A Boynton Beach neighborhood is concerned after at least one city official who supported a planned police training center near the community asked for messages between them and their city commissioner after they fought it.
The city clerk's office received two requests on Aug. 7 from City Commissioner Thomas Turkin. He asked for all emails and text messages between City Commissioner Angela Cruz and Golf View Harbour residents about the project, which would stand across the E-4 canal from their neighborhood.
Turkin also asked for messages between Cruz and news reporters covering the shooting range and training complex, whose development city commissioners voted on Aug. 11 to pause.
Boynton residents cry foul at requests for their emails on police complex
Cruz informed residents of Golf View, which is in her district, when
she learned of the requests.
"I have an extreme concern that an effort is coming from members of your city staff to intimidate people in the neighborhood and our city commissioner," Golf View resident Stacey DeLoye told the commission at a public meeting on Aug. 11. The requests for those communications, she said, "feels like harassment and intimidation."
The request asking for communications between Cruz and residents specifically named Susan Geery, a Golf View resident outspoken in her opposition to the plan to build the police training complex on about 8 acres of forest.
"I was surprised and concerned to learn that my name had become the subject of a public records request involving my communications with an elected official," Geery said.
"Residents should feel comfortable communicating with their elected representatives and participating in their local government without feeling that doing so will subject them to unnecessary scrutiny."
Turkin, who does not usually file these kinds of records requests, defended his actions.
"I’ve filed various requests on a range of issues over the years when public interests warrants it," he told The Palm Beach Post. "This proposal drew significant resident concern. It’s about accountability and transparency on the issue, not the person."
Commissioners, including Cruz, unanimously agreed in June to spend up to $478,000 to survey, design and draft cost estimates for building the training center, which would have included a 12-lane shooting range.
Golf View sits on the west side of the canal between Interstate 95 and Congress Avenue, south of Southwest 23rd Avenue. The complex would have sat on the east side of the canal.
But after weeks of residents voicing opposition to the complex, including at an Aug. 6 town hall meeting in Golf View that Cruz hosted, commissioners unanimously agreed Aug. 11 to discuss other uses for the slice of forest. Those discussions are scheduled for Sept. 1.
Proposed Boynton police complex site was gift to city from FPL
City officials had also told Cruz that the land, gifted to the city decades ago by Florida Power & Light Co., came with rules banning permanent buildings on about 4 of the acres. FPL found that the only types of developments permitted there include a nature preserve, walking or biking trails or parking, Cruz has said.
The city owns the wooded land. FPL operates a substation on its north end.
Boynton Beach Police Department's current firing range, shared with a fire station on Congress Avenue, is 50 years old and dilapidated, Cruz has said. The department also has no dedicated facility for real-life scenario training, which the new facility would have included.
Golf View residents have said they do not oppose building a new police training center, but they do not want it near their neighborhood.
Email news tips and article ideas to Chris Persaud at cpersaud@pbpost.com.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Boynton official requests residents' emails in shooting range dispute
