Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, Joel Malcolm Ford WJNO dot com. My election spotlight
is on the village of Royal Palm Beach March eleven.
Two races in Royal Palm for all residents who are
registered voters living in Royal Palm Beach, and one of
them for the village Council Group three seat which is vacant,
and one for the mayoral seat which is vacant. We
(00:21):
have three candidates and we are speaking with one of
them now justin k Plaza. Thank you for joining me justin.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
All right, let's get some background on you. First of all,
have you ever run for office before?
Speaker 2 (00:34):
I have not?
Speaker 1 (00:35):
All right, and before we get to the question of
you know, what made you decide you wanted to run
this time around? Why don't you tell us some background?
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Well, essentially, I come from an IT background. I started
a company when I was about nineteen years old, started
from almost nov revenues to in the millions of revenue now,
so I'm not far into procedure and process. I'm trying
to release a platform that engages the entire community.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
So as you know, I'm sure you've seen it in
your own area.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Was development you know they'll knock down afar as put
up sixty seventy houses and nobody wants it, yet it
still gets approved. So I'm going to develop a platform
around that that gives every community member a voice as
the thing come online and as they're focused on and
hopefully they don't happen, as you.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Know nobody wants them, and yet they still get built.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Yeah, for sure. I live in Martin County and it's
just people are up in arms over all the building.
Yet when Costco gets open, you know they'll be shopping Costco.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
It's frustrating if you think about it, who's doing this
and who's saying yes? And why when nobody nobody if
they hadn't raised their hand in a room, no one
would raise their hand.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Yes, it's ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Okay, how long have you did? I don't think you
mentioned how long have you been living in Palm Beach County.
I mean we'll be a Royal Palm Palm Beach County
in general.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
First I own a residence is twenty twelve.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
I've moved here in February of twenty sixteen, so just
over nine years now.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
And that you've been in Royal Palm, that long, yes, sir, okay,
all right, because some people come and they live in this,
you know, and then they move to a different place.
So that's why I asked that you have something on
your website called the sixty forty platform. Tell me about that.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
So essentially, the way it works, and as I started
to allude on the platform process, is it's a way
to engage all community members. And the way it's going
to work is every community, every community commandmber will be
emailed the text message however they want to communicate with
the platform, and then there'll be a platform driven process
that they could vote on, Hey we're thinking about opening
(02:51):
a Starbucks, we're opening thing, opening in and out burger,
whatever it may be. That they're notified, and then the
council members will put up what they actually see. I'm
not changing the political process or the stakeholders, just what
they see, and then they will vote on that. Now
I'm only one vote. I'm treated as a council member.
But whatever they vote on, as long as they meet
(03:12):
the specific threshold, which is sixty percent.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
I will vote that in.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
So I can't have any secrets handshakes, that can't be
any developer deals. There can't be any shadiness or developer
requirements on the back end that may not feel right
for the residents.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Now, your website talks about, you know, keeping residents informed
and some of the stuff you're mentioning here, and you
say listen to you know, if you can't find the
time to drive to I assume you meet to the
council meeting, you can listen to a pre recorded zoom meeting.
Is is this something the village isn't doing anything like that?
Are there are there videos of the meet Is there anything.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
They're absolutely doing the pre recorded meetings? What I'm saying
is nobody wants to listen to a pre recorded meeting. Now,
these meetings are generally two and a half hours. They
contain segments that no one has any ability to understand.
There is variant and budget line items that nobody wants
to hear about. What I'm trying to what I'm what
I'm going to engage people with is a platform that
(04:15):
takes all of that data, all those data sets, streamlines
it down and then puts it in in pros and
cons so they're informed and they have a way to vote. Now,
most people will say, hey, I don't want to do
this extra work. I don't want to do anything like that.
So there's a second there's a second piece to it
where we engage local businesses in Roll upon Beach will.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Buy gift cards and then as.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
People engage in the platform, they'll be a random number
generator and after each vote a certain number will be
chosen and they'll have a gift.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Card to one of the local businesses.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
So it's an instant gratification and instant reward and it
allows you to say you've contributed to your community.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Okay, let's talk about issues. What is a traffic is
one that's been brought up by candidates running for seats
in Royal Palm? Is that is that a concern for you?
And is is there a fix that you can think of?
