Incumbent Councilman Jim Rockett is being challenged by Todd McLendon for Seat 2 on the Loxahatchee Groves Town Council.
Rockett recently sat down with the Town-Crier to explain why voters should support him on Tuesday, March 15.
Rockett narrowly defeated McLendon in 2013 to earn a second three-year term on the council. He began his service to the town on the Financial Advisory & Audit Committee.
Holding a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Pace University, Rockett said his 40-year background in accounting and financial planning with IBM and Siemens gives him unique qualifications to sit on the council.
“That’s the expertise and experience that I draw out as an individual,” he said. “Nobody else on the council has that kind of background. It’s kind of a burden to me because I look at it as, ‘I better be checking that kind of stuff.’”
Rockett, a native of upstate New York, moved to Palm Beach County with his wife, Nancy, in 1980, and eventually settled in Loxahatchee Groves to work at his son’s nursery. He has served on several association boards, using his financial expertise to help the organizations.
He believes that he is better qualified to serve on the council because of that background. “I have lots of things that I can look to in terms of skills, and I really don’t think my opponent has any of that,” Rockett said. “On the finance side, you don’t spend 40 years in that kind of business and not pick up a few things.”
Rockett said he is amused that people use the term “activist” to describe his opponent.
“In my mind, [he’s] somebody who’s complaining all the time or arguing all the time, but I haven’t seen any contribution to fix the problem,” he said.
Rockett lists his top accomplishment in office as persuading the council to drop the tax rate in 2010.
“For the next few years, we were able to fight off the desire to increase it,” he said. “This past year, I lost that battle, but only by one vote. I look at holding taxes down or reducing them based on need. If we have a need, then we have to consider where we have funds. If we don’t have a need, and we’re sitting on two or three million dollars in the bank, more than the whole budget for a year, then I can’t see raising taxes.”
Municipalities raise taxes so they can spend more money, he said. “If you need to spend more, let’s justify it, and make sure we start at the expense side,” Rockett said.
Rockett pointed out that the town actually gave money back to taxpayers in the form of a refund for solid waste collection, which was initially his suggestion. The only drawback was that they couldn’t do it every year, so when the fees went back up, it appeared to be an increase. “Some people have short memories and ask why it went up, and you have to explain it,” he said.
Rockett said that part of his experience is working with contracts, reading them and understanding them.
“We’ve had some problems in that arena, in my mind, that we’re not necessarily watching our contracts,” he said. “If you write a contract, you should follow it. If you don’t want a contract, don’t write it.”
Rockett considers the top issues of the campaign to be his experience and what he has done for the town, as opposed to what he considers his opponent has done against the town, including several lawsuits.
“I look at it as two very different situations,” he said. “I’ve had the experience, I’ve also made contributions to the town, and I’m competing against someone who has tried to sue the town, and I think harm the town.”
A year ago, Rockett said that he was considering not running again, until he saw that McLendon was going to run again. “I couldn’t walk away from what I had accomplished, and go ahead and let this guy have this position,” he said.
He said there are other potential candidates who share his viewpoints, but they have not come forward.
Rockett has been through a rough year. He was accused of being involved with the illegal use of absentee ballots to sway the reelection of Councilman Ryan Liang. He denies all accusations of wrongdoing.
“A lot of the controversy comes from accusations, which is a little bit like, ‘When did you stop beating your wife?’” he said. “The accusations have all proven false, all been dismissed, so when you say controversial, it’s because somebody is creating controversy. I’m defending myself in that arena, and we’ve done fine so far.”
The relationship between the town and the Loxahatchee Groves Water Control District has been a contentious topic, and Rockett believes that the LGWCD should have an equal part in the town’s dealings.
“They have a specific role, and the town has a different role,” he said. “Sometimes the town is the overseer, but the roles are different, and I look at them to be the experts in terms of drainage and road maintenance. They should be equals until sometime when the need changes. Certainly, we are honing their focus to more drainage and less road maintenance. Moving in that direction is fine; doing it too quickly is not good.”
