🛞 Driving the news
😎 Welcome back. For you today, hope for a new raceway, a cheaper commute from PSL, about that Florida Supreme Court judge..., hot dogs and storm season advice.
Today’s newsletter is a 5-minute read.
🌎 Next tourist draw: Auto racing
Hotel tourist tax money built the Palm Beach County Convention Center. It helped build two baseball stadiums primarily used for one month a year. It helps keep the beaches sandy.
Could there be some dollars left for auto racing?
County commissioners on Thursday were told they would lose an $81 million lawsuit if they rejected a 2 million-square-foot warehouse complex at the shuttered Palm Beach International Raceway. They approved the warehouses.
“This is not a stop sign. This is just a yield sign,” Commissioner Maria Sachs said.
Yes, but: Commissioners Sachs, Maria Marino and Sara Baxter were so impressed by the stories of family togetherness and moral upbringing shared by racers of all ages and ethnicities at meeting after meeting that maybe, just maybe, they said, there’s something worth saving here.
Why we care: People would come not just from South Florida but from all over the world to engage in events that last far longer than one month a year. That means Indy cars, stock cars and street cars souped up on the weekends for a test run.
Where to put them?
Racing is loud. The site would have to be far from subdivisions, as was PBIR, the former Moroso Motorsports Park out on the Beeline Highway west of Jupiter.
They’ll need a lot of space, perhaps more than is available at one county-owned site at Southern Boulevard and 20-Mile Bend. A quarter-mile drag strip needs more than a half-mile straightaway. PBIR also had a 2.2-mile road course. And at one point a go-kart track.
Commissioners said they would look for a private-sector partner to foot the bill. They didn’t mention the bed tax, which brought in $77 million last year.
Racing fans said they’ll be ready to help. And watching closely.
Joel offers more on the legal logjam that forced commissioners to approve the warehouses at OnGardens.org.
🚍 Cheap commute: Palm Tran pitches Port St. Lucie Express
Here’s a way to take a shot at the high cost of housing in Palm Beach County: Create an express bus service to Port St. Lucie.
Why it matters: So many people live in Port St. Lucie but work in Palm Beach County that Palm Tran is preparing to launch a twice-a-day express service between Gatlin Boulevard and downtown West Palm Beach.
Housing and population factored into the move:
The median sales price of a home in Port St. Lucie is about $380,000. It’s more than $450,000 in Palm Beach County.
Port St. Lucie has nearly double the population of any city in Palm Beach County, with 231,790 people. West Palm Beach has 120,932.
A 162-space parking lot for commuters, complete with six electric-car chargers, is already in place at the southeast corner of Interstate 95 and Gatlin near Bass Pro Shops.
From there it’s just a 50-mile, one-hour commute by bus. Palm Tran is looking at two runs between 5 and 8 am and two runs between 5:30 and 8:30 pm.
Cost for passengers likely would be $3 or less, a Palm Tran official told the Palm Beach Transportation Planning Agency board May 18.
Yes, but. The cost to taxpayers would be … more.
The Florida Department of Transportation is talking about putting up $2 million to $2.5 million to buy three 50-seat coach-style buses. Yes, they would have WiFi.
FDOT also would pay $350,000 to $400,000 a year in operating costs for the first three years.
Who would pay beyond that? Unknown. But County Commissioner Maria Marino warned that the costs should not fall solely on Palm Beach County.
Approvals are still pending but Yash Nagal, Palm Tran director of transit planning, told the TPA board that service could begin in January or February.
🍼 The curious case of the judge and the teething baby
A police complaint involving a mother of four, a teething baby and Florida Supreme Court Judge Renatha Francis quietly wrapped months ago, Florida Bulldog reporter Noreen Marcus confirms.
Olga Mervyak told Marcus a man and woman approached her 10-month-old, who was being watched by her 12-year-old sister in a covered part of the pool at CitySide last July 4th.
The couple was Francis and her husband, Phillip Fender.
Fender unbuckled the baby from a stroller, picked her up and examined a rash on her shoulder. He then put the baby on her legs, where she began to fall, according to Mervyak. Mervyak, who had been watching her two other children, rushed over.
