6 - Edition 571 The Boca Raton Tribune EDITORIALS & LETTERS East/West Boca Raton, FL
The Boca Raton Tribune Founded January 15, 2010
DOUGLAS HEIZER, Publisher Editorial C. RON ALLEN PEDRO HEIZER MICHAEL DEMYAN
Our Writers/Reporters and Columnists MICHAEL DEMYAN CHARLOTTE BEASLEY PAMALA WEINROTH
SYNESIO LYRA ROBERT WEINROTH BRYANNA BASILLO
JAY VAN VECHTEN JESSICA DEL VECCHIO KENNY SPAHN
Online Edition PEDRO HEIZER DINI HEIZER
Business DOUGLAS HEIZER GABRIELA HEIZER
FROM THE MAYOR’S DESK By: Mayor Scott Singer
Making Boca Raton the Best Place to Do Business Like many strong organizations, the City of Boca Raton regularly reviews and sets long-term goals as part of a strategic planning process. Last month, the City held its 2022 planning sessions where the Mayor and City Council, senior management, department heads, and the public all weighed in on key goal areas. One common theme that resonated was ensuring that we capture the unprecedented economic opportunities facing our city. The City Council set as one of its high priority goals of establishing Boca Raton as the best place to do business. Let’s dive into more of what that means. First, we residents already know that Boca Raton has an unparalleled quality of life. We have the finest public safety professionals and safe neighborhoods, with crime rates continuing to drop, even as other cities see increases in crime. We have strong partnerships with our community institutions, such as our school district, as we near completion of a brand-new Blue Lake Elementary School, which will open on August 10th. We have lush and abundant green space, with 47 parks, with the new Wildflower Park due to open in the fall to increase our total, along with pristine beaches. We invest in infrastructure, with hundreds of millions in ongoing infrastructure improvements, all without a tax increase. And speaking of taxes, we have one of the lowest tax rates of any full-service city in South Florida, which helps maintain our property values. Indeed, Boca Raton has the highest property valuation of any city in Palm
Beach County, and the tax base grew by an impressive 13 percent this year. Adding to all these wonderful attributes is the business presence of a much larger city. In business, we punch above our weight class, as Boca Raton is home to more than half of the corporate headquarters in all of Palm Beach County. Since the pandemic began, we’ve seen even more corporations decide to make Boca Raton their home, and professionals from all levels and in varied industries choosing to work here, especially with telecommuting increasing. The flight from high taxes, high rents, and crowded cities has created an inflection point where companies are flocking to South Florida. Boca Raton is getting our share, and the coming Brightline high-speed rail station continues to be seen as a game changer for our city and ability to attract businesses. Even with all these strengths, we will not rest on our laurels. We realize that the landscape in South Florida is more competitive, with many companies looking for the first ticket out of their failing cities. That is why we are setting the ambitious goal to ensure that Boca Raton becomes renowned as the best place to do business. Here are some of the initiatives that underlie this lofty goal: We will improve the perception of doing business in Boca Raton. We’ve already completed 14 substantial streamlining efforts to our complex land development code and were one of the first cities to implement electronic permitting and plan review. This has substan-
tially lowered time for permits, but we will continue to work to improve our reality. That will help improve the perception. In addition, we are adding concierge-style services for larger investments in our city. We will ensure predictability in our process and timelines. When key moments arise, like the opportunities for the new public school and Brightline, it took hustle to work with stakeholders, overcome challenges, and complete complex plans on tight timelines. I’ve been fortunate to work with my colleagues on these successes, which were unprecedented a few years ago. We want to bring that certainty to attract the new set of great companies or to provide opportunities for investment in community facilities, including some of the proposals for culture and recreation coming from non-profit entities. We will address the infrastructure needs of businesses. We already have the municipal infrastructure to more than support our city, and we are working at partnerships to grow the talent base and build on the burgeoning high-tech ecosystem in Boca Raton. We have launched an Innovation Office, partnered with businesses incubators and accelerators, and debuted the Endeavor Lab project to provide training, mentorship, and connectivity to local start-ups. We will fill any gaps in our quality of life and build on our existing strengths. This will require a thorough and candid look of why businesses might prefer other places. Are there amenities for offices – like vibrant walkable areas – that site
selectors would favor? Can we offer new construction opportunities for contemporary Class A offices and does our zoning code need to be reviewed for what it will take for the next generation of companies and professionals? As you can imagine, we will not complete all these initiatives in the coming year, but we plan to make substantial headway as part of a multi-year effort. The next few years, as we approach our centennial in 2025, can lead the way to a new century for Boca Raton and success that will continue to make Boca Raton the best place to live, work, learn, and play. We are fortunate that with our safe and successful city, our priorities are all focused on positives and enhancements. Issues like failing infrastructure and dying industry that some cities face are fortunately not issues in Boca Raton, because of the type of long-term planning at our core mission. We can feel grateful to live in an outstanding community with nearly 2,000 City employees serving with excellence. I am running in the upcoming March 2023 mayoral election to help see more of these goals to completion, including ensuring a thriving economic base so that my children and all young people in Boca Raton will feel that they have the opportunity to find great careers in our city. I’d love to hear your thoughts on what we can do together to reach our goals. Please share your comments, by email at ssinger@myboca.us, and stay connected for more news @ScottSingerUSA on all social media platforms.
POSITIVE LIVING By: Dr. Synesio Lyra
Finding Alternatives There is hardly any situation or challenge you face in life which does not offer you an alternative or more, to accomplish what requires your attention. If you are truly attentive, and prepared to employ discernment, you can succeed. That’s why it’s always wise for people to have different plans for the accomplishment of most tasks. If plan A fails one can turn to plan B, then C, and so on! Someone went as far as to suggest that “when everything is falling part, it is a good sign that everything is about to come together.” Sadly, many individuals are so calcified in following procedures by doing them in just one way that they cannot think of taking any unknown July 8 - July 14, 2022
path, or tackling anything differently from what they’ve been accustomed to do. Yet, even in occasions when you can still achieve your purposes with what you have and know, you may also find more creative and efficient ways of getting to where you need to go, or desire to arrive! As I read somewhere, “anything worth doing is worth doing, period.” In other words, whatever legitimate way you can find to achieve your objectives, just follow it; don’t limit yourself to what has been a common practice in the past. Improvements are invented everyday and whatever may have functioned so well in times past now has nov-
el and more efficient manners of achieving the same in record time, and often with better results! There is an old, true story about a couple of generations of housewives in the same family which, every time they had a fish fry for the family, they would remove a chunk of the fish and throw it out. That procedure one day was finally questioned by a young female member of the third generation. She asked her mother why did they do it that way? The mother simply responded that they had always done it that way. The girl then posed the same inquiry to her grandmother who was able to explain the reason sought. She said, “The only reason we did
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that was because the frying pan was not large enough to accommodate the entire fish.” Yet, all along they could have utilized other alternatives, either by buying a larger frying pan or cutting the fish into several portions which would fit the frying utensil! There’s hardly any situation in life which leaves us without additional paths to follow; you can find better alternatives to embrace. Be sure you never become passive to just one way of doing things, when several others are equally available, and some are far more efficient! You need not be a slave to a sole manner of doing things, especially when it makes no sense at all!
