Board of County Commissioners on 2026-03-24 9:00 AM - Mar 24, 2026

Pastor Blaine Albright, followed by the Pledge of Allegiance, which is going to be led by Ashley Western.

Morning, Commissioner. 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 that you hear us in a time when we can look around and we can see so much division. I'm thankful for your word that reminds us that where there is unity, you command a blessing. And so I pray for unity here today in our county, in our region, in our country, and even in our world. 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. We look around and see unrest and anxiety, and we can answer your invitation where you invite us to come to you if we're weary or if we're burdened, and you promise to give us rest. You tell us to come to you about everything, to not be anxious about anything, 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 you care about us, the details of our lives. As we approach this significant week, Holy Week, God, we remember what you've done for us by sending us Jesus. God, I thank you 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. And so I pray the prayer that David prayed in Psalm 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, 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. Thank you for this beautiful county, for our leaders, for these commissioners, and for the citizens that I believe are doing holy work by working to be good stewards of what you've blessed us with here. And so may we be faithful, God, knowing that you are always faithful. And we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

Amen. Pledge of allegiance 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. I did a year in Japan, Camp Fuji, Japan, and three years in Camp Pendleton, California.

Wonderful. Thank you very much. Absolutely.

Ms. Western, may I say that you did a video recently for your department as part of, I guess, 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.

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 discussion with Sheriff Budensick about State Road 710. There is an additional item on the agenda. It is Department 6, which is the fire rescue update on the interlocal agreement. Is there a motion to approve the agenda? Move approval. Second. There is a motion and a second. All those in favor. Aye. Opposed. That motion passes unanimously. We will first hear proclamations. The first proclamation is a proclamation honoring the Lyric Theater's centennial celebration.

Good morning, Commissioners. The Lyric Theater opened on March 15, 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 Theater'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.

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 Lyric 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, and the audiences who continue to fill it with energy and meaning. 100 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 100 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.

One second.

Are they going to sing or something? We don't want that. You can 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. Tracy Mitchell. Otherwise, oh, please introduce yourself. Yeah.

Hi. My name is Jim Hagen. I'm a Crosses Rose. He's one of our leadership volunteers. Tracy is in traffic somewhere trying to get here. So, I'm happy to accept this for her. Just briefly, the description of this proclamation lays out how our mission is a humanitarian mission. We've been around since the 1880s, a long time, helping Americans with disaster relief and supporting the military and combatant victims of war. And what most people know us for is disaster services. So, my particular job is in disaster services. I organize 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 24-7, 365 service that we provide. 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, she may show up yet, but she wanted to let you all know that it's very important and she appreciates very much that you recognized us. And then a little history, Red Cross Month is a pretty old tradition. It started in the 1940s with President Roosevelt and continues through its day. So, we appreciate your support and we appreciate working with your emergency managers and your fire department on a regular basis. So, thank you.

Thank you very much.

Yeah.

Now, we'll have public comment.

You will have 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 bailiff who will hand it to me. The first request is from Denise Mazalewski, followed by Terry Kogel. And if I've mispronounced your name, please correct me.

I'm here today because I wanted to talk about illegal bonfires that have been happening on our Martin County beaches. For about four to five years, I have noticed there are scars and littering of rusty nails from pallets that are dragged onto the beaches that leave really dangerous situations on our beaches. 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 us for recognizing their hard work. It takes them, 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, our fishermen, our fishermen, 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 taken up because of turtle season. You're allowed to do that in the pits. However, since COVID, 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, Ms. Vargas, spoke to your secretary, and I'm requesting an appointment. 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'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. Ma'am, your time is up.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much, and I look forward to having you.

Terry Kogel is next, followed by Kenneth Shepke.

Good morning, Commissioners. Okay, this is a phrase we're all familiar with and probably hear 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 trust, can we please open up our meetings and make available our community meetings by allowing our growing working-class daytime workers' evening meetings for them? Thank you. Thank you.

Kenneth Shepke is next, followed by Christopher Collins.

