Frankel at a green market in West Palm Beach

West Palm Beach Mayor Lois Frankel quietly left the city Wednesday for a five-day stay in New York City without telling her own staffers, including city spokesman Chase Scott, what she’s up to.

Why all the cloak-and-dagger stuff?

She’s visiting Manhattan green markets with other locals whose job it is to make of the new downtown waterfront a destination.

There’s a plan to bring a green market to the West Palm Beach waterfront, and I’m told you can only know about green markets if you actually go to one or two in exciting places like, say, Manhattan.

The motley crew with Herhoner on her Labor Day weekend jaunt includes: mayoral friend and waterfront manager Joan Goldberg, Downtown Development Authority associate director Rafael Clemente and Willie Perez, the fired Miami cop who runs a security service hired by the city to keep the waterfront peaceful. Sometimes, he’s Frankel’s bodyguard.

So, who’s footing the bills?

For more, look below or click (Read more…)

Smith, headed to Motown (Courtesy WPTV)

Now that the Atlantic’s churning with hurricanes, the heat’s turned up on South Florida TV weathermen.

And that’s the moment that one of them chose to exit the kitchen!

WPTV-Channel 5’s Keenan Smith, who was the first to forecast the day’s weather for T-Coast and Palm Beach County viewers at 4:30 a.m., is hightailing it outta Dodge. His last day was today.

Check this out: He wants to work somewhere that has four seasons!

So he picked Detroit, a dying city that people usually leave, over vibrant West Palm Beach.

Sup with that?

“I’m thrilled to be moving back to the Midwest and back to a climate with four seasons,” he said in a statement. “I’m also excited to be moving to the Detroit area.  There’s a unity of spirit in the people in Southeast Michigan that you don’t find everywhere.”

Smith’s new gig at WXYZ-TV, Motown’s ABC affiliate, starts in two weeks.

We hardly got to know the guy, except that he seemed competent enough albeit a little stiff. Smith arrived in 2008 from Chicago to replace long time forecaster Dean Tendrich, who quit to go into real estate. The 4:30 a.m. dudes are now weekend meteorologists James Wieland and Glenn Glazer, who’ll rotate in and out of the shift.

By the way, Keenan, we have four seasons here: Football, snowbird, mosquito and hurricane season, in case you didn’t have the time to notice!

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Elin and Tiger (Click on the photo for more)

Jupiter Island golfer Tiger Woods‘ secret divorce settlement may be so expensive that he had to mortgage his home to pay for it!

Official records that just popped up in Martin County hint that Woods will have to pay ex-wife Elin Nordegren $54 million by January 2016 — or risk losing the house he spent five years building.

How do I know?

The philandering golf-club swinger took out a $54 million-mortgage last Wednesday, two days after his quickie divorce was finalized in Panama City Aug. 23.

– Click here to read the mortgage docs

– Click here for a better look at Woods’ Jupiter Island digs

And the mortgage holder, according to the records, is a shadowy company with no apparent capital, JRD Florida Ventures LLC. The corporation’s registered agent is none other than one of his former wife’s six divorce lawyers, Dennis Belcher.

Woods, the mortgage shows, used the Jupiter Island property, Sand Turtle, to secure the loan — which means that Nordegren could end up with that Motel 6-style crib if he doesn’t pay up. The document was actually notarized by Tom Sasser, Woods’ West Palm Beach-based divorce attorney.

For more, look below or click (Read more…)

Ross, and George

Surprise, surprise!

Radio personality Jennifer Ross, who was canned a year ago from WRMF-97.9 FM’s morning show and replaced by younger, cheaper talent, is returning to the station — but not to the airwaves.

Ross, 52, is scheduled to take over as director of community affairs next week, said station boss Elizabeth Hamma. The job’s description is unclear. Hamma declined to comment further.

In an email to Page2Live, Ross wrote:  “I’m thrilled about the opportunity.  As you know, I’ve always been committed to the community, as has WRMF, so this is the perfect opportunity for me.  I’m looking forward to continuing my relationship with the WRMF team and great things for the future.”

A station insider who asked not to be identified said the move makes sense for both WRMF and the woman who ruled local morning radio for 25 years.

For more, look below or click (Read more…)

Ramos (Lannis Waters/The Palm Beach Post)

Suicide victim Brett Hall, the well-liked accountant who jumped to his death from the 21st floor of a downtown West Palm Beach office building Aug. 19, is believed to have downloaded dozens of pornographic videos, some showing prepubescent boys with adult males, according to police reports obtained by Page2Live.

Had he lived, he could have been charged with felony computer child exploitation and sexual performance by a child, and faced more than 20 years in prison.

Hall’s home in Boca Raton was being tossed by online pedophile-hunter Charlie Ramos, a Boynton Beach Police detective at the time Hall committed suicide. He jumped from the “Darth Vader” building, which ironically is located in the shadow of the county courthouse and the office of the State Attorney.

