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February 20, 2026 16 mins
Samios, a former member of the Village Council, is running to get back in.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, Joel Malkin for w j n O dot com
and my election spotlight is on the village of Royal
Palm Beach. Now, as it turns out, there is just
one race in the village. Let me look at my
cheat sheet here. You did have two seats up for grabs.
Steve Avila was up, but he withdrew his candidacy and

(00:25):
Sylvia Sharps is the automatic winner in that race. In
group three, And in group one you do have an
actual race here, Adam Miller and Selena Samuos. And Selena,
I know you are a former council member. Thank you
for joining me.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
Thank you very much, Joel for having me. I appreciate
the opportunity.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
So let's Adam Miller, I believe the incumbent in this race.
So let's get some history on you. First of all,
let's backtrack beyond the politics and just talk about how
you're in Royal Palm and work, experience that sort of stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
Absolutely, I've probably been a resident of Royal Palm Beach
for almost seventeen years. I am the executive director of
the Women's Chamber of Commerce of Palm Beach County, where
we serve businesses and members that cover the entire county.

Speaker 1 (01:23):
Okay, now you catch us up to date on your
history with the village council.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
I was first elected in twenty sixteen, and I've probably
served the residence of Royal Palm Beach Village since then.
Last year our mayor passed away and I resigned from
my seat to run for mayor. And now I'm running
to get back on the council.

Speaker 1 (01:49):
And yeah, that was kind of a leap of faith, right,
getting off and you to run for mayor, and then
knowing that if you didn't win, and as fate would
have it, that's the way it went, you would have
to run to get to get back on the council.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
Correct, that is right. I jokingly refer to it as
splitting my tens at the blackjack table.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
All right, and I was corrected. I just verified what
I said. Group one, the incumbent is Adam Miller here,
and then in group three, I should say Sylvia Sharps
is the incumbent and she automatically gets re elected after
Steve Avila, who I believe ran a couple of years ago,
because I remember interviewing him as well, ended up dropping out.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
Yes, that is correct. The council appointed my opponent to
a seat when the vice mayor became mayor and it
opened up his seat.

Speaker 1 (02:47):
That's it. Okay, it's all coming back to me now,
kind of like Celine Dion. All right, here I go.
I guess it's you know what, I think it's appropriate
because nearby, I guess it's officially in lacks of Hatchie,
but the Palms West Hospital, not far from Royal Palm
Beach has a Celine Dion suite and I know that
because my youngest child, my daughter who's now thirteen, was

(03:09):
was born in it. So anyway, they.

Speaker 2 (03:12):
Do, they actulutely do. And they are actually on the
border of They're on Crestwood, Royal Palm Beach is on
the east side, and the hospitals on the west side.

Speaker 1 (03:19):
Yeah, yeah, that I yes, I remember the I remember
the suite very well, the Celine Dion suite where she
actually gave birth to one of her one of her kids,
so years earlier. Of course. All right, I'm going to
start by talking about an issue that I guess is
not officially in Royal Palm Beach, but it's it's close
enough to where it might be getting some talk within

(03:41):
the village and that is Project Tango. This is discussion
about a propose one point eight million square foot AI
data center, and there is some opposition from some in
the community in general and Palm Beach County. I guess
it would be in unincorporated areas where there will be
going what's going on in Royal Palm about it anything.

Speaker 2 (04:06):
We do have some residents that are concerned about it.
It is because it is taking place in the western
communities where we are. I consider us the gateway to
the West just because everyone has to come through here
as they go through to Arden or West Lake, and
it is a concern because of the not only electricity,
but the water supply. We're not sure about the effects
for residents and surrounding areas. And because that is so

(04:29):
close to Line Country Safari. You know, it's a huge
part of our community in the western area and it's
been here forever. So there's a lot of information that
we still need to collect to get an informed decision
on it. But that is a question that a lot
of residents in the western communities are concerned about.

Speaker 1 (04:48):
You know that talk about Lion Country Safari. Obviously, again
not in Royal Palm beach, but close enough to where
you do have people that I'm sure drive over to
it on occasion and check it out, especially over the
summer and you know, times when kids are off from school.
Recently being purchased, the closing down the campgrounds. No other

(05:10):
changes have been announced. But is there any concern from
any any of your constituents about that at all?