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Uh? It's absolutely ironic.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
You have you have members developing every single day, new
projects coming online, new twenty seven variants to squeeze something
in behind a small segment of land, and they have
the audacities to complain about traffic. You know, if you want,
if you want traffic to slow down, you should you
(05:32):
should stop building first.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Well, I mean that it makes sense, but at this point,
you know you're not going to get people to leave
because it's Florida and everybody wants to be here. So
what you know, what what can be done at this point?
Speaker 3 (05:48):
But you can always expand the roads there, there's there's
a variable number of aspects you can. You could stagger
school periods. You know, traffic happens in waves. You know,
at one o'clock in the afternoon, after the lunch rush,
there's no traffic, But eight o'clock in the morning, six
o'clock at night there is traffic. So uh, I can't
stop people going from West Palm into into West Lake.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
I can't stop people from going west with Lake to
the last Palm.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
But if if, if you, if you slow slowed things
down a bit, you would have a chance to maybe
expand the roads. Uh, and then you would be able
to uniformly fix traffic and not have its scale beyond
what you're trying to do up front.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Yeah, the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office providing the law
enforcement services for some you know a number of years
in Royal Palm Beach. How do you feel is Royal
Palm Beach a safe, safe community? Can anything be done better?
Speaker 2 (06:41):
No? No? No, they do a great job.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
When they're called their responsive, their there, you know, even
to the small requests. You know, they take anonymous requests
so you don't have to put yourself on the docket.
They have a fantastic system running over there.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
I don't have I don't have a sample.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Blame and the county Fire Rescue too, I believe right
or does I don't believe Royal Palm Beach has its
own but I could be wrong.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Yeah, it's it's counting as well. No issues.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
There's there's several fire stations within the city limits and
they're always available, they are outside there, they're you know,
they're very responsive, inefficient.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
What is another what is one thing we talked about traffic?
What is one thing if elected as mayor aside from
your sixty forty what is one thing that you'd like
to see done better besides obviously people being informed and
having a say.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
Well again, that's that's that's the primary focus, because if
you look at it from a small scale of Roll
Palm Beach, you know there's there's forty thousand people, of
which you know, twenty nine thousand are are of voting age. Now,
if you take that twenty nine thousand, its platform works
and everyone lines up and locks into it. Now you
do that and expighteed it out to to ten surrounding towns,
(07:58):
and now you have three hundred thousand people on this platform,
and you spied that out to a state level. Now
you have twenty million people on a platform telling their
politicians what they want to do. So the whole structure
here is not what I can do.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
This is not a meek and campaign. This is a.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
Structural campaign to allow everyone to contribute and not raise
their hands when something happens that they don't want because
they're informed and they're advised on everything that's happening with
their in the town. Now you take all of these
people that are contributing, it creates a wave of success
for everyone in the future.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
What would you say to someone that would tell you, you know,
right now we have the village council after the tragic
death of the mayor, Fred Pinto Jeff Amara, who is
running for this seat. Officially it was one of the
(08:53):
council members and he was appointed by the council in
a vote to fill the seat until the election. What
would you say to somebody that might say to you,
you know, that's what we need. We need somebody with
the experience, who's who's done you know, he's been on
the council versus a newcomer to politics.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
Oh yeah, absolutely so politics that does come with a
bit of handholding.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
I do not need that. I've never needed that. I've
never been challenged in my life.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
I have not been able to find a problem that
I can't solve. It's it's That's the only me I
will talk about in this segment is that I can
do it. I know I will do it, and I
don't foresee any issues doing the job at hand.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
All right, And then I have a question for you.
There are three candidates running, Why in a nutshell should
folks vote for you? Justin k Plaza.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
Their voice will be heard not not only before the election,
but during after preceding it and into the next one.
That they'll have an opinion of voice and say and
everything that happens in their town.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
All right, Before we wrap up, is there anything else you.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Wanted to add other than thank you? No?
Speaker 1 (10:07):
All right, Well, I appreciate it very succinct and to
the point, I appreciate you taking the time to share
your word with the listeners, the people who live and
vote again. Obviously mayoral race, but even Village Council Group
three open to all registered voters living within village limits
of Royal Palm Beach. Justin k Plaza, candidate for Mayor.
