Email Chris Persaud at cpersaud@pbpost.com if you have more information on this issue or others.
BOYNTON BEACH — City officials have, for now, holstered plans for a police shooting range and training complex in a patch of forest following opposition from the quiet neighborhood across the canal from where the complex would be.
City Commissioner Angela Cruz broke the news on Aug. 6 to a gathering of about 100 Golf View Harbour residents. Their neighborhood sits on the west side of the E-4 canal and between Interstate 95 and Congress Avenue, south of Southwest 23rd Avenue — an area in Cruz’s district.
In June, Cruz and the commission voted to spend up to about $478,000 to survey, design and draft cost estimates to build the facility on a nearly eight-acre slice of forest next to the train tracks west of I-95, across the E-4 canal from Golf View.
Plans for the new complex include a 12-lane shooting range, a training area for police and a garage for their vehicles. The police department’s current firing range, shared with a fire station on Congress Avenue, is 50 years old and dilapidated, Cruz said. The department also has no dedicated facility for real-life scenario training, a presentation pitching the complex shows.
“I completely support our police department,” Golf View resident Tony Cenkar said Thursday, “But I want them to build their gun range somewhere else.”
A deluge of messages in July from residents opposed to the noise and traffic they believe the project will bring, along with destruction of peaceful wilderness they hold dear, led Cruz and other city officials to pump the brakes on the project, the city commissioner said.
Cruz and city officials found that the wooded land, which Florida Power & Light donated to the city decades ago, came with rules banning permanent buildings on about four acres of the parcel. FPL found that the only types of developments permitted on those four acres include a nature preserve, walking or biking trails or parking, Cruz said.
Pausing the project is just that — it’s not permanent, Cruz said. She plans to do something at the Tuesday, Aug. 11 commission meeting, she said, but would not reveal details. “I don’t say my moves, I just make them,” she said.
Meanwhile, Golf View residents encouraged their neighbors to attend the meeting 6 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 11 to voice their concerns and complaints about the gun range and training facility.
When residents asked Cruz why she voted to move forward on the project in the first place, she said that there seemed to be no major issues with the proposal as municipal staff had recommended it to her and her fellow elected officials.
During the early months of each year, city commissioners have hundreds of pages of items to discuss and consider, Cruz said, and it is a part-time position where its elected members usually have full-time jobs.
As an elected official, Cruz said, “You’re not a lawyer, an architect or engineer. … At some point, you have to be able to rely on your staff.”
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Neighborhood opposition pauses plans for Boynton police shooting range
Reporting by Chris Persaud, Palm Beach Post / Palm Beach Post
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Chris Persaud, Palm Beach Post | USA TODAY Network
