Meet Your Boca Raton City Council Seat D Candidates: Armand Grossman

By: Michael Demyan

Armand Grossman will be running against Paul Preste and Monica Mayotte for City Council Seat D in the upcoming election on March 13, with the winner taking over for incumbent Robert Weinroth.

Grossman first came to Boca Raton in 1965 and was part of Florida Atlantic University’s inaugural class, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in political science and a master’s in human behavior. He has continued to stay involved with the school through the years and was a former president of the FAU Alumni Association.

He has spent much of his life in education and is the only candidate running for Seat D who has previously run for political office, serving as the vice mayor and member of city council in Miami Springs from 1977-1981. He was also recently the vice chairman of the Palm Beach County Planning Commission for three years.

In 2015, Grossman was planning on running for Boca Raton City Council but dropped out in January.

“It wasn’t my time. My heart wasn’t in it at that time,” he said. “We also had a couple of hit pieces come out that were very painful and the people who did that are friends that lived across the street. My wife was deeply hurt and insulted that they would do that.”

He decided to run this year after Weinroth pulled out of the race. After meeting with a committee to figure out who could become a challenger, he decided he would have to be that person.

“[Mayotte] was designed to take Weinroth’s spot and there was another man in the race [Preste] who was a candidate that no one’s going to vote for,” he said.

Grossman believes he has a very different view on city development compared to Mayotte, saying that even if Boca Raton never constructs another building, traffic will still increase from people simply passing through. He does, however, feel that traffic will eventually start subsiding once self-driving cars start to become the norm in the near future.

For Grossman, development is not something that should simply be dismissed. He said that development is what has made Boca Raton the great city that it is today.

“I’ve been in Boca long enough to remember when downtown Boca was blighted, shabby and certainly not the type of downtown that was representative of a world class city. You’d be embarrassed,” he said. “So now we do have a downtown.”

With school overcrowding still being a very highly discussed topic in the city, Grossman noted that it is due to Boca Raton being a fabulous city.

“People want to live here,” he said. “Schools in Delray are not overcrowded, schools in Boynton are not overcrowded, but they’re overcrowded in Boca Raton. My opponent [Mayotte] seems to feel in a very simplistic analysis that the reason they’re overcrowded is because of overdevelopment in downtown. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

Grossman has proposed another high school in the south end of the county and wishes to see a vocational school in the area so students can learn and develop skills to break into the workforce.

He also noted that through his experience in education, he was a part of the creation of numerous security measures at Hialeah-Miami Lakes Senior High School, which he feels is very important to keep children safe while attending school.

“The chances of what happened in Parkland would have been nil at that particular high school,” he said.

Grossman was also not in favor of turning the Wildflower property into a park, which happened this past November, citing that the many parks in Boca Raton are currently under-utilized.

“We didn’t need another park,” he said. “I would’ve loved to see a restaurant there with docks out there so people can pull up in their boats.”

If elected, Grossman said that he wishes to continue to make Boca Raton a residential and business friendly city.

“I want to make sure it continues to be this great place to live, work, learn and play.”

The Boca Raton Tribune will be hosting a candidate forum at the Wayne Barton Study Center, 269 NE 14th Street, Boca Raton on Thursday, March 8 at 6.p.m. The event is free and open to the public, however, due to seat limitations, you must register online by clicking here to receive your complimentary ticket.