ICYMI, during Mayor Scott Singer’s two mayoral terms, our City Hall campus has been allowed to deteriorate where its condition is used to argue the whole campus must be bulldozed and rebuilt. Instead of maintaining and updating our city hall campus, the Mayor has pushed and led the project to allow developers to build high-rise apartments, office buildings, a hotel, and maybe even condos on 31 acres of public land downtown in exchange for a new city “Government Campus”. This looks like it was the plan all along as Boca Raton kept taxes for large landowners low and now apparently has no “bank” to renovate City Hall.
If you get a text survey from Jonathan at Boca Insights, it’s a dirty Boca politics scam. It’s not from Jon at SaveBoca.org. It’s someone posing as him. Click here to see the survey.
On top of the public land give away, the Mayor’s plan includes massive and wasteful expenditures to relocate the Downtown Police Station to the Spanish River Library area so developers have more room for downtown commercial buildings. And, the plan also includes paying to rent large quantities of office space to temporarily house city employees over the life of the 10 year project.
Long time Boca residents have seen this movie before. Former Mayor Susan Haynie and council tried to do the same thing with the City owned Wildflower property. Residents fought that with a petition for a referendum and won. And that is why we have a Wildflower Park instead of a city subsidized restaurant for elites.
Memorial Park, with its tennis center, ball fields, playground and community center have been the center of East Boca’s public recreation for Boca Raton since WWII.
Now, in 2025, the outrage is being organized by Jonathan Pearlman at SaveBoca.org. More on that later, but here’s a sample of how dirty Boca Politics are. Someone has hired an online survey service to send text surveys from “Jonathan at Boca Insights” to Boca Residents gathering input on how people feel about the Mayor’s Government Center plan, each council member and (oddly) President Trump. I asked Jon at SaveBoca about it and he says it’s not SaveBoca.org.
If you get a text survey from Jonathan at Boca Insights, it’s a dirty Boca politics scam. It’s not from Jonathan at SaveBoca.org. It’s someone posing as him. Click here to see the survey.
Residents rise to the occasion. Again.
It is beyond absurd that Boca’s wonderful downtown Memorial Park recreational facilities are being given away. Boca’s Mayor and City Council would have everyone driving 10 miles to other facilities on Yamato Rd or out west to Sugar Sand Park. But Boca Residents are rising to the occasion. Don’t be surprised to see new faces standing up to take office and take our city back. The fight to save the 31 acres of Memorial Park is coordinated by a group at SaveBoca.org. See their website for details on when and where you can sign the petition that will force Mayor Singer and the city council to put the project up for a vote by Boca Residents.
History Matters
In 1947, two years after World War II ended, towns everywhere sought to honor their dead and memorialize the victory. Then Boca Raton Mayor J.C. Mitchell and the town council passed a resolution to create a recreational park designated MEMORIAL PARK. It further authorized a recreational building to be designed and erected as WAR MEMORIAL.
Memorial Park, with its tennis center, ball fields, playground and community center have been the center of East Boca’s public recreation for Boca Raton since WWII. Mayor Singer’s project is an attempt to wipe it from the map. It is now argued that it isn’t a park at all. Below is the 1947 resolution and the current day War Memorial monument.
And, as documented by the November 7 1963 issue of Boca News, Memorial Park was named as the location for the ground breaking ceremony of what is now City Hall.
Are you mad yet?
You should at least be aggravated that elected officials would dare to give away so much public land to developers without a public vote. Unfortunately, like the Wildflower, good governance of Boca Raton once again falls on the shoulders of residents. It isn’t convenient. You’ll need to do a little work to make your voice heard in a legally binding petition and then vote on election day. Boca residents must act now to save Boca.
For background on how residents slapped down Mayor Singer’s previous attempt to extend his term and details on current efforts to give away public lands for the government center, see our article “The problem with Boca’s Government Campus.” and “EVALUATION: The Government Campus Proposals.“
