A delegation from the City of Westlake will be on hand to oppose Acreage incorporation efforts by some Indian Trail Improvement District residents when they meet with the Palm Beach County Legislative Delegation on Thursday, Oct. 28.
“I believe the [ITID group] has done a number of things outside their authorization,” said Westlake City Manager Kenneth Cassel regarding 2021’s Florida House Bill 1185, which allowed ITID to conduct a feasibility study on incorporation. “They’ve changed. Their going down another direction within the statues… They’ve moved things around, and I have concerns over the whole process.”
The issue came up at the Monday, Oct. 11 meeting of the Westlake City Council.
Rather than taking the idea of incorporation to the ITID voters before going to the legislature, as he believes was authorized, Cassel said that the ITID group is going to the legislature and then bringing it back to the voters. “They want to [change the rules] to get them where they want to go,” he said.
ITID President Betty Argue disagreed with Cassel’s interpretation of the legislation. “The citizens have the right to move forward,” she told the Town-Crier, noting, however, that she is speaking only as an interested citizen and not as ITID president, since the ITID board is no longer officially involved with incorporation efforts.
Via consensus, the Westlake council agreed that Cassel and Mayor Roger Manning, and perhaps other council members, should attend the session at the Clayton E. Hutcheson Building at 559 N. Military Trail in West Palm Beach.
State Rep. Rick Roth (R-District 85) plans to introduce an incorporation legislation to the county delegation during the meeting.
“We’re going to monitor the process,” Cassel said, “[and] we’re going to speak our piece.”
Manning said that he has concerns with the incorporation effort.
“This is not a position we would normally want to be in,” he said, “but this could affect the city in a way that would be detrimental… We have to do what we have to do.”
Traffic is the major rub between Westlake and its nearly concurrent Seminole Improvement District, and Indian Trail, particularly Westlake’s desire to connect to 140th Avenue North. There already is ongoing litigation between the two improvement districts over the issue. Depositions currently are underway.
The connection would create an unfair burden on the ITID taxpayers who fund the local roads, Argue said.
However, Cassel told the Town-Crier that a connection between Westlake and 140th would not only benefit the city’s burgeoning commercial district along Seminole Pratt Whitney Road but also ITID residents who currently must take a circuitous route to Seminole Ridge High School or the ER at Westlake.
The situation would be exacerbated further if ITID were to incorporate, Cassel told the Westlake council. It would mean that rather than the county having control over the western segment of Northlake Blvd. and Seminole Pratt Whitney Road, north and south of Westlake, those major thoroughfares would be controlled by the proposed municipality, he said.
“All we’re asking for is the ability to have a referendum,” Argue said. “I think that just as Westlake decided to incorporate with all of its five voters [at the time in 2016], our 45,000 residents should have the right to decide.”
There have been years of friction between ITID and Minto, the primary developers of Westlake.
“[ITID] fought Minto tooth and nail,” Cassel said. “Indian Trail just doesn’t want any change.”
This is a example of the pot calling the kettle black! This is exactly what happened over night when Westlake be came a city. It wasn’t brought before the residences to vote on . Westlake was a underhanded deal with alot of people getting paid off.