business you had to work like a dog, act like a lady and think like a man. Well, I’m revising that to: Work like a dog, act like a lady and think like a woman! Benita Goldstein Delray Beach
Delray vote a rebuke to outside interests
The recent Delray Beach election of Shelly Petrolia as mayor must be seen as a decisive victory for preserving the best future for Delray and a sharp rebuke to out-of-town development interests that insinuated themselves into the campaign of her opponent, Jim Chard. Despite heavy funding from them, and a veritable forest of “Jim Chard for Mayor” signs, Ms. Petrolia won convincingly — giving hope to those who believe the charm, history,
architectural uniqueness, the wonderful small-town feel of Delray must be preserved and advanced. It is, after all, what has made Delray what it is today and what was celebrated in two feature articles, one in the Sunday New York Times, the other in Southern Living magazine. Out-of-town forces have pushed through wrong-headed developments such as the iPic theater in a downtown already overwhelmed by people and cars, and in the closing hours of
the prior administration, a darkof-night vote approved Midtown Delray, another oversized colossus that has no place in the Village by the Sea. Ms. Petrolia was the one vote against it. Kudos! Best wishes to Mayor Petrolia and to those newly elected commissioners, and hoping they embrace the clear message of this election: We in Delray want control over our future! Phil Pepe Delray Beach
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