Good morning and welcome to our March 24th, 2026 Board of County Commission meeting. We are delighted that you've joined us this morning. Let's begin by with an invocation by Pastor Blaine Albbright, followed by the pledge of allegiance which is going to be led by
Ashley Western. >> Good morning, commissioners. Good morning. Great to see you all. Let's pray together. Father, thank you for the opportunity that we have to come to you in prayer, the freedom that we have to do so. Thank you uh that you hear us um in a time
when we can look around and we can see so much division. I'm thankful uh for your word that reminds us uh that where there is unity, you command a blessing. And so I pray for unity here today um in our county, in our region, in our in our country, and even in our world. Um God,
when we look around and we see anger and strife, we can look to you as the God who is kind and patient. When we look around and see conflict and war, we can look to you, our God of peace. Uh we look around and see unrest and anxiety and we can answer your invitation. Uh
where you invite us to come to you if we're weary or if we're burdened and you promise to give us rest. uh you tell us to uh come to you about everything, to not be anxious about anything, um but with thanksgiving in our hearts to present our requests to you. And so we do that today. We come to you knowing
that you're great and you're powerful and you're in charge of everything, but you are also personal and uh you care about us, the details of our lives. Um as we approach this uh significant week, Holy Week, um God, we remember what you've done for us by sending us Jesus.
God, I thank you um for the reminder of Palm Sunday where Jesus rode in Jerusalem on a donkey and the crowds were cheering and just a short time later because he wasn't the political savior that they desired, they turned angry and I can look around and relate
to that. I can look in my own heart and relate to that. Um, and so I pray the prayer that David prayed in one in Psalm uh 139 that you would search my heart and know me and see if there's anything grievous in me and lead me in the way of everlasting. Lord, I need your wisdom
and as servants of you and your people here, uh we need your wisdom. And so I pray that you would lead our thoughts and our words and our actions today so that we would be a reflection of your love for all people. Uh thank you for this beautiful county, for our leaders, for these commissioners, and for the
citizens that I believe are doing holy work uh by working to be good stewards of what you've blessed us with here. And so may we be faithful, God, uh knowing that you are always faithful. And we pray in Jesus name. Amen. >> Amen. >> Amen. Pledge algiance to the flag of the
United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. >> And you are a Marine. Please tell us a little bit about your service.
>> I served four years in the Marine Corps. Um, I did a year in Japan, Camp Fuji, Japan, and three years in Camp Pendleton, California. >> Wonderful. Thank you very much. >> Absolutely. >> Miss Western, may I say that uh you did a video recently for your department
>> as part of, I guess, uh, our highlighting different departments. >> I thought it was fantastic. I thought, and I even mentioned it, I thought you did an excellent job. You really spelled out the services and what the department has. and I had heard from two people that said they had no idea that we
offered those services. So, well done. >> Thank you. Thank you. >> Thank you. Have a great day, everyone. >> You, too. >> Uh, we have several presets today. At 9:05, we'll take public comment. At 9:30, we're going to have a fire rescue update on the interlocal agreement. At
10:30, we're going to have a uh discussion with Sheriff Buddhisk uh about State Road 710. Um there is an additional item on the agenda. It is department 6 which is the fire rescue update on the interlocal
agreement. Uh is there a motion to approve the agenda? >> Move approval. >> Second. >> There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? I opposed. That motion passes unanimously. Uh we will first hear uh proclamations.
The first proclamation is a proclamation uh honoring the Lyric Theater Centennial Celebration. Good morning, commissioners. The Lyric Theater opened on March 15th, 1926, and has stood as a cornerstone of arts, cultural, and community in Martin County. The theater has enriched the
lives of residents and visitors alike through live performances, film, music, education, and cultural programming, and has served as a gathering place where generations have shared unforgettable experiences, celebrated creativity, and built community connections. March 15,
2026 is the Lyric Theat's Centennial Celebration Day and its 100th anniversary represents a historic milestone worthy of recognition and celebration. And here to accept we have Kai Fontaine who is president and CEO of the Friends of the Lyric.
>> Thank you so much. >> Good morning, chair, commissioners. On behalf of the board of directors, staff, volunteers, donors, patrons, and the generations who have shaped the Lyric over the past century, it is truly an honor to accept this proclamation. The
history of the Lyric is a story of community, commitment, and creativity. 100 years ago, the Lyric first opened its doors as a place to gather, to be entertained, to be inspired, and to share experiences together. Over the
decades, generations have passed through those doors, each leaving a little part of themselves behind. What makes the lyrics special is not simply a building. It is a community that has sustained it. When it mattered most, people came
together with vision, determination, and generosity to ensure that this theater would endure as the cultural heart of Martin County. Today's recognition belongs to our community. To the dreamers who built it, the visionary who saw it as an anchor for the
revitalization of downtown. The advocates who preserved it, the artists who brought its stage to life, the staff and volunteers who care for it every day. The and the audiences who continue to fill it with energy and meaning. A
100red years is a remarkable milestone, but it is also a reminder that we are just one chapter in a much longer story. Our responsibility now is to carry this legacy forward to ensure that the Lyric continues to inspire, connect, and bring
people together for the next hundred years. Because places like the Lyric are more than cultural landmarks, they are fundamental to the quality of life in a community. Friends of the Lyric remains committed to that purpose, to
empowering, educating, and inspiring the leaders of tomorrow while continuing to provide a home for the performing arts. Thank you very much for this honor and thank you for recognizing the importance of the arts and the vital role that the Lyric Theater plays in our community.
>> Join us Step forward. Are they going to sing or something? >> Encourage us, but I think we might take up too much of the time of your meeting. >> Again, thank you so much. >> Thank you. Congratulations. >> All the fun stuff.
The next proclamation is a proclamation declaring American Red Cross Month in Martin County. In March, we celebrate American Red Cross Month by honoring our neighbors who make its humanitarian mission possible in Martin County. Every day, their acts of kindness change
lives, bring relief, comfort, and hope when help can't wait. And this compassionate spirit runs deep in our community just as it has for 145 years through the American Red Cross. Committed to readiness, recovery, and long-term resilience, the American Red Cross supports communities across the
Palm Beach and Treasure Coast before, during, and after disasters. And I don't know if Tracy snuck in or not. Uh Tracy Mitchell, otherwise Oh, please introduce yourself. Y >> Hi, my name is Jim Hagen. I'm a employee
of the American Red Cross. This is Mike Rose. He's one of our leadership volunteers. Uh Tracy is in traffic somewhere trying to get here, so I'm happy to accept this for her. Um just briefly, the description of this proclamation lays out how our mission
how our mission is a humanitarian mission. Uh we've been around since 1880s, long time, helping Americans with disaster relief and supporting the military and combatant victims of of
war. And what most people know us for is disaster services. So my particular job is in disaster services. I organized the team of volunteers all across the Treasure Coast and Palm Beach that respond mostly to house fires and it is
the number one disaster response that we have in the Red Cross. 60,000 house fires a year across the country are assisted by Red Cross volunteers and they go out day and night. It's a 247
365 service that we provide. Uh, and it's all possible because of the support of our financial donors and our volunteers. And then this sort of event where it highlights our mission is tremendously important. So, I'm sure Tracy, who again is she may show up yet,
uh, but she wanted to let you all know that it's very important and she appreciates very much that you that you recognized us. Uh, and then a little history, Red Cross Month is a pretty old tradition. It started in the 1940s with President Roosevelt and uh continues to
this day. So, we appreciate your your support and we appreciate working with your emergency managers and your fire department on a regular basis. So, thank you. >> Thank you. >> Thank you very much. Can you imagine like >> Yeah. >> She'll show up. It'll be over.
>> If she shows up, we'll have to give her a minute. If I would benevolence my cornerstone, >> the benevolent one. >> Now we'll have public comment. Uh you will have uh three minutes to address us. If you would like to speak to us,
please fill out a request to speak form and hand it to the baiff who will hand it to me. The first request is from Denise Mazleski, followed by Terry Kogal. And if I've mispronounced your name, please correct me. >> Good morning. Good morning,
commissioners. I'm here today because I wanted to talk about illegal bonfires that have been happening on our Martin County beaches. Um, for about four to five years, ever since CO, I have noticed there are scars and littering of
rusty nails from pallets that are dragged onto the beaches that leave really d excuse me, dangerous situations on our beaches. Um, we recognize and we appreciate your Martin County Park workers who show up every morning with
magnets who are raking the beaches where the night before bonfires have been left. Sometimes they're still smoldering and they're there every morning and we talk to them and they're tired and they appreciate appreciate us for recognizing
their hard work. It takes them if you could talk to them about 45 minutes sometimes to just take care of one section. And my concern I've been bringing my kids to the beach now for 40 years. They're adults now. And my
concern is for the lifeguard camps, the surf camps, our fishermen, fisher women, our seniors, our grandchildren, my grandchildren, your grandchildren. Anyone that enjoys
our Martin County beaches, and I'm sure every one of you have been on one of our beaches, if you go in the morning, you'll see your workers. You will see them trying to make it safer for us. My hope, and I went to about seven
beaches yesterday and looked, there is not one sign that posts no illegal bonfires on any of our signs. We have the bonfire pits that have just been uh taken up because of turtle season. You're allowed to do that in the
pits. However, since co I'm not picking on any generation of people, but someone at night is doing illegal bonfires. I have called the Martin County Sheriff's Department to notify them of the dangers of this and I was told that well, it's
code enforcement. You'll have to talk to the county. I called your department, Miss Vargas. Spoke to your secretary, and I I'm requesting an appointment. Um, if I had more time, I would have brought in a whole room full of people that love
our beaches that are complaining about the same thing. And it's going to come down to someone is going to step on a rusty nail or something bad. They're not going to know that they need to go get attention. They're going to wind up with an infection. and we're going to have a
serious problem, a failure to protect problem. I'm requesting signs be posted. I'm requesting for possibly two to three weeks, maybe a month, nighttime sheriff county patrols on our beaches because our code enforcement aren't going to do
that. They they're not supposed to do that. If our beaches were protected and monitored at night for about a month and you hand out some hefty fines to illegal burns. >> Ma'am, your time is up. Thank you.
>> Mommy and daddy had to pay these signs. >> Ma'am, your time is up. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Thank you very much. And I look forward to having >> Terry Kogal is next, followed by Kenneth Shepky. Good morning, commissioners.
Okay. Uh, this is a phrase we're all familiar with and probably hear or see or see every day. The phrase was not intended to point fingers at anyone, but to remind our fellow Martin County residents of why we need one or two
evening meetings a month. In God we trust is printed on our currency as a daily reminder for unity in our county country during times in national crisis. Originally, it was put on our currency following the Civil War. Then in 1956,
it was printed on our currency during the Cold War. We don't have a Civil War, nor do we have a Cold War in Martin County. But we do have a loss of trust in our local governments. to bring our communities back together and unify our
beliefs and trusts. Can we please open up our meetings and make available our community meetings by allowing our growing workingclass daytime workers evening meetings for them. Thank you. >> Thank you.
Kenneth Shepky is next followed by Christopher Collins. >> Good morning, commissioners. Thank you, chair. My name is Dr. Kenneth Shepki. I'm board certified in emergency medicine and the subsp specialty of EMS. I currently serve as the deputy secretary for health for the Florida
Department of Health, having previously served as the state EMS medical director for the for Florida. But I'm not here to speak in those roles today. Uh my physician and I serve as medical directors for multiple fire rescue systems across South Florida, including the city of Steuart Fire Rescue. I've
spent my career focused on one central principle. Health care exists for the good of humanity and a well- functioning emergency system must always place the patient and the community we serve above all else. And I would add that a very close second to that is that we have to advocate for the
well-being of our prehosp professionals. As hospitals cut services, we see challenges like those discussed at your last board meeting. And there are rational explanations for why physician experts advise when an emergency 911 service should and should
not perform a hospital to hospital transfer that I would like to explain. I have reviewed the data and it is clear over the past six years, Steuart Fire Rescue has consistently accepted emergency hospital to hospital transfers every single time they were asked except
for two that I'll discuss briefly. For one of the cases, an emergency 911 unit was requested for a non-emergent hospital hospital transfer. When that happens, the emergency unit is taken out of service and is no longer available for the next life-saving the next life-threatening emergency in its local
zone. That is why these precious resources are reserved for true emergencies, not non-emergencies. Secondly, in rare cases, the safest course of action is not actually movement. It is continued stabilization at the local hospital.
Federal law and TALA and Florida statutes and regulations establish a clear expectations. Hospitals, even those without dedicated obstetric services, must maintain the capability to evaluate, manage, and stabilize OB emergencies, including performing a
delivery when necessary. This is not a theoretical concept. This is the current regulatory and clinical standard. It's also consistent with what you were promised, that our local hospital would retain the ability to care for mothers and babies when they
present in active labor. That's what happened here. The second patient arrived by private vehicle, not by 911. They drove themselves in to our local hospital already in active labor with regular contractions and severe pain, both of which are hallmarks of transitional labor phase, meaning
delivery is going to be imminent. Taking a patient out of a hospital where there are physicians, nurses, blood products, anesthesia, operating room into the much more limited resources of the back of an ambulance may actually increase risk rather than reduce it. There are plenty of precedents where well-meaning healthcare teams transfer a
patient active labor only for disaster to strike before reaching the destination, leading to traumatic events for both patients and their prehosp providers. My team will never endorse limiting or delaying care, but we do try to protect patients from unnecessary risk. I look forward to collaborating with you all on improving the system locally.
Thank you so much. >> Thank you. Chris Christopher Collins is next, followed by Corey Cwley. Good morning, Mayor. >> Good morning. >> So, I'm thankful our medical director was here. I also wanted to speak to the
ILA conversation that you all be having shortly. um less so from the perspective of a mayor and more so as a father and husband uh to my family. I I appreciate your previous conversation about this
and I'm glad that you are talking about it. The ILA is clearly outdated with station 3 in existence. And I know that we all want to make sure that the closest to the call gets to that call so
that residents are receiving the highest level of service. We all take very good care of our fire departments and make sure they're well staffed. But now with the existence of station three and then you know Jensen Beach
that previous ILA is outdated. Uh if there was a case in the past for the county picking up the slack for the city that does not exist anymore. Uh if anything the agreement that we have is now net positive for the city. Rarely will you see somebody advocating for a
new deal when we are at the uh beneficiary of that deal. But for the sake of the public and making sure that people are not dying, this ILA needs to be updated. In fact, your union initiated the conversation to
update this ILA and from the city's perspective, we entirely agree. What we have asked is that there is a public meeting which I hope is not untenable to you all. I hope transparency seems like the most reasonable thing when we're discussing the uh health and safety of
the public and pulling it out of the political gaming uh realm. So, uh, from my perspective as one of five, if it is untenable to have a public meeting, even to have a private meeting to where we can update this ILA so that ultimately
residents receive the highest level of care and we're not waiting an additional 3 minutes from a dispatch from Brit Road to get to Jensen Beach with a city station less than a mile away. This would be my goal. These are my comments this morning to you. So in your
conversation today, I hope that you know the Cleveland Clinic issue does not take full uh all the air time because there is an ILA that needs to be amended. Cleveland Clinic is really a separate issue and
that has to do with them closing maternity. And um if if you so choose to be the ones that have your taxpayers subsidize uh ambulance trips uh in transport because of of their inability to or unwillingness to transport with
their ambulances since they no longer want to have maternity and have taxpayers subsidize that, you know, but clearly you can hear from our medical director that it may in fact be less safe to be doing this kind of thing. So thank you. Please uh please take those
comments in as you guys entertain. I'm thankful for what you do and um thank you again. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Corey Cwley is the next request to speak form and Mr. Crowley is the last request to speak form that I have.
>> Commissioners, >> morning. >> Good morning. That's my son over there, by the way, who I tried to compel to come up here, but he wouldn't. So, uh, 4 years and 29 days ago, I walked this young man to a bus as he departed for Paris Island, uh,
to join the United States Marine Corps. And the following day, Russia invaded, uh, Ukraine. And none of our lives have been the same since, especially for the residents of Port Serno. Uh, we don't get to quit being a father, but handing your son over to the Marines
felt like graduation day. I had done my part, and they were going to do theirs. I had planned on retiring and I flew to Spain. I rented a caravan and I started to explore. But after a month, I couldn't get to sleep. I didn't have a problem to work on. I didn't couldn't find a purpose.