Good morning, Commissioners. Thank you, Chair. My name is Dr. Kenneth Shepke. I'm board-certified in emergency medicine and the subspecialty 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 Florida, but I'm not here to speak in those roles today. My physician and I serve as medical directors for multiple fire rescue systems across South Florida, including the City of Stewart 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 pre-hospital 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've reviewed the data, and it is clear, over the past six years, Stewart 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-to-hospital transfer. When that happens, the emergency unit is taken out of service and is no longer available for 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 expectation. 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 inactive 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 health care teams transfer to a patient in active labor only for disaster to strike before reaching the destination, leading to traumatic events for both patients and their pre-hospital 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. Christopher Collins is next, followed by Corey Crawley. Good morning, Mayor.

So I'm thankful our medical director was here. I also wanted to speak to the ILA conversation that you will all be having shortly. less so from the perspective of a mayor and more so as a father and husband to my family. 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 3 and then Jensen Beach, that previous ILA is outdated. If there was a case in the past for the county picking up the slack for the city, that does not exist anymore. 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 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 health and safety of the public and pulling it out of the political gaming realm. So 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 three minutes from a dispatch from Britt 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 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 if you so choose to be the ones that have your taxpayers subsidize ambulance trips and transport because 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 take those comments in as you guys entertain. I'm thankful for what you do, and thank you again.

Thank you. Thank you. Corey Crawley is the next request-to-speak form, and Mr. Crawley is the last request-to-speak form that I have.

Commissioners. Good 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 four years and 29 days ago, I walked this young man to a bus as he departed for Parris Island to join the United States Marine Corps. And the following day, Russia invaded Ukraine. And none of our lives have been the same since. Especially for the residents of Port Salerno. 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 couldn't find a purpose. So I flew home and started kicking around, and I owned some properties at the time in Port Salerno, and I went and decided to see what the CRA thing was all about. I met Susan Correz at an April meeting in New Monrovia, and we chatted for a bit. And I asked her some questions, and her answer to one of my questions set the stage 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 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, you know, some magical land that wasn't on a map. As if elsewhere wasn't going to destroy Port Salerno. 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 19-year-old boy on a bus at that Greyhound station in Los Angeles. Florida was never going to become California. And the reason 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 Salerno, 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 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 dais, Ms. Elder, our county commissioners, this is a moment of transformation, not a moment of change. I've fought tirelessly to say Port Salerno has been the victim of a propaganda campaign. But we now need to come together. This is the moment. Your 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. There's a lot of food for thought, and I really appreciate all the comments for everybody who's taking 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 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 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 what additional regulations we can put in place. Certainly during turtle season, they are not allowed, and as far as co-enforcement, the other issue is regarding just the allowance of fires in front of our public beaches. We regulate them at two parks, but I will get back to the board with a memo on the options that we can do to increase the regulation of fires in front of county facilities.

Okay. What about the fires in front of private developments? They may own the beach. How will we handle that?

At this point, I don't believe we can regulate the fires in front of private property. They can, other than through our fire department, on burn bans, and the state can regulate it in terms of turtle nesting season.

Okay. Would it be possible to have signage that you can't just, you know, have a bonfire there? Certainly. In terms of a public educational component, we can bring back to the board options,

on what it is that we can do. But in terms of private property, we are limited on what we can do in terms of signage on private property

or enforcement of rules that we don't have jurisdiction over. 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 cafe at Johnson 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 comes not just locally, but those that, you know, fly in to enjoy our area, too. I want to, I will reserve my other comments for another mention from one of our constituents that took the time to come here and talk about the fire department interlocal agreement.

I would like, however, for our chairwoman Hurd to have the pleasure of talking about our budget and finance department, and they were recognized by an agency that does give state and local governments awards for preparing high-quality budget documents. So I'm going to leave that for our chairwoman to make that announcement. We're very proud of Ms. Murley and her team.

Thank you. Commissioner Capps.

I'll be brief. I would like to reemphasize that I am not for evening meetings for the county commission. You know, some of the smaller towns can manage to have meetings in the evenings that are reasonable in length, but at the county, 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, 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 6 or 8 or 10 hours. Most of our meetings now are run more in the 4- to 7-hour range, but there's the potential. If there's a controversial issue, there can be 50 public speakers, and there can be 2 or 3 hours of public comment, which we greatly appreciate. But it's, you know, I heard it said one time, one of our former presidents said that an exhausted president is a dangerous president, and this president was known for being in bed at 9 o'clock every night and getting his rest because 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. I think the evidence also shows that when public meetings go past 8.30 or 9 o'clock, 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 o'clock at night. People have to get up at 6 the next morning to go to work. So it's kind of productive, and I don't think it would be good.

