Photo: Adrienne Bresnahan / Moment / Getty Images
The Village of Royal Palm Beach is in our Election Spotlight this morning.
There is just one race there on March 10th, the one for the Group 1 seat on the Village Council.
The incumbent is Adam Miller, a former school teacher and principal who currently works as Chief of Performance Accountability for the Palm Beach County School District. As the state Legislature works out a potential constitutional amendment to eliminate most homesteaded property taxes, we asked for Miller's thoughts about that possibility.
"We've maintained our millage rate of 1.92 mills for about 15 years now and that's almost the lowest millage rate in the entire county. With that, the village has done a great job of maintaining strong reserves and we're remaining debt-free. However, if the property tax reductions do occur...I don't support that, but my priority would be if there are cuts, preserving our essential services, public safety, infrastructure management and our core programs. And then we'd have to evaluate everything else against our strategic plan."
His challenger, Selena Samios, spent several years on the Council before giving up her seat for an unsuccessful bid for mayor after the death of longtime Mayor Fred Pinto.
She is the executive director of the Women's Chamber of Commerce of Palm Beach County and says she isn't overly concerned about the potential loss of revenue should voters approve a property tax amendment.
"I know legislation will have to work with municipalities to figure out how to make up that deficit. It doesn't affect our ad valorem so our schools, our public safety, those are all intact. In Royal Palm Beach, we would lose about $3 million in revenue without that money so it's how would we make that up? It's just shifting around some stuff. There are some things that we have in place just to make sure that we can make up for some of that revenue loss if it were to happen."
Both candidates also sound off on a number of other issues, including how residents of Royal Palm Beach could be impacted by "Project Tango," a proposed 1.8 million square-foot AI data center that could be placed near the Arden community, outside the Village, but close enough to cause concerns.
Development within the village is also a key issue we discussed with the candidates for Group 1.
There is no race for Group 3 because Steve Avila withdrew his candidacy, leaving incumbent Councilmember Sylvia Sharps unopposed.
Mayor Jeff Hmara was also reelected unopposed.