From the air, east Deerfield resembles nothing so much as an anthill.

From the ocean to Federal Highway, the Hillsboro Streetscape project has much of Hillsboro Boulevard and much of Ocean Way blocked with barricades. It’s likely to be challenging until December, as city workers paint guardrails and lay conduit in preparation for putting power, cable and phone wires underground.

Road crews with giant milling machines churn the road surface down to gravel on Southeast Third Street, in preparation for putting down new pavement.

Sidewalks have been scraped to the quick. Where the pavers are newly laid in front of the chamber of commerce building, a lattice pattern holds the promise of something better, sometime soon.

Fourth Street? Forget it. Barricades redirected traffic to points west last week enabling city staff to import and set up the equipment to pump sand onto the city’s north beach.

“The city re-nourished the south portion and that is holding up really well,” said George Edmunds, the city’s acting director of parks and recreation. “Now we are going into Phase II.”
Edmunds said that the hurricane season of 2004-2005 eroded the shoreline. As a result, the city applied for Federal Emergency Management Agency funds to repair the damage and FEMA-funded sand – some 11,000 tons – is about to be installed.

Last week and this week until about Feb. 10, trucks will be hauling sand to the shore. There, it will be dumped onto conveyor belts and distributed from the grass to within two feet of the water.

Cove merchants pointed out that the timing was bad, coming as it does during a tourist season already buffeted by the recession. But as Deerfield Beach City Manager Mike Mahaney pointed out, the FEMA money came free – and with a deadline.

“I didn’t want to have to send half a million dollars back to D.C.,” he said, “Not on my watch.”

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Town of Hillsboro Beach commissioners will vote on two charter changes and select three commissioners March 10.
The charter currently provides guidelines for operation of the government and powers of the commission, and it asks voters if they want to institute first-ever term limits, among other things: “Shall the charter be amended to provide for term limits for commissioners, to establish that there shall be no less than one commission meeting per month and empowering the Town Commission to create a Code Enforcement Board?”
Voters will choose, yes, or no.
While that vote could eventually change the balance of power in this town of 2,300 people, the other ballot question is more a matter of tidying up the wording of the existing charter. That charter currently provides an obsolete procedure whereby the Town Commission is authorized to levy special assessments for municipal purposes. The ballot asks, “Shall the Charter be amended to remove the obsolete language in the Charter and replace it with the procedure required by Chapter 170, Florida Statutes, relative to any assessments permitted by law and for beach re-nourishment?”
If it passes, it will tidy up the existing law, according to town attorney D.J. Doody.
Candidates take sides on change
In a town facing a crisis, two challengers are facing two incumbents. The town’s 2,300 residents can vote for three of the four candidates.
Vice Mayor Dan Dodge is seeking a fourth term. Also seeking re-election is Mayor Carmen McGarry, who returned to the dais in 2007 as mayor after a stint as a town commissioner from 1998 to 2002.
Rounding out the slate: Lee Bennett, who apparently has changed his mind since his 2007 decision not to run for re-election and Claire Schubert, a 20-year resident and charter review committee chairwoman.
That committee spent months studying other municipal charters before drafting a governing document that moved the balance of power from a mayor to a town manager, answerable to the commission. Residents never got to vote on a plan approved by the entire charter review committee; three of five commissioners, including Dodge and McGarry, voted it into oblivion.

Carmen McGarry
Mayor Carmen McGarry said the vanishing beach or the dying water plant are equally ? pressing concerns making continuity vital as the town embraces changes for which it has spent the past two years preparing.
“We made a decision in December to replace everything in the water plant. We are not patching. We are bringing it up to date,” said the 67-year-old retired teacher, adding that she supports this project because it’s half the cost of a third option: an $8 million state-of-the-art replacement.
As mayor, she said, she met with all major parties, from engineering consultants CH2M Hill to the South Florida Water Management District to Broward County. “I am looking forward to the beach re-nourishment in November, and I have suggested going to a beach comprehensive plan,” she said. “Hopefully, if we do it on a five-year plan people will not get hit with a tax increase.”

