Public Safety Committee - Regular Meeting

Alright. Good afternoon. It is Wednesday, March 11 at 04:00. I'd like to call to order the Village of Wellington Public Safety Committee meeting. Will you please stand for the pledge of allegiance?

Pledge allegiance to the flag of

The United States Of America

and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under

God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

I think we'll run down the roll call. I'm Michael Weil. Helena Mines is not here. Ryan McCarthy? Present. Matthew Ladd? Present. Ron Herman?

Present.

And Robert Chenoweth and Matthew Aldridge are not here. Perfect. Before we get started, I'd like to take a moment of silence for our fellow Public Safety Committee Board member, Chief Arena, who passed away on 11/03/2025. Chief Arena began his career with the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Rescue in October 1986, and faithfully served our community until his retirement in 2017. He continued his dedication and service as a member of the Village of Wellington's Public Safety Committee since 2019.

In addition to his extensive contributions, leadership, and service to residents in Palm Beach County and Wellington, Chief Aurigna was a military veteran who served in the United States Coast Guard Reserve. Even in passing, he continued his lifelong commitment to helping others through the gift of organization. Please join me in a moment of silence. Thank you. And it's my pleasure to welcome our new appointee, Ryan McCarthy, to the Public Safety Meeting. Committed.

Thank you.

Alright. Does anyone have any opening comments? Have you all had a chance to review the agenda? Can I get a motion to approve the agenda? Motion to approve. Second. Second. All in favor?

Aye. Fantastic.

And the same for the approval of the minutes of the last meeting. Motion approved. Second? I second. All in favor?

Aye.

That's good stuff. Okay. Any old business to bring up? Alright. Then we are already at the Palm Beach County Fire Rescue Report, who is not currently here. So the sheriff ops, you're up.

First, I just wanna introduce myself. The new executive officer for District 8, which is represents the village of Wellington. Prior to receiving this position, I was a watch commander lieutenant on the operational side. I spent the past eight years in the Western Region. So I'm highly familiar with Wellington and the Western Region.

A lot of those shifts were at midnight. So I know what's going on after hours. And so if you have any questions on that later on, you know, feel free to ask because I have a lot of information on that. On that note, lieutenant Lavinia, he had planned to have the bomb unit out here for you all. And they were gonna have the the robotic dog. But I just found out last minute that they had to cancel. So I'm going to reschedule for the next committee meeting, if that's okay. Okay? Just wanted to go over some brief stats. I don't have a PowerPoint point because I've only been here for two weeks.

So like I said, they just told me I was going to have to represent them. And when the bomb unit fell through and last minute. So here I am. But just wanted to go over a couple of things that we've been doing since the beginning of the year. We've been running a couple operations.

A lot of it has been geared towards traffic because traffic seems to be our number one complaint. The we had a traffic initiative recently in February for Pearson at one hundred and twentieth. And I'll just read over the some of the stats that we had on that. Total of, 29 stops, 14 citations, and 17 warnings. And basically, what we were told, one of the complaints was that there was illegal passing, speeding, and so forth like that.

And if you're familiar with Pearson 120th, it's really not the type of roadways that you want to have vehicles going and passing because there are the there's a lot of horses and other type of vehicular traffic that obviously if somebody was passing and caused a head on collision or something like that, that would be something not too well. So with that, we had our traffic unit out there. We also did a Brunello safety operation. Let's see if I have the stats on that one. That was was a traffic enforcement focused on, again, speeding, reckless driving, hands free driving, texting while driving, improper passing, modified exhaust.

They didn't include the actual stats on that one. But I do know that they the traffic unit had another initiative that was going on through November through February, and it resulted in 10 DUI arrest. So that's pretty good. I know there's an issue out here with DUIs. Let's see what else do we have.

Our street team recently paired up with Florida Department of Corrections and the probation office. They did some spot checks on those individuals, resulted in five felony arrests and two additional felony filing packets for a total of seven felonies. One of them were was a a gang member, a CMF gang member, and the other was a sexual predator. 175 grams of marijuana was also seized. And do you guys have any questions for me? I don't know.

No

question questions? Got it about the mechanical dog.

Yeah. Next time, I'll I'll make sure

that That's alright.

We're through on that.

I think

they got real They're probably a little a little bit more exciting than listening to it.

Alright. Staff report.

Alright. And just to kinda piggyback off the lieutenant, during spring break, as we know is coming up, they are gonna be doing a, Moto Madness, ebike enforcement operation because we know, that might ramp up a bit, as we deal with those issues here in the village. If there's anything else you wanted to mention?

No. That's gonna run starting this Saturday through the following Saturday for spring break. And I guess there's been some issues with the illegal moto electric bicycles type vehicles and so forth. So it's gonna be a joint venture between our community policing, street team, and our traffic unit. So we're gonna have units out during the day and night to try to get the the mass coverage.

So, yeah. We did a the first day went out in January and February, and they did like an educational. So they went out and did a lot of warnings and so forth and trying to educate the youth that are and their parents, if they can get a hold of them, that the things that these individuals are doing is illegal and dangerous. So now we're going to go out and do some enforcement.

We always encourage if anybody that's out there listening, if you see anything, you can always call the non emergency PBSO number, which is (561) 688-3400. Or obviously, if it's an emergency, dial 911. But and they'll have an officer dispatched. So on to the staff report. We have a couple events coming up. I'll go through it in order, with PBSO. They'll be doing their coffee with a deputy a deputy converse no, I'm sorry. Conversation with a deputy, at Foxtail Coffee. That's gonna be on April 8 at 07:30 a. To 10:30 a.