So, I flew home and started kicking around and I owned some properties at the time in Port Solerno. And I went and decided to see what the CRA thing was all about. I met Susan Corores at an April meeting in New Monrovia and we chatted for a bit and I asked her some questions and uh
her answer to one of my questions set the stage for the for the history that we have now. I read your CRA plan and it has hacked to pieces a lot of what your comprehensive plan was supposed to protect. And so I asked her, "Where are
we going to park?" and she said one word that will echo in the history of of Martin County. And her word was elsewhere. As if elsewhere was some other place that wasn't my neighbor's yard. As if elsewhere wasn't uh you know was some
magical land that wasn't on a map. As if elsewhere wasn't going to destroy Port Serno. And it made me very very angry because after visiting my son after he went to California, I had seen what California had become firsthand. The only way I put him on a bus on a Greyhound station was because he was a
Marine. Nobody would ever put their their 19-year-old boy on a bus at that Greyhound station in Los Angeles. Florida was never going to become California. And the reason Florida was California became California was because of good intentions but misguided policies. And elsewhere is such a
policy. So over the past four years, local governments have lost more power than in my entire lifetime. The state of Florida is usurping local control. The past three years have been a very tumultuous time in Solerno and I've been the cause of much of that. The past two years we've seen the rise of artificial
intelligence and over the past year the Florida state uh is going to propose amendments to get rid of property taxes. These things are changing these things are transforming not changing the way we have to approach governance and
protecting our communities. Change has not just been hard for the residents it's been hard for the government. I have been the victim of code enforcement and all kinds of other things. My main point is you guys here at this stas miss elder our county uh
commissioners this is a moment of transformation not a moment of change I've fought tirelessly to save ports I've been the victim of a propaganda campaign but we now need to come together time is up >> thank you >> thank you
>> would anyone else like to address us and we will close public comment and move on to commissioner comments Commissioner Vargas. >> Okay. Uh there's a lot of food for thought and I really appreciate all the comments for everybody that's taken their time. I think one lady talked
about nighttime meetings. I'm all for it. Once or twice a month. We do need to reach out to those folks that are working hard during the day and cannot make the morning meetings. Meetings are for the benefit of our constituents, not
for our comfort. And that's why we're up here. So, I'm very strong for that. I just want everybody to know and I did say that last time also there was a mention about the illegal bonfires and I think Mr. Donaldson and I uh spoke about that. I know that we have the fire pits. So what can be done about that to
monitor that so that we don't have a situation? I know we're right in turtle season imminently but outside of that time also. >> Yes, Commissioner. I know we uh spoke briefly about it, so I haven't had a chance to talk to fire rescue and some of the other issues, but I will get back
to the board on uh what additional regulations we can put in place. Certainly during um turtle season, uh they are not allowed, but uh and we can, you know, as far as code enforcement, the other issue is regarding just the allowance of fires in front of our
public beaches. We regulate them at two parks. Um, but uh I'll I'll get back to the board with a memo on uh on the options that we can do to increase uh the regulation of fires in front of county facilities. >> Okay. What about the fires in front of
uh private developments that may own the beach? How how we handle that? >> Um at this point in time, I don't believe we can regulate the fires in front of private property. they can other than through our fire department uh on burn bands and uh the state can
regulate in terms of um turtle nesting season. >> Okay. Would it be possible to have signage um that you can't just you know have a a bonfire there? >> Certainly in terms of a public educational component um we can uh bring
back to the board options on what it is that we can do. Uh but in terms of at private property uh we are limited on what we can do in terms of signage on private property or enforcement of rules that we don't have. >> Okay. Well, the private property I understand and that would be for those
owners to make that decision, but certainly on our public beaches. We're getting ready to rebuild the >> Yes. the uh cafe at Jensen Beach and we'd like to have it there for quite a few years and also for the enjoyment of the beaches of everyone else that that
comes not just locally but those that you know fly in to enjoy our area too. Um I want to I will reserve my other comments for another mention uh from one of our constituents that took the time to come here and talk about the fire
department interlocal agreement. Um, I would like, however, for our chairwoman Herd, uh, to have the pleasure of talking about our budget and finance department, and they were recognized, uh, by a an agency that, uh, does give
state and local governments uh, awards for preparing highquality budget documents. So, I'm going to leave that for our chairwoman to make that announcement. We're very proud of Miss Merley and her team. Thank you, Commissioner Caps.
>> I'll be brief. Uh I would like to re-emphasize that I am not for evening meetings uh for the county commission. you know, some of the smaller towns uh can manage to have meetings in the evenings uh that
are reasonable in length, but at the county uh it's a much bigger jurisdiction and there's always the potential for numerous public speakers to come in, which we appreciate very much. But there's been a history in the past, not
so much lately, but there's been a history in the past of extremely long meetings. Um, and it would be super cumbersome to deal with to start a county commission meeting at 5 or 5:30 in the evening when that meeting may run
six or eight or 10 hours. Um most of our meetings now are run more in the 4 to 7 hour range. Um but uh there's the potential if there's a controversial issue there can be 50
public speakers and there can be two or three hours of public comment which we greatly appreciate but it's it's you know I heard it said one time one of our our former presidents said that an
exhausted pres president is a dangerous president and this president was known for being in bed at 9:00 every night uh and getting his rest because he that was his comment. An exhausted president is a dangerous president and I think
exhausted commissioners are dangerous commissioners. So I'm not for evening meetings. Uh I think the evidence also shows that uh when public meetings go past 8:30 or 9:00, people start
leaving anyway because they have to get up and go to work the next day. You're not going to have many people in the audience when you have a meeting that's running into 11 and 12:00 at night and people have to get up at 6:00 the next morning to go to work. So it's kind of
productive. Um, and I don't think it would be good. >> Uh, Commissioner Vargas is referring to an award that we got from the government finance officers association. Uh, they are pleased to inform us that our budget
has been awarded the distinguished budget presentation award from the government finance officers association. This award is the highest form of recognition in government bud budgeting. it its attainment represents a significant achievement by our
organization. This is a wonderful uh >> win every year >> award and we know that our budget office does a terrific job and this is welld deserved. So thank you budget office >> commissioner. Thank you madam chair. Mine's much
lighter. I think each of us received an email from a gentleman in Tallahassee that wanted us to somehow acknowledge the 70th anniversary of the Lawrence Welk Show. Uh I thought originally it was probably a
joke, but he did put his name and telephone number. So, I called him and it's he's very serious about celebrating uh Lawrence Welk uh and the show and it's 70th anniversary had over a hundred counties uh and let uh governmental
entities write a letter of congratulations and I would request that our chair write a letter of congratulations on the occasion of Lawrence Welk's 70th anniversary of his show.
>> Sure. Thank you so much. >> On behalf of all the commissioners, you know, >> it's an excellent idea. Thank you. >> Long overdue. I think it's something a lot of us had on our minds and finally we'll be settling it up. >> Commissioner Heatherington.
>> Yeah. I'd just like to thank our CRA staff and our public works department. We have the El Camino Trail. We've been doing for the past seven years so much in Golden Gate. We had the septic sewer project and that's not exciting to anybody to see underground
infrastructure, but El Camino Trail really has our residents in the area very excited. You can see it coming to fruition throughout the neighborhood and our CRA staff. Uh I want to thank you and public works because you've been really putting a lot of time and elbow
grease into working with the residents, making sure it's comfortable for them, making sure the project is on time and on budget. So, thank you. And we hope to have that completed soon and the soccer fields back up and running at Lamar Howard Park. And then I would also like
to say on the topic of meetings, I am fine with morning meetings. I am fine with night meetings. I think it is a terrible idea to switch back and forth. It gives um it doesn't give a lot of predictability and consistency and causes a lot of confusion in the
community in my opinion. That's it. >> Commissioner Campy. >> Thank you. Just one other point about the CRAAS and our office of community development. There was a speaker this morning that was quoting and I'm not I will take him at his word. He was quoting a verbatim conversation that he
had and he mentioned her name, Miss Susan Chorus. I have had the pleasure of working with Miss Chorus uh in Palm City and I know all of us have. she is our director and I don't know what that conversation was but I would just tell you that I don't think uh in any of the
experiences that I've had with her and members of her team she's not flippant she's not you know she might have said something in humor that someone's taking as a serious comment if at all um she is a very professional she's got a
tremendous uh resume and track record of doing an excellent job not just here in Martin County but in her earlier career Uh, and I didn't want someone to specifically disparage her. Um, if maybe they were not trying to do that, but that's how I took it and I didn't want
that uh that we would just hear that comment, let that go out there and without a response. We are very very fortunate to have Miss Chorus uh as a member of our team. She does remarkable work in all of the all of the CRA areas, but especially uh I feel in Palm City.
Without her guidance and leadership, we would not have accomplished nearly what we have. Thank you, >> Mr. Donaldson. >> And nothing. Thank you, >> Miss Elrich. >> Thank you. >> All right, we are uh we will now take up our
9:30 preset, which is a fire rescue update. What is this? This thing is Oh, that's boom. >> Good morning, commissioners. Morning. >> Can you hear me? Okay. I'm trying to >> Yep. >> It's a little bit different.
>> So, um, my name is Chad Changeli, fire chief for Martin County Fire Rescue. And to my right, >> Good morning, commissioners. Matt Rush, fire rescue administrator. >> Morning, commissioners. David Hayes, division chief. >> Good morning, commissioners. Joseph Labasco, District Chief.
>> Good morning, Rock Natalie, division chief. So, uh, today we're actually here to just give you an update on the current interlocal agreement that we have with the city of Stewart and Martin County Fire Rescue for our fire services. Just to give you an overview of what we're going to go through in the
presentation. It's going to give you a highle view of the operational impacts that we've had along the way. This agreement has been in inception since 2020. Um, we're going to talk about some of those labor and delivery concerns that you just heard a little bit prior to me. And then at the end of this,
we're looking for a pathway forward to shore up some of the things that you're going to find out in this pres uh presentation that need to be shored up. And I I will say this, I am glad that we do have some representation from the city of Stewart. Um as far as their mayor and their medical director, it's
important for them to hear this information because what I'm going to share with you is 100% factbased. None of this is made up. And I'm going to give you real world examples because you need to hear it. and the residents of our community and the city need to hear it. So, first let's talk about why did
we even develop an interlocal agreement that was a feebased interlocal agreement with the city of Stewart. I'm going to take you back to 2015. What we noticed in 2015, we started having an operational impact on our mutual aid services with the city of Stewart.
That's them requesting us to go into their jurisdiction. 20 I'm going to fast forward you from 2015 now to 2020. That problem grew worse over time. In 2020, Fire Rescue Administration changed and we started looking at many different areas that
needed to be addressed with our services and with fire rescue in general. This was the biggest area that needed to be addressed was the imbalance that we had with our mutual aid with the city of Stewart. And I'm going to discuss that in a little bit here. But first, let me
talk about the feebased portion of this. Why did we do a feebased interlocal agreement? An interlocal agreement is not a foreign concept with your surrounding agencies. That's a normal thing to do. The feebased interlocal agreement that's a little bit unique. The design of this was to put pressure
on them essentially. It was to do one of two things. One, stop the city of fire rescue, shut their services down, merge with Martin County Fire Rescue, which would have been the most beneficial and efficient thing to do at the time. or two, grow your fire services within the city to meet the demand of the city
residents, which they were not doing. One of those two things needed to happen. That's why it was a feebased. Now, where did the fees come from? The fees came from a FEMA based concept that every apparatus has an hourly rate associated with it. For the simplicity
of this document, we averaged out what those fees were. on a quarterly basis, we would send each other a bill for each agency that would run into the other county or city for calls. And that's how we've been doing it. But the principle of this interlo interlocal agreement was
public safety was putting the public first and then he built the agreement around that. That was the intent. But I'm telling you now, some of this information information I'm going to share is going to disturb you because that's not exactly what happened. So first, let's talk about the geography.
When we look at for the general viewing public when we look at Martin County Fire Rescue and the services we provide in the county in the map you're looking at the dark gray area that is all of Martin County Fire Rescue responsibilities roughly 540 square
miles. We do that with 11 fire stations not to include Lifar and not to include Jupiter Island which is a substation. Now for reference in the upper right you'll see the red area that is the jurisdiction of the city of Stewart. If
you can see all the county all the county zones are surrounding in the city area. But if I for perspective if I take you to the bottom right leg of the city of Stewart you'll see station 30. Station 30 square miles is roughly 12 square miles. This is Port Solerno area.
This is for reference. If you look at the city of Stewart and the orange strip you see on the side is their contract they have with SS Point. Collectively that's roughly about nine to 10 square miles. Population of Port Serno roughly over 18,000 residents. Population of the
city of Stewart roughly over 19,000 residents. This is perspective. City of Stewart has three fire stations to cover that area. Port Solerno, we have one fire station, which is one engine, two rescues, and then the supporting zones around there to shore that area up
because it is a very busy area. So, just for context for the general viewing public, let's talk about the imbalance. When we talk about the imbalance of the mutual aid, I'm going to take you back to 2020 when we signed this agreement. In 2020, if I take you with what exactly
they had, City of Stewart for 911 calls in total in 2020 was roughly over 7,000 calls. Out of those 7,000 calls, Martin County Fire Rescue was running 21% of those calls. Now, the question I would
have for me is, well, what's normal? And that'd be a good question. So, let me take you to a neighboring jurisdiction for us. North of us, St. Lucy County, south of us, Palm Beach County. Our mutual aid with them less than 1%. City
of Stewart was 21% and the problem wasn't getting better, it was getting worse. That's why we had to do this agreement. So now let me take you into the negotiation side of this agreement. when we sat down many meetings that led
up to this final document that we have. When we went into the room, we went in there to negotiate with the city of Stewart. And again, the number one premise of the agreement was public safety, doing the right thing. In fact, it was just mentioned here earlier about being there in a timely manner when
somebody has a 911 call, right? That should be it. So, what we offered initially was something called closer unit response. You just heard that prior to me coming up here. Closest unit response is it's a simple concept. Essentially, the dispatcher gets a 911
call. They identified on their CAD where that call is geographically. All of our trucks, city and county, are tracked by GPS. It would identify that closest unit to the call, tag that unit to the call, and respond to that emergency. That is
the most beneficial and efficient way to run a 911 service. That's what the community deserves to have. However, the city of Stewart was adamant that that is something they would not agree on. In fact, what they said, no matter of the
response time, they wanted to exhaust all city assets before you look for a county asset. And I'm going to get back to that. So, hang on that for a second there. What we did agree on in the room was something called an echo call. An
echo call in the dispatcher world is probably the most critical call type that we can run. Examples cardiac arrest, drowning, and difficulty breathing. An echo call, what we agreed on is if that call does happen, no matter what, it would look for the
closest unit response, city or county, doesn't matter, and then they would respond and address it, and there would be no fee associated with that call. Now, that is the right thing to do. Here's what gives me a little bit of heartburn. Over 30 years of doing this
job, I cannot tell you how many times I have been dispatched to a call that was not labeled as an echo call. Because you have to understand it from a dispatcher perspective. It's whoever calls in this emergency, they are really relying upon
that information. For the caller, it could be the first emergency they've ever seen. It's hard to articulate the information they're trying to share with the dispatcher. dispatchers at the mercy of that information and then they dispatch units accordingly. My point is I have been on many many calls that were
not labeled echo calls and I arrive on scene and it's a full-blown cardiac arrest. You do not know what the emergency is until you get on scene. So yes, I agree all calls should be treated like echo calls, but they have refused
to do it. So let me give you a real world example of what that impact looks like. This happened in the not too distant past. City of Stewart had a 911 call in the most northern part of their jurisdiction, Windermir community. They would not look for any county resources.
They only look for an available city asset which is in the further southern part of their jurisdiction. And they attached that call to that apparatus. It responded to that Windermir development. 15 to 20 minute response time.
We have a county fire station less than one mile from that development. We could have been there within minutes for that 911 call, but they refuse to go with that model. Now, before I go any further, because if you're not disturbed by that, I'm going
to really disturb you with the next phase. What I want to be clear at because I know the keyboard warriors are going to light me up after we do this presentation. The city of Stewart firefighters, this has nothing to do with them. They are doing a job they were told to do. They have policies and
procedures they have to follow and that's what they're doing. This has to do with their leadership and it has to do with their policy makers. This is wrong. So now let's go into labor and delivery. So, labor and delivery, as you know, Cleveland Clinic, April of last
last year shut down our labor and delivery services. One thing Cleveland Clinic was really good at was communicating that they were going to do that to give us plenty of time to prepare to modify our operation because we needed to. When you have an OB
patient, you need to take them to the appropriate facility. It is absolutely paramount to do that. So, with our medical director, Dr. Wood who was with us today. We established policies and procedures of how to treat our OB patients. And what we came up with is
any OB patient 20 weeks of gestation or greater with any labor and delivery issues would be transported to the closest hospital that has labor and delivery services. It makes sense. The hospitals that we have closest to us would be Tradition from Cleveland
Clinic, St. Lucy Medical Center or Jupiter just depending what part of the area that we're in. That's where we would transport. Let me take over to the city of Seu side. What did they do? Did absolutely nothing. What they do is they take the patient to the closest
facility, no matter if it's labor and delivery OB concerns or not. And that's not something that is good for the community. So, let me give you not two examples that were just shared with you, but I'm going to give you four examples that are realworld calls. this is
happening. There's more than this, but for the sake of time of this presentation, I'm going to stick with four. So, first, let's talk about April 2025. Cleveland Clinic had a walk-in patient, 35 weeks gestation, contractions less than one minute apart.
Well, let me pause for a second, the walk-in patient, and it was talked about before I came up here. One thing that it's very difficult for the community as a whole to understand is Cleveland Clinic not having labor and delivery services. if they don't use the hospital systems and don't understand how
hospitals work. The layman perspective is one hospital, it's a one-sizefits-all. Whatever your needs are, you just walk in and it's there. We know that's not true. But to get the community at 100% to know that for a fact is difficult to do. So these
walk-ins are going to happen from time to time. But let's get back to the patient. 35 weeks of gestation, contractions less than one minute apart. They are being assessed by the ER physician and the ER staff. They quickly identify this patient needs to go to the
appropriate facility that has labor and delivery services. Right? And what they do first first decision they have to make in their decision tree they have is to reach out to Coastal Care. Coastal Care is their inner facility transport
within the hospital. This is what they do when it comes to hospital transfers. The problem is this was a timely issue and needed to happen now. Coastal Care was not available within that first 30 minute window. The next step in that
decision tree, call 911. And it's the right thing to do because Cleveland Clinic North resides in the city of Stewart. They are going to get a city of Stewart response. And they did. So the ER staff calls 911. They dispatch a city
unit. City unit responds. In fact, the city even brings their battalion chief with them to help make this decision. They get on scene. They assess the patient. They interact with the ER physician. They interact with the ER staff. And then they say, "We're not
assuming care of this patient. We're not going to take them." Think about this from the perspective of the ER. They called 911 for assistance. This isn't optional for us. we deal with a set of circumstances that most people cannot
deal with and you mitigate whatever that incident is. They call us for help and then they go on to say, "Call 911 back and call for a second and call for a county unit. Call 911 back." In 30 years of doing this job, I have never shown up
on a scene and said, "Nope, can't do it." You know what? Call 911 a second time and see how your luck runs that way. That is the wrong thing to do for the patient. But they called 911 back. County unit responded. We picked up that patient, no questions, and we took that
patient to the appropriate facility. Why? Because it's the right thing to do. Example number two, September of 2025, Steuart Fire Rescue, fullterm OB, active labor, contractions less than one minute apart. You're right. Imminent labor.
