West Palm Beach, FL - Police radio meeting ends in fireworks

[ScanWI]

West Palm Beach, FL - Mayor Jeri Muoio, who for two years has said she wants West Palm Beach to go on its own radio system and not remain with the consortium of cities and towns that runs the OpenSky radio system, said she favors this new proposal: West Palm Beach would remain with the consortium but run its own more advanced P25 system while the rest of the cities in the consortium run OpenSky.

Police radio meeting ends in fireworks | West Palm Beat blog | The Palm Beach Post

 

[rapidcharger]

Bear in mind, all this is happening in a city that is only 16 square miles in size, a population of a hair over 100,000 and nearly 20% of that are below the poverty level.

 

[loumaag]

Bear in mind, all this is happening in a city that is only 16 square miles in size, a population of a hair over 100,000 and nearly 20% of that are below the poverty level.

Actually the city is over 55 Sq Mi in size and in addition to the core city, the city services (public safety and utilities) cover much of communities in east Palm Beach county that do not fall within the actual bounds of West Palm beach. This means that the radio system under discussion in the article would be used by those agencies that serve a population base of just over 1.2 million.

 

[rapidcharger]

Actually the city is over 55 Sq Mi in size and in addition to the core city, the city services (public safety and utilities) cover much of communities in east Palm Beach county that do not fall within the actual bounds of West Palm beach. This means that the radio system under discussion in the article would be used by those agencies that serve a population base of just over 1.2 million.

People often confuse the city of WPB with palm beach county and also the city of palm beach which are separate entities.
The county has a population of ~1.2 million but I am not aware of the city of WPB providing services outside of their city. And yes they annexed some land for a water catchment area with hardly any inhabitants (3 subdivisions).

I would like to correct you but I never argue with mods.
What a dilemma.

 

[N4DES]

Actually the city is over 55 Sq Mi in size and in addition to the core city, the city services (public safety and utilities) cover much of communities in east Palm Beach county that do not fall within the actual bounds of West Palm beach. This means that the radio system under discussion in the article would be used by those agencies that serve a population base of just over 1.2 million.

Actually the city provies very little services outside it's geographical boundaries and in many locations service,s like water & sewage, are still provided by the County and it has a population of just over 100K.

The city of west palm is dwarfed by the county that is approximately 2400 square miles and has an approximate population of 1.3 million and is served by the County TRS.

#15 is the city of west palm beach

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_Beach_County,_Florida

 

[rapidcharger]

It's an easy mistake to make.
Especially when there's multiple cities with confusingly similar names.

The county is called "palm beach" but palm beach is that tiny blue sliver (#1 on the map - pop. 8445), meanwhile unincorporated areas in the county usually have a "west palm beach" mailing address even though WPB is not the most populous nor the closest city to where they may live. And chances are if someone lives in Boca Raton (#37 way down in the lower right corner) and they travel to Texas and someone asks "Where y'all from?" chances are they will reply "West palm beach, florida".

If that's not confusing enough, there's also North palm beach, Royal palm beach, palm beach gardens, and palm beach lakes. Residents of those cities will say they live in "West Palm" when they don't but they'll never say they live in "Palm Beach" even though technically that would make more sense. It's the opposite here in Atlanta, people usually say they live in {county name} and not the county seat.

 

[N4DES]

With 38 municipalites that all have "local control", things can get confusing very quickly. There are, what I call wanna-be cities, like Wellington, Loxahatchee Groves, Hypoluxo, Haverhill, Cloud Lake, Village of Golf, and Gulfstream that all get their public safety and other services like building and code enforcement services from the County and pay out the nose for it. They are only in name and the residents in most cases would pay less in taxes if they were unincorporated and would have the same identical services from the Sheriff and Fire Rescue.

There has been a lot of talk about the abolishment of the 3 cities in the Glades as they have a zero tax base and can barely pay their bills to the Sheriff and Fire Rescue which has been in the paper numerous times.

 

[rapidcharger]

Yeah I came very close to buying a house in the Acreage prior to the bubble, which I guess is now Loxahatchee Groves.
If I did and it incorporated right after that, I would have pood bricks.

What is the point of that? People move to that area to get away from city services not to mention the waste, fraud, abuse and corruption on a micro scale. I could see who was buying in there and building McMansions. It really comes as no surprise.

 

[N4DES]

There is still many areas in the Acreage that are not in the Groves. One thing that did was to stop Royal Palm Beach from marching west. Not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing.

 

[loumaag]

Actually the city provies very little services outside it's geographical boundaries and in many locations service,s like water & sewage, are still provided by the County and it has a population of just over 100K.

Yes, I probably did some assuming in reference to the services, as I relied on a WIkipedia article for that statement which can be found here.

The city of west palm is dwarfed by the county that is approximately 2400 square miles and has an approximate population of 1.3 million and is served by the County TRS.

While I realized that the county is much larger than the city of WPB, that doesn't change the fact that WPB is the largest city in the county both in area and population. Just considering actual land, the county is a shade under 2000 Sq Mi and the city of WPB (as I previously said) is 55.29 sq mi actual land area (58.2 sq mi total). That is just under 3% of the total land area of the county and the city's population accounts for about 7.5% of the entire county. Since it is county seat and a major employment center we can assume the transient daily population accounts for more than the actual population of the city, although to what extent I cannot say. But I can say that, those folks impact the services provided by the city. Much like here where I live. The city of Houston TX has only a bit over 2 million actual residents, but the MSA of 6 million certainly impacts the city services provided.

It's an easy mistake to make.
Especially when there's multiple cities with confusingly similar names...

Indeed it is, which why I am guessing the 18 sq mi number you came up with earlier is something else.

 

[rapidcharger]

Indeed it is, which why I am guessing the 18 sq mi number you came up with earlier is something else.

I didn't include the water catchment area which you can can clearly see on google maps is a grassy wetland. It can be thought of more like a body of water which isn't normally counted in land area.

 

[loumaag]

I didn't include the water catchment area which you can can clearly see on google maps is a grassy wetland. It can be thought of more like a body of water which isn't normally counted in land area.

Ah, okay. I was just using the Official US Census data, which apparently does count it.

 

[rapidcharger]

Ah, okay. I was just using the Official US Census data, which apparently does count it.

Probably due to the large number of alligators that filled out the census.