Dan Dodge
Dodge, 54, the vice mayor, is general manager and CEO of the private Hillsboro Club, where supervising 304 employees indicates he has the expertise to run the town more like a business.
The 20-year resident said beach erosion is the paramount issue, and the revolutionary sand retention technology yet unproven. “Many residents feel it is not working, but we need to look at the project in its entirety, not just in hot spots,” he said. “We will have another report in time.”
Dodge said he did not support the proposed charter revisions, just the ballot measure updating the wording.
“One of the large issues was the form of government,” he said. “I think the charter is fine the way it is.”

Lee Bennett
A Realtor, Lee Bennett said the failing water plant is at the top of his to-do list.
He favors re-building the existing plant, he said, because other options are more expensive.
“Building our own plant would cost more than $8 million and with 3,000 residents, the math just doesn’t work,” he said. “I’m for keeping our current plant and feasibility studies show it is fixable.” Bennett said the town has some money saved toward the $1 million cost, with the remainder spaced over three years, less onerous for taxpayers.
Likewise, Bennett said, there is no question more sand is necessary and it the cost should be shared. His greatest strength: He brings to the dais “a level-headed approach that doesn’t use attack as a forum to get things done.”

Claire Schubert
A 20-year resident, Claire Schubert has been a board member of the Hillsboro Alliance, representing several condominiums on town issues and felt compelled to run for office after her work on the charter review committee was for naught.
“It made me keenly aware of why the town isn’t functioning properly. The single most important issue is the beach and the water system, but every other issue we face has become critical because of the functioning of city hall.”
Schubert supports a pro-?active approach to maintaining the beach, as well as improving communication between the town’s governing body and its residents, perhaps via streaming video. “We have two sitting members, and I am sure they have the best interests of the community at heart,” she said. “But Mr. Bennett has been to one commission meeting all year.”
Elections are 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. March 10 at Town Hall, 1219 Hillsboro Mile.

For more information about the election, call Interim Town Clerk Robert Lange at 954-427-4011.

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It’s the kind of morning that makes being a firefighter worthwhile – 24 tykes lined up in front of the fire truck, upraised faces filled with hero worship.

But the lesson Deerfield Beach's firefighters brought to Maria’s House Montessori School today was one that could sustain these preschoolers through life.

“If the house is all locked up, does that mean the fire department can’t get in?” Deerfield Beach Firefighter Jim Langlois asked the excited crowd.

“Yes,” came the soprano chorus from the ground.

“Wrong. Everything I need to get in is in this truck,” he said, waving to an impressive range of tools stocked inside.

Danielle Sinatra, 6, was an old hand at fire trucks. She had toured one courtesy of the preschool last year and it was “good. It was fun,” she said.

Her favorite part? Not the siren or lights. “The hose,” she said. “The water comes out.”
Langlois handed each and every student up the tall steps and into the front seat, then watched as they made their way out the other side.

“Everybody have a good time?” he asked. “Everybody going to have a meeting place? Remember: Stop, drop, and roll. Call 911 and identify a meeting place.”

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It was an unusual entry in an otherwise routine police blotter.

“Employees noticed a three-page letter on the floor near the front door,” said the entry dated Jan. 20, 12:17 p.m. “One part stated that if the library did not open in two minutes, a bomb scare would be called into an address in Boca.”

The address listed in the blotter entry: 837 E. Hillsboro Blvd. That is the address of the Percy White branch of the Broward County library. It opens in the afternoon on Tuesdays, and it was just before opening that things got exciting, according to Lisa Manners, branch manager.

Librarian Joan Martin said she arrived to open the library and was stunned when she found the missive slipped under the front door. "It was the morning of the innauguration and I had told my husband at home, `I hope nothing stupid happens,'" she recalled. "I found the letter and I thought, `You have got to be kidding me!'"

Martin said she called the non-emergency number at the Broward County Sheriff's Office. Then, since no one was waiting at the door, the library opened as usual. But business behind the scenes was anything but usual.

