North Palm Beach Archives

Gardens annexation faces court challenge

Hidden Key residents file suit to block annexation, claiming Palm Beach Gardens City Council didn’t follow the law in putting proposal on ballot.

A 70-home gated community at the eastern edge of Palm Beach Gardens’ massive proposed annexation area sued Friday to block the March 19 vote that seeks to add thousands of residents to the city.

The city’s failures at public hearings in November and December are so great as to make a mockery of state laws designed to limit annexations to compact and contiguous areas, four homeowners from Hidden Key say in the suit that aims to block the annexation of Zone 1, the largest of five areas sought by the city.

“This annexation is unwelcome and unwarranted,” Hidden Key resident and petitioner Kenneth Glueck said in a statement. “Hidden Key is no more a fit for Palm Beach Gardens than it is for Miami.”

Despite opposition, annexation passes first test toward March referendum

One neighborhood vows to sue as Palm Beach Gardens pursues annexation of 8,300 residents on 1,300 acres east of Interstate 95.

They came to Palm Beach Gardens City Hall roughly 200 strong Thursday to speak against annexation.

Most left without hearing the City Council’s response.

They would have been disappointed.

The council countered neighbors’ statements, saying there was no reason for hostility or panic and the city had no hidden agenda.

Also, the annexation proposal shouldn’t come as a surprise, council members asserted, as there have been talks about annexation for decades.

Rifle-toting challenger takes aim at Congressman Brian Mast

Melissa Martz’ point: the AR-15 is not to blame for mass shootings and Mast is weak on the Second Amendment.

In the past two weeks, after a gunman killed 21 people at a school in Uvalde, Texas, a Republican congressional candidate posted about two dozen signs throughout northern Palm Beach County of herself wielding an AR-15 rifle with a baby on her back.

Wringing every last drop out of the old, before ringing in the new

Seacoast Utility Authority replaces aging headquarters with $21 million campus.

When you turn on your faucet, you expect water to come gushing out. When you flush your toilet, you expect the water to go swirling away.

In Palm Beach Gardens, Lake Park, North Palm Beach and Juno Beach, that has meant relying on the Seacoast Utility Authority, housed for decades in its low-slung, aging headquarters next to the water plant on Hood Road.

Seacoast remains, but after 40 years its headquarters are gone.

In April, the utility started in 1955 by Lake Park and Palm Beach Gardens founder John D. MacArthur completes its move into a stylish series of blue buildings accented by brown stone that nearly doubles its space, protects against hurricanes and modernizes meeting rooms, warehouse space and labs.