Commissioner Vargas is referring to an award that we got from the Government Finance Officers Association. 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 budgeting. Its attainment represents a significant achievement by our organization. This is a wonderful award, and we know that our budget office does a terrific job, and this is well-deserved. So thank you, budget office.

Commissioner Campy. 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. I thought originally it was probably a joke, but he did put his name and telephone number, so I called him. And he's very serious about celebrating Lawrence Welk and the show, and its 70th anniversary. He's had over 100 counties and 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. Sure. On behalf of all the commissioners, yeah.

That'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. Thank you.

Commissioner Hetherington. Yep.

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, I want to thank you in 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 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 CRAs and our Office of Community Development. There was a speaker this morning that was quoting, and I will take him at his word. He was quoting a verbatim conversation that he had, and he mentioned her name, Ms. Susan Corris. I have had the pleasure of working with Ms. Corris 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 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. She is very professional. She's got a tremendous resume and track record of doing an excellent job, not just here in Martin County, but in her earlier career. And I didn't want someone to specifically disparage her. If maybe they were not trying to do that, but that's how I took it, and I didn't want that we would just hear that comment, let that go out there, and without a response. We are very, very fortunate to have Ms. Corris as a member of our team. She does remarkable work in all of the CRA areas, but especially, I feel, in Palm City, without her guidance and leadership, we would not have accomplished nearly what we have. Thank you.

Mr. Donaldson.

Nothing, thank you.

Ms. Eldridge. All right, we are, we will now take up our 930 preset, which is a fire rescue update.

Morning, commissioners.

Morning. Can you hear me okay? I'm trying to. Yep. It's a little bit different. So, my name is Chad Chancholi, fire chief for Martin County Fire Rescue, and to my right. Good morning, commissioners. Matt Rush, fire rescue administrator.

Good morning, commissioners. David Hayes, division chief. Good morning, commissioners. Joseph Lombosco, district chief.

Good morning, Rocco Napoli, division chief. So, 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 high-level view of the operational impacts that we've had along the way. This agreement has been in inception since 2020. 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 presentation that need to be shored up. And I will say this. I am glad that we do have some representation from the city of Stewart 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% fact-based. 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 fee-based 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. I'm going to fast-forward to 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 fee-based portion of this. Why did we do a fee-based interlocal agreement? An interlocal agreement is not a foreign concept with your surrounding agencies. That's a normal thing to do. The fee-based 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 fee-based. 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 interlocal agreement was public safety, was putting the public first. And then he built an agreement around that. That was the intent. But I'm telling you now, some of this 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 Lifestar 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 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 Salerno 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 that they have with Sewell's Point. Collectively, that's roughly about 9 to 10 square miles. Population of Port Salerno, 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 Salerno, 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 sign this agreement. In 2020, if I take you with what exactly they had, City of Stewart, for 911 calls in total in 2020, it 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 would be a good question. So let me take you to a neighboring jurisdiction for us. North of us, St. Lucie 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, it's a simple concept. Essentially, the dispatcher gets a 911 call. They identify it 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 reliant 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. Dispatcher's 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, Windermere community. They would not look for any county resources. They only looked 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 Windermere development 15-20 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 refused 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 are 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 policymakers. This is wrong. So, now let's go into labor and delivery. So, labor and delivery, as you know, Cleveland Clinic, April of 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. Lucie 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 Stewart's 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 real-world 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. But 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-size-fits-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 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-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 this 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. Stewart Fire Rescue. Full term 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. We'll take that patient. No questions asked. And then the last one, I think I'm driving a point home. Stewart Fire Rescue transported. Again, third trimester OB patient, active labor. They're contractions less than one minute apart. And they transport that patient to Cleveland Clinic North, knowing that patient has to get transferred out. Think about the mother and the baby. Truly, you have to, if you deliver the child there and take in 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 stopgap. 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 transport that Coastal Care cannot handle, you call 9-1-1 and you request a county unit. And we will take that patient, no questions asked, because you cannot have that delay of care. The 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 have the city, we have 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 right the wrong. And then, no reason at all, they cancel the meeting. Just cancel it. 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 there's any apolitical 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 level-headed 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 ILA. 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, let me first, let me address that. So why do I have this running clock here? We have roughly over 20 minutes that just clipped 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.