“It was scribble writing. It was not very neat writing, and he was upset because we hadn’t opened the door,” said Manners, who was called into action on her day off when the bomb scare was discovered. “If there was somebody standing near the door yelling and screaming, we wouldn’t have opened. We would have battened down the hatches. But it was just a note in handwriting with nobody nearby.”

By the time library staff and the Sheriff's Office had sorted through all this information, the threat was a moot point.

“Two minutes already had passed when the call went into the Boca Raton Police Department, which recognized the name as that of a homeless person,” Manners said. As the police blotter noted, “it was someone they had arrested Jan. 19 in connection with petit theft.”

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When she looks at the photo of the burley soldier asleep on the ground in his fatigues, she sees, not military professional too exhausted to notice that his face is buried in his bed of sand. She sees a fuzzy-headed boy, lanky in her lap, his arms wrapped around her neck. She notes that he has no bed, no pillow, and no mittens for those frost-bitten hands.

Karla Smiley knows well what these soldiers endure. Her son, James Reed, is in North Carolina in the Army’s 82nd Airborne, an elite modular airborne infantry division. The Fort Lauderdale woman writes and phones. She sends monthly care packages. And when she learned there were legions of soldiers who get no mail at all, she vowed to help.

That was six months ago. Since then, referrals have flooded in. They are forwarded by e-mail and snail mail. They come from army chaplains, sergeants and friends.

“I started with 20. Now I have more than 200. It’s unbelievable how many I have,” she said Jan. 26. “Last night, I just got 80 paratroopers and at least 60 are ones not getting any mail or care packages.”

No longer. Since Smiley set up Florida Moms for Soldiers, the non-profit organization has assembled 600 care packages. The priority mail packages have been sent from Florida to Afghanistan or Iraq, each bearing a blanket, bags of peanuts and slim jims that fit into trouser pockets on the battlefield, candy, shampoo and an interdenominational prayer.

As word of the effort spread, people have stepped forward to help. Judy Smith, a military Mom and retired TWA airline executive, has made it her full-time job. She collects donated supplies, buys items to fill in the gaps, takes checks to the bank and waits in line at the post office.

“My son showed me his hands, with nails split from the effect of frostbite,” she said. “I spent last week trying to find hand warmers.”

A woman in Delray Beach crochets crosses to send with the enclosed prayers. The organization has set up a web site. It has the support of the American Legion.Kiwanis of Wilton Manors recently donated more than 50 blankets.

But with requests exceeding donations, Smiley’s brother-in-law Tom Kelaher, co-founder of the organization, came to a Deerfield Beach commission meeting on Jan. 13, asking for support from anyone who can help.

Each seven-pound package costs $10.95 to send overseas, he said, and the group relies on donations to fill the boxes as well. Blankets are in particularly short supply as are military-approved socks that the newly expanded and renamed Americas Moms for Soldiers buys from the military supply store.

On Jan. 9, the group became a Florida non-profit corporation. It has filed to become a 501C3. When that designation comes through any and all donations would be tax deductible. Meanwhile, the military moms rely on the kindness of strangers – including anyone listening at the Deerfield Beach commission meeting.

So what will they do now that the new presidnet has pledged a withdrawal?

“They are scaling down in Iraq,” Smith said, “But my son is shipping out in the summer to Afghanistan. And we will serve our soldiers as long as they are in combat.”

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The Democratic candidates for mayor meet at Century Village for a debate that is open to the public, Feb. 9.
Moderated by radio personality Nicole Sandler, the debate brings together the three Democrats running for mayor: former District 1 Commissioner Peggy Noland, political activist Caryl Berner and democratic club President Bernie Parness.
Anyone interested in attending should enter Century Village through the west gate, on Powerline Road just south of Hillsboro Boulevard, and say they are attending the debate at Le Club.
Call Bernie Parness at 954-425-5658.

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Hillsboro Beach residents packed town hall Jan. 26, and the tension was palpable as they pondered the problem of the vanishing beach. A pioneering sand retention technology has been undercut by a year of bad weather, according to Vice Mayor Dan Dodge, and now they just want sand.

