The Palm Beach Post from West Palm Beach, Florida • Page 15

MONDAY, AUGUST 18, 1997 The Palm Beach Post SECTION LOCAL NEWS piipi 5B Truck tire debris irks 1-95 motorists See tire parts littering the highway? Whom motorists can call if they see a truck leave behind a shredded tire. PAGE 5B The rubber chunks are blamed for everything from marking up cars to killing people. By MATT REED Palm Beach Post Staff Writer Drive Interstate 95 often enough and you'll wind up dodging, bumping over or getting pelted by broken-off chunks of truck tire. The ugly pieces of black rubber, widely blamed on broken-down retreaded tires, dot the interstate like road kill from Jacksonville to Miami. cause they cost a fraction as much as new tires.

Is it time to ban retreads? Should truckers be punished for the mess? Not so fast, says Dave Drady, manager of Palm Beach Bandag Tires in Riviera Beach. Most of what drivers see on the side of the road comes from regular radial truck tires that go flat usually unbeknownst to truckers then shred and fly off. "When your car tire goes flat, you know it and stop," Drady said. "With a tractor-trailer, you've got a power unit 50 feet out in front of Please see TIRES5A "It's a hazard," said Robert Adler of Boynton Beach, who was riding with his wife when a whole tread peeled off a semi and smashed into the front of their car. "It's always out there, littering the highway." Wednesday night, a grandmother was killed and five passengers were critically injured south of Gateway Boulevard in Boynton Beach when the driver spotted a large tire tread in the lane, swerved to miss it and flipped their Isuzu Rodeo, troopers said.

Residents have complained about the debris for years, even as retreaded-tire manufacturers defend the safety and quality of their product. Truckers depend on retreads be rnrv rll I 1 1 rrnurm 4 LLU, New dorm rooms, a new beginning for Class of 2001 West Palm parks need millions, firm says A city bike path and 10 million in upgrades are recommended. By J0UNICE NEALY Palm Beach Post Staff Writer WEST PALM BEACH Officials should invest $10 million to upgrade 11 parks and should consider designing a bicycle path that loops through the city, according to a consulting firm that has formulated a recreation strategic plan. The city also should reserve a parcel of land near 45th Street and Haverhill Road for a future sports complex and reunite the parks and recreation departments that were separated a year ago, according to the report. The plan, the first comprehensive parks study of its kind for the city, will be presented to the mayor and city commission during a 5 p.m.

workshop today at city hall. Commissioners will have to decide how to pay for the upgrades. Officials have said, however, that the money is likely to come from the proceeds of land sales such as the recent $12.5 million sale of the Municipal Auditorium to the Jehovah's Witnesses. Representatives from Glatting Jackson Kercher Anglin Lopez Rinehart Inc. spent eight months analyzing 372 acres of city-owned parks after the city awarded the company a $75,000 contract.

The Orlando-based firm also interviewed city officials and community leaders and chatted with parents on park benches. The consultants found that, with few exceptions, the public parks were developed haphazardly and poorly maintained, the report said. "We knew the parks were not in good shape," said Laura Schuppert, the city's director of recreation. The study detailed a plan to improve the facilities, recommended standardizing park features such as signs, benches and trash cans and encouraged city officials to pursue more grants. Although her title does not include parks, Schuppert said there is no true separation.

The parks department was moved to the grounds maintenance division because workers there do the inspections and mow the lawns. But Schuppert still supervises the activities that take place there. The consultants suggested spending about $400,000 each on the Coleman, Fogelman, Nathaniel Does city have right to develop CityPlace? A judge will decide whether development rights can have a value. By JOEL ENGELHARDT Palm Beach Post Staff Writer WEST PALM BEACH For years, the issue has clouded the city's purchase of the former DowntownUptown land, putting taxpayers at risk beyond the $20 million already spent. The city could have asked a court to settle the issue long ago before it invested any money but it didn't, confident its legal arguments would win out.

Now it's judgment day. In a two-day trial starting today, Circuit Judge Edward Fine will decide whether a jury can put any value on development rights rights that can be owned independent of land in the former DowntownUptown project area. The city says absent a specific law allowing the transfers, they can't be separated from the land. But Palm Beach Gardens investor Bert Moerings, who controls most of DowntownUptown's 4 million square feet of development rights, says the city set up a law the project's zoning that allows the transfers. Moerings also claims the city took actions over the years to encourage his belief.