It's going to happen. We know that. and they still transport this patient to Cleveland Clinic North knowing they don't have long-term labor and delivery services for the patient the OB patient there is complications could be during
pregnancy post pregnancy and god forbid any needle natal care after the pregnancy for long-term care Cleveland Clinic does not have those services don't misunderstand me can Cleveland Clinic deliver the child absolutely they Can can we deliver the child in the back
of the rescue? We certainly can too. However, we don't prefer to do that. We prefer to have the patient and the soon-to-be born child in a clean environment for if anything happens, the long-term services are there. Let's go
into this year, January of 2026. Walk-in patient again, 32 weeks gestation, contraction 10 minutes apart. What do they do? They reach out to Coastal Care. Coastal Care is just not available within that 30-minute window. They have to call 911. 911, they call the city of
Stewart. City of Stewart again responds, assesses the patient, and then they say, "We're not assuming care of this patient. Call 911 back. Call for Martin County >> and they'll do it." And we did. They called us, we go, and we take that
patient. No questions asked. And then the last one, I think I'm driving a point home. Steuart Fry Rescue transported again third trimester OB patient active labor contractions less than one minute apart and they transport
that patient to Cleveland Clinic North knowing that patient has gets transferred out. Think about the mother and the baby to truly you have to if you deliver the child there and taking the newborn and then go ahead and take the mom and the newborn, put them on the stretcher, put them in the back of a
rescue, drive to the next hospital that has labor and delivery services through traffic, take them through the front door of the hospital, get in the elevator, go up to the LOD floor, and then turn over into the area they should be in the first place. That is just not
right for them. It's not right. So stop gap, what did we do? So I had enough of watching this happen and I reached out to Cleveland Clinic and I spoke with some of the physicians. In fact, I have two of the physicians with me today and what we told them is this.
If you have any labor and delivery concerns at Martin North ER or excuse me, Cleveland Clinic ER, if you have any needs of a transport that Coastal Care cannot handle, you call 911 and you request a county unit and we will take
that patient no questions asked because you cannot have that delay of care. Problem is we are in direct violation of this interlocal agreement by doing that. So what I'm asking for on a path forward
is assistance from you. Here's what we did try to do and this is fact. We tried to bring them back to the table and negotiate renegotiate this interlocal agreement. The union doesn't negotiate
interlocal agreements. This is the fire administration that negotiates interlocal agreements. We had a date set up to do the right thing because we care. We had the city uh we had the county attorney with us. The city attorney we invited the department heads
were supposed to be there. We were supposed to do the right thing. It was all set up. Give us a shot. Let us work this thing out. Let's write the wrong. And then no reason at all. They cancel the meeting. Just cancel it. And then
the next thing I know the interlocal agreement is at the city side and then it turns into this political and public spectacle and then they want to take this document and they want to negotiate it for political and public in the light
of all of that. It doesn't make any sense. If this if there's any a-olitical document we can talk about it's this interlocal agreement. So, where I'm looking for assistance from you is to help me force this negotiation. Remove the nonsense from it. I don't want the
politics in there. I don't want the emotion in there. I just want levelheaded people that can help us do what's right for the community. It's the right thing to do. But the last question that I would ask if I was you to me, why don't you just reach out to the city fire rescue fire chief? I'm like, that's
a great question. Well, I would, but he refuses to talk to me. back in 2020 when we were negotiated this ILA that he himself signed who was still there today. He's been very emotional ever since and refuses to communicate with me
since then. So much so two years ago when we had the training facility up and running and we were going to do mutual training with them. I extended the olive branch to him and I called him and I said we need to get together. We need to talk to mend this relationship to build on it what it's supposed to be. but he's
still in his feelings and emotional and will not train with us and will not meet with us to discuss this OA. So there's the time where you have to put your personal emotions to the side and do what's right for the community and that's where I'm asking for your
assistance to do that. So before I turn it over to questions um well let me first let me address that. So why do I have this running clock here? We have roughly over 20 minutes that just clip through with me talking to you, right? What is that 20
minutes? Let me share what that 20 minutes actually is. In an emergency setting, 20 minutes is an absolute eternity. So, think about the perspective of this OB patient that needs to be transported. Let's break
down the timeline. ER recognizes we have got to call 911. It takes two minutes to do the dispatch, right? They do the dispatch and then they have a couple of minutes to get on the truck. Call it four minutes. Let's round it to five just for sake of the argument. They have
a five minute travel time. 5 minutes. Now we're at 10 minutes. 10 minutes. And then they got about 3 minutes from getting the stretcher out of the truck to get to the patient, right? The one they're supposed to transport. So now we're at 13 minutes. And then they look
at the patient and they're like, "Yeah, no, we're not doing it. Call 911 back." So, let's do that again. Dispatch 911. Another two minutes. And then another five minutes of travel time. And then we get there and assess the patient. My
point is 20 minutes has clipped by where this patient who needs to be transferred out is just time you are not going to get back. So that's the point of the time. So what I would like to do real quick is invite up Dr. Dayton and Dr.
Dr. Wood who was our medical director and they can share their spe perspective. Dr. Wood is our medical director that is also an ER physician and he can give it from his lens and Dr. Dayton has probably delivered half of the children in Palm City that I know
over the last 20 years. So it'll be good introspective for everybody. So anyway, gentlemen, >> deliver your kids. >> Thank you board of commissioners for having me. My name is Dr. Wood, Donald Wood. I've been practicing emergency medicine 26 years and 16 of those 26
years has been here. Okay. So, I was former chief of all the Martin ER system before we became Cleveland Clinic and then we divided it up. Other than that, I am sitting as the president uh elect for the medical staff and I'm the chairman of the peer review. I'm also the Martin County Fire Rescue Medical
Director. So, with that said, I'd like to just kind of me you guys got a great picture of what's going on. I'm going to take you through a little bit more personal picture from a physician side. I want to, you know, start out with, you know, recognize Dr. Schleky. He's still
here. Yep. Good. I met him years ago. Um, so as the physicians, we can deliver a baby that or a pregnant woman that is in, you know, active labor that is crowning and is about to deliver any minute. And we do that. We don't like that. And as you guys know, if you think
about yourselves, your family, your daughters, um you know, how would it be to deliver a baby in the ER? I mean, really, if you if you had a choice, would you pick that choice if you lived in the city of Stewart? Would not. So, with that said, um to Dr. Schleky's
point about Intel law, okay, I'm going to clear this up real quick. Yes, it's val it's it's definitely valid. However, it is a definition of unstable and that definition is determined by physicians, paramedics, whoever happens to be performing a medical screening exam on
the patient. So, if I've got a patient that is in labor and they're 10 minutes apart, that's a stable patient to be transmitted, I'm sorry, transferred 20 minutes. Okay? And just so you know, it takes about seven, it's 7.7 miles exactly from here to St. Lucy Medical
Center, which is has that capability. It's exactly 21 minutes driving normal, not driving priority. Okay. In a in a fire rescue. So with that, if you're one minute apart, it can still take hours. Okay. And to Chief's point, you know, 20
minutes to register the patient, do an assessment, get everything tucked in is is is pretty much a long time. But that's what's going to happen when they drop them off. >> So, as a doc, I'm sitting here going, "Man, I haven't delivered one of these babies in 15 to 20 years. You know, I'm capable. I can do and Dr. Dayton and I
put on some education for the system, but it's not comfortable. It's not comfortable for me. Dr. Slept, is it comfortable for you? Probably not at this point, you know. So, I'm just saying it is not a comfortable situation, but we can do it in emergencies, and we do. That said, um I want to take you guys through what it's
like to get the patient out of the ER. The chief pointed out that, you know, they got to make the phone, they got we make the phone call, they got to get there to get the patient out. The hospital does have transport available. The problem is they may be taking another patient to another hospital
because we're unique. Martin Health before it became Cleveland Clinic. We have a footprint in two counties. So we do strokes primarily, especially interventional strokes at tradition. We do cardiac at North. We do orthopedics at South. And often times we're moving people from location to location and
those transports are not in service and they're not available in the timeline that we're looking for which is 30 minutes. So um that's just a function of reality. You know, if we were in Cleveland, Ohio, there'd be one building, one building with everything right there on site. But that's not the
case here. We're spread out. So, it's often 2 to four hours just to get an accepting physician to take one of these patients at another hospital. We have to hang on to them during that time, possibly deliver them during that time. It is definitely not comfortable for the
staff, the nurses, or the physicians. And that's if everything goes smooth. All right? So, you know, we don't always agree with the fact that we don't have uh L & D services in our hospital system, but we have to work with what we're given and what we're given right now is this situation that Chief
Chenuli, you know, kind of like painted the picture for you. Um, you know, I looked up Steuart on the way over. I just thought this is kind of fun. Maybe I'll look it up. Steuart, everybody, anybody know the definition of Steuart? The meaning of the name. If you named your kid Stewart,
it means to be a good steward. Okay. So all we're asking people to do is step up, do the right thing, be a good steward of the community. I agree with uh Dr. Slappy. We need to put the patient first. And again, you know, 10 minutes of labor pain, you know, that's
stable. That can be transferred to the closest facility 20 minutes away. If it's one minute, it could potentially be stable as well. I'll let Dr. Dayton point that out. We take trauma patients to the locust local the closest trauma center available. Okay. Trauma patients
go there. That's a state mandate. Um obviously L & D is not. I get that. But we take them there. We take pediatric emergencies when you're in the the bigger areas, say like Palm Beach and Broward County. We take them to pedes hospitals. We don't take them all the way to the community medicine adult
centers. So, we kind of triage that in a very respectful way for the patients because it gives them the best care and the fastest time to get there. Thank you. >> Morning. >> Morning. >> Morning. >> I'm Peter Dayton. I'm the medical director for patient safety and quality
at the Cleveland Clinic. I've been practicing here for 41 years. I'm old, but you know, uh I have delivered about 6,000 babies in this community and I care very deeply about this community and the health care that we provide. Uh we do have a logistical problem at
North. As you all know, Martin closed their obstetrical services April 1st of 2025 and the reasons are beyond the scope of this discussion. The fact is there are no obstetrical services provided at Martin North, which means we do not have an obstitrician able to
respond in a timely fashion. We don't have neonatal support, pediatric support at Martin North. We don't have ambulatory monitoring or fetal heart monitoring. We have nobody to interpret that monitoring. We do not have the connectivity with the tradition
hospital. We we've tried to work on those logistics and it's not been able to be done. So, we have a hospital system that is divided. As Dr. Wood said strokes and interventional neurology go up to tradition and our ambulance service moves these people constantly
from ER over to the other ER. Same thing for cardiac. Our our interventional cardiologists work out of North. So if you have a heart attack and and you're going to get a calath, excuse me, you come down to North. Obstetrical services are a tradition or
if if it's an e situation, we go to HCA Medical Center because that's the closest facility that has the capacity to provide the services necessary for that patient. And if I may use the quote from US code 421 1391
1395, the medical screening examination needs to be done within the capability of the hospital's emergency department. Martin North lacks the capability to properly evaluate and manage laboring patients. So when Steuart Fire Rescue takes a laboring patient and brings them
to North, it only delays care. And we've had four examples. Now, we move these people all the time with our own with our own ambulance service. So, it's not like we're going to call them every single day for every patient that's walking in. It's in that very rare situation where we've got two or three
ambulances in route with heart attacks and strokes in route which means they can't respond. That's when we have to call 911 and we need their cooperation to take these people and put them in the proper perspective to put them where they're going to get the best care and it's not Martin North if you had an
active laboring patient. We have no way to support a baby, especially these 28-week instances that you were given the examples of. A 28-week infant in an emergency department is a medical nightmare for Dr. Wood because it's a very difficult intensive care situation
and those babies need the neonatal support that is not provided and is not available at Martin North. So, you you do have a logistical problem. I asked the commission to please get these people together and and let's get something done to protect these patients. I'm an advocate for patients
and that's why I'm here for you is to be an advocate for patients in this community and they deserve better than what they're getting and I'll be happy to answer any questions. Thank you, >> Commissioner Kby. >> Chief, is that the end of your presentation?
>> Uh, this will end I would conclude this presentation and take any questions. So, that would be the end. I have had the uh I guess the fortunate uh experience to have heard that we were going to lose
uh labor and delivery services at Martin North several years ago. It started out in Indian Town when the community health, what's the organization that was delivering babies in Indiantown? Community Health. >> Florida Community Health. >> Florida Community Health. Um, I know
that they had received a very large grant through uh some assistance from Senator Harold and there was talk that they were going to be closing up their services. At that point, I had a conversation. Uh, and at the point the district was three and five were split
in Indian Town. So, it it it was part of my responsibilities to at least hear about it. met with the folks at Cleveland Clinic North and had the conversation about why that that point we were just trying to deal with the fact that it wasn't going to be happening in rural Indiantown. Then
flash forward to the point where Cleveland Clinic also says they're not going to be able to do it. And there was a whole rationale and explanation. I'm not a medical expert, but when they laid it out and you got to hear about it, it made business and and realistic sense. I
know that Dr. Dishi Singh who was uh heading Martin North at the time did uh appear before the city of Stewart commission and did a Q&A with them. Uh I know that the city there was a lot of public speakers and the commission themselves were frustrated uh and
concerned which I get. Uh but when you had the opportunity to hear directly from the people that are responsible for figuring out how you logistically do that in a hospital setting, I understood um that it just did not make sense. And the concept someone said that you'd
expect every hospital to have every service. That's just what the lay person would think. But that's absolutely not the case. And uh there is no guarantee. you know, many people live in what they call hospital deserts, medical deserts
where there is no hospital. So, with that in mind, you know, we're very fortunate and sort of become very uh used to and expecting a high level of medical services in our community. I think the labor and delivery was one of the first that was a wakeup call for Martin County residents to realize, wait
a second, we're not going to guarantee guaranteed all of these services. uh and maybe labor and delivery is the first of others to go. Makes sense if you have multiple locations that you'd have, you know, uh orthopedics at South and and uh
stroke at tradition. Why wouldn't you utilize the services? So, that being said, when they gave it up, I understood what was happening. Now, there's really two conversations being had this morning during public comment and now, which is
one, are we specifically talking about this labor and delivery issue, which is one of them. The other is the bigger issue that you started to talk about is, and it's been a conversation for years and years and years. Commissioner Herd is our senior uh commissioner, our
elder. Uh but I've been here a long time as well. This is an issue of merging the two fire systems since since the beginning. Sometimes it feels like it's heading in the direction that it would happen and then it feels like it's not. I thought the point that
you made that um this is not an an attack or from my perspective an insult to the men and women of the Steuart Fire Rescue, the people that are boots on the ground. Fantastic. have had interaction with them both personally uh from a
medical point of view and have seen it happen with other people, I've seen them work. Excellent. Uh it's just that when you have a small department next to our larger department like your map showed, there's it's probably more politics and I get it. If I was a city of Stewart
commissioner, you don't want to start giving up your police and your fire rescue and your other things because it's sort of what makes the city the city. But this is a life and death issue. Now I feel that yes there's probably personalities involved and egos
involved. Um but at the end of the day I believe both sides are absolutely focused on the mission which is public safety. So we can address this two ways. The first one being with the labor and delivery. I
think that the the easiest conversation slashnegotiation with the city of Stewart fire rescue would be as you optioned would be that we handle all of the transports. If it
can't be done with a uh Cleveland Clinic transport, then it would be us. I understand if I was involved in the city of Stewart's fire rescue, they don't have a lot of rescues. they, you know, start traveling out of the county to go to Tradition or
up US1. I get that that limits their services, which then goes to the other question, which is who's responding to what. So, if we're comfortable with that, we represent the city of Stewart and and Helen McBride, God rest her
soul, I will never forget, she says, Helen McBride, I'm a resident of the city of Stewart, which is in Martin County. So, that being said, I would personally uh offer up a motion that um Martin County Fire Rescue negotiate with
the city of Stewart's fire rescue uh organization to create at least an offshoot of the bigger interlocal that would say when in doubt, it's going to be us. I think the advantage there being that we heard from the medical
professionals, it's this doesn't happen every single day, but if it does happen and you're the family that it's happening to, it's paramount. So, I don't think it's going to turn the system upside down and we're going to be driving people from Cleveland Clinic
North to uh labor and delivery hospitals. I But when it does happen, I think it should be us. I think that's you don't have to be a doctor to know that. And then in regards to sitting down to have a regular negotiation on what needs to happen in terms of Martin
County Fire Rescue and City of Stewart Fire Rescue. I have a suggestion for that separate meeting. So the first one would be to just handle that knowing you're not going to try to peel back the whole can >> lid. The second one would be a meeting.