(10:31):
Thank you for joining me. Thank you,
Hey, Joel Malcolm Ford WJNO dot com. My election spotlight
is on the village of Royal Palm Beach March eleven.
Two races in Royal Palm for all residents who are
registered voters living in Royal Palm Beach, and one of
them for the village Council Group three seat which is vacant,
and one for the mayoral seat which is vacant. We
(00:21):
have three candidates and we are speaking with one of
them now justin k Plaza. Thank you for joining me justin.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
All right, let's get some background on you. First of all,
have you ever run for office before?
Speaker 2 (00:34):
I have not?
Speaker 1 (00:35):
All right, and before we get to the question of
you know, what made you decide you wanted to run
this time around? Why don't you tell us some background?
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Well, essentially, I come from an IT background. I started
a company when I was about nineteen years old, started
from almost nov revenues to in the millions of revenue now,
so I'm not far into procedure and process. I'm trying
to release a platform that engages the entire community.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
So as you know, I'm sure you've seen it in
your own area.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Was development you know they'll knock down afar as put
up sixty seventy houses and nobody wants it, yet it
still gets approved. So I'm going to develop a platform
around that that gives every community member a voice as
the thing come online and as they're focused on and
hopefully they don't happen, as you.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Know nobody wants them, and yet they still get built.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Yeah, for sure. I live in Martin County and it's
just people are up in arms over all the building.
Yet when Costco gets open, you know they'll be shopping Costco.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
It's frustrating if you think about it, who's doing this
and who's saying yes? And why when nobody nobody if
they hadn't raised their hand in a room, no one
would raise their hand.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Yes, it's ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Okay, how long have you did? I don't think you
mentioned how long have you been living in Palm Beach County.
I mean we'll be a Royal Palm Palm Beach County
in general.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
First I own a residence is twenty twelve.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
I've moved here in February of twenty sixteen, so just
over nine years now.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
And that you've been in Royal Palm, that long, yes, sir, okay,
all right, because some people come and they live in this,
you know, and then they move to a different place.
So that's why I asked that you have something on
your website called the sixty forty platform. Tell me about that.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
So essentially, the way it works, and as I started
to allude on the platform process, is it's a way
to engage all community members. And the way it's going
to work is every community, every community commandmber will be
emailed the text message however they want to communicate with
the platform, and then there'll be a platform driven process
that they could vote on, Hey we're thinking about opening
(02:51):
a Starbucks, we're opening thing, opening in and out burger,
whatever it may be. That they're notified, and then the
council members will put up what they actually see. I'm
not changing the political process or the stakeholders, just what
they see, and then they will vote on that. Now
I'm only one vote. I'm treated as a council member.
But whatever they vote on, as long as they meet
(03:12):
the specific threshold, which is sixty percent.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
I will vote that in.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
So I can't have any secrets handshakes, that can't be
any developer deals. There can't be any shadiness or developer
requirements on the back end that may not feel right
for the residents.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Now, your website talks about, you know, keeping residents informed
and some of the stuff you're mentioning here, and you
say listen to you know, if you can't find the
time to drive to I assume you meet to the
council meeting, you can listen to a pre recorded zoom meeting.
Is is this something the village isn't doing anything like that?
Are there are there videos of the meet Is there anything.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
They're absolutely doing the pre recorded meetings? What I'm saying
is nobody wants to listen to a pre recorded meeting. Now,
these meetings are generally two and a half hours. They
contain segments that no one has any ability to understand.
There is variant and budget line items that nobody wants
to hear about. What I'm trying to what I'm what
I'm going to engage people with is a platform that
(04:15):
takes all of that data, all those data sets, streamlines
it down and then puts it in in pros and
cons so they're informed and they have a way to vote. Now,
most people will say, hey, I don't want to do
this extra work. I don't want to do anything like that.
So there's a second there's a second piece to it
where we engage local businesses in Roll upon Beach will.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Buy gift cards and then as.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
People engage in the platform, they'll be a random number
generator and after each vote a certain number will be
chosen and they'll have a gift.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Card to one of the local businesses.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
So it's an instant gratification and instant reward and it
allows you to say you've contributed to your community.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Okay, let's talk about issues. What is a traffic is
one that's been brought up by candidates running for seats
in Royal Palm? Is that is that a concern for you?
And is is there a fix that you can think of?
