Riviera owes a response

Riviera Beach residents have found something on which they can agree -- even if their city council and administration can't.

Too long ignored financial accountability questions have prompted a citizens coalition to request that the state's auditor general "immediately investigate the fiscal affairs and operations" of the city and its Community Redevelopment Agency. The need was inevitable for a CRA that today will hear multimillion-dollar proposals from master developers who want to redo the downtown waterfront and oversee citywide redevelopment. Yet the Citizens' Coalition of Riviera Beach had to go over the heads of the council members who also serve as the CRA board. The coalition's call for state scrutiny now is supported by state Reps. Carl Domino, R-Jupiter, and Priscilla Taylor, D-West Palm Beach, state Sen. Jeff Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, and Palm Beach County Commissioners Addie Greene and Karen Marcus, each of whom represents part of the city. Only state Sen. Mandy Dawson, D-Fort Lauderdale, refused to support the audit request after being asked.

The multiracial, bipartisan, mainland-and-Singer Island coalition unites redevelopment supporters Mayor Michael Brown and Councilman Edward Rodgers with longtime redevelopment opponents such as Martha Babson and Jacquie Loriol. The local chapter of the national housing rights group ACORN is on board. So are the longtime fiscal-accountability watchdogs of the Singer Island Civic Association.

The need for outside review was apparent long before a council-appointed Financial Review Advisory Committee concluded in January that the CRA was a year away from a "state of financial emergency." Long before the claims and counterclaims by what appear to have been grossly overpaid consultants. Long before the retired Judge Rodgers' inability to get even a simple accounting of his summer swimming scholarship fund at the city-owned water park prompted his recent memo saying he was forced to "believe the allegations of fiscal irresponsibility of which the (recreation department) has been accused."

His CRA colleagues, meanwhile, plan to overrule residents and let Marriott develop high-rise towers on the public beach at Singer Island's Ocean Mall. Riviera can regain the high road to revitalization only with an independent assessment of the town's finances.