It doesn't h I agree. If elected officials are involved, us city of Stewart there it's it looks like it's tagged as being political or campaigning or whatever you want to call it. So my
suggestion would be the meeting be between our chief and their chief. You pick a couple of administrators to come with you, not 10, two, three, because they don't have 27 people in the city of Stewart to bring anyway. So to keep the sides even, the chief and whoever you
deem appropriate to come with you, two or three people, both medical directors, we see both of them here. They should be at the table. An attorney, our attorney, their attorney, because an attorney needs to be in the room if you're having negotiations and you're going to go to a
contract. representatives from the Cleveland Clinic because they are the third po uh point of the triangle because both city of Stewart and Martin County are bringing people to Cleveland Clinic. They have to have a seat at the table. And then the other point back
briefly just to the labor and delivery part that there's at least a little hopefully silver lining that we know that our not forprofit healthy start has been working and Samantha Cevich has been working for quite a while to offset some of the disruption of
Cleveland Clinic North not delivering in the county by I know that we've all heard they're working on trying to create a birthing center. Now, I think some of the issues of transporting people back and forth still might need to be transported because in my mind, as
the doctor said, the birthing center is going to be for pretty straightforward births. Anybody that's got a medical issue, anybody that's early, anybody that's delivering a premature baby or low birthweight baby, you're not going to go to a community birthing center if
you have a choice. So, that would be my recommendation. I'll I'll recap. My first motion is that the two organizations get together and work on that exclusively we will handle the transport from the hospital to a
birthing hospital. And then the second uh open for discussion but is having that meeting to once and for all have an interlocal discussion negotiation. No, no elected officials, just the people that genuinely need to be
involved. We're we're opinions. We're not experts. And whatever you two decide, maybe you say you're going to stay separate. Maybe you say next year or in 2027, 2028, we're going to work a path towards merging. I don't know what their
financial Well, I'm just putting it out there. I'm just a suggestion. Maybe it happens, maybe it doesn't. But the only people that should be sitting at the table and it doesn't have to be a spectacle open to the public. This is open to the public. City of Stewart meetings are open to the public. I watch
them all. And then when they were having this did come up at a city of Stewart meeting where they were mentioning our personnel's names and I was listening, but I wasn't familiar with the back part of that story. So let's the people that really have to make the decisions and
live by them sit at the table, not elected officials. Thank you, >> Commissioner Heatherington. >> Yes. So, first I'll start is we were somewhat briefed about the situation by some residents um and last meeting, but
and then we heard from a city leader early on in this meeting that the agreement was outdated and that we should all meet. And then to hear your presentation and to hear that sid the city has refused to meet and address this even though it was mentioned at
this last meeting. I'm I'm almost a little appalled. And as a city of Stewart resident, I want if my family member is having a heart attack, I want the closest unit to respond. It's life
and safety. I think the meeting needs to happen immediately between the two chiefs. I agree with exactly how you outlined the meeting should happen. I think the two administrations should get together immediately. And then I'll say I've been on the board for Healthy
Start. I rolled off the board, but seven to eight years I've worked with Healthy Start and really we've delved into the health of mothers and babies and how important these emerging issues are. And I was saying, I have two sons, 20 and
21. And when my first son was born, great healthy pregnancy, normal, you know, I my water broke on Easter Sunday, 4:00 in the morning. Okay, it's time. We've had a great run. You know, it's time to have this baby. We go to Martin
North, and very quickly things change. So, I'm in labor. Very quickly, I need a C-section. I need a I need to have the baby delivered. And they transport me. I'm down in the emergency room. I have a C-section.
Well, quickly after I had that C-section, my baby, who was a very healthy pregnancy, 8 1/2b, so pretty big baby, 8 12B boy. They transport him to the NICU with some heart issues. And he
stays in the NICU for a day and a half. and I'm up in my room mending from the C-section. Had I not been in the right place at the right time and had my older son needed that NICU care and had I needed that C-section, even though it
was healthy pregnancy all along, then it would have been or could have been a lifealtering experience for me and my child. And that's what we're talking about. But we're talking about lifealtering decisions and these things need to be
negotiated immediately. So I would second Commissioner Campy's motion and have the folks that are necessary, the chiefs, the medical directors there because I believe it is a life and health safety issue. not only the labor
and delivery but the closest unit and it needs to be renegotiated I think immediately for the best interest of all of our residents and the residents should actually show up and encourage the city of Stewart to make sure they sit down at the table and negotiate.
So I'll second your motion. >> Commissioner Vargas, >> I don't care about politics or unions. I really don't. Um, but I think that whoever is closest to the calls should respond and transport the patient.
People's lives are at risk. And the thing is that I don't see there is priority response time to emergency calls for our public. The most important thing is to take care of the people that reside in Martin
County, no matter what city. And I would hope that no one on this board would have any egos. Um, having said that, this should be beyond any doubt a discussion that should be out in the public as a public meeting. Pure
transparency, no secrecy at all. Last meeting, we had a dissension on some of our commissioners here. I was ready to go full force with the request, the very respectful request from the city of
Stewart mayor. And I think anyone should be above reproach here. Anyone on this commission who is against having the parties that should be at the table. This is not a public meeting to be in hiding or covering up or suppressing. In
other words, behind closed door deals. Whoever is closest to the calls should respond to transport. We expect clean, efficient public safety. Again, if you're embarrassed, you're on the wrong side.
I think that we should have the mayor, the city of Stewart, we should have our chairwoman of the county commission, the city and county attorneys, the city managers for both, and our county administrator, and of course, our medical directors and our fire chiefs
for both. That is not too many people, but everybody offers an opinion, and they should be respected. And I think that if we provide this for our citizens and those that depend on us, we are clarifying expectations
and we can see the next steps that need to be taken so we can untangle this immediately. This is intergovernmental cooperation at its best and this is the best way to serve our constituents.
Commissioner Caps, >> thank you all for coming in and enlightening us um on this pressing issue. I think that we as policy makers and as noviceses in the field
uh could could be traveling in territory that we're not that familiar with and there could be unintended consequences to us making motions. Um I would like to hear from you, Chief. Um if you were sitting up
here, what would you like the motion to be? Um, I would actually like the motion to be exactly the way Commissioner Campy just laid it out because that's the right way to do it. >> Okay. That's mainly what I wanted to hear. So, I will support Commissioner
Campy's motion as well. >> And chief, even though you have attempted to have meetings with the Stewart's chief and you've been unsuccessful, he's he's canceled meetings. He's refused to meet with you. Why are you confident that this approach
will be any different? >> Um, I'll just have him hug me and then he can uh just move on with business. Maybe we can do that. >> We'll hug it out. >> We just hug it out. >> It's the best I got. We can make it work. You just put the right people in
the room, we'll make it work. >> I'm confident. >> But we haven't been able to put the right people in the room. >> With your support, >> we will. And you have the mayor right here watching you. So I'm assuming he'll do the right thing.
>> Okay. >> Commissioner Vargas. >> Yes. So again, who are you saying that should be in the room? And this is in secrecy. Is that correct? >> Uh ma'am, nothing we do is in secrecy. Okay. Commissioner, everything we do is is in the public eye. But if you want to re understand what that actual motion
was, I'll I'll kind of put that back to Commissioner Camp. >> No, I'm asking you because you're the one that said you support what he's saying. So, >> so this would actually be a good example why the politics shouldn't be in the room because what happens is if you do have uh somebody that's a policy maker
that is political that are very emotional and they don't understand the content they're going to make emotional responses case in point commissioner was speaking and we had the mayor was actually in the background there's decorum and while he was speaking he made a comment that would be the same
disruption to be in an interlocal agreement it's the prime example of why You don't have politics in there. What you do have is the legal team in that room to make sure that everything you do is above board in legal. We have our county attorney here.
She's put here for a reason. She's to make sure that everything we do is above board and is a public document and is done in the correct fashion. That's how you properly run business when it comes to public safety. This is not a a campaign document. This is a interlocal
agreement of how we serve the community. So examples have been laid out in front of you here. That's what I'm trying to prevent in the negotiation. >> Who will be in the room? >> Myself, the other fire chief. I'd have some of my administrative team in there, finance. I'd have who runs the ILA,
Chief Hayes, and I have my deputy chief or soon to be deputy chief, uh, Chief Napoli. I would have Elise Elder, and then I would have Don Donaldson. And then the similar would be on the other side. >> Similar on the other side. And and so why would you not have a representative,
the mayor and also our chairwoman? We're not stepping into waters that we're going to get in trouble with. They might learn something and be able to deliver a message to us. >> And I I appreciate you sharing and that's your opinion. I appreciate that. >> It's a valid opinion.
>> Sure it is. >> They're very capable, the mayor and our chairwoman. Thank you for sharing. >> Any further comments, commissioners? There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? I opposed.
>> That motion passes unanimously. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. Thank you. >> We're now going to take a 10-minute break uh for the closed captioning clerk and then we're going to take up our 10:30 preset with the sheriff.
>> It's a public safety morning. We are back taking up our 10:30 preset which is a an update from Sheriff Budensick on State Road 710. We're happy to see you. >> Good morning, Madam Chair, and good morning, commissioners. Thank you for
giving me just a few minutes to to uh to really just keep you apprised of what we're doing. I'm not asking for anything this morning other than uh once you leave here and you interact with people from FDOT uh individuals that we interact with as elected officials that
have that really control the the purse strings here in in the state of Florida. I'm asking that you just relay some of these things I'm fixing to show you. And to preface this, it's a little bit graphic and um you know, pictures worth a thousand words. I I uh have hesitated
to show some of them. I'm going to show a portion of them, but I think it's important that we all as community leaders >> realize what's taking place. Uh for starters, I want to introduce the individuals behind me. I have my staff, Major Ruben Romero. I think he's in the far corner there. Captain Joe Collazo,
he's in charge of road patrol, which includes traffic. And then Lieutenant David Rosco, he's the other bald looking guy behind me, uh, who runs a traffic unit and they are inundated with calls day in and day out. And he put this PowerPoint together as it was his individuals, his folks that were out
there working these fatality crashes. Immediately after the beginning of the new year, we all know we had three crashes back to back or two crashes that resulted in three deaths in Martin County. And you see the title here, most dangerous road in Martin County. Again,
I know this is not your road commissioners, but it is in Mark County and and we we share some I share some responsibility in patrolling it. We started looking back at the stats we've had and basically for the last 10 years, we've had three deaths a year out there. That's a lot of people dying in in
Martin County and some of these slides will explain kind of why that's taking place. Well, instead of just doing what I don't want to do as as an elected official, running out there dealing with the crisis, kind of smoothing over everything with the people of Clemensville, the the
people of the area, wanted to actually try to keep pushing. We're writing citations. I'll hit that in a minute, but I wanted to keep pushing on the state to get this project approved, and I know you've been instrumental at in getting this project, the road widing project approved uh long term. But I
reached out to State Representative Snyder, who can't be here today. He's with the uh with some leadership down in Palm Beach. And and we started just talking to some of the funders of of the budget that are going to allocate the money for this project, this widening project. Uh one of the individuals that
we presented this PowerPoint presentation to was uh Jared Purdue. He's a secretary of FDOT. He's the head of FDOT. And then our local leazison, Steve Brown. He's our our local FOT individual. and we shared this PowerPoint with them and we showed them
how important it was to widen this road and really just again the picture's worth a thousand words. They were really alarmed by by the presentation. Again, Lieutenant Rosco did a good job putting it together. So, I thought it'd be important just to go through it with you real quick. Again, I don't need anything. I'm not asked for any other
than just educating all of us of what we're dealing with and just keep pushing instead of running out there dealing with a crisis. We'll just keep pushing for this project to take place. It's slotted right now to be shovels in the ground in 2030. They're already starting. It's a long process. You know
better than anyone. It's a long process to either buy or imminent domain the property and get it surveyed. It's a long process. They're already starting some of that now. But my push is if there's any extra money in the state of Florida that's allocated to get this job up and running and done so we can
prevent more deaths. So, let me start through this. Uh the first slide here is is something that our deputies and your fire rescue personnel that just walked out of here. They deal with this on a regular basis. These are traumatic scenes that they're going to on a
regular basis for our citizens, for the victims of these crashes for our fire rescue personnel and our deputies that are showing up out there. This picture right here, actually, I had just left 710 doing traffic enforcement. We had a wrongway drunk driver out there which our deputies chased, crashed into the
guard rail, arrested him. I had just left. Immediately after that, this fatality crash took place. I'm going to show you this news clip. And what I want you to focus on in the news clip is is the road itself. You can see here in lies a problem. The road for
the amount of traffic that's coming through Indian town and and uh western Mark County. It's just too small and narrow for the congestion that we have. And then if anything goes wrong, there's nowhere to go. There's no there's you'll see there's a narrow shoulder guard
rail. there's nowhere to go. And uh most of these crashes that you're going to see involve heavier vehicles, semis, dump trucks. But this is a news clip just if you just pay attention to the width of the road from the arrow. It kind of puts in perspective what the issue is. >> Now, an Indian Town Road has reopened. A
deadly crash shut down State Road 710, also known as Warfield Boulevard, for nearly eight hours today. Chopper 5 gives you an exclusive look at the crash scene, which happened around 9:30 this morning. The driver of the pickup truck died after investigators say a dump
truck driver swerved across the center line while heading north. They hit headon. The passenger of the pickup was flown to the hospital for treatment. No word on the extent of that person's injury. >> So, you see where it pauses right there? You see the guard rails, a narrow
shoulder, and you see really it really is a a death funnel. If you're going down there and something goes wrong, a car swerves or a car passes and can't make it. This is the kind of stuff that we're dealing with out there. So, since 2015, and I'm adding Okachobee
County in this because I think the DOT should do Okachobee while they're at it because it's not going to fix their problem. They've got a 10mi stretch of road that they need to finish all the way to Highway 70. But since 2015, the 33.7 miles stretch of 710 between Warfield and Martin County and Okchobee
has experienced over 1,250 reported motor vehicle crashes. Uh this one right here that you're looking at took place this year. This was a a head-on crash with a fatality. I'm going to show video and I have really we've talked about do I show it, do I not show it? I'm going to show a
portion of it. But again, this is what we're dealing with. This is what our citizens are dealing with. The people in Clemensville have seen firsthand uh our deputies. This is traumatic stuff. And again, if it's too graphic, I apologize. Just put your head down. I'll show you some of it and then we'll move on.
>> This is our deputies responding to recent fatality. Citizens are already there trying to help. The car is on fire. >> The guy's trapped in there. He's dying. He dies immediately after we get him out of the car. >> He's cooking here. >> Car's on fire. I mean, this is a
traumatic scene for me. >> Come on. >> Both north and southbound shut down. >> Come on. See that fire extinguisher? >> Vehicle's on fire. Passengers stuck inside the vehicle. >> Come on. >> Come on.
Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on, boy. Come on. >> Come on, bud. >> All right, I think we've seen enough of that. But they get him out. Unfortunately, he passes pretty much immediately after they get him out of the car, but not all of them get out of the cars. Our deputies are responding.
People are burning to death in the cars. Like, these are really traumatic traffic crashes that they're dealing with. All right. In the last 10 years, uh 710 within Martin County has experienced a total of 31 fatal fatal motor vehicle crashes. These crashes have resulted in the deaths of 39 people. That's us in
Okchobee. 29 of those deaths are ours on our side of the county line. We'll kind of scroll through that. So, the most common contributing causes to these crashes are uh of these crashes, 20 were crossover crashes, people passing, people trying to avoid
slower traffic and they move over in the oncoming lane and fog and rainstorms or they hydroplane and you end up with what I'm fixing to show you, the crashes. So, you saw the aerial on in the news clip. Again, this highlights the issue that we have on the north end where the road is
just too narrow. There's nowhere to go. And uh let me back up a little bit. This road has been a problem for a long time, but with GPS is coming online. Uh there's a whole lot more traffic coming through Indian town than used to in the past with Terargo coming online. There's some large building projects that are
going on in Okchobee County. The traffic is just all day every day uh moving through there. It's not like little Indian town used to be uh even 15 years ago. I'm going show you what's happened on the south end of Indiantown. So, south
of the uh Big John Monahan Bridge, the 710 bridge is what we're looking to do, what the state's looking to do on the north end. And it really shows you how the design of the road itself. And I know a fatality crash can happen out there, but the design of the road itself fixed the issue that was south of Indian
town. So, the road used to be the same all the way through Martin County. and they fixed from the John Monahan Bridge to the Palm Beach County line and widen that road to a a broad four-lane highway. Uh during that construction period, we had two fatality crashes. That's the diagrams that you're looking
at here. But since that uh piece has been completed in 2017, we've had zero fatality crashes south of the Big John Monahan Bridge. So really again highlights how the design of the road has prevented these crashes. It's not that we don't have crashes down there, but they're not those nasty head-on
crashes where people are dead right there, dead on the scene. So, this is just a uh a photo from the ground of of south of the Big John Monahan Bridge. You can just see how wide it is. Two-lane highway moving in each direction. Traffic has a little bit of wiggle room and if there is again a
hydroplane or a mistake, it can be there can be some preventative measures for head-on collisions. Again, I know a traffic fatality can happen down there, but it has not. I think it's shown that this road design has worked.
Uh, some things that I know you all have helped us work on and the village of Indiantown has worked on is Tommy Clementsville, the entrance there. We've had multiple traffic fatalities there. The state in the interim has gone in and put a turn lane there, which has reduced some of our bad crashes and our fatality crashes. So, thank you for doing that.