So town officials decided to tap the last remaining off-shore sand supplies, the last time they can, at a cost of $7 million.
“The beach re-nourishment set for 2010 was moved up to November because state permits are coming through,” said Mayor Carmen McGarry, who got the permit news via e-mail last week.

Beach re-nourishmnet will begin at the end of turtle-nesting season in November, with $3 of the $7 million cost covered by the federal government. The town will pay the other $4 million and, Dodge said, the commission is studying equitable way of assessing residents of single-family shore-front houses and high rise condominiums.

It also is studying the effectiveness of the newly installed sand-retaining modules. “The PEM is going to take more time,” McGarry said. “We will reassess it is six or seven months.”

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Vince Kendrick’s long wait for a fresh start is over.

After 18 months of thrice-weekly kidney dialysis, the city’s Parks and Recreation director has a new kidney.
Kendrick, who is on medical leave, is sharing his time between Deerfield Beach and Orlando. He checks in in Orlando two times a week to ensure that his blood sugar levels, blood pressure and other indicators are in line with his continued recovery.
He checked into his office in Deerfield Beach Jan. 26 to say hello and pick up some documents.

His contact with the public is limited, and he wears a surgical mask to minimize the chance of getting sick. But those close to him said he is doing well.

“His spirits are high and he’s doing good,” said Angela Storr, secretary to the man whose grant-writing skills transformed the city’s park system by turning $6 million in general obligation bonds into $18 million in government grants. Those grants saw construction of a state-of-the-art Athletic complex and Aquatic Center at Deerfield Beach Middle School and athletic field upgrades at Westside Park, as well as land acquisitions that returned vacant areas, including beachfront property, to the public trust.

But more than two years ago, Kendrick learned that he would need a kidney transplant. Kendrick underwent dialysis three times a week for more than 18 months even as the University of Florida alumnus and former football player waited on no fewer than three lists for a kidney. Jan. 3, he learned that a compatible kidney was waiting at the Florida Hospital Transplant Center in Orlando.

A day later, he was in Orlando, undergoing four hours of surgery.

“He was in the Intensive Care Unit for a week after surgery, then downgraded to a less critical unit for another week,” Storr said. “But right now, they are not letting him talk on the phone too much; and when he is around people, he has to wear a mask until his immunity is restored.”

The city’s grants wizard isn’t letting that keep him down. Altermease Kendrick said today that her husband had walked no fewer than two miles through his neighborhood on Jan. 19.
He checked in at his office at the public works facility to say hello to the staff and pick up get well cards – and tell everyone there he feels 1000 percent better, Storr said.

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Keeper Days is just nine years old, but the Lighthouse Point founding celebration is as close to a tradition as a 53-year-old city gets. This year, the party starts on Feb. 6 and, as always, three “Keepers” honored for their civic contributions will march in a Saturday parade.

Detective Larry Hawkins, who retired to Sarasota this year, is honored for his decades of working with the senior citizens and youth of the city. Keeper John A. Grant, Jr., the city’s first engineer, is being honored posthumously.

Keeper Cynthia Rohkamm will be riding in a convertible like a beauty queen, waving to daughter Stephanie Stepney, her 96-year-old mother Margaret Satterfield both of Pompano Beach, and son Peter Rohkamm, III.

“They give you a plaque and you get to ride in the parade with my two granddaughters throwing beads to crowd,” she said.

Last week, however, Rohkamm was collecting a starling from off her front porch.

“Unfortunately, it was DOA when I got here,” she said sadly.

It’s a rare outcome for the go-to person for finders of injured wildlife. For 35 of her 44 years in Lighthouse Point, Rohkamm, mother of three, grandmother of five and great-grandmother of one has been foster mother to anything that walks, crawls, swims – or did in its prime.

She has scalded meal worms for baby birds, swum laps in her pool with a baby otter and her garage looks like an animal hospital. She has taken courses on wildlife care, researched her wards on line, and called experts for help and as her calling consumed her spare time, Rohkamm went on to win licenses as a wildlife rehabilitator.