Five minutes. Now we're at 10 minutes. 10 minutes. And then they got about three 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. Wood, who was our medical director, and they can share their 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.

Thank you, 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-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, 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 the physician side. I want to, you know, start out with, you know, recognize Dr. Schlepke. Is he still here? Yep. Good. I met him years ago. 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, you know, how would it be to deliver a baby in the ER? I mean, really, if you had a choice, would you pick that choice? If you lived in the city of Stewart, would not. So with that said, to Dr. Schlepke's point about EMTALA law, okay, I'm going to clear this up real quick. Yes, 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. Lucie Medical Center, which has that capability. It's exactly 21 minutes driving normal, not driving priority, okay, 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 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 it. And Dr. Dayton and I put on some education for the system, but it's not comfortable. It's not comfortable for me. Dr. Schlepke, is it comfortable for you? Probably not at this point, you know? So I'm just saying, it is not a comfortable situation. We can do it in emergencies, and we do. That said, 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 to, 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 oftentimes, 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 that's just a function of reality. You know, if we were in Cleveland, Ohio, there'd be one building with everything right there on site, but that's not the case here. We're spread out. So it's often two 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 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 Cianciulli, you know, kind of like painted the picture for you. You know, I looked up Stuart on the way over. I just thought, this is kind of fun. Maybe I'll look it up. Stuart, anybody know the definition of Stuart? The meaning of the name, if you named your kid Stuart, 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 Dr. Slapke. 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. And I'll let Dr. Dayton point that out. We take trauma patients to the closest trauma center available. Okay? Trauma patients go there. That's a state mandate. Obviously, L&D is not. I get that. But we take them there. We take pediatric emergencies when you're in the bigger areas, say like Palm Beach and Broward County, we take them to PEDS 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.

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. 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. 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 obstetrician 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'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 interventional cardiologists work out of North, so if you have a heart attack and you're going to get a cath, you come down to North. Obstetrical services are a tradition, or if it's an emergent 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 U.S. Code 42-1395, 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. And so when Stewart 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 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. And 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've got 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 do have a logistical problem. I ask the commission to please get these people together, 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 Canty. Chief, is that the end of your presentation?

This would be the end.

Before the Q&A?

I would conclude this presentation and take any questions. So that would be the end.

I have had the, I guess, the fortunate experience to have heard that we were going to lose labor and delivery services at Martin North several years ago. It started out in Indiantown when the Community Health, what's the organization that was delivering babies in Indiantown, Community Health?

Florida Community Health.

Florida Community Health. I know that they had received a very large grant through some assistance from Senator Harrell, and there was talk that they were going to be closing up their services. At that point, I had a conversation. And at the point, the district was three and five were split in Indiantown, so 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. At 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 realistic sense. I know that Dr. Rishi Singh, who was heading Martin North at the time, did appear before the City of Stewart Commission and did a Q&A with them. I know that the City, there was a lot of public speakers, and the Commission themselves were frustrated and concerned, which I get. 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 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 layperson would think, but that's absolutely not the case. And 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 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 wake-up call for Martin County residents to realize, wait a second, we're not guaranteed all of these services. And maybe labor and delivery is the first of others to go. It makes sense if you have multiple locations that you'd have, you know, orthopedics at South and 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 Hurd is our senior commissioner, our elder. But I've been here a long time as well. This is an issue of merging the two fire systems 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 this is not an attack or, from my perspective, an insult to the men and women of the Stewart Fire Rescue, the people that are boots on the ground, fantastic, have had interaction with them both personally from a medical point of view and have seen it happen with other people. I've seen them work excellent. It's just that when you have a small department next to our larger department, like your map showed, 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, 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 easiest conversation slash negotiation 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 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 start traveling out of the county to go to Tradition or up U.S. 1. 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 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 offer up a motion that Martin County Fire Rescue negotiate with the city of Stewart's Fire Rescue 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, 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 labor and delivery hospitals. But when it does happen, I think it should be us. I think 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 have... I agree if elected officials are involved, us, city of Stewart, 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 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-for-profit 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 birth weight 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 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, open for discussion, is having that meeting to once and for all have an interlocal discussion, negotiation. No elected officials, just the people that genuinely need to be involved. 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, 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, 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 Hetherington. Yes.