Rockett said that the town is willing to take over the district’s dirt roads but does not have a mechanism in place to pave or maintain them.
“At this point, I think we need to carefully walk forward with taking roads,” he said. “Once we have them resurfaced, that could be a point where we say, ‘We’ll take that road.’ That should be done over a period of time.”
Rockett believes that the town is providing all the services that it should, but that some of its services could be done better, such as maintenance on non-district roads. “The district was really taxed because of the rain that we had, so what was already an aggravated situation became even more,” he said.
Rockett cited a recent culvert collapse on C Road as an example of the district being overtaxed and not able to correct the situation immediately. “They just weren’t able to help us out,” he said.
With the town taking over roadways, he said the council recently reached an agreement with Bergeron Land Development to improve and maintain them.
“In terms of the town roads, they’ve brought in a lot of good fill, raised the level of the town’s roads and have made suggestions to have better drainage,” Rockett said. “It should, in the long term, be less expensive to maintain the roads.”
He would like to see Okeechobee Blvd. remain a two-lane “rural parkway” with a trail system on one side. “The popular opinion is that it is going to be a four-lane road, divided in the middle,” Rockett said. “That’s not my vision. My vision is that we figure out how we can keep it a two-lane road.”
As for development along the road, he said the council recently agreed to reduce the floor-area ratio. “What we have said along Okeechobee is low-impact non-residential as a potential of what you should put there,” he said, adding that he would consider low-impact professional offices or other services that benefit the community.
Rockett credited the Western Communities Council, where he is the town’s representative, with helping diverse government entities coordinate efforts to present a united front in managing development.
“We only meet quarterly, but it has been an organization that worked hard on the State Road 7 extension and getting it through to Northlake [Blvd.],” he said. “We seem to be somewhat successful. Loxahatchee Groves is putting in its two cents’ worth as far as the cost of that.”
He thinks supporting the county’s effort for a connection to the Beeline Highway is the next natural step to control future traffic.
Rockett doesn’t believe that the town needs more commercial development. If there is more retail or industrial development, he said it should be along Southern Blvd.
A critic of the town’s management company, Rockett said he wants Underwood Management Services Group to follow its contractual agreements more closely. He favored putting out a request for proposals for management companies when Underwood’s contract was up for renewal, which resulted in two responses, but one was deemed unqualified and the other withdrew. The council ended up giving Underwood an extension, which Rockett opposed.
“I have always liked the town manager and his staff as people, but I am concerned that they don’t follow the contract,” he said. “In some recent developments, they are overpaying themselves.”
He thinks the contract negotiation with Underwood was not followed as he would like to see it conducted, based on what he has seen in the corporate world.
Rockett noted that a contractual management company is relatively unusual in the way municipalities are run.
“When you ask for people to do that service that way, and there’s really not a demand for it, it’s very difficult to find somebody to step up and do it,” he said.
Rockett said he would favor having a separate manager with a contract, and either hired or contractual employees to attend to services, following more commonly used municipal management models.
He believes there is a misconception about the town’s budget, and budgets in general, that because the money is there, it should be spent.
“Some people feel like if you have it in the budget, then you pay it. That is about as far away from the actual way budgets work as you can get,” he said. “You put money in the budget so you allow for certain things; you anticipate certain things. You don’t know if they’re going to come to pass, but you’ve got your ducks lined up.”
Rockett thinks that the controversy surrounding last year’s election, when Ryan Liang won a narrow victory over Keith Harris — in which Harris alleged that the result was tainted by illegal absentee ballots and Rockett was involved — is being generated by those who supported Harris.
“I respond to allegations with facts, and they’re going to still cover the situation we have going on, but it doesn’t drive me from my standpoint of seeking reelection,” Rockett said, adding that he is not aware of any ongoing investigations regarding him and the use of absentee ballots in the 2015 election.
Rockett believes people should vote for him because of his experience and skills. “I think you have to look at the two people and see what they have done for the town, not to the town, and what I could continue to do,” he said.