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(Click on the Splash News photo for more)

Life goes on for newly single Elin Nordegren on the week she divorced golfer Tiger Woods and granted a cozy, softball interview to People magazine about her crowded marriage.

Still surrounded by bodyguards, the 30-year-old was just photographed exiting a pediatrician’s office near Orlando with her and Woods’ two children. (above)

Elin, meanwhile, is not the only one squawking about her world falling apart. Miss Congeniality star Sandra Bullock is scheduled to sit down with Today’s Matt Lauer Tuesday to discuss her pending divorce from philandering motorcycle builder Jesse James.

– Click here for more about the divorce

– Click here for a look at the Jupiter Island home that soon will be Tiger’s homestead

Raban, on his old job

Brent Raban, a Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office sergeant once known on the tough streets of Belle Glade as “The Punisher,” was fired by Sheriff Ric Bradshaw.

Raban, 34, an 11-year veteran, broke his promise to be good made last year to save his job when he was demoted to patrolman. He’d been bragging on Facebook about beating suspects.

Now, one of his neighbors in Lake Worth has been complaining Raban is “harassing” and “intimidating” her, and Internal Affairs recommended after a long probe that he be terminated.

Bradshaw signed off on it Friday.

Raban made news last year when it was revealed he patrolled the nightscape wearing a camouflage skullcap with the word PUNISHMENT. His strange Facebook postings also surfaced.

In one, he wrote he considered his job to be not so much about fighting crime as about applying punishment! Another read: “But like a good batterer, I know the areas that hide the marks well.” Better yet: Raban, who admitted to being a fan of comic books with troubled heroes like Batman and The Punisher, once commented how he hadn’t beaten anyone in 11 days.

For more, look below or click (Read more…)

Hall

The young man who jumped to his death from the 21st floor of a downtown West Palm Beach office building last week was under investigation by a sex crimes police task force, authorities and his employer told Page2Live.

Brett Hall, 24, who was buried today in Valhalla, N.Y., was questioned by members of the Palm Beach County Sexual Predator Enforcement Task Force about two hours before he committed suicide Thursday.

The secretive Boca-based unit is made of detectives with the State Attorney’s Office, Boca Raton and Boynton Beach police as well as the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

Through advanced data-mining techniques, the group investigates mainly child porn distributed through the Web.

A spokeswoman with the Boca Raton Resort, where Hall worked as an accountant, said detectives served a search warrant at Hall’s workstation about 9 a.m. Carole Boucard, the resort’s director of public relations, added she didn’t know what the investigators were looking for. But a source close to the probe told me they mainly searched Hall’s work computer.

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Lional Dalton (Click on the photo for his booking mug, and more)

Former National Football League journeyman Lional Dalton spent today in a West Palm Beach jail after surrendering to Palm Beach County authorities on charges of domestic violence.

The 350-pound defensive tackle, who made Boca Raton his home when he retired in 2006 after playing for the Baltimore Ravens, Denver Broncos, Kansas City Chiefs and Houston Texans, was scheduled to post his $2,000-bail today.

The wife, 5-foot Kimberly Dalton, also was arrested last week in connection with the same incident, which occurred at their home in March.

According to court records, the Daltons have been going at it for more than a year. He filed for divorce earlier this year.

Each has asked courts to grant several domestic violence injunctions against the other. Yet, they still share a $1 million-house at the fancy Fox Hill Estates, even if a judge ordered Lional to live in the pool house. He is only allowed in the main house, where Kimberly lives, to prepare food and attend to personal needs.

Still, they run into each other every so often — and that’s not good.

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Loeb and Vergara in Los Angeles last year (Courtesy People en Espanol)

Former State Senate candidate Nick Loeb was in critical condition today at a Los Angeles area hospital after a single-car crash in the swanky Bel-Air neighborhood.

Loeb, 35, who also ran unsuccessfully for Delray Beach City Commission, is mostly known in Tinseltown for the company he keeps. He has been romantically linked to sitcom star Sofia Vergara, who lives near the crash site.

The West Coast website TMZ reports this morning that paramedics found the trust-funder Loeb suffered a severely broken leg and a “deep gash” to his chest in the crash, which occurred on a narrow, winding road running through hilly Bel-Air.

While Vergara stars in the ABC hit series Modern Family, Loeb has been dabbling in movie production. He is the son of Ronald Reagan White House ambassador John Loeb and a cousin of former Seagram boss Edgar Bronfman.

Loeb was recently divorced from his Swedish wife Anna, who was arrested for DUI in Delray shortly after Loeb announced his candidacy for Sen. Jeff Atwater’s seat last year. Loeb quit the race a month later and took up with Vergara.

– Nick Loeb never had to scrounge for a hot date. Click here for racy photos of his conquests