How do you defeat a ballot measure 136-0?
Let’s ask Ken Glueck, one of the leaders who worked to block separate efforts to annex his neighborhood into Palm Beach Gardens and North Palm Beach.
Glueck’s Hidden Key community joined neighboring Portage Landing to vote 136-0 against becoming part of North Palm Beach. Such a vote left it vulnerable to being annexed into Palm Beach Gardens, a proposal so unpalatable to Hidden Key residents that they had filed suit to block it.
Hidden Key was part of a much bigger annexation zone sought by Palm Beach Gardens. Even if all of the residents of the 70-home Hidden Key voted no on Gardens, a majority of the rest of the zone could have voted yes and Hidden Key would have been part of Gardens.
So Hidden Key residents considered voting yes on North Palm Beach to have an alternative to Palm Beach Gardens if the Gardens referendum passed.
That put Hidden Key’s much smaller neighbor, Portage Landing, in a pickle.
Portage Landing wanted no part of North Palm Beach but a yes vote from Hidden Key would have swept the 17-home Portage Landing North and South into the village.
So the neighbors talked.
And Hidden Key gambled.
They were impressed by the grass-roots, anti-annexation campaign against Palm Beach Gardens headed by Charlie Hollings, Melissa Wiegand and Shanna Walker and the growing opposition evident in the proliferation of yard signs throughout the zone, Glueck said.
Residents didn’t believe that they would pay less in taxes and fees, worried about higher standards for code enforcement, balked at an additional layer of government and felt the city ignored their concerns at public hearings, Glueck said.
“The trajectory was pretty clear,” said Glueck, an executive with Oracle.So they recommended their neighbors vote no on both annexation proposals – the Gardens and North Palm Beach.
It worked.
They defeated the North Palm Beach attempt 136-0. The huge Gardens Zone 1 annexation also failed, 2,313 to 170 – a whopping 93% against.
“We did better than Putin,” Glueck said.Vladimir Putin took 88% of the vote in the recent Russian presidential election.
All five annexation efforts launched by Palm Beach Gardens failed to generate even 10% favorable vote. And the three annexations launched by North Palm Beach to counter Palm Beach Gardens did even worse, losing a combined 227-6.
It’s not that all municipal referendums on the March 19 ballot failed in light of low turnout for a presidential primary that had been decided.
Riviera Beach voters approved three referendums to borrow $115 million for public improvements.
West Palm Beach residents backed a pair of charter changes to make it harder to run for office.
Residents west of Loxahatchee Groves and north of Southern Boulevard voted 19-0 to be annexed into Wellington. Unlike the Gardens annexation, it involved mostly undeveloped land with few residents.
Gardens has filed a motion to dismiss the Hidden Key lawsuit. But Hidden Key isn’t so sure. State law lets Gardens try the annexation again in two years, a prospect residents do not relish. They plan to continue the suit, Glueck said.
This story was originally published by Stet Palm Beach, a WLRN News partner.
