At the Dec. 10 Loxahatchee Groves Water Control District board meeting, a referendum was held for landowners on North B Road. The question at hand was whether the landowners wanted to have North B Road paved.
The vote came about because a few months back a local landowner had gotten up a petition asking for paving and submitted it to the LGWCD. Although the petition fell short of the necessary 51 percent required by the board’s own policy to generate a referendum, the board in their wisdom deemed it “a good enough effort” and decided to proceed with a referendum anyway. The vote had a record 92 percent turnout — something heretofore unheard of in Loxahatchee Groves. The end result was 425-259 against paving the road.
Clearly the majority of landowners do not want the expense of paving in these hard economic times and are satisfied with the dirt road. Another factor was that no one could tell the landowners for sure what the cost would be. The people were only given an estimate. One resident asked what would happen if the cost turned out to be double or triple the original estimate; would the landowners get a second chance to vote when they knew the actual cost? The answer was no.
Furthermore, in the board agenda packet for this meeting, a resolution to proceed with paving on North B Road was included with these words: “Whereas the landowners situated on North B Road approved the referendum by a majority vote of the acreage cast.” It would seem logical that before the board went to the trouble and expense of paying the lawyer to draw up a resolution to go forward with paving, they might have waited to see how the people voted first! Not only was this a waste of our tax dollars, but it was very presumptuous on the part of the board members. Apparently they did not know the minds of the voters as well as they thought. Maybe it is time to do away with the board altogether and consider consolidating the LGWCD’s function with the town?
Marge Herzog
Loxahatchee Groves
There were many factors in addition to cost, that resulted in the No vote.
The canals were in place for almost a century without one yellow sign.
Put down a little OGEM and now you have umpteen yellow metal signs along the canal.