Always she releases them into the wild or to the SPCA Wildlife Care Center in Fort Lauderdale.

“In looking for people who do special things that make Lighthouse Point special, everyone thinks about people but no one thinks about wildlife. Yet for 30 years, kids whenever they had injured birds would take them to the bird lady,” said John Trudel, the city’s recreation director and the person who nominated Rohkamm to be this year’s Keeper. “She was just a young mother in the city and I found out she takes care of wildlife. Ever since then, I’ve had her under “b” for bird lady.”`

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Melius Pierre had worked 25 years at the Boca Raton Resort & Club when he spotted a Dixie Highway ad offering home ownership for “$500 down and $1,000 per month mortgage payment.”

Pierre made $23,000 a year, but he figured with the $19,000 his wife made working at the Deerfield Beach Hilton, they could pay a mortgage instead of rent. In the three years since, mortgage and maintenance on their three-bedroom unit has risen from $1,157 to $1,405. Then the economy tanked. The hotel cut Bertha Pierre’s hours. Melius was laid off. Their son, Emmanuel moved back in to help, but they now owe $1,225 to the association in back payments.

And that isn’t the worst of it. Jan. 17, City Manager Mike Mahaney visited Deerfield Palms Condominiums with fliers in English and Creole. The association owed $92,000 in unpaid water, sewer and garbage bills. As a result, Feb. 9, the water would be shut off to all 168 units.

That would include the one belonging to Emmanel’s diabetic father. Melius Pierre is so dependent on water he carries a Gatorade bottle full all the time. “I wanted to shoot myself,” Emmanuel Pierre said when he heard the news. “If they come here [Feb. 9] and cut the water, the Red Cross will tell us we have to leave.”

So where did things go wrong? Berlyne Forest said the problem began with that sign on Dixie Highway.
“These are people working two jobs at minimum wage and there is no way they could have got approved for these loans,” said Forest, formerly homeowner association president.
“Their mortgage goes up $800 or $900. A lot abandoned their units.”

That left residents who stayed to share the maintenance fees of those who no longer paid. Some took in relatives and friends to help – more residents using more water. That boosted the bill from the city from $6,500 to $12,000 per month. Soon, there wasn't money to repair potholes or cut down crumpled palm trees.

“We owe more than $100,000 right now,” said Casanova. “But they are asking us to pay the monthly bill plus $1,000 for back payments.”

When Mahaney came with news about the water shut-off, Marc Etilier was among those who wrote a check on the spot. He gave Mahaney $250 of the $600 he owes, he said, a good chunk out of the $18,000 income that supports three children, a wife and a $1,700 mortgage payment.

District 2 Commissioner Sylvia Poitier blames the company that sold residents units they could not afford, using mortgages that began at artificially low levels, then ballooned into a higher payment. When it did, the water bill went by the wayside, leaving Deerfield Beach’s city manager with a bare bones municipal budget, $90,000 owed for water, sewer and garbage, and no one to pay it.

“It’s difficult to do business this way,” he told city commissioners Jan 13. He presented four difficult options: suing the condominium association which, itself, can’t pay because it hasn’t collected from residents; asking the court to put a community with no value into receivership; filing foreclosure actions against all 168 unit owners.

Or cutting off the water.

Residents started writing checks on the spot when they got the news, but unless they pay even more, Feb. 9 will bring the last drop. And Hernon Casanova doesn’t blame Mahaney at all. Casanova is vice president of the homeowners association and when he bought his unit, he was making enough – $36,400 – to support a mortgage on a two-bedroom, one bath condo. That was in March 2007, and the $1,200 mortgage payment was just $200 more than what he had paid to rent.

But Casanova has been dealt a one-two punch by the economy and his contract.

Three months after moving in, Casanova was laid off from his job as a bottom-painting technician at a marina. Five months after that, the maintenance fee went from $128 to $155.86. Casanova winced when asked what his family of five will do when the water goes off.

“I got no idea,” he said. “Ask for help.”