So first I'll start is we were somewhat briefed about the situation by some residents and last meeting. 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 the city has refused to meet and address this, even though it was mentioned at this last meeting, 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'll say, I have two sons, 20 and 21. And when my first son was born, great, healthy pregnancy, normal, you know, my water broke on Easter Sunday, four o'clock 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 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, eight and a half pound, so pretty big baby, eight and a half pound 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 life-altering experience for me and my child. And that's what we're talking about. We're talking about life-altering 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. 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 as 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. 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 Capps.

Thank you all for coming in and enlightening us on this pressing issue. I think that we as policymakers and as novices in the field could be traveling in territory that we're not that familiar with, and there could be unintended consequences to us making motions. I would like to hear from you, Chief, if you were sitting up here, what would you like the motion to be?

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 canceled meetings, he's refused to meet with you, why are you confident that this approach will be any different?

I'll just have him hug me, and then he can just move on with business. Maybe we can do that. We'll 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. Yeah, so, again, who are you saying that should be in the room? And this is in secrecy, is that correct? Ma'am, nothing we do is in secrecy. Okay. Then who should be in the room? Everything we do is in the public eye.

But if you want to understand what that actual motion was, I'll kind of put that back to Commissioner Campy. No, I'm asking you because you're the one that said you support what he's saying. 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 somebody that's a policymaker, 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 Campy was speaking, and we had the mayor who was actually in the background. There was a 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 and legal. We have our county attorney here. She's put it 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 campaign document. This is an 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? I would have 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, 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 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 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? Aye. Opposed? That motion passes unanimously. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

We're now going to take a 10-minute break 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.

10-30 preset, which is 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 really just keep you apprised of what we're doing. I'm not asking for anything this morning other than once you leave here and you interact with people from FDOT, individuals that we interact with as elected officials that really control the purse strings here 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, you know, a picture is worth a thousand words. I 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. For starters, I want to introduce the individuals behind me. I have my staff, Major Reuben Romero. I think he's in the far corner there. Captain Joe Colazzo, he's in charge of road patrol, which includes traffic. And then Lieutenant David Roscoe, he's the other bald-looking guy behind me, 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, Commissioner's, but it is in Martin County, and 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 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 an elected official, running out there, dealing with the crisis, kind of smoothing over everything with the people of Clementsville, the people of the area, I 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 in getting this project, the road-widing project, approved long-term. But I reached out to State Representative Snyder, who can't be here today. He's with some leadership down in Palm Beach. And we started just talking to some of the funders of the budget that are going to allocate the money for this project, this widening project. One of the individuals that we presented this PowerPoint presentation to was Jared Perdue. He's the secretary of FDOT. He's the head of FDOT. And then our local liaison, Steve Brown, he's our local FDOT 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 the presentation. Again, Lieutenant Roscoe did a good job putting it together. So I thought it would be important just to go through it with you real quick. Again, I don't need anything. I'm not asking 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 eminent 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. The first slide here 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 enforcing. We had a wrong way drunk driver out there, which our deputies chased, crashed into the guardrail, arrested him. I 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 the road itself. You can see herein lies a problem. The road for the amount of traffic that's coming through Indiantown and Western Mark County is 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, guardrail, there's nowhere to go. And 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 Indiantown 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 930 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 head-on. 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 guardrails, the narrow shoulder, and you see really, it really is 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 Okeechobee County in this because I think the DOT should do Okeechobee while they're at it because it's not going to fix their problem. They've got a 10-mile stretch of road that they need to finish all the way to Highway 70. But since 2015, the 33.7-mile stretch of 710 between Warfield and Martin County and Okeechobee has experienced over 1,250 reported motor vehicle crashes. This one right here that you're looking at took place this year. This was a head-on crash with a fatality. I'm going to show a 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 of Clementsville have seen firsthand, 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 the recent fatality. Citizens are already there trying to help. The car's 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. The car's on fire. I mean, this is a traumatic scene for him. Come on.

