New Substation

Budget uncertainties delay new substation for Palm Beach County sheriff

By Mike Rothman
Forum Publishing Group
Posted June 11 2007


Budget uncertainties have postponed a plan to open a district station for the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office west of Boynton Beach by the end of the summer.

"With the budget situation, we are sort of in a holding pattern right now," sheriff's spokesman Paul Miller said.



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The department's $400 million budget is to be discussed at a county budget workshop Tuesday, Miller said.

"It is going to happen; it is just a matter of when," he said. "We just don't have a firm date."

The station, which will serve the new District 6, will cover Lantana Road to north of Flavor Pict Road. It will be headquartered on the southwest corner of the Park Vista High School campus at 7900 Jog Road at Northtree Boulevard.

Maj. Alfred Musco, commanding officer for Districts 4, 6 and 7, said the department had planned to open the station in June, but minor adjustments pushed the date back to late July.

Now, Miller said, the opening could take a few more months.

The new, 15,000-square-foot station will serve more than 100,000 residents, who will have a police captain and officers specific to the community, Musco said. An additional 20 patrol officers have been authorized, and Musco has requested one or two more detectives.

The rest of the personnel in that station would be decided once the realignment of people is completed in the department, Miller said. The budget also limits the number of extra personnel available for a new station.

The station will have parking fenced off from the high school. There were concerns about the station being a full-service facility, which would mean there will be a gasoline pump on the high school campus. But Larry Clawson, vice principal at Park Vista, said he doesn't think the fuel tank will have an effect on the school.

"The architects have done their research. I don't think it will be a problem. I actually think the new station will be a positive thing," he said.

Clawson said people would be less likely to trespass on campus at night or cause damage.

Plans call for the Sheriff's Office District 4, which covers 98 squares miles, to be cut in half at the end of July along the L-30 Canal, Capt. Martin Bechtel, the District 4 commander, said previously.

The district covers the area from Lantana Road south to Clint Moore Road.

"District 6 will become the north end of District 4," he said. "District 6 will cover from Lantana Road to just north of Flavor Pict Road. District 4 will then be reduced in size and cover from there to Clint Moore Road."

The new district was created to make the county law-enforcement officers more accessible and reduce response time.

"We are looking to downsize and bring policing to address the smaller communities and their needs," Musco said.

The Coalition of Boynton West Residential Associations has been instrumental in the creation of the new station, he said.

"Everybody is going to feel better with this new presence in the community," said Sandy Fagien Parker, COBWRA vice president. "This is a welcome addition."

Parker said residents west of Boynton Beach did not feel like they are a priority, and response time to a break-in or other calls was too long.

Bechtel said the location of the new station would eliminate the need for a 10-minute drive to respond to a call.

The District 4 station is at 345 S. Congress Ave. in Delray Beach.

Plans for sheriff stations west of Delray Beach, Boynton Beach change


Decisions for two areas refigured in budget cutting

By Maria Herrera
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Posted June 23 2007


The Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office recently decided not to move one substation and not to open another in communities west of Delray Beach and Boynton Beach.

The decisions have residents upset over what they say are broken promises.



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"We're not happy about it," said Alliance of Residential Associations President Bob Schulbaum. "They said they would use it for other services."

Looming budget cuts forced the Sheriff's Office to halt projects until it figures out what it can afford, officials said.

"We have to review the sheriff's resources and manpower availability," said Sheriff's Office spokesman Pete Palenzuela. "District 4 will continue to provide services to West Boynton and West Delray."

District 4 covers nearly 100 square miles along the L-30 canal. The original plan called for cutting the district in half.

District 4's substation would have moved to the 7000 block of West Atlantic Avenue, where the West Atlantic library branch now stands. District 6 would have been housed in a new substation in the 7900 block of Jog Road.

Now District 4 will stay put. Palm Beach County was supposed to renovate the building for the Sheriff's Office use. But county administrators recommended changes to the capital budget that didn't include the $2.4 million needed for the renovation.

Schulbaum said the community is disappointed because they had heard of plans to move District's 4 station for years. Schulbaum said the station would have brought a police presence to the area and would have placed deputies closer to their patrol areas.

"It's a strange place for the captain and his staff to be sitting at," Schulbaum said of the station's current location. "The high visibility of patrolmen would have been enough to make this area secure."

But Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said residents won't feel the effect of the cuts when it comes to their safety. Rather than adding deputies to the two areas, the substations would have brought deputies closer.

"It would have made it easy, deployment-wise, to have those substations open in a timely fashion." Bradshaw said. "But they are not going to see any fewer deputies than they saw before."

The new 15,000-square-foot District 6 station, west of Boynton Beach near Park Vista High School, would have served more than 100,000 residents. It was scheduled to open in July but will remain closed indefinitely, Palenzuela said.

Community leaders there also expressed concern.

"This was something we were counting on," said Sandy Parker, vice president of the Coalition of Boynton West Residential Associations. "They were setting up a new district and it would have given us better coverage."

Bradshaw said he is still trying to figure out a way to reallocate some of his resources to open the Park Vista station as soon as possible.

County Commissioner Burt Aaronson said the changes were not "cast in stone."

Cuts to capital improvements are still being studied, and until the budget season ends, he couldn't say whether the changes would stick.

"We have to make some cuts, but it's not going to impact the service we've been getting all these years," Aaronson said. "And we've been getting great service."