Kicking off our Election Spotlight series for the March 19th municipal elections. We start with the one active race in the City of West Palm Beach. That's the one for the City Commission in District 5 on the city's south end, though the election is open to all registered voters in West Palm Beach.
Commissioner Christina Lambert is running for a fourth term and has one challenger, hedge fund manager Matthew Luciano.
Lambert says she has continued to push for more affordable housing.
"We have passed some policies in the city that incentivize programs for more workforce and affordable housing and I'm really proud that we have created over 600 new workforce and affordable housing units."
More transparency within city government is one of Luciano's priorities.
"One thing I'd be an advocate for is on all the votes, I'd have an easily accessible system on the city website that say who votes for what. I believe that people should be able to go back and see the voting track record of the incumbent."
The Commission used a 2020 state law that allows cities to incentivize developers to add more units if they provide 25 percent of workforce housing, which is how a proposal for a mixed-use development on the south end was initially approved for 200 apartments but ultimately increased to 360.
That is something Luciano questions when it comes to transparency.
We asked Lambert the transparency question and her answer was that the Commission "can always do better" and some things "fall through the cracks" but in the mixed-use project, she claims they have been providing community outreach for years, and there were at least a half a dozen meetings that she attended where there were over a hundred residents in attendance at times.
The voters will get their say on whether to give Lambert another term come March 19th.
The reason there is only one race in West Palm Beach is that two incumbents ran unopposed, Cathleen Ward in District 1 and Christy Fox in District 3.