Come on.

Both more than Southbound shut down.

Come on.

You got a passenger?

It's like the vehicle's on fire. Passengers stuck inside the vehicle. Come on.

Come on. Come on, buddy. Come on. Come on, buddy.

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 the death in the cars. Like, these are really traumatic traffic crashes that they're dealing with. All right. In the last 10 years, 710 within Martin County, Okeechobee, has experienced a total of 31 fatal motor vehicle crashes. These crashes have resulted in the deaths of 39 people. That's us in Okeechobee. 29 of those deaths are ours on our side of the county line. Kind of scroll through that. So, the most common contributing causes of these crashes are, of these crashes, 20 were crossover crashes. People passing, people trying to avoid slower traffic, and they move over in the oncoming lane in fog and rainstorms or the hydroplane, and you end up with what I'm fixing to show you, the crashes. So, you saw the aerial 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 let me back up a little bit. This road has been a problem for a long time, but with GPSs coming online, there's a whole lot more traffic coming through Indiantown than used to in the past. With Terra Largo coming online, there's some large building projects that are going on in Okeechobee County. The traffic is just all day, every day, moving through there. It's not like little Indiantown used to be even 15 years ago. I'm going to show you what's happened on the south end of Indiantown. So, south of the big John Monaghan 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 Indiantown. So, the road used to be the same all the way through Martin County, and they fixed from the John Monaghan Bridge to the Palm Beach County line and widened that road to a broad four-lane highway. During that construction period, we had two fatality crashes. That's the diagrams that you're looking at here. But since that piece has been completed in 2017, we've had zero fatality crashes south of the big John Monaghan Bridge. So, it 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 photo from the ground of south of the big John Monaghan Bridge. You can just see how wide it is. It's a 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, 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. 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 and 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 big blessing to them out there. But we were having a lot of crashes there. As cars would stop the turn, people that were not paying attention would go past. And as the car turned, we were having nasty T-bone crashes into head-on traffic in some 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, Sheriff, what are you doing? Why are you not out there writing tickets? We are. We wrote last year, we wrote 2,781 citations right here on this section of road. So, we're writing a lot of citations. But it's dangerous for our deputies out there, too. You can see 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, 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. 2015, we lost a 58-year-old to a semi versus a smaller truck crash. This was one of the turn lane crashes that I just explained to you right there in front of Tommy Clements. This was, as crashes go, one of the rougher crashes, a triple fatality. The youngest that died in that crash was a 4-year-old. And 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. This vehicle burned. Another semi truck running into a car. We lost a 29-year-old in that crash in 2020. We lost a 22-year-old. This is a small PT cruiser and a larger pickup truck that got in a crash. These are two pickup trucks. You can see, by the way, there's an excessive amount 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 mile an hour 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 2022. Again, a semi where we had a double fatality, a 26-year-old and a 24-year-old. This was a head-on crash. Another head-on crash where we lost a 60-year-old. This is another semi crash. I know you can't see the semi in this photo. Another semi crash. This one's actually up in Okeechobee. And this is a semi versus truck fatality crash again. But this one is the very next day, actually, where you have a fire. You can see where you have a double fatality with a fire. Both cars torched. 2025, just last year, 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 73-year-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 went around everybody and rear-ended straight into the back of this car. And 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 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 Okeechobee'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 gave you a lot. Again, my ask is simply this. When you're out and about talking to FDOT people, talking to the people of Inningtown, 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 working traffic crashes. But the big fix is actually the road being widened and being 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'm happy to, or we can call it. Yes, sir.

Commissioner Petherington.

