YD Review

Welcome to the new Palm Beach County Young Democrats blog!

This blog will be a space to keep you updated on local and state politics, elected officials, as well as national issues that we believe should be brought to attention.

Our 2018 year kicked off at our new meeting place in Northwood, Cafe Centro, with an exciting debate between three of the four District 2 Palm Beach County Commission candidates: Alex Garcia, Gregg Weiss, and Emmanuel Morel. (Sylvia Sharps will be speaking at our February meeting.) For those who were unable to make the lively debate, please see video for highlights.

Alex Garcia is a realtor who is dedicated to creating well paying jobs for postgraduates once they return from college, lowering taxes for the middle class residents of Palm Beach County and championing growth management as Palm Beach County develops. Alex will support growth management strategies that preserve open spaces, will make traffic and congestion more manageable, and exercise the most sustainable use of our natural resources.

Emmanuel Morel has spent his entire career dedicated to fair labor practices and and labor legislation. His plans include protecting and maintaining agricultural reserves, advocating for free college, banning the use of plastic in supermarkets, ending homelessness in Palm Beach County, ending wage theft, and fighting for a $15 minimum wage (which both contribute to the homeless problem that faces the county.)

Gregg Weiss has over 30 years of business experience overseeing sales, marketing and implementing best business strategies. He is a county activist and has been extremely involved in the West Palm Beach community. Gregg’s executive experience will give him valuable insight on managing the county budget and increasing government efficiency. He believes his history of mediation throughout his career would help bring the West Palm Beach City Commission and Palm Beach County Commission together. He also believes that by communicating and finding common ground, we can move forward in our goals as a county.

Quotes from the candidates:

“Things must change here. We can’t continue to live like this. I’m willing to take blows and I’m willing to take blows behalf of the poor people, our people who have 1 trillion dollars in student loans and nobody sees anything wrong with that.” --Emmanuel Morel

“I want to make sure when they (young students) come back here they have good high paying jobs--it’s great that there’s tourism, but I want to make sure that those tourism dollars are spent back into the county, back into the young people.”--Alex Garcia

“It was great to be alongside the Young Democrats for the first Palm Beach County Commission District 2 Debate. Tons of energy and lots of excitement about the future of our party. Palm Beach County is blessed to have some of the hardest working Young D’s in the state." --Gregg Weiss

We would like to thank Alex, Gregg, and Emmanuel for participating in our debate, and we look forward to a thrilling August 2018 primary! If you would like to get involved with a particular campaign, see below:

https://www.votegreggweiss.com/volunteer/

http://www.votemorel.com/volunteer

https://www.electalexgarcia.com/volunteer.html

http://www.sylviasharps.com/volunteer

The traditionally nonpolitical Palm Beach County Soil & Water Conservation District (SWCD) recently became much better known after November’s contentious Board of Supervisors election. The friction erupted over the SWCD’s Mobile Irrigation Lab.

The lab is a free, consultative service offered to local growers. Paid for through the state Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, the lab provides technical analysis and recommendations to farms and nurseries regarding irrigation water management and efficiency. For the past 12 years, the lab has been conserving hundreds of millions of gallons of water per year in Palm Beach County, saving growers thousands of dollars and drastically reducing water usage estimates.

So far this year, the Mobile Irrigation Lab has documented actual savings of 78 million gallons from its over 100 visits to farmers and growers, with the potential to save over 150 million gallons by the end of the year. This conservation has a significant beneficial impact on irrigation runoff, water purity and utility pricing for county citizens.

Recently, the lab came under fire from several of the same SWCD supervisors elected to promote conservationism in our county. These supervisors want to privatize the “free” lab program, which would not only make these services unavailable to many small farms and nurseries but could also result in the loss of local SWCD jobs.

Fortunately, the Mobile Irrigation Lab program was recently rescued by a narrow vote margin and will remain a functional water and money-saving program for county residents, at least for now. However, instead of forcing the majority of the supervisors to spend valuable time justifying programs like the lab, which has consistently demonstrated quantifiable results, all SWCD supervisors should be seeking the money to institute other constructive programs, like the defunded Urban Mobile Irrigation Lab. That lab program used to bring the same preservation applications rendered by the agriculture-focused Mobile Irrigation Lab to residential irrigation systems, and consequently offered even more direct benefit to county residents.

It is important to know who the county’s SWCD supervisors are, and who is running to replace them. The SWCD deserves leaders who will fight to leverage this community’s resources to appropriately serve the needs of county residents.

ROB LONG, DELRAY BEACH

Editor’s note: Rob Long is a member of the Palm Beach County Soil & Water Conservation District’s Board of Supervisors.

Original post here.