
Name: Reinaldo Diaz Campaign website: diaz4lwb.com Date, place of birth: Dec. 11, 1983, Boynton Beach Florida’s auditor general says the city has not complied with a law requiring audited financial statements since about 2022, and has failed to provide final or audited statements on municipal bonds, which prompted Moody’s rating service to withdraw any rating from the city’s $88 million utility bond issue from 2020.
How will you address this failure to adhere to state law and the accompanying lapse in sound financial reporting? Those claims are false. Our Public Information Officer has or will be sharing with you the documentation and communications with the state proving otherwise. And when you sign onto Moody’s our rating is unaffected.
However, your question is still very valid. It highlights something that has been one of the most challenging aspects of this job, organizational structure. When I started it was immediately clear that for years our city unfortunately had all kinds of staffing issues and ineffective organizational structure.
I’ve been at the forefront of making sometimes difficult high level staffing changes. Such as when we let go of our previous city manager which was unpopular at the time, but now a year later it is widely accepted as one of the best decisions for our city. She was a nice person, but unfortunately wasn’t capable of fulfilling the demanding job, including making sure our finance department stayed on track and keeping the commission informed on the issue.
But back to our finance department, Yannick Ngendahayo was rehired and promoted to be our finance director. Quite frankly, we were at risk with our previous finance director, but Yannick — who had voluntarily left us previously due to the staffing issues I described — agreed to come back and lead our finance department. He has brought us back on schedule and has been doing a phenomenal job righting the wrongs of the past.
The difference is night and day. I can only speak for myself on the commission but I certainly keep a close watch with staff on these issues and at times, changes needed to be made. Right now I have immense confidence in all our directors and have been fast tracking our efficiency but for sure quite a bit of catching up was needed regarding the audit.
A recent shooting at a Lake Worth Beach bar left two people dead and two others wounded. Dangerous street racing incidents have resulted in multiple arrests. How serious is the crime problem in the city and what additional measures should be taken? Fortunately, murders such as what happened downtown are exceedingly rare for us.
Crime is still a serious issue for sure, but overall the numbers have been steadily improving. Most of our persistent issues fall into 2 categories: drugs and intoxication, and traffic. Intoxication can be a source of problems as it is in most of the world.
We have a number of very popular events such as our street painting festival, which brings thousands of people crammed into our downtown streets in the sunshine with plenty of fun to be had. But as the event continues to grow we will be addressing security as needed. Even so, the vast majority of these issues tend to be domestic.
Always on my mind are DUIs, we have some of the best bars and restaurants in the county and people need to safely get to them and not put others at risk. I was happy to be instrumental in bringing Circuit to our town so that our locals don’t drink and drive. But overall that is certainly a persistent problem I’m always interested in addressing.
Our city is a young city with lots of families compared to our neighbors, I strive to be family friendly with plenty of fun events that offer an alternative to the typical south Florida drinking culture found in many of our neighbors. Another traffic related issue is that last year we’ve had 9 train incidents at our crossings. which is wild to think about because we don’t have many crossings, and none of them are larger than 2 lanes.
Fortunately we have a new PBSO captain in charge of our district. Captain Carn has a broad experience at PBSO which has been amazing at bringing a fresh perspective to address our crime issues. The city has settled a lawsuit challenging its anti-panhandling ordinance filed by Southern Legal Counsel on behalf of several homeless individuals.
Do you support this ordinance, and why is it good public policy? Very against. It was clear that the ordinance was duplicative of criminal laws that already exist. For example battery is a crime by statute so throwing on an added ordinance addressing the same crime is legally perilous.
If the person committed battery then charge them with the crime not just a ticket. This is the main reason why these types of ordinances historically failed in court. The core issue here is that these types of ordinances fail to address the problem at hand, we cannot ticket or arrest our way out of homelessness.
One of my challengers, Greg Richter, is deeply involved with a local PAC called Prosper Lake Worth which in our last election were instrumental in ousting commissioner Kim Stokes. Their central focus was on homelessness claiming that we weren’t doing what’s necessary to get rid of the homeless. Many mailers were sent which were heavily criticized due to their distasteful tone and cruel demeanor.
We were heading toward investing a significant amount of ARPA money towards programs that would help our homeless community and better their lives. Commissioner Stokes was really pivotal in doing the research and putting together the options on what could be done and who we can work with. Unfortunately she was voted out right before the funding decision was made.