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They came from as far as Miramar in black tie, and Obama T-shirts – and Vonice Gibbs came in pearls, "for Michelle," she said. They gathered to pray for the nation’s first African-American President as they watched him take the oath of office and, while the `watch party’ at the Deerfield Beach Hilton was one among many yesterday – it was special for those who had watched too long.

“It would be a singular event,” said Carl Crawford, deacon of First Baptist Church Piney Grove in Lauderdale Lakes. “We thought this would never happen in our lifetime.”

The idea, hatched by church Treasurer Vonice Gibbs and Crawford, quickly grew from a church gathering to a party that embraced the entire community: Haitian-Americans, Jamaican-Americans as well as African-Americans – bigger than the 104-year-old Lauderdale Lakes church could handle

Parishioner Dorothy Davis, an event planner, said she got three calls urging a party for 500 and, in the end, almost 150 gathered at the Deerfield Beach Hilton for a celebration of the new president in song, dance, and poetry.

“I am a Jewish White American and finally the U.S has. demonstrated the ability to transcend all of these labels,” said Century Village resident Ruth Kalish, her eyes fixed on the large-screen television. “It is my wish that we share this for the next eight years.”

Landis Bing skipped a day of sixth grade at Crystal Lake Middle School to be there. “I did watch the debates and his speech when he won,” he said. “I came to see Barack and his inauguration.”

Yolanda Brown approved her son’s only absence of the year because, she said, “It’s a lesson that’s outside the classroom. He’s learning hands on [and] this is the closest we could get [to Washington].”

For Ashley Robinson, a church deacon, attending with three generations of the Coral Springs family meant, he said, “I can look my daughter in the face and say `Anything is possible for real now.”

But Jan. 20 was a school day, so being together meant Gabrielle, age 5, and mom Casandra Robinson, the principal of William Dandy Middle School, called in absent.
“I went to my school first, just to set the tone,” Cassandra said. “They are watching the program live.”

Davis had planned to watch the program, live, in Washington D.C., but Gibbs changed her mind. “I said you aren’t going to Washington, you are going you have to stay here and do this event,” Gibbs said. “She loves doing events like this and she was an avid die-hard Obama supporter.”

Davis thought less where she wasn't than who she was with – her mother. “This would have meant so much to her,” Davis said of the woman who worked as a maid to raise ten children she proudly told people none of whom went to jail. “She told me to keep doing what you’re doing. Do the right thing."

“I’m so excited, I brought my Mom with me,” she said, touching the pearls at her neck. “Here she is," she said.

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In Deerfield Beach, they have been known as the Haynes Sisters too long to call them anything else, even though their married names have endured for decades now.
Their restaurant, Haynes Sisters Catering and Take Out Service, was an institution in Deerfield Beach. From the well-equipped kitchen across the street from City Hall, Annie L. Jones and Deloris Gillion prepared the legendary baked chicken, green beans, seasoned rice and dinner rolls and delivered it for functions around the city.
So, there was very little to talk about when it came to deciding just who would be right to handle a Martin Luther King, Jr. Day brunch hosted by Deerfield Kiwanis Club West at Westside Park.
That was seven years ago and while Jones moved to Georgia last year, and missed last year’s brunch, she traveled back just for this occasion.
Jan. 17, when the sisters rose at 4 a.m. and began cooking breakfast for 140 people waiting to eat at 9:30 a.m., they were continuing a tradition that they now have refined to a science.
“This is a brunch, so it’s got just about everything you can stick in a brunch, and we kind of keep it at that,” Gillion said.
There’s grits, of course, and eggs, soft scrambled.
The sisters, two of four siblings born to a pair of cooks, serve them up with sausage or bacon, rolls and Danish, fruit cups and coffee and juice on the side; and chicken wings.
“We include the wings because a lot of people don’t eat pork,” Gillion said.
To get all that to the auditorium and serve it hot, the sisters started the bacon, sausage, grits and wings at home. As the meat browned, they stirred grits into boiling water and cut fresh fruit for the fruit cups.
At 9 a.m., the food was transferred to the hall. Hot food went into chafing dishes over low flames, while a Tupperware box of freshly cracked eggs was poured into pans and scrambled over low heat. “We don’t do the eggs before hand,” Gillion said.
By 1 p.m., it was all over at Westside Park, but with 140 people fed, feted and happy, the job for Jones and Gillion continues at home.
“You should see what my house looks like when we bring it all back and clean up,” Gillion chuckles.
The sisters retired from the catering business seven years ago, but they have yet to say no to this event.
“The city was good to us all those years and gave us a lot of jobs,” Gillion said. “We try to return the kindness by doing this.”