Francis said she was a judge, recalled Mervyak,“telling me, ‘I will take your children away from you for abuse and neglect.’”
Soon after, the Department of Children and Families launched an investigation. So did the sheriff in Polk County, where the Mervyaks live.
The couple was cleared even before Francis was sworn in as a member of the high court last September. The judge’s husband, Fender, died in November.
It took months before the sheriff’s office released the report.
Francis declined to talk to the Bulldog about its story.
The former West Palm family court judge is dogged by controversy. Stet contributor Jane Musgrave previously wrote about the politics involved in Francis’ first nomination to the high court in 2020, here.
The nomination failed because she did not have a minimum of 10 years of Florida Bar membership.
“Only public outrage and the intervention of the Florida Supreme Court prevented embarrassment,” wrote former Supreme Court Justice Harry Anstead of the botched nomination.
But Francis is not the only new Florida Supreme to face scrutiny. Marcus reports that the political activism of Justice Meredith Sasso’s husband has raised conflict of interest concerns.
🐛 The juice
Fresh-squeezed news from all over
🏛️ Ex-Everglades Foundation chief scientist Thomas Van Lent was found guilty of contempt of court. He faces up to one year in county jail. (Florida Bulldog/The Backstory Blog)
✍🏼 Gov. Ron DeSantis signed SB 540 last week. The bill, which Joel wrote about in April, makes it more difficult to challenge changes to the comprehensive plan. (WQCS)
🕰️ “Your psychic clock needs time to adjust to Palm Beach, to the sun, the wealth, the safety and the pool fatigue.” From the Martin Amis archives. (Tatler)
🌭 Quiz: Hot Doggie!
If it’s summer, it’s grilling time, and if it’s grilling time, Hot Dog Eating Champion Joey “Jaws” Chestnut is back on the Major League Eating circuit. (Note to reader: Not making this up.)
Chestnut holds the world record, winning the right to raise the Mustard Belt (Again: Not making this up) after downing 76 hot dogs in 10 minutes at the annual July 4 Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest.
How does Joey prep for the annual feast?
🌀 561 insider: The hurricane center’s case for which model you should watch this season
Many storm-tested Floridians have a favorite hurricane track model. We debate the merits of the European ensemble vs. the UKMET and unwind the spaghetti bowl of tracks to find the one that helps us feel safe.
Jamie Rhome makes a compelling pitch as we enter the six-month hurricane season to focus on just one squiggly line: the official forecast of the National Hurricane Center.
Rhome, the acting director of the National Hurricane Center, spoke this month at the Governor’s Hurricane Conference in West Palm Beach.
“If you’re so enamored with which model is best, I’m going to tell you: It’s the official forecast issued by the National Weather Service.” — Jamie Rhome
His case:
In 20 years, the accuracy of the storm path prediction has increased by 30 percent to 50 percent.
Predicting intensity, or how fast the wind will blow, has been challenging for the center. Today it is 20 percent to 40 percent more precise than it was two decades ago. Especially when it comes to storms that intensify rapidly.
Three days before landfall, the NHC’s margin of error for wind speed is about 11 mph.
Of note: There has been a decline in deaths directly caused by storms (72 in 2022) and an increase in deaths in the aftermath of hurricanes (111 in 2022).
That demonstrates the success of evacuation efforts and the danger after a storm has passed, Rhome said.
Rainy day reading:
Palm Beach County has a helpful online guide.
The sales tax holiday is now through June 9 and from Aug. 26 to Sept. 8. What’s exempt?
Check your storm evacuation zone.
🎉 🎉 🎉 Thankfully the Heat didn’t sweep the Boston Celtics in their Eastern Conference Championship series. If they had, we wouldn’t have had that hugely entertaining Game 6 Saturday, lost by the Heat on a shot with 0.1 second showing on the clock. And we wouldn’t have had the total domination of a 19-point Heat victory on Boston’s court Monday night. Heat vs. Denver Nuggets start June 1.
“Sometimes you have to suffer for the things you really want.” — Heat coach Erik Spoelstra after Game 7 victory.
And don’t forget the Florida Panthers hockey team. They play the Vegas Golden Knights for Lord Stanley’s Cup starting on June 3.
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