Speaker 2 (05:16):
I think the concern is is we're not sure what
the new owner. You never know what their plans are,
what their long term desires are, so we're still waiting
to find out. As a huge fan of my and
many floor Indians and people visiting, can remember my grandparents
used to take us there when we were younger, so
I remember driving out and it was really going into
the jungle at the time. Huge for Reynolds fans. So

(05:39):
smoking the bandit too was did a section out there
was filmed when they were transporting an elephant. So and
we've had we've had a second membership with it.

Speaker 1 (05:49):
That was that's from two with Don Delauise. That was
with the elephant.

Speaker 2 (05:54):
That is yep, they're transporting the elephant.

Speaker 1 (05:57):
Wow, all right, you learned something new I had I
had no idea interesting go on I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 (06:03):
Yep, well no, that's quite okay.

Speaker 1 (06:05):
So it is.

Speaker 2 (06:05):
You know, we've had annual passes to the Line carsh
as far as you know, my daughter's growing up, we
would go there. It was a great place on a
rainy day, you could drive through the park. So when
you're looking for stuff to do with young children, they've
done a lot of renovations, so we're watching to see
what happens. And you never really know. With as I said,
with new ownership, there are always possible changes. But on

(06:28):
a personal level, I do hope they maintain it because
it's something that we've been doing for generations.

Speaker 1 (06:33):
And you might have touched on this before. How many
years were you on the council prior to you know.

Speaker 2 (06:40):
I was on the council for nine years.

Speaker 1 (06:42):
Okay, I want you to if you if you'd like,
you can, you know, talk about a few of your
what you might want to claim as accomplishments from your time.

Speaker 2 (06:51):
Absolutely. One thing things that I've started that once being
elected is I focus on our senior residents. So I'm
crowd that I created. I helped create the Senior Citizen
ad Hoc Board so we had residents that we could
listen to them, find out what their needs are, how
we can implement them into the village. So as the

(07:13):
liaison for the Senior Citizen ad Hoc Board, we then
have now two senior living facilities in Royal Palm Beach,
one of them with the Memory Care, so this way
residents who have lived here can continue to stay. I
also focus on our local businesses, so I've worked with
staff and we ease the process into opening a business

(07:33):
and maintaining it in Royal Palm Beach. So if you
go to our website Royal Palmbach, fl dot gov, there's
a drop down there that you can click on and
it's how to open a business in the village, So
it really eases the process if you're not sure. Every
municipality is a little different, and it's a step by
step guide to expedite the process. And the other thing

(07:55):
I do is focus on transparency, so making sure that
residents know what's going on. I post, I push out
all the information. So every time we have a meeting,
I put the agenda out there, how to participate, whether
it's in person or virtual, and then I do a
quick wrap up afterwards. This is what happened at the meeting,
and then here's the link to watch the video so

(08:16):
you can go back and watch in detail everything that happened.
I'm also proud of the fact that since being on
the council, we've hired a public information specialist so really
helps push out the information there. We've renovated our website,
so we have a new website that's a couple of
years old that is really detailed. Everything you need to
find on there, from when the roads are going to

(08:38):
be paved to when different things are coming up on
our county calendar. You can find everything up there. So
I've focused on those three aspects and continue to grow
to make that those sure that they succeed.

Speaker 1 (08:56):
The state is working on well. The governor and some
of the legislature working on property tax reform. The governor
would prefer there be complete elimination of homesteaded property taxes.
Currently everything being worked on includes at least school taxes.

(09:21):
That's not enough for the governor either way. As a
member of the council, if you win your way back in,
this might be something obviously that you would have to
take up. Are you concerned about a potential loss and revenue?
It is a.

Speaker 2 (09:39):
Concern for all of us, and I think every municipality
has their own issues they need to overcome with that.
I'm not concerned. One thing is that I know legislation
will have to work with municipalities to figure out how
to make up that deficit. It doesn't affect our ADVALRM,
so our schools or public safety are all intact. In

(10:02):
Royal Palm Beach, we would lose about three million dollars
in revenue without that money, so it's how would we
make that up. We have a we're financially found, we
have a robust reserve, and we really operate within our limits,
so it's just shifting around some stuff. Hopefully won't come

(10:23):
to that. I think from speaking with residents that they
are not in favor of it, and they don't see
that it really would take effect. But there are some
things that we have in place just to make sure
that we can make up for some of that revenue
loss if it were to happen.

