Longtime Boynton Beach critic wins $2M Powerball prize
BOYNTON BEACH — For years, David Floering fought with the city of Boynton Beach over a lost towing contract and sparred with then-Mayor Jose Rodriguez so vociferously that the mayor sued him for libel.
That might have been the last thing on his mind last week when he won $2 million in a Florida Lottery game.
Floering, 57, bought the ticket for the April 18 Powerball drawing from the Publix Super Market at Federal Highway and Woolbright Road, not far from the towing company and body shop he’s operated for years.
The Lottery said he matched all five white ball numbers of 9-10-12-17-23, but not the Powerball number of 9. The prize for matching all five plus the Powerball was $122 million.
Floering and his wife of 25 years, Barbara, traveled to Tallahassee on Friday, where they were photographed holding the ceremonial check.
On Monday, Floering was back at his shop.
“I’m thinking of semi-retiring and running for the County Commission,” he said. Floering has lived west of Lake Worth for about 17 years and is in the district that will be open after Paulette Burdick leaves this fall because of term limits.
As for the money, he said his business has been good and “I didn’t really need it.” He said he will “probably invest it.”
For the past five years, Floering has stayed out of the public eye and out of spats with the city. His earlier ones go back nearly a decade. When the city descended into a free-for-all of scandals from 2010 to 2013, Floering was in the thick of it.
After claiming his outfit was cheated out of a towing contract in 2010, Floering accused then-Mayor Jose Rodriguez of cheating on property taxes and called the mayor a crook and a liar so many times Rodriguez sued him for defamation. Rodriguez later dropped the suit, and Floering stopped bidding for contracts.
In October 2012, former commissioner Ron Weiland admitted in a deposition that he, Floering, lobbyist and former commissioner David Katz and then-commissioner Rodriguez met at his shop in 2007 and privately discussed city business in violation of Florida’s open meetings law.
Later that year, Floering settled a lawsuit saying the city had violated its charter with its continued deadlocks in naming an interim commissioner after Bill Orlove had resigned.
And in December 2012, Commissioner Marlene Ross resigned hours before the Palm Beach County Commission on Ethics brought two charges accusing her of casting a vote to keep a political enemy from revealing she had sent naked pictures of herself to her cousin. Floering was one of those leading the charge for her to step down.