Stet News🗓️ Welcome to Stet’s newest feature: our monthly roundup. You can catch up on a month’s worth of news, and we’ll give you a look behind the scenes.
🏥 County commits $10 million toward centralized mental health facility
Jan. 7, 2025
Palm Beach County commissioners committed this month to contributing $10 million in federal COVID relief money to the construction of a $60 million crisis care center, a potential first step in transforming mental health care in Palm Beach County.
After hearing emotional testimony supporting the first-stop mental health site, commissioners shortened the contractual timeline to five years for the Health Care District of Palm Beach County to buy land, design the facility and build it.
The district is studying two potential sites, one a Health Care District-owned site in Riviera Beach, the other a 6-8 acre privately owned site north of Southern Boulevard, Health Care District CEO Darcy Davis said.
The goal is to open the building by spring 2028.
– Joel Engelhardt
⭐ Palm Beach State College takes a bow
Jan. 14, 2025
The first match at the Tiger Woods-backed indoor golf arena went off without a hitch this month, drawing nearly 1 million television viewers and 1,500 live fans to the campus of Palm Beach State College in Palm Beach Gardens.
The college campus along PGA Boulevard sports a fresh look with murals, fence linings to cloak equipment areas and repaved and brighter parking lots, marked by upright lighted boxes branded with the college logo.
“It was a priority from a timing standpoint to seize the opportunity for the launch of TGL to put the campus in the best possible light,” foundation CEO David Rutherford said. “The idea is ‘Wow, this really has elevated our sense of pride and our feeling about the college and the campus.’”
– Joel Engelhardt
🛤️ Still noisy quiet zones
Jan. 21, 2025
Last year, north county officials expressed confidence that after years of work, train horns would be silenced along the Florida East Coast Railway tracks.
Now, city officials cannot offer an exact date on when the quiet zones long sought by residents who live near the tracks will go into effect.
Each city is working independently to obtain a federal signoff and one city, Lake Park, is making no efforts to quiet trains.
– Elisabeth Gaffney
⚖️ Existential drama at G-Star
Jan. 28, 2025
Greg Hauptner is fighting in court to win back control of G-Star School of the Arts, which he founded 20 years ago.
He went so far as to call a board meeting in the school parking lot, dismiss the existing board and appoint three new directors, who promptly voted to fire the management company, Charter Schools USA.
His parking lot powwow prompted the existing board to fire him and file suit in Palm Beach County Circuit Court to ban him from campus and stop him from interfering in school affairs.
Why it matters: The fate of G-Star, the county’s premier charter film school, hangs in the balance.
– Jane Musgrave
🚀 A moon shot for Palm Beach County nonprofits
Jan. 21, 2025
Dan Pallotta has an urgent message for Palm Beach County philanthropists, nonprofit leaders and the community they serve.
- “The nonprofit sector is in an economic prison,” the 2013 TED Talk speaker told nearly 300 people in a virtual conversation this month at the Kravis Center.
Why it’s important: There are 8,000 nonprofit organizations in Palm Beach County. Each of them is charged with keeping their operating expenses low, a value that Pallotta rejects.
- And all of them could be more effective if they joined together, he insists.
In the conversation sponsored by entrepreneur and philanthropist Lisa LaFrance, Extraordinary Charities and Nonprofits First, Pallotta talked about the coordination it took for NASA to get to the moon.
– Carolyn DiPaolo
🕵️♀️ Stet behind the scenes
Stet co-founders Joel Engelhardt and Liz Capozzi will represent us this weekend at the Florida Press Club awards presentation. Stet’s work is a finalist in three categories.
Best newsletter, staff: Stet News exclusive coverage of the Margaritaville hotel planned in Riviera Beach; Vanderbilt University’s interest in a West Palm Beach campus; and a developer’s intention to build twin 25-foot condo towers on Broadway in Riviera Beach.
Best independent website, staff: Highlights include three exclusive news stories by Joel: Why West Palm Beach commission candidate Martina Tate-Walker dropped her run for office; county in bidding war for Pal-Mar preserves: and the 2-minute clash at Dreyfoos High School that ended Romen Phelps’ life.
Best community news, Joel (twice): His West Palm Beach coverage, including the failed plan for a marina on the West Palm Beach waterfront and the Vanderbilt story; and Riviera Beach coverage, including the city’s $665 million redevelopment plan and the proposal to rezone a yacht repair yard, both placed among the top three.
Shoutouts to Stet News contributors Joe Capozzi, Jane Musgrave, Janis Fontaine and John Pacenti, all of whom are finalists.
We’ll report the results in our weekly newsletter.
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