Dass for Port of Palm Beach commissioner, Group 2

In the Democratic primary for Port of Palm Beach commission Group 2 race, incumbent Varisa Dass faces a challenge from Jeffrey B. Jackson, a retired commander in the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office and Kelly Fleury, a political newcomer. The Palm Beach Post recommends voters choose Dass. She's more qualified and has a better understanding of the office's demands.

The port provides an important service to county businesses, particularly those that do business with The Bahamas and Caribbean islands. It also hosts popular cruises and generates jobs for locals and economic growth for the county as a whole. It's important that it be run efficiently and aggressively, and we feel Dass is best equipped to serve that goal.

Dass, a contracts litigator, supports plans to pay off the port's bond debt as soon as possible, to save millions in interest expenses and use the savings for needed projects. These would include widening berths to enable sugar and cement shipments to unload at the same time, and to improve internal infrastructure such as roads and other areas that must support the heavy loads generated by stacking containers. She'd also encourage expansion of cruise business by lines that use small-to-moderate sized ships.

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As the port's liaison to the City of Riviera Beach, she takes pride in participating in job fairs, and in working to ease traffic clogged by trains using the port, and in seeing that new port buildings that face the community are sufficiently attractive.

Dass says it would be worth considering expanding port operations to an area not far from the port, possibly near the county's Solid Waste Authority landfill. But she is not in favor of an idea her opponent would revive, of creating an inland, intermodal port out west in the Glades. A more realistic project to help the Glades economically would be to arrange transportation Glades residents could use to commute to jobs at the port, she says.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Dass for Port of Palm Beach commissioner, Group 2