Delray Beach joins financial literacy campaign
Consumer Credit Management Services execs John Gormley III, Maria Gaitan and Bill Wood hold up a poster drawn by a Village Academy student in support of next month's financial literacy campaign.
By David Sedore, Palm Beach Business.com
DELRAY BEACH — Delray Beach city commissioners have agreed to support a financial literacy program and contest that is to be conducted by Consumer Credit Management Services, a nonprofit consumer counseling agency in Delray Beach.
Under terms discussed at Tuesday’s commission workshop meeting, the city will lend its name to the contest as a sponsor, and will help publicize it. CCMS is not asking the city to contribute financially to the campaign.
The contest is to begin in April in conjunction with financial literacy month.
CCMS CEO John C. Gormley III told commissioners that the contest is part of a year-long effort to educate the public on financial issues such as budgeting, how to buy a home and how to avoid foreclosure. Events will be held throughout the year and throughout Delray Beach.
The contest will be geared toward improving savings of the participants, who will receive individual counseling, while reducing debt, and also improving credit scores. The contest will be structured so that participants are on even playing field no matter their incomes.
“About 25 percent of the people in a given areas are in trouble financially and have housing issues,” Gormley said. “It has become an issue, obviously. We’re at a point where we want to help people turn the tables. We want to do something positive despite the economy.”
Also on hand for Tuesday’s meeting: Maria Gaitan, CCMS’s vice president and chief financial officer, and Bill Wood, development coordinator for the nonprofit and former president of the Delray Beach Chamber of Commerce.
In other matters, commissioners agreed to have staff draft an ordinance that would set ground rules for community gardens on vacant lots in the city.
There are several in the city already, including one in the city’s southwest neighborhood and one proposed in the Southridge area.
The rules are intended to encourage organic gardening and a diversity of crops. Work on the gardens would be limited to daylight hours and the land would not be eligible for an agricultural tax exemption.
Sites would be between 7,500 and 9,000 square feet; fencing or hedges would be required and parking and tires would be prohibited.
Commissioners received an update on work of the group formerly known as the Green Task Force, now known as the Green Implementation Advancement Board. Among the proposals it has made: changing city regulations to allow “urban farming” in certain neighborhoods, define green jobs and conducted a green jobs summit; have FPL conduct an energy audit on the city, which already had been done.
Among tangible changes it has helped put in place: Changing the lighting at Pompey Park’s athletic fields to make it more energy efficient. That’s being done with federal stimulus funds. Retrofitting the police department to make it more energy efficient. It’s working with a private firm to have five electric-car charging stations installed within the downtown at no cost to the city and have a private firm bring a public bike sharing program to Delray Beach.
The board also has implemented a “double review” system for the recommendations it makes to the city that takes financial considerations — how much will they cost, if and how much they will save the city and over how much time — and any benefits in terms of the environment and quality of life.
