Stet NewsIt’s Let’s-Circle-Back-After-the-Holidays Season! For you today, get ready for your local elections, a close look at the Jupiter race and who else is running. Also, a story of courage and pop ups at CityPlace.
🚒 Jupiter fire department showdown
The Jupiter Town Council election in March stands to reshape not just the Town Council but the town’s fire service future as well.
Three seats are up in the March 11 election – mayor and two council positions. The winners will decide whether the town continues its own fire department or reverts to county service.
Yes, but: The mayoral race between incumbent Jim Kuretski, who supports the town fire department, and Council Member Cameron May, who has opposed it, will grab most of the headlines but won’t determine the department’s fate.
- It requires a council majority to reverse course.
Why it’s important: Jupiter’s decision to create its own fire department, estimated to cost $60 million initially and potentially save $250 million over 10 years, has divided the community and sparked legal challenges.
What’s happening: After firefighters failed to force a public vote through the courts, they’re taking their fight to the ballot box.
While May, a county firefighter, is challenging Kuretski, who championed the department’s creation, he refuses to say he would press to reverse the council’s August 2023 vote to sever ties with county fire rescue.
What they’re saying: “Any decision I make should be based off of what the residents think and what the residents want, not what I personally think or what I personally want,” May told Stet News.
Two council seats are also up for grabs, with some candidates backing the return to county service.
- Teri Grooms, Phyllis Choy and Andy Weston have signed up to run for the District 1 council seat.
- Malise Sundstrom is facing a challenge for her District 2 seat from Linda McDermott and Willie Puz. Sundstrom joined Kuretski and Ron Delaney in voting to cut off ties with the county.
More candidates could jump in. Qualifying for the election closes at noon today.
There’s much more to the story here.
— Laurie Mermet
🇺🇸 Election season begins — again
Even as the ink is barely dry on the ballots cast for president, candidates for local municipal office are lining up.
The qualifying period for candidates to run ends Tuesday, Nov. 19, in seven central and northern Palm Beach County cities. The election is March 11.
- As of Monday, more than two dozen candidates have jumped in.
Jupiter will have a hotly contested campaign for control of the council in the wake of the town’s decision to start its own fire department, as Stet’s Laurie Mermet reports here.
Riviera Beach voters will select a mayor and fill three city council seats, with at least nine candidates already signed up to run.
In Lake Park, four of the five seats are open, with five candidates including four incumbents lined up. The only non-incumbent is John Linden.
Juno Beach has just one seat on the schedule and as of Monday no one had filed to run against incumbent Diana Davis.
Opponents have until noon Tuesday to challenge incumbents in West Palm Beach, where Shalanda Warren and Joe Peduzzi have qualified; and in Tequesta, where incumbents Molly Young and Patrick Painter are running.
Two at-large seats are up for election in Palm Beach Shores, where incumbents Roby DeReuil and Tracy Larcher have qualified.
- Candidates have a week or two longer to sign up to run in Palm Beach Gardens, Lake Worth Beach and North Palm Beach, which all have two seats on the ballot; and Palm Beach and Jupiter Inlet Colony, which each have three seats.
- Tiny Mangonia Park has a year off; no council member term ends in 2025.
Candidates who draw no opponent automatically win the seat without facing voters.
— Joel Engelhardt
✡️ Remembering a couple who rescued Jewish children during the Holocaust
After the first 63 years of her life, Eliane Strosberg of West Palm Beach figured she knew everything there was to know about her parents, Isak and Lilly Leuwenkroon.
Back story: She knew they were Polish Jews who met in Belgium in the late 1930s, survived World War II, and lost relatives in the Holocaust. She knew they raised four children in Antwerp and built a successful chain of perfume stores. But they rarely talked at all about the war.
What happened: Then one day in 2010, Strosberg received a phone call from a researcher with a revelation: In 1943, four years before she was born, her young parents helped smuggle 239 Jewish children in war-torn France to safety in Switzerland, under the noses of the Nazis.
Why it matters: Isy and Lilly could have saved themselves, gone on one of those rescue convoys and escaped to Switzerland. They stayed and helped their fellow Jews escape. Eventually, they went into hiding, sleeping with their clothes on in case they had to make a hasty escape, and returned to Antwerp after the war ended in 1945.
Isy and Lilly Leuwenkroon’s story is being told again as part of a tribute to 12 ordinary people who intervened at great personal risk to save Jews during World War II. They are part of “Stories of Rescue,” a new permanent exhibit at the Richard and Pat Johnson Palm Beach County History Museum in downtown West Palm Beach. The museum was recently designated by the Palm Beach County school district as a holocaust education site.
Read the gripping details of the Leuwenkroons’ courage at ByJoeCapozzi.com
—Reported by Joe Capozzi
🍊 The Juice
🌐 Transition in our midst: In 2016, President-elect Donald Trump met with potential cabinet members at his New York residence. This time, Mar-a-Lago is front and center.
- When Trump ran for president in 2015, the club initiation fee was $100,000. Today it’s $1 million. (The Washington Post gift link)
💪 An Equinox gym and a Crate & Barrel home store are coming to the 575 Rosemary building at CityPlace. Related Ross President Kenneth Himmel confirmed the leases last week at an Urban Land Institute forum. (The Real Deal)
- Alexandra Clough has a more detailed account of Himmel’s remarks. (The Palm Beach Post $$$)
🎓 In the wake of former University of Florida President Ben Sasse’s abrupt resignation, an assessment of the school’s drive to improve its national reputation. (The New York Times gift link)
🛍️ 561NSIDER: Construction distraction at CityPlace
As CityPlace remakes itself, two on-trend pop-ups are filling in the gaps.
Why it matters: The attractions fill a hole in the heart of CityPlace left by the demolition of shops and the AMC movie theaters to make way for two office towers.
- Construction of the first tower is expected to begin after the pop-ups pop out.
The Bal Harbour Pop-up is an open-air collection of expensive clothing, shoes and jewelry a shopper would see at the historic fashion center in Miami-Dade County or even on Worth Avenue in Palm Beach.
- The mall was among the first to offer European designers in the United States when it opened in 1965, long before luxury brands and their knockoffs could be found across America and online.
Context: The traveling show typically sets up shop in smaller towns without, say, a Tiffany’s in driving distance. The last two stops were Greenville, S.C., and Miramar Beach, in the Florida panhandle.
Stet visited the pop-up, which is open through Jan. 15, as part of a preview for supporters of the YMCA.
What we found: Inviting storefronts peek out of white shipping containers arranged around a palm-shaded courtyard.
- Instead of the stereotypical cool reception from the luxury sellers inside, we met engaging, down-to-earth staff members.
Don’t miss: Take in the heavenly scents at the outpost of Italian fragrance maker Santa Maria Novella. The boutique traces its origin to a 13th century apothecary in Florence.
- Try not to spill anything on the frothy couture dresses a few doors down at children’s designer Monnalisa.
The other pop-up brands are Dolce & Gabbana, Balmain, Etro, Lanvin and Elisabetta Franchi fashion houses; sneaker designer Golden Goose; sneaker seller Addict; New York jeweler Tiffany & Co.; and Parisian publisher Assouline.
The shops will be open through mid-January. The pickleball courts will run through March.
– Carolyn DiPaolo
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And to each of our supporters, from 1 to 300, a special thank you.
