Inaugural Council Members Proud Of The Village That Wellington Has Become
On March 28, 1996 — 25 years ago this month — the inaugural Wellington Village Council met for the first time. The new village’s elected leaders took the reins and set Wellington on a course of self-governance that it remains on to this day.
As amazing as it might sound today, Wellington’s incorporation was a controversial idea, and a vote to create the new village passed in November 1995 by a slim margin. Then, a total of 27 people ran for the five seats on the inaugural council. In the end, all but one of the winners had previously served on the board of Wellington’s pre-incorporation government, the Acme Improvement District. Those early voters, it seems, put a high value on proven service and experience.
On that first council were the late Paul Adams, a commercial real estate executive, and the late Michael McDonough, an attorney. However, three of those inaugural council members are still alive and have been enshrined on the Wellington Founder’s Plaque, honored as elder statesmen who were instrumental in the development of the community. They are Kathy Foster, Dr. Carmine Priore and Tom Wenham, who spoke with Wellington The Magazine regarding those early days in village history.
Foster came to Wellington in 1979 when there were just 700 people in the community. “We just loved it,” she recalled, but tragedy struck after they had been in the area for just 15 months. “My youngest son became ill and died of spinal meningitis. We had no hospitals here and had to go to Miami. The community really rallied around us.”
From this terrible experience, Foster bonded with the community that embraced her and became a leading voice among the fast-growing population of residents.
Opening K. Foster Design in 1983, she joined the newly established chamber of commerce and women’s club.
“We worked to bring a school to the community, so our children didn’t have to be bused to Greenacres,” she said. “The school board approved the first school, Wellington Elementary School, which opened in January 1981.”
In 1989, other community leaders encouraged Foster to run for a seat on the Acme Improvement District Board of Supervisors, which was switching over to being popularly elected by residents, rather than being controlled by the developers.
“I ran against an incumbent who represented a utility. When I won, he quit the night of the election. I was sworn in the next morning. At my first meeting, it was me and all men from the existing board,” Foster said. “We met in a temporary building. There was one piece of paper with a consent agenda, and I asked if we could go through it.”
Questioning the refinancing of a loan, she helped save the community $1.5 million. “And that was the first question on the first day,” Foster said.
Others elected from the young community’s residents joined Foster on the Acme board, including Priore and Wenham.
The Priores had been coming to Wellington to visit family since 1980, about the same time as the Fosters arrived. A dentist, Priore moved up from Miami after operating a successful dental practice down there.
“I moved to Wellington and opened an office by Palms West Hospital in 1985,” Priore said. “I was in my late forties. We really liked Wellington. My son was entering college, my daughter was entering high school, so we thought that was a good time [to relocate].”
The area reminded Priore and his wife Marie of Miami when they were young.
Priore remembered getting involved in his new community first through local issues, regularly attending Acme meetings.
He later joined a volunteer committee, then later serving on the Acme board, before becoming very active in the incorporation effort.
“Someone calculated that for the size and revenue being collected, it was nearly $8 million that was paid to the county,” Priore said. “We wanted to incorporate so we could start to use that money more effectively.”
Foster noted that some $700,000 was all of the money that was coming back from the county to Wellington.
Wenham, who then worked as a facilities manager coordinating stations being built by Palm Beach County Fire-Rescue, remembers the situation well.
“I thought we should be doing more for the community,” he said, adding that the incorporation effort was a long time coming and that it provided many services and benefits to the residents. “We all thought that incorporation would be the best thing for the community.”
Wenham is most proud of his work on the village’s first comprehensive plan.
“The equestrian element was one of the more important things at the time, and the [limiting] of dwelling units per acre was important, too. We wanted to govern ourselves with councils that were from the community. We were closer to the constituents,” Wenham said.
Priore noted that incorporation was a years-long effort that failed the first time out.
“Incorporation was a systemic effort made by a conscious decision to have Wellington be run by the community itself,” Priore said.
After the first vote failed narrowly in 1990, the idea was retooled with some changes. Making the incorporation area smaller than that covered by the Acme Improvement District rid the effort of some uninterested property owners, and the measure passed the second time. “We would have home rule, make our own decisions and get our own tax revenues,” Priore said.
All three were vibrant, successful members of that inaugural council, with Foster serving as the first mayor from 1996 to 1998, when that position was decided by a vote of fellow council members. Priore served as mayor from 1998 to 2000, then Wenham took the gavel. Wenham later became the first popularly elected mayor in 2003 after a charter change.
Wenham believes that incorporation was not only the right choice then, but it has proven to be the right choice over the past 25 years.
“We had to work on that first comp plan to determine what Wellington would be today,” he said. “The councils that followed us maintained the work. We are proud to have been part of it. It is an honor and a privilege when you can give something back to the community.”