Sheriff, thank you for being here today and describing what we have been hearing on this board and the MPO for many years. And the MPO prioritized this project at the very top of its list. And I want to thank DOT. While it seems like we're moving slowly, they did at least 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 Indiantown, right around the corner from this road. My sister lived off a 710. When we have had family and friends be the victims of some of those fatalities that you showed on this road, it's our main priority, I believe, at this board and the MPO. 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 speaking about safety improvements and speeding on Canter Highway. So we had six or seven DOT representatives and our public works director and our county engineer and experiencing similar safety issues on Canter Highway. DOT, even on that call, said we have prioritized 710. We are going to work with you on some of these safety and education enforcement was so paramount. I also want to point out, too, 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 become a safety concern. So at the MPO, we've also prioritized that intersection or to realign to 609, and I think 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 our goal in the future. The beeline to the south, as you mentioned, south of John Moynihan, has made a huge, tremendous difference. So that's our goal, along with DOT, is 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, that was really jarring. Yes. But thank you so much for giving us this information and showing what's necessary. Excuse me. I did have the pleasure of meeting with Secretary Perdue at a conference last year. And I'm going to reach out to him personally. 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. 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 ripple effect of this, I think, and Commissioner Hetherington said it accurately, FDOT has really made this through our meetings with our MPO board, has really made it a priority. But we all understand that the frustrating part. 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 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 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 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 short-term Band-Aid as we wait for FDOT as fast as they could possibly do. It's still going to be a couple years. I don't know if there's things we can do with, like, as Commissioner Hetherington said, bright signage, or people understanding that they're about to enter into, as you put it, sort of like 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, you know, 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 Indiantown. 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 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 so blinking signs, big traffic lights, 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, every one of those was a dangerous stop. And you can't let them, I guess you can 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 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 the GPS tells them to go down 710, 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 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 has allowed to take people on overtime away from their normal complement and dedicate themselves to that road. And even with them there, though, I think last week they wrote a citation at 106 mile an hour, 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 just passing through. Mr. Gordon.

Jim Gordon, Public Works Director. I just wanted to go over 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 design is underway right now on the corridor. They've got $11 million tied up in that design. After that, the right-of-way phase starts in fiscal year 27, which is July of this year, which means 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 29. The first project is the County Road 714 realignment. That's in fiscal year 29. And then the next phase is the Martin Okeechobee County line up to 126th Boulevard, which is in Okeechobee County. That's in 30. And then the two projects in Martin County are in 31, as currently planned. And that's fully funded? It's fully funded. So the Martin County MPO and this board prioritized the project. And this past year, DOT fully funded all phases of this project. And they're all being actively designed right now.

Thank you. Commissioner Kapps.

Yeah, I like Commissioner Kappi's idea of bright signage along 710. And I had a few questions for Mr. Gorton. Is it possible for us to put signs on a state road as a county? Would we have to have FDOT's permission, or how would that work?

We would have to work with DOT. They have changed some signage out there. They've upgraded everything that they have. They've added additional signage. But there always can be more that can be done. But, yes, we can work with DOT to coordinate that. They would prefer us not to install signs, but we can supplement what they have going on.

What could the signs say to really alert the public? I'm not sure what a sign should say. It seems like most of the accidents appear to be passing in no-passing zones.

So no-passing zone signage. They already put the – they milled in the center line audible warning so that when people cross over, they hear it. That has worked really well for us on the grade. But out there, it's a different situation. Those are people trying to pass, not people that are losing their lane.

So, yeah, additional signage and maybe even looking at the speed limit out there 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 really alerts the public to danger, not so much, you know, passing signs and that kind of thing.

There are narrow road signs, but they have a meaning in the manual for uniform traffic control devices, the MUTCD. And when we say narrow roads, 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 right-of-way. The pavement surface is appropriate. It's just not – there's nowhere to pull off on the shoulders. 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 – it is the manual – it's a federal manual that 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.

It made it uniform across the entire nation for what types of signs tell what things. Some are regulatory. Some are informational. 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 as 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. But typically, we want to stick with things that are in the MUTCD. Of course. That makes sense. Yeah.

Thank you.

Commissioner Campy.

Just a layperson's option, you know when you're on the HOV lanes on the highway and they have those little plastic delineators that run down to sort of keep people in the high-occupancy lanes or if you pay down in South Florida, and is 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 in Palm City. And we did groove the center lane. But 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, I think, obviously, they're not going to hold a semi in line, in the lane. But 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 100 miles an hour, they don't care about the rest of the signs either then. If, 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 little plastic, you know, things for this full length. It would keep some people in the lane. Or even do jersey barriers and run it where you can't come out of your lane.

Yeah, you're talking about delineators. So, sure, we can talk to DOT about that as an option. I think they do want to leave some ability for people to depart the lane if it's necessary. But delineators can fold down.