Speaker 1 (10:38):
You have as one of your priorities local business, and
you know that made me think about what the county
has been doing. After the election of Mayor Zorn Mumdani
in New York City, I'm sure You're aware that the
county put Palm Beach County posted billboards Times Square and

(10:59):
maybe some other areas trying to bring firms, financial firms especially,
you know, to get them to relocate. Based on the
election of a mayor in New York who does not
appear to be business friendly based on his platforms well
during his run, how do you feel about you know,

(11:21):
you think Royal Palm might get some of that business.
And you know, is Royal Palm Beach should it be
doing anything if it's not to try to lure some
of that business as well.

Speaker 2 (11:34):
Well, and with our Business Development Board with the county,
they do a great job going after businesses to have
the headquarters relocate in the area. We do have Wall
Street South in downtown West Palm. I think in Royal
Palm Beach we have amazing homes and opportunities. So what
I love is that there people who have their headquarters

(11:56):
or businesses in Palm Beach County or in other areas,
but that they live in Royal Palm Beach. So although
we may not have realistically we're not going to have
a Merrill Lynch move out into Royal Palm. We have
we're not building skyscrapers to house all of this. But
we do have amazing homes programs, parks O Love. We're

(12:19):
twelve square miles and we have twenty three parks. We
do four major events a year at Commons Park and
everything is free to attend that we do over there.
Plus we also have rides for children those that's free
to attend, and our concerts that we do in the park.
We do a green market, so we offer a lot
of family friendly events that lure residents to the area

(12:44):
that may work in other areas.

Speaker 1 (12:45):
So what I.

Speaker 2 (12:46):
Focus on our local businesses, so our mom and pops,
our restaurants, grocery stores, things like that, also maintaining that
we do have some big box stores in the area
as well and that it's easy to open up. We
do have some areas on State Road seven that have

(13:09):
bays that are empty, So how can we attract businesses
to come in there that our family friendly or that
will generate revenue not only for the owner but the
local community as well.

Speaker 1 (13:21):
And I know you talk about the new business packet
that you work with staff to provide. What is that exactly?

Speaker 2 (13:28):
So if you go on it's a new business packet
and it really tells you about how to open up
a business in Royal Palm Beach. So it's a new
business guide and it talks about the step by step
your business tax receipts. What's the first thing that you
need to do to gather all your information to come in.
We offer helpful links on there, making sure that you
register with sun biz or the Palm Beach County tax

(13:51):
collector get your Florida license. We go through, we give
you all the information on sun biz, so really opening
up from step by step and then when you're ready
to do that, how do you come and get a
space in the village? How do you meet with the
property owner because we don't personally own the space, but
making sure that there's availability there. We do have the

(14:15):
Burlington Code Factory area. They just put out some bays
that faced State Road seven, so there's smaller areas in there.
We had an optical place open up, a small restaurant
open up in there, so it really expedites the process.
When you're going through, you're not lost. How does it
work in Royal Palm versus other municipalities that may have

(14:36):
multiple steps or different process in general, And I'm proud
of that and the staff worked really hard to make
sure that all of that information was up there. And
then it's a quick turnaround time, all right.

Speaker 1 (14:48):
And then a final question two candidates in this race, why, ultimately,
in a nutshell, should folks choose Selina Samios looking.

Speaker 2 (15:00):
For residents to vote for me in Royal Palm Beach
on March tenth. I have kept my word. I have
represented our residence when we have developers that come in
and want to, of course, overbuild, when I speak with
residents and they don't like that, I'm the only person
on the council who has voted against over development or

(15:21):
smaller unit sizes. I've protect our green space as the
liaison for the Recreation Advisory Board, making sure that we
really offer programs for all ages of residence through Royal
Palm Beach. We have a skate park that we have
at our rec center that was brought forward by some
of our residents. We have little free libraries throughout the

(15:42):
entire village that we worked with one of our residents
to make sure that they're in there in stat and stopped.
So residents should vote for Selena Samuels on March tenth
because I have kept my word. I have been the
voice of the residence and I will continue to fight
for them and make sure that the voice is heard
up on the.

Speaker 1 (16:01):
Dais all right, And once again just to reiterate, this
is the one race on your ballots if you are
a registered voter in the village of Royal Palm Beach.
Group three the incumbent ran unopposed. Also Mayor Jeffemarra ran unopposed.
So just this one group one race open to all
registered voters within the village limits of Royal Palm Beach.

(16:22):
Candidate for Group one, Selina Semos, thank you for joining me.

Speaker 2 (16:25):
Thank you, Joel. I appreciate the opportunity
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