It's been a a big uh blessing to them out there. Uh but we were having a lot of crashes there. As cars would stop to turn, people that were not paying attention would go to pass and as the car turned, we were having nasty uh t-bone crashes into head-on traffic in some uh
instances. This is that turn lane where they widened it. And this is just a band-aid, but it is something. And then this shows you, you know, we hear, "Well, well, sheriff, what are you doing? Why why are you not out there writing tickets?" We are. We wrote uh
last year we wrote 2781 citations right here on this uh section of road. So we're writing a lot of citations, but it's dangerous for our deputies out there, too. You can see uh the guardrail that's there. You see our car hanging out in the road. You see the cars that have to avoid our traffic stop. So it's
dangerous really for everybody. People moving in north south direction, our deputies that are out there, the people that are stopped. So uh even though we're out there and we're taking care of business, it's not without some risk to our people that are out there. All right, I'm going to kind of go through some of these crashes that have happened
in the last 10 years. So, in 2015, you're going to see the recurring theme of large trucks. Uh 2015, we lost a 58-year-old to a a semi versus a smaller truck crash. This was a u one of the turn lane crashes that I just explained
to you right there in front of Tommy Clemens. This was a, as crashes go, one of the rougher crashes, a triple fatality. Uh, the youngest that died in that crash was a four-year-old. And, uh, this was a vehicle, T-bone crash that happened out
there on 710. Semi versus small car. Three people that were dead right there on scene. Crash in 2019. Um, this vehicle burned. Another semi-truck running into a car. We lost a 29year-old in that crash.
In uh 2020, we lost a 22-year-old. This is a small PT cruiser and a a larger uh pickup truck that got in a crash. These are two pickup trucks. You can see, by the way, there's an excessive amount of of damage to these vehicles.
Like, these are not low speed impacts. You know, the speed limit's 55 each way. Most of the impacts are 100 mph or better. most of the time better of these crashes. And these are two full-size trucks that look like they've been eviscerated in this crash. And in this
crash, we lost a 20-year-old young man. Another crash in 2021 where we lost a 20-year-old female. Another semi wrapped up in this one. Another semi crash where we lost a 22 year old in in uh in 2022. Again, a semi uh where we had a double
fatality, a 26-y old and a 24 year old. This was a head-on crash. Another head-on crash where we lost a 60y old. This is another semi crash. I know you can't see the semi in this photo. Another semi crash. Uh this one's actually up in Okachobee.
And uh this is a a semi versus a truck fatality crash. Again, uh this one is the very next day, actually. uh where where a uh you have a fire. You can see where you have a double fatality with a fire, both cars uh torched.
2025, just last year, um fatality with a double fatality, 68-year-old and a 60-year-old. And then this is this year, this is one of the double fatalities we had this year out there in Indiantown where we lost a 73y old and a 44 year old. In
this scenario, they were doing road work there and traffic was stopped. This car was stopped and a drunk driver uh went around everybody and rear ended straight into the back of this car and uh two were dead right there on the scene. Your fire rescue personnel, it took them
about eight hours to extract this fatality victim out of the car. That's how entangled in the car they were. And again, I'm not trying to be too graphic, but I think it's important to understand what we're dealing with out there. So these are just stats for you. I think you have the PowerPoint presentation.
These are where the traffic crashes were, who was in them, kind of some of the the small details of what they were, but again, it's 29 fatalities. Basically, three a year in the last 10 years on our side. And then this is Okachobee's fatality crashes, which again, I'm pushing on DOT to widen that
road all the way through and not just stop in Martin County. So with that, I know I I gave you a lot. Again, my ask is simply this. When you're out and about talking to F dot people, talking to the people of Indian town, I don't want to be the sheriff that runs out there. We write a couple
tickets. We put a band-aid on it. We're doing our job writing citations. We're doing our job uh working traffic crashes, but the big fix is actually the road being widen and be able to support the volume of traffic coming through there and not having that little funnel, that 23 plus mile funnel where cars just
have nowhere to go. So, with that, if I can answer questions on that, I I'm happy to. or uh >> mine's an old lady >> or we can we can call it. Yes, sir. >> Commissioner Heatherington. >> Yep. Sheriff, thank you for being here today and and describing what we have been hearing on this board and the MO
for many years and the MO prioritized this project at the very top of its list. And I want to thank DOT. Um while it seems like we're moving slowly, they did at least uh fund the project. And I think what you're saying is right. We
should take every opportunity we possibly can to emphasize that this is a severely dangerous I personally I grew up in Indian Town right around the corner from this road. My sister lived off of 710. We have had family and
friends have be the victims of some of those fatalities that you showed on this road. It's our main priority I I believe at this board and the MO and we and I want to thank Representative Snyder too because he really has been up in
Tallahassee speaking on our behalf and working to make sure that they expedite it. I was on a call with DOT yesterday uh speaking about safety improvements and speeding on Canor highway. So we had six or seven DOT representative
and our public works director and our county engineer and experiencing similar not um safety issues on Caner Highway. DOT even on that call said we have prioritized 710. We are going to work
with you on some of these safety um and education and enforcement was so um paramount. I also want to point out to you that we have been working on a signalization at either 710 and 609 or to be realigned on 710 to Martin Luther
King because that's become a very very dangerous intersection and people are coming flying down 710 heavy trucks and going around and that's that's become a safety concern. And so at the NO, we've also prioritized that intersection or to
realign to 609. And I think that's going to be um that's going to be helpful for some of our safety concerns. So, thank you for your enforcement of these issues. And I want to say to DOT, thank you for working with the county and also
Representative Snyder. And DOT always touts this vision zero as a safety and that's that's our goal in the future. The beline to the south as you mentioned south of John Moahan has made a huge tremendous difference. So that's our
goal as along with DOT is uh vision zero. We don't want to see these fatalities of our friends and neighbors. So thank you for enlightening us. >> Thank you Commissioner >> Commissioner Vargas. >> Yes. Um that was really jarring. Um but thank you so much for
>> uh giving us this information and showing what's necessary. Excuse me. I did have the pleasure of meeting with uh Secretary Purdue at a conference last year. Uh and uh I'm going to reach out to him personally.
uh part of the initiative of moving Florida forward also includes safety and infrastructure and this is regarding all the projects that are in line. So whatever I can do I certainly
will and again I will reach out to him personally and let us know of our meeting and your presentation today. Thank you so much. >> Thank you Commissioner >> Commissioner Campy. >> Thank you Sheriff. Thanks. And I think what's important to remember is that you're speaking of the fatalities, but
there's probably been hundreds if not thousands of catastrophic injuries. >> So the the ripple effect of this, I think, and Commissioner Heatherington said it accurately, FDOT has really made this through our meetings with our MO
board has really made it a priority. But we all understand that the frustrating part is that even if they started today with all the money, we're still talking two or three years from now. The right-of-way acquisition, there's a railroad track is right there. FPL has
massive uh transmission lines that run through that area. So, I think we need to look at and you obviously are a two-pronged approach. The first one is what do we do in the meantime today and what do we do as we wait because in the beginning of your presentation you said
um it'll be 2030 and people are frustrated and every time there's a tragedy out there there's a new rally cry which I completely get. You know you showed the video of of a can you imagine a bystander stepping in
there to try to rescue a person who's trapped in a burning car. If you noticed, he was wearing flip-flops. So, we need to have some type of a shortterm band-aid. Uh, as we wait for
FDOT as fast as they could possibly do, it's still going to be a couple years. Um, I don't know if there's things we can do with, like, as Commissioner Heatherington said, bright signage or people understanding that they're about to enter into, as you put it, sort of
like a a funnel of really just catastrophe that it's so narrow that I don't know if we run temporary lighting through there. I know that on 95 heading south just past Bridge Road that was known as a very high traffic incident
collision area and now if you drive past south of Bridge Road on 95 they completely lit it with tele you know high uh highway lighting maybe that's something that a short-term answer I know the gentleman the family that owns
the property mostly parallel to it from 714 heading south almost to India in town. We've had that conversation. I'm sure he would be willing to put lighting or something that during that time frame, look, if it's a DWI or someone
that's evading, they're not they could care less. But I think most people don't understand when you're traveling for miles on the road, you're entering into a really sort of a death corridor, which sounds dramatic, but I mean, officially it is. And um so blinking signs, big
traffic lights, not not signals, but you know, overhead lighting to light our way through that until we can actually get it done because I think our residents are expecting solutions immediately. And I agree with you. The final thing I would say is it's super dangerous for
you to have your personnel out there, you know. So, you wrote 2,800 citations that every one of those was a dangerous stop and you can't let them I guess you could go further down the road and pull off when there's more space, but anyone that's driven down that corridor realizes it's a long way before there's
an a safe space to pull out. Thank you for everything you and your team are doing. >> Thank you, Commissioner. And to kind of weigh in on your point with education, we've gone to like the media, social media, Indiantown's done the road. We've done heavy campaigns about the road. The
issue we're having is the people that we're finding out there that are driving like maniacs. They're not even from here. >> They're from elsewhere that they the GPS tells them to go down 710 and and they don't care. So, while our locals understand the dynamics and they drive very carefully, they actually help us
with the situations. They call 911 and we come out and respond. It's these maniacs that are coming from elsewhere that are causing these problems nowadays. So, uh, another thing that the state's done for us, they've given us a decent amount of grant money for that road. And our traffic unit is allowed to
take people on overtime away from their normal compliment and dedicate themselves to that road. And, uh, even with them there though, uh, I think last week they wrote a citation at 106 mph uh, and we had another bad crash at the other end of the road. Even with them there, crashes are still taking place.
Well, and also as you mentioned, most of these fatalities involve a semi that's not a local resident. They're they're just uh passing through. >> Yes. >> Mr. Gordon, >> Jim Gordon, public works director. Um I
just wanted to go over the kind of the phasing of the DOT projects just for everyone's I know most of our board knows it, but for the audience as well. So, uh design is underway right now on the corridor. Um it they've got $11 million tied up in that design. After
that, the rightaway phase starts in fiscal year 27, which is July of this year. Um which means that they they have to acquire quite a bit of land to be able to widen the roadway. So they're going to go through that process. It's usually about a two-year process, which is what's pushing out the start date of
the project to to 29. The first project is the C the County Road 714 realignment. Um that's in fiscal year 29. And then uh the next phase is the Martin Okchobee County line up to 126th
Boulevard which is in Okachobee County. That's in 30. And then the two projects in Martin County are in 31 as as currently planned. >> So >> and that's fully funded. >> It's fully funded. So, the Martin County MO and this board uh prioritized the
project and this past year DOT fully funded uh all phases of this project and they're all being actively designed right now. >> Yeah. >> Thank you, Commissioner Caps. >> Yeah, I I like Commissioner Campy's idea of bright signage
along 710. And I had a few questions for Mr. Gorton. Um, is it is it possible for us to put signs on a state road as a county? Uh, we would we have to have FDA FDOT's permission or how would that work?
>> We would have to work with DOT. Um, they have changed some signage out there. They've upgraded everything that they have. They've added additional signage. Um, but there always can be more that can be done, but yes, we can work with DOT to to coordinate that. um they would prefer us not to install signs, but we
can uh supplement what they have going on. >> Like what what could the signs say to really alert the public? I'm I'm not sure what a sign should say. >> It seems like most of the uh accidents appear to be um passing in no passing
zones. >> So u no passing zone signage. Um they already put the um they milled in the center line uh audible warning so that when people cross over they hear it. Uh that has worked really well for us on
the grade but out there it's a different um situation that those are people trying to pass not people that are losing their lane. >> Um >> so yeah, additional signage and maybe even looking at the speed limit out there um is another thing they could do. Have you ever seen a sign that says
something like narrow dangerous road? You know, like anything like that? I mean, something that that uh really alerts the public to danger, not so much, you know, passing signs and that kind of thing, but uh >> there there are narrow road signs um but
but they have uh a a meaning in the manual for uniform traffic control devices, the MUTCD. And when we say narrow roads, it's it's the lane width is less than 11 feet, which isn't the case out there. So, we can't say that it's a narrow road. It's a narrow
rightway. The the pavement surface is appropriate. It's just not um there's nowhere to pull off on the shoulders. So, so some information about the shoulders could also be put in there, but we would want to use a sign that's in the MUTCD. >> What is that? >> That's the uh it is the uh manual. It's
a federal manual that uh dictates what is shown on signs and it's so that they're all the same so that different communities don't have different signs. Um it it um um made it uniform across the entire nation for what types of signs tell what things. Some are
regulatory, some areformational. In this case, a lot of it's going to be regulatory, which means they can write tickets against it. >> So, you can't really get creative in what you want to say on a sign. has to be according to this manual. Basically,
>> that is definitely the preference and certainly on a state road. We do have some custom signs in Martin County. We have a peacock crossing sign which is not in the MUTCD. >> Go for tortoises. Um but uh typically we want to stick with things that are in the MUTCD. >> Of course, that makes sense. Yeah.
>> Thank you, >> Commissioner Campy. >> Just a lay person's uh option. you know, when you're on the um HOV lanes on the highway and they have those little plastic delineators that
run down sort of keep people in the uh the high occupancy lanes or if you pay down in South Florida and can there any possibility of running those the full length? >> I'm the sheriff. Jim, you probably better answer that question. I don't
know what you can and can't do in that regard. >> Yeah, I mean because they run them for miles and miles. I'm wondering, I get the delineation. We did, you know, with the audible. We did that on High Meadow. We had a couple of head-on collisions with fatalities, two in a row on in Palm City, and we did groove the center lane.
But I I agree with you, those are people that were not paying attention or sleepy, and they faded. They weren't specifically trying to pass this situation. And I think obviously they're not going to hold a semi in line in the lane, but you if you see them, most
people wouldn't run them over on purpose. My concern about signage is if the sheriff is telling us they're catching people that are doing a 100 miles an hour, they don't care about the rest of the signs either. Then if uh you know, no passing, who cares? I'm doing
110. So I wonder if you just ran that full length as a temporary fix. If you could speak to whoever it is at FDOT, if you could run those those little plastic, you know, things uh for this full length, it'll keep some people in the
lane or even do jersey barriers and run it where it's you can't come out of your lane. >> Yeah, you're talking about delineators. So, um sure, we can talk to DOT about that as an option. Um I think they do want to leave some ability for people to depart lane if it's necessary. Um but
delineators can fold down >> and they can get bounced over and pop back up. But >> look, the it's it's a catastrophic issue. I mean, FDOT understand that they funded everything and they're moving as fast as they can, but you were giving dates that are five years from now. And
if you're having three to four or five accidents a year, we're going to say that another 20 or more people and it is all of the other accidents where they've got thankfully the person didn't die, but they could be maimed and injured for life.
So, thank you very much. >> Thank you, Commissioner. >> Thank you, Sheriff. >> You're welcome. >> Any further discussion? >> Thank you, Sheriff. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. >> Uh we will take up the consent approval. Uh we have consent nine was pulled.
>> Miss Miller. Good morning, Madam Chair, commissioners. >> Morning. >> Michelle Miller, human services director. Today, I'm here to present the updated local housing assistance plan or the LHAP for fiscal years 2026 through 2029. This plan is required every three
years and serves as a framework for how Martin County administers our state housing initiatives partnership or our SHIP funds. Uh, in this new plan, we have recommended several changes which I'll just go over briefly. The first for strategy A, the owner occupied
rehabilitation strategy, we suggest increasing the maximum award from 63,500 to 75,000. This covers the increase of construction and repairs costs that we have seen rise significantly over the past few years.
For strategy B, we suggest increasing the emergency repair maximum from 16,000 to 20,000 and establish it as a one-time benefit. This ensures that we can respond to urgent needs like plumbing or HVAC failures while also preserving
resources for as many households as possible. For strategy E, disaster repair and mitigation, we suggest increasing the maximum award to 20,000. This ensures that we can provide meaningful support after a disaster.
And then we have also expanded our rental assistance strategy. For strategy H, we added utility deposits as an eligible expense. In addition, we introduced a sustainability guideline to ensure that households receiving rental assistance are positioned for long-term
success. The LHAP was reviewed and approved by the affordable housing advisory committee at a public hearing in February and is now before you for your approval so it can be submitted to the Florida Housing Finance Corporation. And in closing, just to state that this
updated plan doesn't uh fundamentally change the structure. It just changes some minor uh amounts to expand the program and the eligibility. And we hope that your approval of this
2026 to 2029 LHAP um that you will approve it. And thank you. And I'm happy to answer any questions. >> Questions for Miss Miller. Commissioner Kat. >> Yes. Um >> it it sounds like we have some
flexibility in how these funds can be used. >> We do and mostly the amount. So the strategies are prescribed to us from the state and we can have flexibility with how much we will allow for each specific strategy. One thought that came to me was, you
know, there's there are people out there who really struggle with rental assistance. >> Um, who who can't afford a house. >> And it seems like a lot of ship is for the benefit of people who have enough
resources to own a house, perhaps a a small house in disrepair, you know, and those people need help as well. But what what is available for uh rental assistance? >> So ship funds are allowed for rental assistance in first, last and security
if the unit being rented meets their their uh requirements. So ship says how much we can allow a onebedroom, two-bedroom, threebedroom can charge and then if they fall into that category, then we can provide that assistance if
they're income qualified. Now I believe we we spend about a million dollars a year on ship >> about 1.5 it's been for the past five years. >> Okay. So 1.5 how much of it goes to rental assistance? >> Uh I would say um 25% or less a majority
of it goes to rehab which is mandated. So the state gives us certain requirements that we have to meet and rehab is the main one. So we have to put the most money towards that and then it goes down from there. So rental is probably 25% or below.
