Dear Boca Raton,

Please join your neighbors for the premiere of the 2022 State of the City address on Tuesday, February 15 at 7PM, followed by an in-person town hall meeting at the Downtown Library. Please read on about the groundbreaking on the new Brightline Station, the new Blue Lake Elementary, and more. As always, please reach out with any thoughts - your views matter to me! Hope to see you on February 15 and around town! For more news, please stay in touch at @ScottSingerUSA on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

State of the City & Town Hall: This year's State of the City premiere is both a video and a live experience. The video will premiere online on Tuesday, February 15 at 7PM at myboca.us/soc. You can join your neighbors at the Downtown Library to watch it there before my in-person town hall following the premiere. Doors open at 6:30 PM. All are welcome, and coffee and snacks provided. RSVPs requested below. We'll be live streaming the town hall portion on my Facebook page for those who can't join in person. Have questions or topics you would like to cover? Please feel free to email me.

Brightline Groundbreaking: On January 25th, we broke ground on the new Brightline station in Downtown Boca. The station will be a game-changer for Boca and is due to open later this year.  More residents spoke at a city council meeting in favor of this initiative than any other in the last decade. The opportunity to be one of only five cities in South Florida on this major transportation network has untold benefits for our city, residents, and businesses.

As you can see in the Sun Sentinel headline above, not every city can get a train station. How did we get ours? A lot of it was hustle. I approached Brightline's CEO three years ago, and at the groundbreaking he mentioned our city's relentless pursuit and effort to get a deal done quickly. We needed that effort, as we were competing with other areas for the station, as detailed in this Sentinel story. Our brand and location are assets, but to continue to succeed, we need to move quickly. That's why the City Council set seizing emerging economic opportunities as one of our top priorities.

New School Update: The School District has announced the first new public school in Boca Raton since 2005 will be named Blue Lake Elementary. The school is named for "Blue Lake", the lake next to the school on the former campus of "Big Blue", IBM. The new state-of-the-art school will eventually serve 970 students and will have a full-time gifted program, afterschool care, and much more. Check out the District's intro video and more info and photos here. As with Brightline, we got this school through hustle and partnership. We donated the land to get the school when another site fell through. Thanks again to the School Board, especially Chair Frank Barbieri; School District and City staff, and the City Council for the years of work to get us closer to the August 10, 2022 opening - the third new or rebuilt school in Boca Raton in a 25-month period!

BocaHelps.com continues to assist people in need and link volunteers with those who need help. Deepest thanks to the many unsung heroes, including our health care workers, first responders, city employees, and residents who have helped so many in countless ways. May our spirit of community long endure and unite us.

Please contact me with any concerns or ideas on how I can better serve you. I look forward to seeing you at our State of the City Premiere and Town Hall Meeting at 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday, February 15 at the Downtown Library. Your opinion matters to me! Please share your comments, by email at ssinger@myboca.us, and stay connected for more news @ScottSingerUSA on all social media platforms.

Please stay connected on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram @scottsingerusa. 

Friends and neighbors can also sign up for my newsletters here.

If you need help or can provide help, please visit BocaHelps.com.