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No worries about what happens to the stuff that skips the recycling bin, at least in the bottom half of the city.
Deerfield Beach is rolling out its cutting-edge automated trucks and garbage cars to another section of the city the week of Jan. 26. As sort of a late Christmas present, owners of single-family homes in nine neighborhoods will get new garbage carts, the most important part of which is the metal handle. That should be facing the street.
Positioning the cart in what may seem a backward position, when the carts are wheeled to the curb, will facilitate collection pick up by Department of Public Works and Environmental Services trucks, not employees. And it will signify that those neighborhoods are joining the other 60 percent already receiving fully-automated garbage collection.
After that, residents can expect to see a single driver, not a crew of workers, on any given truck. That truck will chug down the block and stopping at each bin. At the touch of a button, that driver will put into motion a metal claw, which will seize the garbage cart by bar and dump it into the truck.
Along with innovation comes a whole new set of rules.
Beginning Jan. 26, residents of The Lakes, The Meadows, North and South Courtyards of Waterford, Villa Verde, Highland Meadows, Country Knolls, Discovery Point and Highland Village should recognize the following:
-Solid waste crews will only collect garbage that is in city-issued carts.
-Drivers no longer will pick up extra bags on the ground or next to garbage carts.
-Additional garbage carts must be requested and approved by the solid waste division.
-Residents who need an additional cart should call 954-480-4384 and be willing to pay $14 per month, not per cart, upon approval.
-Carts must be curbside by 7 a.m. on pick-up day, or cart owners should be willing to pay for a return trip or extra call.
-Recyclables and yard debris may not be put in garbage carts.
For information, visit www.Deerfield-Beach.com and search Solid Waste Services, or call 954-480-4394.

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It was old-fashioned democracy Tuesday. No hanging chads. No recounts. As the remnants of the city commission looked on, city Clerk Ada Graham-Johnson plucked two names from a yellow box and announced the winners.

In the end, Gloria J. Battle beat out two other candidates for the District 2 commission seat and Colleen Simpson-DiDonato bested a field of seven in District 4. Battle was out of town for the vote, and unavailable for comment last week. But DiDonato was philosophical about her three-meeting term.

“It’s four, if you count the last meeting where the new commissioners are sworn in,” said the PTA executive board veteran and former special events coordinator for a runaway shelter. “I just enjoy volunteering.”

The positions became vacant when corruption charges led to the arrest of former Mayor Al Capellini and former Commissioner Steven Gonot.
Gonot resigned his post. When Capellini failed to follow suit, Gov. Charlie Crist suspended him and Vice Mayor Sylvia Poitier, the commissioner in District 2, stepped in to serve.

Under the charter, replacements are chosen by the city commission. With the vote deadlocked, however, Graham-Johnson drew names from a box.

Battle is a career bureaucrat with a doctorate in public administration from Florida State University. Her 27-year-career has taken her from Broward County’s human rights division, where she supervised 17 staffers and a $987,000 operational budget, to the census bureau, where she organizes partnerships with local entities insuring an accurate count in 2010.

DiDonato, a 24-year-resident, was chaiedrman of a citizens' committee behind the cell tower campaign, and is a founding member of West Deerfield Community Alliance, representing the interests of the city’s westernmost residents.

The new commission will serve until those elected March 10 take the oath of office on March 17. The only candidate vying for Poitier’s seat has dropped out of the race, but District 4 finds Gary Lother and William Ganz competing for Gonot’s former seat.