>> Now with rental at 25%. What is there like a maximum amount that could be rental? >> There is not. It just depends on the unit and the person's income. >> Okay. So theoretically we could spend half the money uh on rental assistance
if the need >> to about 25%. >> Oh, but 25 is like a max. >> Yes. >> Oh, okay. Okay. Well, uh, a couple other little things just to sort of, uh, re-educate us on a few things. Um,
when you get SHIP funds, do they have to be paid back? >> They have to be back paid back in certain circumstances. So, a rehab, if you're getting your house, uh, rehabbed and you get up to that maximum amount, there's a 15-year 0% deferred mortgage
that would be leaned on that property. And for every year that you live in it, it decreases 115th. So if you stay in it for 15 years, then at the end of the 15, you don't have to pay any back. For the rental strategies, that's considered a grant. And that does not need to be paid back. >> That 15-year thing, is is that set in
stone? Does it have to be 15 and not 10 or eight or >> It is up to your discretion. So >> really, we would have some discretion on that. >> Yes. It used to be 30 and then we've reduced it to 15 just because we found that people weren't really living in their houses 30 years anymore, but 15
does seem to be the average. And so, uh, that is also to prevent people from getting these upgrades and then turning around and selling it right away and then making a profit off of it. So, if they do sell it within those 15 years, whatever that amount goes back into the SHIP fund and then we can use that for
other households. And then lastly, uh what are what are like the qualifications for ship money, income, thresholds, that kind of thing. >> So the first and primary thing is that you have to if it's for your home, you have to be the primary residence. So it
can't be a rental. So you have to live in it. And then the in I'll give you an example of the income qualifications. So the the primary um income categories that we serve here in Martin County are people that are between 50 and 80% of
our median average income, which in Martin County is 89,300. So if you are a family of four, so maybe you're uh two parents and you have two children, you can as long as you make under $113,640,
you could be eligible for SHIP assistance. So, it is higher because our medium average income is higher than other parts of the state. And that changes every April 1st. We get a new uh chart that tells us what those incomes are.
>> Okay. I would just like to encourage anyone listening, you know, there's a $ 1.5 million uh for people who need it and come and get it. Uh spread the word. Um,
I know that uh affordable housing is a very very pressing concern and it's amazing how much people don't know about what is available, >> right? >> So, we really appreciate you shedding light on that today. >> Thank you. And I would encourage anyone
that wanted to apply, there's two ways to do so. You can do so on our web page, which you can find at the Martin County's web page, and then also in person at our office. We're located offsite here. We're at 3435 Flaggler. Someone can just walk in, get an application, and meet with one of our
coordinators, and then they would be happy to go over any eligibility requirements. Commissioner Heatherington, >> I just thought Michelle, thank you for that. While you're touching on that, you might touch on how ship funds are available for sewer connection, the
eligibility requirements and and some of those because I know many of our residents who are amongst the sewer connection process are interested in utilizing those funds for sewer. >> Yes, that has been very popular in the past few years. So if the infrastructure is available then we can provide the
hookup and again it's income eligible. You have to be the primary resident in the house and as long as you meet those uh two qualifications then you could be eligible. >> And are there any lean requirements on the sewer program? >> Not any longer. That's also considered a
grant now. >> Great. Thank you. >> And how do do uh most recipients hear about the availability of of these funds? presentations that we do in the community. A lot of word of mouth. You know, people that do get work will tell their friends and neighbors. A lot of
people that come into our office for other types of services, we will make them available. So, any opportunity that we have for outreach, we try to let people know about the availability. >> Other non for not forprofits, too. >> Yes. Exactly. Which we have several in the community that we work with that will let people know about our services.
>> And we've heard that there's that chip funds can be used for uh rental assistance. They can be used for sewer connections. Um they can be used for uh repairs. What kind of repairs? What other kinds of things can can they be
used for? And are there in some of the other categories are there caps like there are for rental assistance? So the primary uh strategy that we use is for rehabilitation and we are mandated to use 75% of the funds in that category or
anything that surrounds that category. Primarily that's used for people that have a a roof leak or perhaps their air conditioner went out. Maybe they want impact windows, something to harden their home, those types of things. any and we we primarily
uh advocate for things that are going to help the health and safety of the resident. So when our inspector goes in, they will look to make sure if there's things that they want versus what they need that we'll try to give them what they need first. So in other words, if you want uh your bathroom to be rehabed,
but you need a whole new roof, we would advocate first that you get your roof fixed. >> Thank you. Any other questions? Excellent presentation. Thank you. >> Thank you, Michelle. Commissioners, is there a motion to approve the consent agenda? >> So moved. >> Moved. Yes. >> Second. >> There's a motion and a second. Any
objections? That motion passes unanimously. Thank you. >> Let's see. We don't have any more presets, so we'll move on to public hearing. Quasi judicial number one. Is that the first one? >> Yes.
>> Looks like it's quasi judicial. Any exparte disclosures? Commissioner Vargas, >> if I have any, they've been filed. >> Commissioner Caps, >> if I have any, they have been filed. >> If I have any, they've been filed. Commissioner Campy, >> I don't have any and that has been filed. >> And Commissioner Heatherington,
>> if I have any, they've been filed. >> Anyone who's going to be providing any sworn testimony in this public hearing, please stand, raise your right hand, and be sworn in. Do you swear or affirm the evidence you're about to give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth? >> Okay, I do. >> And Mr. Aguilar, have you provided a record of all of your important? >> A copy of my work history has been turned in as an exhibit one and there are no intervenors and a public proof of public notice was turned in at the LPA
meeting. >> Okay. Please present. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Good morning members of the board. My name is Luis Aguilar, principal planner for the growth management department. I'm presenting a revised major final
site application for a property owned by SSTI 1990 Northwest Federal Highway 1 LLC. The applicant extra space storage is requesting approval of a revised major
final site plan to construct a twostory 60 63,114 square ft self storage facility and associated infrastructure on approximately 2.51 acres currently
utilized for outdoor storage space. included is a request for a certificate of public facilities reservation. The subject property is located just west of the Cedar Point Plaza at 1990
Northwest Federal Highway in Stewart, approximately half a mile south of Norwest Brit Road. >> This is an enlarged area of the site. The property scoring use is outdoor storage. S the subject side there is a
twostory surface storage facility which is this one over here. To the east you will find the Cedar Point Plaza and to the west there is a 140 acre common area dedicated to the Vista Commons Owners Association.
This is a storm storm water retention area of approximately 100 ft wide. The future land use designation is commercial general and the zoning district is general commercial. The property is about in a church
located on medium density land use to the south and to the west uh you'll find parcel A which is the common area dedicated to the Vista Commons Owners Association which is this one over here. This is the first sheet of the proposed
site plan. Access to a property is from one location on Northwest Federal Highway. This is Federal Highway and this is the location. The applicant is requesting alternative alternative compliance from the primary facade transparency administration
provision of article 4 division 20 commercial design. Staff recommend approval. The board of county commissioners is the final decision maker for this application. The parking rate a parking rate adjustment is requested pursuant to
section 4.625 Martin County land development regulations. 13 parking spaces are proposed. The applicant is providing renderings and elevations with their presentation. This is a closer look of the proposed
building. You can see the proposed parking spaces along with a 12 ft wide loading zones throughout the building. Development review staff have found the extra space storage application to
comply with all applicable regulations and the comprehensive growth management plan as detailed in the staff report. This matter was heard before the LPA on March 19, 2026. The LPA voted to approve
320. We recommend move that the board receive and file the agenda item and all attachments including the staff report as exhibit one and move that the board adopt a resolution approving the revised final site plan and preserve area
management plan for the extra space storage facility project. This concludes my presentation. The applicant has prepared a presentation and is here to answer any questions. >> Questions from Mr. Aguilar. I don't see any applicant. Would you
like to present to us? >> Thank you. Thank you. Good morning, commissioners. Craig McDonald with Corporate Property Services on behalf of Extra Space Storage. I'll run you through a brief presentation. Be happy to answer any
questions you all might have. This is an aerial uh just showing the location. Right now there's twotory and a one-story um indoor storage, self storage, and then the outdoor storage um lot is where we're proposing the new uh
two-story building. We're requesting a major final site plan to construct a two-story 63,114T self- storage facility and the associated infrastructure where the outdoor storage currently exists. We're also requesting alternative compliance
um from Martin County Land Code Regulations Section 4.8. 872 architectural design guidelines and we're requesting a parking rate adjustment from the Martin County Land Development Code section 4.624 parking rates for warehouse mini residential storage facility.
With regards to parking rate uh adjustment, a use like this just doesn't require the same amount of parking that a retail use would require per the code. And many many land development codes don't take that in consideration. Um the proposed 63,114T
self- storage use would require 43 parking spaces based upon one space per 1500 ft of gross floor area. The existing extra space storage facility is 41,590 ft and provides five parking spaces which is equivalent to one space per
8318 ft of gross floor area. Based on this ratio, the proposed 63,114T extra space storage facility will require eight parking spaces which have been provided. Um the first floor of the proposed uh self-s storage building contains 27 drive up units of which
vehicles can park in front of the storage unit door and will not need to utilize the designated parking spaces. Um there also we're also providing three loading zones around the building in addition to the eight spaces. The 13 total parking spaces proposed for the entire extra space storage development
will far exceed the parking demand for its customers. And based upon the eight parking spaces, the 27 drive up parking spaces and the three loading zones, the proposed extra space storage will more than meet the demand for parking needed for this new self- storage building. Here's just a colored site plan shows uh
the brown is the new building and we've got the landscape buffer around the west side as you can see in the north side. We've got parking in front and a little bit of new landscaping and a walkway that connects the other building here. I'll show you the new parking. See?
Yep. These the upper right hand areas, the existing five parking spaces. Then we're adding the 13 um below. I'm sorry, the new eight below for a total of 13. I want to just point out behind us we have a 20ft buffer behind the building
and then we have a storm water track which serves the association which approximately 150 ft. So, you got about 170 ft to the uh residence on the other side. And I've got a few pictures just showing the thick buffer that's back there. We're only two stories and it's much higher than the two stories we're
proposing. This is one. This is another. And we're not touching anything on there. We're going to clear out exotics from the storm water retention area and post signs for that just to clean it up because it hasn't been taken care of in years. But we're not going to touch any of the buffer at the rear on the west
side. We are requesting alternative compliance for the design standards. Let me show you the elevations and I can talk a little about that. Here we've got the north elevation and basically the east which is the front, the south and the west. And here's a
rendering of what the building's going to look like. So strict adherence is not reasonable due to the fact the property doesn't uh front any roadway and it's not visible from north northwest federal highway for discussion with staff. It was determined due to the lack of visibility from Northwest Federal
Highway. The only elevation that require compliance would be the primary uh facade would be the east elevation which you see in front of you right here. Um the following minimum design elements are being provided. We've got defined customer service entrance with a raised parapit and suspended canopy. We've got
faux windows. Um we're providing multiple changes in color and material texture with the use of split face block, CMU, and cement plaster. Um the use of architecture details such as decorative cornice features at the raised parapit. Um the significant plan recess near the
center of the building which serves to diminish the overall mass and eliminate blank walls. You can see also um the primary custer entrance and loading area is actuated by a projecting wall plane. change the material raised parapit simmer wall plane changes and parapit transitions have been provided on the
other four locations along the east elevation. The proposed secondary facade's been designed to be consistent with the primary facade in terms of material finishes and colors. Really when when you think about this, we back up to the back of the shopping center on the east and north sides. The west were buffered
by the storm water track and the 20 20 foot uh rear buffer. So we got about 170 ft there and you can't really see us. On the south is the extra space storage facility. So the location of the proposed building is currently outside storage for vehicles, buses, boats, trailers, etc. And the proposed exterior
design is far superior to the other two buildings we have currently as well as the shopping center and the impacts of the alternative compliance are very minimal. With that, we'd request approval and happy to answer any questions you might have. >> Questions for Mr. McDonald? Seeing none,
Commissioner Campy. Thank you very much. Um, I think it's an attractive building. I know the location that you're speaking of is behind the main drag of US1. Uh, I did watch you. It's amazing. Your presentation to the LPA was almost
exactly what you just did. You well rehearsed. Um, I would make a motion to accept staff's recommendation and allow them to build a new building. And we appreciate you investing in Martin County. Thank you. >> This is a public hearing. Would anyone from the public like to address us?
Seeing none, there is a motion. Is there a second? >> Second it. >> Any further discussion? There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? I >> I >> opposed. That motion passes unanimously. Thank you. >> Thank you very much. >> Thanks.
>> We'll take up department one, which is Office of Management Budget items, which require board approval. Good morning, Miss Merley. Good morning. Stephanie Merley, director of the Office of Management and Budget. I'm here to
present three items for you today. Um, our first item is a permission to accept the Florida Department of Environmental Protection or FT Resilient Florida Grant Amendment number one. Our public works department is requesting the acceptance of an additional $120,000
um for the adaptation plan which is consistent with the Florida adaptation planning guide book. Um there is no cashback required for this item. I can't scroll. The second item is a permission to accept amendment number one to the FY26
mosquito control agreement from the state of Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. Um, our mosquito control division is requesting um the acceptance of a budget amendment number one to uh the mosquito
control in the amount of $7,731.94 for the purchase of chemicals used for arthropod control. Um, and there is no additional cash required for that. And our last item is a request for funds for the emergency management risk
assessment. Our emergency management division is requesting um $40,000 in funding to supplement current grant funding allocated in order to complete a threat and hazard identification and risk assessment for Martin County. This is essentially a comprehensive planning
process that enables communities to identify potential threats and hazards and then determine the capabilities required to effectively prevent, protect against, respond to and recover from those risk. This is part of our emergency management division's accreditation process and we are
requesting a budget transfer from general fund reserves for contingencies to fund this request. And that is all I have today. >> Questions for Miss Merley? >> Commissioner Caps. Move approval. >> Second. >> There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? I opposed. That motion passes
unanimously. Thank you. Department two is contracts that meet the threshold for board approval of $1 million or higher. We have one item. Good morning. Christy Brotherton, chief procurement officer. Uh we have one contract for your consideration today.
This is our first construction manager at risk contract. So very exciting. >> Um This is for the Martin County Building Department, Larry Massing Building Expansion and Renovation. And staff is recommending that the board
award the contract to the highest scoring firm, which is Remnant Construction, in the amount of 4,130,616.85, 85 and move that the board approve the amended CIP sheet for the Martin County Building Department Larry Massing Building Addition and Renovation Project
and move that the board authorize a budget transfer from the building fund reserves to Martin County Building Department Larry Massing Building Addition and Renovation Project and move that the board authorize the county administrator or designate to execute all documents related to this request.
And that concludes this item. >> Questions for Miss Brotherton? Commissioner Heatherington, >> I just wanted to um proudly move approval of this building. It's appropriately named after Larry Massing and I'm so proud that we're using um the
Seymar on this project, too. So, I know it's going to be very um beneficial to the county. So, >> second, and I feel the exact same way that she did, and I like that you said Larry Massing's name three times. >> Mr. Caps,
>> I like to rehearse old things. U tell us about Seymar and three or four of the distinctive features of that type of contract. >> Sure. Uh Sean Donahghue, general services director. So Seymar is construction management at risk is
different than design bid build which is our typical uh uh delivery uh process for uh building projects. So in the SEAR process, the the contractor is hired upfront as a consultant uh and they can provide services uh during design uh
value engineering design services reviewing plans looking at cost efficiencies uh better ways to construct things in the process. So in doing that, you gain efficiencies in number one, time because you're you're getting the contractor in the project earlier on, but number two, you're having the
contractor provide opinions and and valuation engineering that will avoid uh change orders down the road. So theoretically, when you get a GMP, a guaranteed maximum price, which is what we receive from Remnant Construction, they are completely familiar with the plans. They can build this thing for
that for that cap. Uh it will only go down from there. uh and we get the value back if they go under the project u maximum and and they can they can speed up the project essentially. So it takes a little bit more time in the beginning because you're bringing them in up front but you are you are kind of providing
some efficiencies in the process and you gain a little bit of speed at the end of the project. >> Great. Thank you. >> And in fact that promise is made reality in this proposal because the bid came in lower than the budget. >> Correct.
>> Which is terrific. We're saving a lot of money. This is a terrific project. There's a motion and a second to approve it. All those in favor? I opposed. That motion passes unanimously. Thank you. >> Next up is department three, which is
adoption of a resolution accepting the transfer of a parcel from the Martin County Community Redevelopment Agency and approving the surplus and sale of the parcel to the village of Indiantown for government recreational purposes. Miss Agura.
>> Good morning. Carla Agura, real property manager. Um, this item, as you mentioned, was um, a property that belonged to the CRA and it was foreclosed on in 2011 and the judge at that time decided that
um, the property needed to be redeveloped under the CRA, but the CRA um, abandoned uh, the Indian Town section when the village of Indian Town took over. So in February of this year,
the CRA board determined that the parcel was no longer needed for redevelopment purposes due to the dissolution of the Indian Town CRA in 2018. The approximate 1 acre parcel was
um acquired by the CRA for approximately $80,000 which in addition there were charges for demolition and other associated cost for the unsafe structure that was on the property at
the time. staff acquired an appraisal for this parcel after the village of Indian Town requested that we sell the property to them. Our property was our appraisal was
done in April of last year for $310,000. Um so we provided that information to the village of Indiantown. They obtained their own appraisal in December which came back at $275,000 which was also a fair market value at
that time by that appraiser. Pursuant to Florida statute 12538, the county may authorize a private sale of property to a municipality at a price set by the board and upon finding the property will be used for a public or
community purpose and is no longer needed for county purposes. The Village of Indian Towns board approved um an offer for the purchase of the property at 275,000. Uh once the board determines an
appropriate sales price based on the appraisals, a contract will be issued to the village at Indian Town and approved and returned to the board for final approval. I meant conditional approval.
