Westlake Mayor John Paul O’Connor said this week that it is time for residents to have a seat on the Seminole Improvement District’s three-member board of supervisors.
“The people of Westlake deserve representation on the SID board to ensure their priorities and concerns are heard and addressed,” O’Connor said.
SID provides most of the infrastructure for Westlake, including roads, drainage, parks and swales. Two of the three board members — Leolani Gevers and Zane Beard — are employees of Minto Communities USA, the city’s primary developer and by far its largest landowner. None of the board members are Westlake residents.
Under SID rules, a landowner gets one vote per acre, and each homeowner gets one vote no matter the size of his or her lot.
“I believe it’s only fair that the SID board reflects the voices of the people who live here, not just the interests of the developer,” O’Connor said. “It’s concerning to me that so much power resides in the hands of one entity… I strongly advocate for one of those seats to be filled by a resident of Westlake.”
Seat 2, currently held by SID President Scott Massey, expires in June, according to SID Manager Kenneth Cassel.
Cassel, who also is Westlake’s city manager, said nominations for the seat would be accepted at the district’s annual landowners meeting. The date for the landowners’ meeting has not been set.
Any Westlake property owner attending the landowners meeting can nominate a candidate for the seat, Cassel said.
O’Connor’s comments came a week after Westlake resident Ted Sarandis told the Westlake City Council that they should be doing more to reshape the 8-year-old municipality’s founding documents and to reimagine its future, now that it has grown from five residents in 2016 to some 7,000 today.
At their Jan. 7 meeting, Sarandis urged the council to hold public hearings on the city’s relationship with SID.
“This agreement does not benefit residents and must be changed now,” he said, reading from a prepared statement. “It is common sense for the City of Westlake to control roads and traffic signs.”
Sarandis also said “it would greatly benefit the citizens of Westlake” for the council to establish charter review and comprehensive plan review committees to hold public hearings and make recommendations to the council.
“I’m open to discussing it,” O’Connor said this week. “I can see that there might be value in it.”
Sarandis, who moved to his home in the Cresswind Neighborhood in November 2023, ran unsuccessfully in 2024 for a seat on the Port of Palm Beach Commission.
The council voted at their Jan. 7 meeting to engage in a professionally led, two-day strategic planning session this spring in an effort to chart the municipality’s course for the next two to five years.
While open to discussing Sarandis’ suggestions, O’Connor said he does not favor delaying the strategic planning session because “by the time those committees got set up, members selected and they do their work, it could be six months to a year.”
The strategic planning sessions are something the city can do now, he explained.
“Through clear priority setting, we can create a roadmap that addresses our immediate needs while positioning us for future growth,” O’Connor said. “By dedicating an entire day to community engagement, we can ensure our decisions are impactful and focused on elevating the quality of life for every Westlake resident.”
Residents will be able to sit in on the entire two-day session but only will be allowed to participate during day two.
“I’m hoping this strategic planning exercise brings our council closer together, fosters transparency and strengthens collaboration,” O’Connor said.
Cassel, who has been with SID since 2013 and the city since its inception, said this week he believes much of the frustration with the district-city relationship is based on a lack of understanding of why and how the connection was formed and how it works today.
To help the public better understand, Cassel wrote, and this week published on the city’s web site (www.westlakegov.com) a 2,000-word “History of Westlake.”
Cassel noted that most of the residents of Westlake are new to the area, some very new.
“I realized that there was no history easily available to our residents about how we got started,” he said. “I felt like it needed to be out there.”
Cassel said the main thing he hoped readers would get from the history is an appreciation for the founders’ “vision of predictability… of cutting out as much red tape as possible” that has allowed Westlake to become for years the fastest growing municipality in Palm Beach County and one of the fastest growing in the state.
How development and business applications “are processed and the predictability or unpredictability all impact the interest of the business community and their willingness to locate within Westlake,” he wrote, warning that, “Changes in the current process will have a significant chilling effect on potential development and slow the overall development of the city.”
At the same time, Cassel’s ability to objectively serve both SID and the city has been questioned by some residents.
Cassel said the arrangement was born out of necessity because the mostly uninhabited district and the brand-new city could not afford separate managers. When the city was officially incorporated in 2016, it made sense for him to hold both jobs because so much of the work overlapped.
Later, a Florida Inspector General’s review found “no conflict of interest with me holding both positions,” Cassel said.
However, this week Cassel said he expects to hang up one of those hats within the next couple of years — “as soon as it’s financially feasible for the city and the district to have separate managers.”
In other news:
- There will be temporary road closures from 6 to 10 a.m. on Saturday, Jan. 25 as Westlake hosts the second annual 5K Run/Walk & Carnival Games.
The road closures include Kingfisher Blvd., Town Center Parkway South at Kingfisher, Town Center Parkway South at Ilex, Persimmon Blvd. from Sky Entrance to the entrance to the Grove Market Place, the Terraces at Westlake Entry on Ilex, the Sky Cove South entrance to Ilex Way and the Groves at Westlake to Ilex Way.
Event activities will take place near Kingfisher Blvd., across from the Lodge at Westlake Adventure Park at 5490 Kingfisher Blvd. The race will begin at 8 a.m. On-site registration opens at 6:45 a.m., with the carnival games starting at 8:15 for registered and bibbed participants.
- At its Jan. 7 meeting, the council selected Saturday, April 5 as the date for this year’s SpringFest event.
- The council’s monthly meeting has been moved from Tuesday, Feb. 4 to Tuesday, Feb. 11 at 6 p.m. Council meetings are held at the Lodge at Westlake Adventure Park at 5490 Kingfisher Blvd.