Ganz got a taste for politics in the recent and successful campaign opposing a cell tower in his district’s park. Lother is the city’s former fire chief. Absent from the field: Simpson-DiDonato.
DiDonato has no political aspirations. “I enjoy giving back to the community,” she said.

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After five years in the recycling business, Sean Harrigan knows more about recapturing metals for recycling than almost anything else. These days, however, talking to the 33-year-old Pompano Beach resident is more like talking to a International Monetary Fund economist.

“When the Chinese economy was booming, they consumed anything we could give them. At the end of the July the market was the peak,” he said. “They slowed down, because the whole market slowed down and in November it went into complete free fall.”

Take copper, for example. Gleaned from insulated wires and pipes used from plumbing, the metal commanded $4.26 a pound on the London Metal Exchange at the peak in July. Jan. 12, the price had plummeted to .95 cents a pound.

That market contraction has taken a toll on Harrigan’s business. He says the company laid off six of 13 employees at the beginning of November. Since then, a modest rise in prices enabled them to rehire three of the six, but “It’s not near the levels of November,” he said.

Harrigan’s problem is shared worldwide. In England, the price of recycled steel has fallen to zero, according to trade publication, packagingnews.co.uk. In Massachusetts, corrugated cardboard prices plummeted 60 percent in 45 days. In Deerfield Beach, the November drop was so profound, that recycling specialist Cheryl Miller found herself on a Jan. 15 meeting with Waste Management Inc. and colleagues from 26 other communities in Fort Lauderdale.

For the time being, she said, the market is more of a problem for Waste Management than Deerfield Beach. That company is storing materials until prices recover, she said, which Waste Management told the group might be in the third quarter of 2009. In the interim, she said, it is Waste Management that is taking a hit from falling prices, not Deerfield Beach.

“All I know is that we have a contract,” she said. “In this contract, they are bound to pay us a certain amount of money until 2013.”

Harrigan is not optimistic that the market will recover this year. He sees mid-2010 as more realistic and predicts even then, prices will be lower than at their peak. That’s more realistic – and sustainable, he says, pointing to bales of metal stored along the back wall of his compound.

“We have kind of a perfect business model with low overhead, so when the market first started falling, we just adjusted accordingly,” he said of how the downward spiral has affect his company. “It’s a good thing – if the price for material is down, the cost to build is down. Most of the time, that’s reflected in the price of a home.”

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Workers gathered with heavy equipment Jan. 2 at a barren patch on the south side of the Dunkin' Donuts on Powerline Road. There, they installed trees, planted native grass and raked mulch and tested a temporary sprinkler system that will support the plantings in the near future.

When they are done, a month from now, Deerfield Beach will have a new park. Tiny though it is, the Trailhead Park captures yet another vanishing bit of vacant space and preserves it for all to enjoy.
In addition to the lakeside view, the trailhead of a linear park running down the west side of Powerline Road holds the promise of something other than traffic for residents of Independence Bay and nearby communities.

Already in place are a play structure and a circular sidewalk. On the to-do list: benches, a pavilion and grill, picnic tables and bicycle racks.

“Deerfield Beach has a 20-year master plan for parks and recreation,” said George Edmunds, the city’s acting director of parks and recreation. “What we plan is, because this city doesn’t have a lot of open space, we plan to make use of linear pathways and hook various parks together.”

That plan echoes one embraced by Broward County, which is designing 210 miles of trails linking neighborhoods via parks, conservation land and other property. The county’s so-called greenway system is being financed from $23.1 million left of what initially was a $400 million parks bond issue approved by voters in November 2000.

Deerfield Beach’s project was financed by a $200,000, state land and water conservation fund grant. Although the landscaping went in last week, the water to sustain it remains wrapped in red tape. So workers installed temporary irrigation last week to sustain the plantings until South Florida Water Management issues a permit to draw water for irrigation from the lake.

Felix Flitas, a foreman with Northern Dirtworks, contractors for the parking lot and drainage, said last week that he anticipates the project wrapping up in three to four weeks.

Edmunds said the park should be ready for anyone to enjoy by the end of the month.

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