Um, we ask that the board adopt a resolution accepting the special warranty deed from the Martin County CRA and approve the surplus designation of the property for governmental or recreational purposes and authorize
staff to prepare a vacant land contract to be conditionally approved by the county administrator or designate at a price determined by the board. Following board approval, we will issue the conditional contract to the village of Indian town for their approval and
return to the board. There's any questions? >> Mr. Caps, >> I think that the village of Indiantown is the best entity to decide the future of this parcel. This is a piece of land
that used to be in the Indian Town CRA and then incorporation happened. So, it's it's in the village. I understand they have some great ideas for the use of the property for expanding the park and and uh I think they're the best
people to to to deal with it. And I would move approval of the sale to the village for the price offered of 275. >> Second. >> Question. >> Mr. can't be.
>> Does the money go uh into our CRA fund or does it go into the general fund? >> Um, that has yet to be determined. >> Since the Indian Town CRA no longer exists, um, it'll revert back to the taxing authorities that originally funded the Indian Town CRA, which would
be the general fund. >> You can't blame me for trying. >> Mr. Fox, do you have a comment or is it was this from Miss Merley? Um, just uh to clarify, the motion should also include an acceptance of the property from the CRA. >> Yes. >> Yes.
>> Is there anyone from Indiantown here to speak on the behalf of the project? I'm I'm on the fence. >> Would any any other questions from the board, Miss Christa? >> Yeah. Karen Christa, village manager. For the record, um, we had been looking at this
parcel since the village had incorporated and as the board knows, other the parcels that were within the village were transferred over to the village ownership, but this parcel because it was separated by the CRA was an exemption for that. So, uh, we
reached out and asked and as Carla said, you know, got the appraisal and initially we were hoping that the county would donate it, but because of the way it was purchased, we acquire, you know, the way it was acquired, we recognized that we had to pay for the parcel. So,
that's when we did the appraisal and had made the offer. The funding for this is actually coming from the halfsent sales tax for uh environmentally sensitive lands. Even though this is not an environment sensitive parcel, it is right across from our recreation office
as well as adjacent to a multi-purpose field. So, our intent would be to, as was stated, expand those uh recreational opportunities for the village. >> If you were still with the county, we you would have made us uh charge 310.
Well, but with that said, you know, there was an indication that that appraisal was not based on what would you call it? Fair market or >> there was some he just put market value on the appraisal that was provided >> and we would have split it.
>> What would you like to do today? >> I'm following my district colleagues. >> The motion is for 275. >> Thank you. >> And that's what I will support. Any further questions or comments? There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? I
>> opposed. That motion passes unanimously. >> Thank you so much and we appreciate our cooperation with the county >> trying to get along with our municipalities. >> Thank you. >> Uh, next is department four, which is a discussion of a potential school zone on
Southwest Newfield Parkway at Citrus Grove Elementary. >> Yes. Nothing easy in district 5. >> Good morning. >> Good morning, commissioners. I'm Michael Grisulka, the county engineer. I have
with me Eric Ferguson, your traffic engineer. >> Good morning. >> He's going to give the presentation. >> Um, good morning. I'm here to give a presentation on potential school zones on Citrus Grove Elementary on Newfield Parkway.
Next slide. Uh for some history, uh Citrus Grove Elementary School and Newfield Parkway from 714 to Port St. Lucy Boulevard were built in around 2008
2009. Um, at that time, Canopy Creek on the west had a very limited number of housing units, but um, a traffic signal, crosswalk, and sidewalk were included
with the roadway project, anticipating that students would walk across Newfield um, Newfield Parkway to the school. This next aerial photo is a enlargement of the configuration in 2009 is constructed.
I'd like to note there was a single crosswalk and a north approach, a be prepared to stop beacon, a single one for southbound traffic, uh school pavement marking messages, and notably at the time there was no school
speed reduction when it was originally designed. Um over time as Canoby Creek built out, uh staff received a number of requests for reduced school speed limit zone. Staff at the time reviewed it and we
identified several u additional safety measures uh which are shown on this aerial photo. These include a additional be prepared to stop flashing beacon that flashes when the lights yellow and red for southbound traffic.
We also at uh we also added school signs at the crosswalks. And the other change was an additional crosswalk was added to the south approach. And this additional crosswalk had the benefit that students no longer
had to walk across the school's driveway. They that conflict was eliminated. And it also moved the crosswalk further south away from the curb for southbound traffic. >> Uh we performed a crash history and we went back the past 10 years. That's as
far as our database um has information. There were seven reported crashes. Notably, there were no crashes involving pedestrians or bicycles. Um, 43% of the crashes were rear end. 43% were off-road
and 14% involved a left turn conflict. Now, I'm going to give a brief some brief information on school zones. So, Florida statute allows the roadway authority to establish reduced speed limits in school zones. Something comes up a lot. It's not the law enforcement.
It's not the school board. It's actually the roadway authority that determines that. But we do the statute says we work with the law enforcement to determine it. Um, typically we get a lot of requests for let's make school zones longer
and they're really the intent is we just reduce a speed limit at at an uncontrolled crosswalk, a crosswalk without a traffic light to one that's immediately at the school where students cross.
Um there's research that as we make school zones longer what's reduced speed limits are not effective compliance drops. So that's what we've our policy has been that they're the school zones are really meant with this with the speed reduction
limit at a single midblock crosswalk where students have to cross a roadway. The county engineers existing long-standing policy has been that we only employ school zones reduced speed limits at midb block crosswalks where
crossing guards have to enter have to stop traffic. And the reason we historically have not deployed them when we have a full traffic signal is we perceive it's a lack of benefit for the additional cost.
Motorists with a traffic signal have to come to a complete stop with a red light uh before the crossing guard enters. We we find that the school zone and a traffic light as you as you deploy more signs and flashing lights, a driver can only
process so much information. There's potential that all these extra signs >> That's right. >> and flashing lights take away focus on the red light. And finally, there is an additional cost to deploying a school zone. We have flashers.
They have to be repaired. Life cycle replacement. Every year we have to reprogram each flasher uh for the school schedule with the calendar. So, uh, based on our review of crash history, our determination that is that
there's not an operational deficiency or a crash pattern at this at Citrus Grove Elementary that would u nec necessitate establishing a school zone speed limit. Um
uh we prepared a several options for discussion. First would be to accept staff's determination to not have a speed limit reduction. The second would be to establish a 20 mph school zone
speed limit. We estimate that would cost $80,000 for the additional flashers and to relocate the the existing flashing beacons. Um, and we do have adequate funding in the traffic safety funds for that and we
that could be completed by the start of next school year. A third option would be a pedestrian overpass. It's a longer term solution. We estimate uh high level cost would be $5 million and funding has not been identified for
that. So that that completes my presentation. >> Thank you. Questions for Mr. Ferguson. >> Commissioner Campy. >> Thank you. Thank you. Two reasons. One for doing the research and two for
coming back so quickly. It became an issue recently. something that we've been dealing with in the past and I know one of the things that you didn't mention is we had reconfigured the sidewalk there as those houses were being built I guess how the the original crosswalk was coming and it required us
to do instance lay a sidewalk down but it's a lot more to it than that and we did that um now in your presentation you were giving two different scenarios which I like the first one was you know look if
we did a school zone speed limits, school zone. We don't know if it would be effective. If anything, it could have the adverse effect and create more of a a distraction for drivers. If you go back to page 344, this one you can see here, for the folks
that are not familiar with this area, where it says Canopy Creek, above it, it looks obviously vacant, but now in a later picture, you show that the houses are there. So you can see that that whole area is now built. But go back to 344. The point
I'm trying to make here is this Newfield Parkway. That green line that goes over where the houses now are. You see how it does like a big left curve there. So if you're coming south where this road leaves Martin County, uh more
specifically Palm City is up to Port St. Lucy Boulevard and Becker Road in and St. Port St. Lucy. So, a lot of folks that are coming into Martin County from Port St. Lucy come down this road and they're driving quickly. You can see
there's some like um it's curved a little bit, but then it's got that really sharp curve. So, if you were heading south, it's a real sharp righthand turn right into the school. So, if you had a school zone, people that were even if they're driving the
regular speed limit, they're going to be surprised when they turn the corner or the curve here right into a school zone. Um, there is a traffic signal there. I guess a question to Arab folks or to you, Eric, would be, does the crossing
guard have one of those clickers where she can control the signal? She pushed sorry she she pushes the button on the on the pedestrian >> just like anybody would just like anybody else would. Yep. >> I know at Martin Highway and Palm City
School Avenue uh directly at the Danforth they have a clicker they can open they have some ability to open the traffic box and have like a little they used to I mean I don't know if they still do. I I haven't looked recently but I know they used to be able to
control the signal. Um, if that's not an option, then it isn't. But if it is, maybe giving the crossing guard the ability to when there's enough kids there, push the button and control the signal. I know that it's a
got a crossing guard and it's a signal, a traffic signal. And um, that one picture that you showed, the first one was obviously stock, but the second one was the actual intersection. Correct. >> Correct. >> Can you go back to that one? that one that's actually at the site. So
they have it looks like, you know, they're crossing right into the north side of the entrance. I think that's probably going to be sufficient at this time. Now, if it I'm glad it wasn't just a matter of money,
and I'm happy that you said there was money in the fund. So, if the first half of your presentation wasn't that you don't think that a school zone would work here, um, and you and it was more of a money issue, I would say we'd spend
the money. But I'm leery to create an additional potential issue because we think it's going to work or it's, you know, it's what I call security theater where it's people will feel like it should work. It's a school zone, but it
could potentially be more dangerous. Uh, I'd like to leave it alone. My I'd make a motion that we leave it alone for the time being, but that you both gentlemen would um indulge me and make the same presentation to the school board
um during one of their meetings and uh if also potentially either take this portion of this meeting video and send it to the uh administration at Citrus Grove Elementary School and also
I believe there's a homeowners association in Canopy Creek so that the four entities that would be involved in something like this understand the conversation that we just had. Now, I know that their
inclination would be that we want it anyway. Um, we're not saying that we can't afford to do it or we wouldn't pay the money to do it. Our experts are telling us that we don't know if it would genuin genuinely bring us the
result that we were that they were hoping for. I did mention a um a over walkway, but obviously we're not going to >> put $5 million towards a 600 kids that go to that school, 650,
whatever the the enrollment is. Not all of them are going to walk across. We're not going to build a $5 million crosswalk uh overhead crosswalk for them. Just a suggestion because I know that road's busy, but I think between what you have there is is enough for the time being. Thank you. That's my motion,
>> Mr. Donaldson. >> Yeah, I was just simply going to suggest that uh staff could also simply look at the um the striping and uh and the signage if the reflectivity is deteriorated at all that we could uh um upgrade the maintenance of that. So the
visual of that crosswalk and everything pops um to the maximum extent uh that it can. >> Um I can answer that easily. Uh we did the north half from the roundabout the the new roundabout up to St. Lucy County
last year. This year it's it funded and it's on the program to be done from Citrus or from Martin Highway up just past the school zone here because if you look at the let me go back up to this
picture real quick on this one on the second bumpout to the to the west a signal is under design for that right now because they're building a new road new and it's under construction off to the north to that's where that um what
is it 600 unit um multif family is going to be and we put it in it's it's in the approval for that that that multif family has to have the the signal up and running um along with that >> 600 unit >> part it's part of new field
>> it's part of new field >> just a phase yeah you're scaring people when you talk like that I'm like what are you doing it's a it's >> it's part of it's another phase of >> field >> it's another phase of Newfield correct uh the the this the yeah it's it has not been completely approved yet. I mean
they have not gone to construction. Um but the road work has got approval and it's gone to construction with the master drainage system is going in it currently. The other recommendation, I guess, if there is if when you speak to these entities, if there is speeding issues that we can have the sheriff's
office put our um because it's not the crossing guard's responsibility to do traffic control, but we could have someone, you know, up the road or in this case north and west um stop people from speeding into the zone. >> Yeah, that's why I mentioned the signal.
That signal will start slowing down that whole corridor. >> Mr. Vargas. >> So, uh, yes, I was also going to say what Mr. Donaldson says. If you could please shore up that what exists right now and make that more pronounced for drivers that are just focusing on
getting to work or getting back home or whatever they're doing at that time. I know that in a designated school zone, the um fines can be pretty hefty, up to $500 and of course three to six points on your license and of course your
insurance, everything else. whereas elsewhere um if you're speeding down Caner Highway can start at over $150 and depending how many 5 miles per hour or depending on the officer's mood uh then you'll definitely have a nice um nice
bill to pay. So, um that's always a deterrent too, but I think some of the recommendations uh while nice but not affordable, $5 million, no. Um, and then I accept the status quo right now that
the uh staff is recommending for this. Look at it again. >> Commissioner Heatherington, >> I was just curious whether you had conversations of some kind of different delineation of pavement markings, whether it be green or pavers. If does
that help um identify the crosswalk and potentially I'm I'm sure you've discussed this. I wasn't a party to to some of the conversations, but does that assist at all delineating that crosswalk with it instead of the stripes with something
that stands out a little more? >> I I believe currently we have out there the the high visibility the the the latter the keyboard one for that for that crossing as well because that's pops more than the the two parallel
lines. keyboard that the the stripes that were in that picture >> and they're all getting like I said it's it's it's in this year's program. I just don't know how far you know down it is. We started our long line stuff. This uh contracts went out I don't know a month ago or so and I don't know where it is
but I know it this this road is on that contract to be done. >> If it falls later in the year than the beginning of the school year or even if you want to do it now I would use some district funds to pay for that. I mean, >> or I'll lend you I'll lend you the money until
>> until you get your money. >> We we it's 100% funded. And like I said, the contract got let I don't know if it was like four weeks ago or something. So, it the the work will be started. This is one of several roads that are on this year's budget. >> Put them to the top of the list. And remember, the other good news is it's
180 days of the year that this is an issue, >> not year round. >> Would anyone from the public like to address us? 85. >> Yeah. >> Any further discussion? There's a motion. Is there a second? >> No. >> Sec. >> Yes. Approve.
>> There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? I opposed. That motion passes unanimously. Thank you. >> Thank you. Thank you. >> And now we'll take up department five, which is a 25th anniversary presentation
on the Martin Pumpout Operation Program, which is called Miss Poop. Good morning. >> Good morning. >> Nice to see you on land. >> Good morning. I am Britney Basset. I'm the assistant director of the utilities
and solid waste department and I'm accompanied by >> this. I'm Daryl Scheler, project manager with utilities and solid waste and also the program manager for this particular program. Chair, commissioners, thank you for for allowing me to to present to you
this morning or us to present. Um, in the summer of 2000, um, late Mr. John Pauly came to my office with a file and he says, "Darl, we have a grant here for you to start a mobile marine sewage pumpout operation program." and he says, ' And you have till late October to
launch your first boat.' Well, I did. I got it done. And we started pumping boats. Uh we were only working three days a week with a part-time operator. Fast forward 25 years. Like I said, we started with one boat in
2000. Now we are operating two boats 5 days a week with two f two full-time operators. And as of December 31st, 2025, we have completed 60,000 plus pumpouts and have removed 2.5 million gallons of untreated sewage that could
have potentially ended up in our waterways. Um, matter of fact, but operators are actually complaining right now because they're having to service between 40 and 60 boats per day. So, just and they're doing it, bless their hearts, without overtime,
which is why we're running the full-time two full-time operators. Uh, at this time, Britney has a a short PowerPoint presentation that'll I hopefully give you all the information you can possibly ever want about this program.
>> All right. So, this is a marine vessel service that serves all Boers in Martin County's waterways. You don't have to be a resident of Martin County. you have to just be in Martin County's waterway. Um, and the MS POP stands for Martin Ship
Pumpout Operation Program. Um, and it's funded in part by the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the Clean Vessel Act through the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. And I think >> I want to go back.
I have a video, but I don't know if it's going to play. So, all right, we're going to skip that one for now. So, the program began in October 2000 as a part of the Clean River Initiative, and FD absorbed 75 of
the um costs, 75% of the cost for the initial purchase of the equipment. Um, and since the program started over the last 25 years, we've seen an increase steadily over those last 25 years in requests for pumpouts. So, the MS poop prevents untreated
sewage from entering our waterways, which could contribute to nitrogen and phosphorus loading in our waterways that can contribute to algae blooms. Um, it supports safe boating, um, water activities and protects all the
residents and visitors of Martin County from untreated sewage. And the sewage from the boats is collected and treated responsibly at our wastewater treatment plants. And as Daryl had said, we've had 60,000 requests for pumpouts between October
2001 and December 23rd, 2025. Um, and we've prevented 2.5 million gallons of untreated sewage from entering our waterways. So, the MS poop service area is any of our Martin County waterways. So, it includes Indian River Lagoon, St. Lucy
Estuary, St. Lucy River, Willoughby Creek, Crooked Creek, and Manatee Pocket. And I would just like to thank the board for your support over the last 25 years for this program. It's been really successful and we couldn't have done it
without the board and administration support um and believing in our department could do this. So, thank you. And um Madame Chair, if it's okay, uh would Sam be able to say a few words before I just wanted to ask before he
started talking. >> I presume. >> By all means. You know, I'll be brief. Thank you, commissioners. Um Sam Emerson, um utilities and solid waste department director. It's been a great pleasure working with Daryl all these years. Um he's a unique individual, let me put it that way. He does a lot of
different things, whether it's plant expansions, treatment plants, um pipeline, pumpout program. He's just a really incredible individual. We're glad to have him on board. So, shout out to Daryl for the program. And also uh in February he reached his 30-year
milestone with Martin County. So he's been here for 30 years. So I wanted to give him a a shout out for that. >> Thank you. >> So Mr. Emerson, we could say that Daryl's really number one in the number two business. >> He really is. Yes. It's not the first time I've heard that.