M. So it's a good opportunity for residents to engage with, law enforcement if there's any issues in a more casual setting. Those have been pretty successful here in the village. And then we're also gonna be doing a neighborhood unity event. It's kind of a newer event we're doing in some of our multifamily areas with some engagement with PBSO, code enforcement, we'll have animal care and control. So we're kind of bringing services out to residents based on maybe upticks in certain complaints. And that's going to happen April 11 in the Goldenrod community from around eleven to two. So if you're interested, you're welcome to join. We also are getting ready for hurricane season. We're starting all of our preparedness measures.

You're gonna see messaging going out on that on our social media and communication channels. And then we're gonna be hosting a hurricane expo May 2 at the Wellington Green Mall. We'll have vendors there. So we're doing a joint partnership with the Wellington Green Mall. And we're hoping to have a big guest speaker there, but I don't have it confirmed yet, but might be a weather personality that people would like to come and check out.

Vanilla Ice.

Not Vanilla Ice. We are working on that. But hopefully we can secure that and I can get you more information in a flyer. With that, I did just as a little housekeeping measure, as we know we recently went through the election And what that means is that our committees are on two year terms and we'll go through that reappointment process. The village clerk will be reaching out to you all if you're interested in serving again.

And we appreciate the service you've provided here to the village. And those appointments, as you get your paperwork in, will be officially selected in May, which would take us then to our next meeting here at the Public Safety would be June 11 I'm sorry, June 10 at 4PM. And that rounds out my updates. If there's any questions for me, I'll be happy to take them.

I have a question back to I mean, might be for staff or for law enforcement. We haven't had a meeting, I think, since the pool opened up at Village Park. Any complaints or positive information, I mean, far as any law enforcement issues? Any small, you know, petty crimes or anything? Or is that place pretty safe and secure? And just generally, any feedback from the community at this point?

I could take on the general if you want Sure. Take on the So just generally, yes, it opened in January. So it's still going through its new phases here. And I do anticipate the participation there is going to uptick with the nicer weather. Well, next week it'll be a little bit cooler. But, yeah, we're we're seeing as far as parking. There's some rough start with the parking challenges there, but I think we've got a plan for that. I'm hearing good things. I think there might have been an incident or two with the Wellington Sports Academy, not necessarily the pool. But I think those are juvenile related, typically Sure.

juvenile, maybe valuables in a vehicle type situation.

That's kind of what I was asking. Mean, people like leaving stuff at the pool and saying, where's my wallet? Where's my watch? Or is that not really happening?

I haven't heard that at the pool.

Okay, good.

I haven't heard that at the pool, no.

Okay, thank you.

And then I'm hearing a lot of positive feedback from those that do go to the pool. Beautiful.

That second course is hard though. The higher one is very difficult. The first one you can do no problem, but the higher one is very difficult.

I will let them know. Maybe they need to bring that down a level. But other than that, I think it's been pretty successful so far.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah. And for PBS, so we haven't had any incidents over there that I can recall. I know larceny is down right now. It's down from last year's, so that's a good thing. But, you know, with any type of parks that you have, I mean, throughout the county, it's a target when you have mass vehicles parked. So, you know, it's something we want to keep our eye on.

I guess separately too, is is the education and enforcement on on the golf carts handled a little differently than it is on on the e bikes around here? Because they seem to, I guess, present their own unique issues. So

Well, I mean, I think we always do. If we do a traffic initiative, we always like to do an educational operation first. And especially if it's something a law that or ordinance or something that is not well known, and we just don't wanna surprise, you know, the citizens, you know, start writing tickets and so forth like that. So we'll we'll give them a warning and then educate them on that. And then same thing with the motorbikes. Even if it's a traffic violation that, you know, that has passed recently and so forth like that, we'll educate before we start doing enforcement with citations.

And just to kind of further that a bit, with the golf carts per the state law, it allows us a little more, I would say, on the enforcement side on the age. With the e bikes, they just the state law currently, and I I hope it falls in line with what happened with the golf carts, where they said you have to have a learner's permit or a driver's license. Which would really mean that that you to be eligible for that, technically, you would be 15 or 16. 16. But if you don't have that and you're 18, still have to have that to lawfully be operating on our pathways in a golf cart scenario.

On the e bikes, the state law just states that you have to have a valid government ID, which last time we checked, that could be that could be a 10 year old, an eight year old. So could we impose an age limitation? I think we have that ability. We just haven't we have an ordinance drafted, but we're we just have not had that yet. And then on the eMotos itself, that is prohibited.

That's illegal. So the different classifications of e bikes and then there's eMoto, which they all kinda look similar, but you could tell an e moto from an e bike because there's no pedals. So we're looking at those e bike ordinances and we're we're tracking what others are doing to see what's best for the village. Because I think town of Palm Beach completely prohibited e bikes. And I don't know if that's the solution for the village of Wellington, but I do hope that we could see something from the state that would make it more uniform, like an age requirement would be be great.

And then we can fall in line, like you said Ryan, to a more uniform approach like golf carts.

Thank you. Any public comments? I got really excited when there are two cards here, I think they're left over from the last

meeting. All

right. Any closing comments?

No. All right.

Personally, I'd like to thank you both and everyone for your service. I've been on this committee now for eight years in different roles, and all because I said yes to somebody once. So, yeah, you you do better things when you just randomly say yes to people. But I I thank you all very much. Anything? Nothing. Thank you. Alright. In that case, we are adjourned. Okay. Thank you. Still wanna count.