Stet News🥾 West Palm Beach’s longtime planning director, Rick Greene, resigned last week rather than fire an employee who angered the mayor over her presentation of a plan for an 11-story parking garage at Palm Beach Atlantic University, Greene said. (The Palm Beach Post $$$)
🚔 A new report calls the West Palm Beach Police Department an agency “in crisis” with staff and equipment shortages, low morale and tension among its officers. The department spent $6.9 million on overtime last year, far exceeding its overtime budget of $3.6 million, the report said. (WPTV)
- Chief Tony Araujo responded that 13 officers will join the force in June and concedes the department’s overtime spending is unsustainable. (WPBF)
- Read the 89-page report.
🏛️ Florida Senate Democrats’ choice for their new leader is Boynton Beach’s Lori Berman. She succeeds state Sen. Jason Pizzo, who announced on the Senate floor last week that he was leaving the party, which he declared “dead.” (Sun-Sentinel $$$)
✍🏼 Weeks after rejecting a letter to the editor from civic leaders protesting the firing of Opinion Editor Tony Doris after he published an editorial cartoon that was called antisemitic, The Palm Beach Post on Sunday ran a column from the men defending the right to publish it and a column next to it condemning the cartoon. In recent weeks, The Post has not published any editorial cartoons.
☀️ With no Sunfest set to stage shows on the Flagler Drive waterfront this year, Andrew Marra takes readers on a 42-year journey through the music and arts festival’s history and the factors behind its cancellation. (The Palm Beach Post $$$)
🔔 Cultural Council for Palm Beach County Senior Vice President Jennifer Sullivan shared an alert last week on social media saying arts and culture in Florida appear to be on track for state money this year.
- Sullivan cautioned that lawmakers in Tallahassee are also debating whether to cut hotel bed taxes and dissolve tourism agencies, which she warned would greatly impact the arts around the state.
- She invited supporters of the arts to contact their legislators in the state House and Senate and make their voices heard.
🗓️ Nearly 30 local government and nonprofit organizations will help connect residents with everything from court payment plans, affordable housing information, mental health resources, job training, mugshot removal to legal advice for civil court cases. It’s the county clerk’s third annual Community Resource Fair from 9 am to noon Saturday at the Greenacres Community Center, 501 Swain Blvd. More info here.