>> Thank you. >> And how do you request a pumpout? Uh we have a a phone number that we have had since the since the very very beginning of the program. Uh residents who were or a boat owner can simply call that phone number and just leave a
voicemail with the name of your boat, where your boat is, and uh we'll just put you on the list and come pump your boat out. >> What's the phone number? >> Okay. >> 7722608326. >> So So then what do you do? you you call those people back and you arrange a time that you
>> No, we just come pump your boat out. You don't have to be there. We don't care if you're there. >> It's it's irrelevant to us. Uh we log every single pump out on log sheets, uh which we are required because we do operational grants every year that cover 75% of salaries and maintenance repairs
and supplies and that kind of stuff. The grant requirement, one of the grant requirements is I have to prepare a quarterly report that tells the state how many boats we pumped out, how many boats were out of state, and how many gallons we collected. So that's that's a
requirement of the grant documentation. >> It's a terrific service. >> Does St. Lucy County and Palm Beach County offer the same thing? >> Not to my knowledge. >> So if someone's from St. Lucy County, they could just come down >> and we're okay with that. >> Well, because otherwise they're going to dump it in the water.
>> That's right. Right. Correct. And we we do go all the way down. As a matter of fact, I I contacted the boat operator this morning because the newspaper wanted to do an article and uh he was already down to Jupiter Island. >> Yeah. >> So, we have four or five boats that customers down there that we service on a weekly basis.
>> So, >> well, it's fantastic. >> Well, you're kind of a big deal, Darl. >> Well, thank you. >> Thank you for the presentation. >> You're quite welcome. >> Very well done. >> Thank you. That brings us to the end of
our our meeting. Mr. Mcrist, would you like to address us? >> Mr. Mcrist's been busy. Spoke a couple times last night at the city of Stewart meeting. He's busy. He's like on a tour.
>> They allow you to speak multiple times. >> Yeah, he speaks on every topic. >> Mr. can't be. Sometimes I like the way you think >> most of the time. >> Like, hey, don't bring your St. Lucy poop to our rivers. >> That's her hair doesn't like people use
public bathroom. >> Oh, brother. Uh, >> forgot what you're going to say. >> Let me start off on a positive note. Last last meeting, I wasn't here, but my neighbor got awarded. He's the uh got award for the um unique things he did to
do something special in um >> safety. >> Uh who was that guy you gave award to last last time? >> It was a safety award. >> No, no, no. The uh the guy who does surveying. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. That that was amazing. But what is but but you but what I recognize also is for someone like that because I know I'm kind of his personality but the real sharpest tool in the shed like I've always said Mr. Donaldson is
the guy who recognized that guy and said yeah go ahead I trust you go ahead and do that. Yeah that's that's big. Anyways, um man, your fire chief,
that is one arrogant swamp creature. Oh my goodness. I mean, all you subhumans aren't smart enough or you're too emotional to be in the room
when we discuss important stuff. And this thing between the city of Stewart and Martin County fire has been going on for decades and it's never sat well with Martin County that Steuart wants to remain independent. And what he failed to mention was how
the ball game got changed with Stuart building that uh fire station to the north. Uh and that was just a distasteful touch when you bring in Dr. Dayton to pile on to the city of Stewart for something
that none of you have control over. And it's a problem caused by Cleveland Clinic in Crimeir River about the 11,000 illegal immigrants you have in Golden Gate whose idea of prenatal care, trust me, I've seen it. Their idea of prenatal
care is to call 911 when the when the labor starts. I actually delivered one of those babies one time out in Indian town. I was training. I said, 'What do I do? He said, "Sit here and put on your catcher mitt. That's all you got to do."
Sure enough. Well, anyways, please. The times have changed because of social media. The fire union is not as powerful as it used to be, and that's a good thing. And the swamp is nervous because they also don't have as much control as
they used to have. All right. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Would anyone else from the public like to address us and we'll move back to commissioner comments? Commissioner Heatherington. >> We'll set for today. Thank you. >> Commissioner Campy.
>> I was going to respond to that, but I won't. And I received a a request for a uh a proclamation to be given to an Eagle Scout uh Mr. Kevin Joseph Okconor. And I presume that >> we handle those.
>> Okay. We we already handled that. >> Yep. >> All right. I have nothing else. Commissioner Caps. >> Yes. Uh, I thought I would like to mention or comment just a little bit about uh some of the state legislature actions
taken uh this legislative session and you know preeemption is really on the rise. Uh, I think they're enjoying the the power trip up there of of sort of beating up on the counties and the cities
and uh trying to control us um and to erode local control. There were a number of land use bills uh that were advanced that were really troublesome to local governments. Um and
most of them did not make it through both houses of the legislature. There was one called Blue Ribbon Projects, which would be for like part uh large chunks of land that were 15,000 acres or more
uh where maybe they're out in an agricultural area where they don't have the zoning and land use for dense development. But as long as you preserved like 60% of the land, you could uh have yourself a zero
lot line densely developed community on the other 40 acres out in the middle of nowhere. And fortunately, that one did not pass. Uh there was one down in Dade County. There's a there's a strip of land between the urban area and
the Everglades. And uh it's it's always been in uh preserved uh according to the the codes. There were one of the legislators down there uh advanced the idea of uh take putting
that into development and developing all the way over to the very edge of the Everglades. And fortunately that one failed as well. There was another one advanced to abolish urban services boundaries in the state of Florida.
Think about that. Um, you know, when you think of about the Martin County comprehensive plan, what's the first thing that comes to mind? I always think of the first two things are the USB separating the urban area from the A area. That's how we're different. And
then the four-story height limit. That's to me those are the two biggest things. There are many other things. But but those are the two biggest ones. Um but these kind of ideas are are circulating. Um and uh then there's one that I think
we need to let our residents know about. This one has passed both houses of the legislature and it's sitting on the governor's desk or it's about to be sitting on the governor's desk. It's called the Enclave Bill.
And if you imagine Martin County, uh, the shape of it, and you have like a squiggly line up through the middle, we call that the urban services boundary. And that separates the urban area from
the A area. and in places where the line kind of wiggles, if there's like a a cutout there, where there's some um urban development around the edges, the Enclave bill would basically say,
"Okay, we're going to straighten out that urban services boundary and that a land that is kind of in one of the cutouts there. We're going to uh allow development of that parcel without
county commission approval and without comprehensive plan amendments and zoning changes. Um they would there would be this um this hearing that is set up with strict
rules called an enclave certification hearing where the applicant comes in and says, "Okay, I'm here to get my enclave. I'd like you to rubber stamp it, please." And here are the rules and the the for
what qualifies as an enclave. And it's clear that I meet the rules. please rubber stamp my application for an enclave. And suddenly we're going to have to allow development, dense development
in in those areas. And and as I understand it, like if one of the borders of that enclave is like dense apartment buildings, um then the developer can say, "Yeah,
I'll take that. I'll take that as my zoning and my land use and let let's build 3,000 of them. Um, and maybe one of the other borders is single family or something. Well, they don't have to take that. They can just pick whichever one they want. So, uh, without county
commission approval, without comp plan amendments, without zoning changes, uh, this is, uh, on the way to Martin County, and there's been very little talk or exposure about it, and I think
our residents need to know about it. Um, u, because it appears that we we could have uh some enclaves. you know, we don't know for sure who's going who would be applying for an enclave. I'm
really surprised that the statewide environmental groups have not picked up on this like a thousand friends of Florida or or other ones that uh there's not been a lot of exposure to it. And I think the reason for that is because the
the enclave concept really doesn't apply to that many counties. Um, from what I understand, this legislation was sparked by developers who have interests in just two or three counties in the state. So, it doesn't
really affect many counties, but Martin County is one of them uh where it could apply. So, watch out for the concept of enclave bill. Um if the governor signs
it, uh it's coming our way. >> One bill that has been passed has been signed by the governor is the bill regarding the uh paid consultants doing development review that which the development county development review is
bypassed altogether. >> That's right. and we are forced to approve some developers uh suggestions for paid consultants to do the development review. So it cuts Martin County and us out of the process.
>> That's right, Commissioner Vargas. >> So uh yes, everything that uh Commissioner Caps had spoken about, I'm a well aware of. We have our legislative representative and also our chief of staff that does present information to us. uh hopefully we all read all the
bills that are coming through but it's sort of like a kaleidoscope. You're not certain if this is going to happen or it's pulled back or then it doesn't pass the first committee. So it's um it's uh fastm moving and fastm moving here where the developers will just go through an
administrative uh walk and we will be cut out and that means our uh residents will have no say in what happens in their beloved Martin County. Uh, one thing that I did want to uh, bring up today and I appreciate, we have our
director of tourism development here, uh, Nerissa, please. Um, it was brought up to me actually several times. Um, and we're talking about the short-term rentals. Um, having said that, uh, the
sheriff had, um, spoken to the, um, to the, uh, Indian River Plantation HOA yesterday, was talking about, um, actually arrests that they made right on Alice Street in Jensen Beach. Uh this
past week, 10 individuals were renting the place on a short-term basis, but yet they were uh calling defrauding uh folks of their information uh for their bank accounts and some people were actually giving them information and uh the owner of the
property said, "I have something that's odd on my Ring camera." So he was able to hear the audio and see the visual and uh dispatched the sheriffs and they were able to arrest the fellows and ladies and they lived in uh St. Lucy County
actually and they were renting a place here in Martin County. Not saying every short-term rental is as such um I owned a short-term rental at one time on the other coast, another county and so um there are many fine people that do come.
However, we do have our residents that are here and um I've explained to them that if there is a nuisance or there's um you know public uh uh public actions that you know are are not suitable that
they should call the sheriff. But what I had asked also of Mr. Donaldson and I I did ask Miss Nissa to be here and of course our county attorney. See, this is another example of local authority being preempted. We
have no say. We are handcuffed in so far as ordinances uh that will address this. So, in Sarasota County right now, they are pursuing those owners that have not that have not um paid the business uh
tax development of to the state or to the respective county. And I I think this is something we need to look into because there are a lot of rogue operators out there. So, if you could please explain what you're doing. I know there are services because I was at a
National Association of Counties conference in uh Philadelphia and I did meet somebody and I passed on the information to our administrator. They will go through social media. They will also go to the short-term sites u you know that that you have VBO and those
others vacation rentals to uh callull those roles and make sure that those owners are submitting the taxes not just to us but to the state. It is required. It is a law. It's not if
I wish to or I don't. Again, when I owned my short-term rental, um, we had to submit reports, and I believe it was quarterly, it may be monthly, I can't remember. It's been a while. Uh, that we would submit it to that county, happened to be Charlotte County, and they, that
particular tax assessor, would disperse whatever funds were required to the state level. So, we abide by that. Could you address this for us, please? >> Yeah, there's a lot of Nuros, for the record, I'm the tourism director here. There's a lot to unpack with that. Uh we
are preempted. It started in 2011 and then 2014 there was changes made. Um and we're preempted from regulating short-term rentals taking place, the duration of those or the frequency. Uh in 2024, we were very hopeful and this
board completely supported a short-term regulation bill um that passed the House and Senate but was vetoed by the governor. Um and that would have kind of cleaned everything up and put everything at a restart. So again, kind of that preeemption discussion you were all just having. We're preempted from a lot of
things. However, that being said, um the TDC passed their strategic plan last November, and one of those is really making sure that we're digging in to who's collecting or who's renting, excuse me, and are we collecting that? And this is actually perfect timing. I have a meeting on Wednesday with the
vacation uh Florida Association of Vacant vacation rentals. there's a treasure coast chapter and then the tax collector uh staff that helps us and myself and then the software that we do have because the TDC did invest in this software so that we could really get a
holistic look of what is taking place here. Uh so we have a meeting that was actually scheduled last week that was moved to this Thursday to go through and addresses. So, we're having an address challenge. Whereas my system, which is the system you mentioned, it's uh we use host compliance. It's part of the
Granica system. Goes through and pulls all of the short-term rentals, anybody renting anything from a house, a room, a condo, etc. Um it calls all of those with addresses, but those addresses aren't matching up with the tax collector's addresses. So, we have a demo on that. Um but again, this is a
priority of the TDC. The TDC chair is here. um and she's been pushing hard on us to make sure that we are really monitoring this and working um to get every little bit collected. So, baby steps, but we're trying to find ways and Melissa's here. Um she's been part of
these meetings as is Elise. She was our attorney way back when. Um so, we've making a lot of we've made a lot of progress. We continue to try to get more of that taking place. >> Right. Um I feel and then again without doing this constructively and myself uh
looking at at information and results that there's a lot of seepage. We're losing a lot of revenue that we need that we're entitled to actually. >> Um is is it possible to have look back and this might be a question for legal.
In other words, if this person or this entity is constantly renting short-term, you can look back and say, "Hey, you know, you owe these taxes." I know that, you know, the arm of the state is very long. They certainly will do that or and the county, too. >> If we have addresses, we definitely send
those on to the tax collector. That's our regulating or they're the ones who the bed tax is remitted to here in the county. A lot of counties do it differently. So, everything goes to our tax collector first. Um, and we can double check those addresses if there's concerns with that. and we do that a lot. Um, and so we do, um, check those
addresses. We ask people to please let us know if these nuisances are taking place and do everything that we can to make sure they're in compliance that way. Um, we're looking at innovative solutions and additional ways to continue to hone in and fine-tune the process. Okay. So, you're saying you purchase software. Is this something
that these companies commercially offer? you have that software or would it be wise to possibly reach out to those that dedicate finding lost revenue? >> So, this software does that. The host compliance goes through and and calls
through at least who's renting and then we work with the tax collector to match those addresses up. Uh it's part of the rise agreement so I can see everybody's who's renting. I can't see everyone who's remitting the bed tax if that makes sense. So, we're trying to fine-tune that process. So, you're
working with the tax office >> that we have a meeting on Thursday with the tax collector's office and it has become a priority of the TDC. They just they just approved that strategic plan last November and that was one of the priorities on there. >> Okay. So, when can you get back with us to give us an update on this? It's it's
a big concern. >> Yeah, I would um I know that it's something that the TDC and usually how these things have worked in the past. As the TDC works through things, they bring through a list of recommendations to the board of county commission to take on in
terms of these are the things that we can do or should do. The TDC is an advisory board that then reports up to the BOCC, >> right? So, when might that be? Because if you're having the meeting, what you know, what what is the end? >> The TDC meets four times a year, mandatory by statute. Um, our next
meeting is coming up in July and we do have a list of of things that we've been kind of working through on the So, I'd say after that TD >> I'd be happy to speak to that as the chair if that's okay with the chair. So um I in November we did a strategic plan and one of the objectives of the
strategic plan that the TDC did was to initiate collections on bed taxes and what it was one of the goals and we've been working through we've been meeting with the tax collector and I think the best solution is to have the TDC
um who's working on this bring back some recommendations and um suggestions on how the board can actually um implement because it is one of the goals of the TDC in the strategic plan. So my suggestion is you have the TDC bring
back recommendations to this board on how to implement their strategic goals in their strategic plan. >> Okay. Can that be before July? >> The TDC is not meeting until July. We meet four times a year. >> I I know you said that but you have a meeting this week. Are there going to be
recommendations from the other entities? This is a meeting for us to kind of cross reference reference everything and then we need to bring this forward to the TDC as the advisory board and then the TDC brings things forward to the board of county commission. >> Okay. >> I'd be willing to make a motion that we
uh the TDC bring back recommendations to this board based on the strategic objectives in the um strategic plan for initiating um bed tax collection and then we bring back those recommendations to this board. >> Okay. Um, I'm not expecting you to
address nuisance. That's a sheriff's thing. And, you know, obviously folks will do that that live in the area. My question is, can there be a look back, a clawback for those that have been consistently renting? Because that's what these commercial entities do. They
can track and see how long they have been renting short-term rentals. It could be three years, four years, 10 years, whatever it may be. So, that's my question. >> Melissa Petri, senior assistant county attorney. Regarding a look back, you'd have to one, I'd have to look at the statute in more detail. And then also, if we knew a property was renting, we'd
have to be able to prove that. So, if we're going to say, hey, we're going to look back for the last 2 years, we'd have to back that up to say over the last 2 years, when did you rent? How much, you know, how often did it take place? So, it's something that may or may not I can't give a solid answer. I mean, I'll research it further and I can
bring that back at the next meeting. >> Would you please do that? That's the neighbors will talk. >> The neighbors will let you. Yeah, but I I it's we would need the solid evidence beyond more than just the hearsay on that. Yeah, >> I I understand it's becoming a problem >> and the software is new, the technology
that we have and they are refining it. So that's why we have this meeting on Thursday to be like, okay, what are the new things? What are you looking at um in terms of the data that we're able to collect to make sure that we're being efficient and effective and that we're sending that through the tax collector. So changes have been made. It's kind of
one of these ongoing things where improvements are being made and we're trying to stay ahead of those as part of our goals and objectives. Okay. I I would like to uh second Commissioner Heatherington's um proposal that we we start to get this
information sooner rather than waiting until July. I mean, there are other counties that do have this problem, too. So, and they've been able to write. Sarasota County, I'll tell you right now, pick up the phone, call them. Yeah, that's part of the process we've been doing with the TDC is looking at who's been able to make these changes because
we have been preempted. Um, and so it's a very interesting line that we have to walk and we're trying to make sure that we do that. >> Okay. Well, tax collector is definitely on this. So, he would have all the ideas. He can have all the points for you to touch and certainly recommendations to be most effective.
>> Thank you. >> Quickly. All right. I appreciate that. Thank you, >> Commissioner Caps. >> I was just going to second. >> Okay. There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? I opposed. That motion passes unanimously. Thank you,
>> Mr. Donaldson. >> All good. Thank you, >> Miss Elder. >> All good. Thank you. >> Anybody else? We are adjourned.