The new majority with newly elected Commissioner Mimi May refused to invest in these programs and killed the effort. It gets worse. In a recent meeting, much of the same ordinance was just brought back with the excuse that we needed to respond to the state legislation allowing any citizen to sue the city if they feel we are not addressing the homeless problem.
It went even further with adding language to go against “unlicensed vendors,” clearly targeting our Central American community. Is the city too pro-development, or too anti-development, or does it strike the right balance between growth and preservation? The pressure is certainly on. I love my hometown and apparently so does everybody else.
I certainly don’t blame them we clearly have something desirable, since I’ve been on they’ve been pounding on our door trying to get in. One of the unfortunate narratives I often hear is that our city needs to “stop getting in its own way” in regards to development. But Florida’s history shows us that we should always welcome developers with healthy skepticism.
I’m not “getting in the way” of business or development, I’m merely doing my due diligence in asking questions and making sure our city is not getting grifted, or being saddled with decades long financial liabilities like our Bohemian parking garage. Mr. Richter will tell you that he started his involvement with Prosper Lake Worth because he wanted to make sure I didn’t stop the Gulfstream Hotel project, which of course was a false narrative to begin with.
Asking questions and pushing back against too many giveaways as incentives is precisely the job description of an ethical commissioner. The same group is pushing the same narrative with our current WMODA project in the works. Any time a question is asked, or I merely suggest that perhaps we should take some time to consider a deeper analysis of what’s being proposed I’m met with with a flurry of comments on how I’m anti-business.
Fortunately, the people in our city generally appreciate the caution and fiscal responsibility. Similarly, Mr. Segrich will tell you that we short term rentals like AirBNBs are what our community wants, but we’re struggling to manage the influx of “investors” taking up valuable housing inventory from our community.
That being said there is still a lot of policy to be made before I comfortably say we’re balancing growth management. What distinguishes you most from your opponent(s)? Recently I’ve been looking back at my life journey and what brought me here. More so than usual now that I have a toddler as a close reminder of what’s at stake.
It’s been an interesting introspective reflection for sure. Honestly it’s extremely challenging representing such a diverse constituency. In our city’s 100+ year history I’m only the 3rd or maybe 4th brown person to be commissioner, so I represent that very large segment (nearly 50%) of our population well.
Both my parents are immigrants from Central and South America and I have a thorough understanding of the challenges of working toward the American dream in our community. A lot of our residents are from out of state like much of South Florida. So like many Floridians I often feel like a stranger in my own home.
I’m fortunate to have known Bob Graham, who I hold to the highest regard for Florida growth management (remember that?), and I can remember a few conversations about this. He called it the “Cleveland effect.” The perspective has changed and we welcome all our residents, but we also need to remind ourselves that Floridians created the flavor that attracts people from all over.
And that flavor really needs to be protected whenever possible. I have a lot of high level board experience with Everglades Coalition and Florida Wildlife Federation which brings an experience needed for government. Organizational structure and running a well oiled machine are critical for things like staffing decisions I wrote about above.
I also feel that it is important to point out that I have no conflicts or real estate connections or interests in town. I think it’s important that elected officials cannot directly benefit financially in any way from the decisions they make. List in reverse chronological order, starting with most recent, colleges and universities attended with years of attendance and degrees held.
Nova Southeastern University, Shepard Broad College of Law, Juris Doctor 2014. Miami Dade College, Basic Law Enforcement 2010. Florida Atlantic University, Bachelor of Arts – Communication 2005.
List in reverse chronological order your work history for the past 15 years. Lake Worth Beach, City Commissioner, 2022-present. Lake Worth Waterkeeper, Waterkeeper, 2017-present (currently on hiatus).
Calusa Waterkeeper, executive director, 2015-2017. Robert Hartsell, P.A.
, legal intern, 2013-2014. Richard Grosso, Esq., research assistant, 2012-2013 Have you ever been a party to a lawsuit, including bankruptcy or foreclosure? If so, provide details and disposition.
No. Not personally as a named party at least, I’ve been part of different cases through my nonprofit work. Have you ever been charged or convicted of a misdemeanor or felony, including an adjudication of guilt withheld? If so, provide charges, dates and terms of sentence.
No..