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Uh? It's absolutely ironic.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
You have you have members developing every single day, new
projects coming online, new twenty seven variants to squeeze something
in behind a small segment of land, and they have
the audacities to complain about traffic. You know, if you want,
if you want traffic to slow down, you should you
(05:32):
should stop building first.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Well, I mean that it makes sense, but at this point,
you know you're not going to get people to leave
because it's Florida and everybody wants to be here. So
what you know, what what can be done at this point?
Speaker 3 (05:48):
But you can always expand the roads there, there's there's
a variable number of aspects you can. You could stagger
school periods. You know, traffic happens in waves. You know,
at one o'clock in the afternoon, after the lunch rush,
there's no traffic, But eight o'clock in the morning, six
o'clock at night there is traffic. So uh, I can't
stop people going from West Palm into into West Lake.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
I can't stop people from going west with Lake to
the last Palm.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
But if if, if you, if you slow slowed things
down a bit, you would have a chance to maybe
expand the roads. Uh, and then you would be able
to uniformly fix traffic and not have its scale beyond
what you're trying to do up front.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Yeah, the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office providing the law
enforcement services for some you know a number of years
in Royal Palm Beach. How do you feel is Royal
Palm Beach a safe, safe community? Can anything be done better?
Speaker 2 (06:41):
No? No? No, they do a great job.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
When they're called their responsive, their there, you know, even
to the small requests. You know, they take anonymous requests
so you don't have to put yourself on the docket.
They have a fantastic system running over there.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
I don't have I don't have a sample.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Blame and the county Fire Rescue too, I believe right
or does I don't believe Royal Palm Beach has its
own but I could be wrong.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Yeah, it's it's counting as well. No issues.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
There's there's several fire stations within the city limits and
they're always available, they are outside there, they're you know,
they're very responsive, inefficient.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
What is another what is one thing we talked about traffic?
What is one thing if elected as mayor aside from
your sixty forty what is one thing that you'd like
to see done better besides obviously people being informed and
having a say.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
Well again, that's that's that's the primary focus, because if
you look at it from a small scale of Roll
Palm Beach, you know there's there's forty thousand people, of
which you know, twenty nine thousand are are of voting age. Now,
if you take that twenty nine thousand, its platform works
and everyone lines up and locks into it. Now you
do that and expighteed it out to to ten surrounding towns,
(07:58):
and now you have three hundred thousand people on this platform,
and you spied that out to a state level. Now
you have twenty million people on a platform telling their
politicians what they want to do. So the whole structure
here is not what I can do.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
This is not a meek and campaign. This is a.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
Structural campaign to allow everyone to contribute and not raise
their hands when something happens that they don't want because
they're informed and they're advised on everything that's happening with
their in the town. Now you take all of these
people that are contributing, it creates a wave of success
for everyone in the future.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
What would you say to someone that would tell you, you know,
right now we have the village council after the tragic
death of the mayor, Fred Pinto Jeff Amara, who is
running for this seat. Officially it was one of the
(08:53):
council members and he was appointed by the council in
a vote to fill the seat until the election. What
would you say to somebody that might say to you,
you know, that's what we need. We need somebody with
the experience, who's who's done you know, he's been on
the council versus a newcomer to politics.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
Oh yeah, absolutely so politics that does come with a
bit of handholding.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
I do not need that. I've never needed that. I've
never been challenged in my life.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
I have not been able to find a problem that
I can't solve. It's it's That's the only me I
will talk about in this segment is that I can
do it. I know I will do it, and I
don't foresee any issues doing the job at hand.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
All right, And then I have a question for you.
There are three candidates running, Why in a nutshell should
folks vote for you? Justin k Plaza.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
Their voice will be heard not not only before the election,
but during after preceding it and into the next one.
That they'll have an opinion of voice and say and
everything that happens in their town.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
All right, Before we wrap up, is there anything else you.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Wanted to add other than thank you? No?
Speaker 1 (10:07):
All right, Well, I appreciate it very succinct and to
the point, I appreciate you taking the time to share
your word with the listeners, the people who live and
vote again. Obviously mayoral race, but even Village Council Group
three open to all registered voters living within village limits
of Royal Palm Beach. Justin k Plaza, candidate for Mayor.
(10:31):
Thank you for joining me. Thank you,
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