City officials, who paid Moerings $600,000 in 1994 to negotiate a legal settlement with the original DowntownUptown partners, says they never backed Moerings' view of development rights. Moerings claims he owns the rights to develop all 77 acres of DowntownUptown, the land near the Kravis Center now ticketed for the $375 million CityPlace development and a county convention center. Moerings received the rights between 1992 and 1994 as repayment on a $1.25 million loan. Moerings also owned 4.6 acres in DowntownUptown before the city took his land and his development rights in January in an earlier stage of the eminent domain lawsuit. Now Moerings and the owners of an additional 10 acres want to be paid.

But first the court must decide if a jury should add development rights into the equation when they determine the value of the land. In a trial that could require testimony from Mayor Nancy Graham, Fine will be asked whether Graham and city officials led Moerings to believe his development rights had value just to jump-start the CityPlace project then deny it later, when he asked to be paid for them. Moerings says the CityPlace project can't go forward without the development rights, making them worth millions. CityPlace plans to pay the city $20 million. But the city's deal Please see RIGHTS4B sir Please see PARKS35 A V.

Silver Beach Rd. wtw" 1 RIVIERA HMMtr I BEACH 30th BE3i Blue Heron Blvd. vfe-fi 12 Mile 7 rs STAFF GRAPHIC "A JEAN HART HOVWRDStaff Photographer BOCA RATON Florida Atlantic University freshman gency room just in case. It took Sara and her Sara Riddle of West Palm Beach looks out the win- family just two trips (top) to move her in. FAU's larg-dow of Timucua Hall with her brother, Paul, as their est-ever freshman class 1 ,300 strong arrived father points out the direction of the nearest emer- Sunday for a week of orientation.

STORY, 2B Riviera still at odds over black cemetery Officials have yet to give a Broward County developer the OK to build 10 homes on West 30th Street. By IAN TR0NTZ Palm Beach Post Staff Writer RIVIERA BEACH If Edith Bradberry could swear on her grandfather's grave, or even her nephew's or sister-in-law's grave, she could put this cemetery turmoil to rest. Bradberry, 76, doesn't recall exactly where in Sugar Hill Cemetery all of her relatives are buried. Nor can she say exactly where the cemetery ends at the last visible vault or further up West 30th Street, where a developer wants to build 10 houses. "I can't swear there's a body that far up if I can't find (my grandfather's) marker," she said.

A year and a half after Cedarbrook Development of Pompano Beach submitted its plans, the city council still has not voted on whether to approve the homes. In February 1996, several black residents protested on the grounds that the grounds contained human remains their parents, grandparents and other kin. "I'm sure they'd find a rotting box or something," said Beatrice Jones, 78, whose father, sister, brother-in-law and niece all were buried there. "I don't think the dead should be disturbed. They are not God.

Trapping raccoons poses cagey dilemma 3 years ago, when rabies was a bigger threat, laws were passed requiring trappers to humanely destroy coons. By THOMAS R. COLLINS Palm Beach Post Staff Writer The commission issued the order in 1994, when rabies levels in Martin County increased dramatically. In 1992, according to the Florida Department of Health, only two raccoons tested positive for rabies in Martin County. By 1994, the number shot up to 27.

In Palm Beach County, two tested positive in 1994. But in 1995, 14 tested positive. Current numbers show the problem is improving, Regan said, "but rabies is still here and we're picking up probably a coon every month in Martin and Palm Beach (counties)." Please see RACC00NS5ZJ i Illuminated by a garage lamp iiKe a critter on Broadway, a raccoon has provided familiar late-night entertain- ment for Bill Stevens. The suburban West Palm Beach tailed trash-pickers now face a difficult decision: Love 'em or kill 'em. The latter is fine with Stevens, who has tried to raccoon-proof his garbage can by clamping down the handles.

"If you trap 'em, get rid of 'em," he said. Not so fast, said Roxana Rigal of Haverhill. "I really love animals. So if I saw one I'd probably feed it." There is no confusion in the mind of Tim Regan, a wildlife biologist who works for the commission. His job, plain and simple, is to stop the spread of rabies.

handle to the end of the driveway. If a professional animal trapper had caught the critter, according to a little-known clause in trapper's permits, it would have to be killed, rather than released into the wild. And the Florida Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission, which issued the order in Palm Beach and Martin counties three years ago, plans to increase enforcement this year. Because of that rule, neighborhoods often visited by the cute, bushy- resident is used to being roused by the animal's scratching sound around 3 a.m. He once watched through the window as a raccoon, after trying unsuccessfully to get the prized leftovers jnside, dragged his parbage can by the Please see CEMETERY 1.