Yeah, they can get bounced over and pop back up. But, look, 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 all of the other accidents where, 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.

We will take up the consent approval. We have consent nine was pulled. Ms. Miller.

Good morning, Madam Chair, Commissioners. Good 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. 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 fundamentally change the structure. It just changes some minor amounts to expand the program and the eligibility. And we hope that your approval of this 2026 to 2029 LHAP, that you will approve it. And thank you, and I'm happy to answer any questions.

Questions for Ms. Miller.

Commissioner Katz.

Yes. 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 are people out there who really struggle with rental assistance. There are people out there 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 small house, and disrepair, you know, and those people need help as well. But what is available for rental assistance?

So SHIP funds are allowed for rental assistance in first, last, and security. If the unit being rented meets their requirements. So SHIP says how much we can allow one-bedroom, two-bedroom, three-bedroom 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 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?

I would say 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%, 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 on rental assistance if the need would have.

Up to about 25%.

Oh, but 25% is like a max?

Yes.

Oh, okay. Okay, well, a couple other little things just to sort of re-educate us on a few things. When you get SHIP funds, do they have to be paid back?

They have to be paid back in certain circumstances. So a rehab, if you're getting your house 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 1 15th. 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 that set in stone? Does it have to be 15 and not 10 or 8?

It is up to your discretion. 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 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, what are 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 resident. So it can't be a rental. So you have to live in it. And then I'll give you an example of the income qualifications. So the primary 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 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 median average income is higher than other parts of the state. And that changes every April 1st. We get a new chart that tells us what those incomes are.

Okay. I would just like to encourage anyone listening. You know, there's $1.5 million for people who need it. And come and get it. Spread the word. I know that affordable housing is a very, very pressing concern. And it's amazing how much people don't know about what is available. 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 webpage, which you can find at the Martin County's webpage. And then also in person at our office, we're located off-site here. We're at 3435 Flagler. 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 Hetherington.

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 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 two qualifications, then you could be eligible.

And are there any lien requirements on the sewer program? Not any longer.

That's also considered a grant now. Great. Thank you.

And how do most recipients hear about the availability 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 not-for-profits.

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 SHIP funds can be used for rental assistance. They can be used for sewer connections. They can be used for repairs. What kind of repairs? What other kinds of things 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 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 roof leak or perhaps their air conditioner went out. Maybe they want impact windows, something to harden their home, those types of things. And we primarily advocate first 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, then we'll try to give them what they need first. So in other words, if you want your bathroom to be rehabbed 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 ex parte disclosures? Commissioner Vargas?

If I have any, they've been filed.

Commissioner Capps?

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 Hetherington? 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. 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 1, and there are no intervenors, and a 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 plan application for a property owned by SSTI, 1990 Northwest Federal Highway 1, LLC. The applicant, Extraspace Storage, is requesting approval of a revised major final site plan to construct a two-story, 63,114-square-feet self-storage facility and associated infrastructure on approximately 2.51 acres, currently utilized for outdoor storage space, included as a request for the 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 Northwest Breed Road. This is an enlarged area of the site. The property's current use is outdoor storage. So, at the subject site, there is a two-story self-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 1.40-acre common area dedicated to the Vista Commons Owners Association. This is a stormwater retention area of approximately 100 feet 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, you'll find parcel A, which is the common area dedicated to the Vista Commons Owners Association. This is the first sheet of the proposed site plan. Access to the property is from one location on northwest Federal Highway. This is Federal Highway, and this is the location. The applicant is requesting alternative compliance from the primary facade transparency fenestration provision of Article 4, Division 20, Commercial Design. Staff recommend approval. The Board of County Commissioners is the final decision maker for this application. 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 representation. This is a closer look of the proposed building. You can see the proposed parking spaces, along with the 12 feet 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 1. 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?

Good morning, Commissioners.

Craig McDonald with Corporate Property Services on behalf of Extra Space Storage. I'll run you through a brief presentation. I'd be happy to answer any questions you all might have. The scenario, just showing the location. Right now, there's a two-story and a one-story indoor storage, self-storage, and then the outdoor storage lot is where we're proposing the new two-story building. We're requesting a major final site plan to construct a two-story, 63,114-square-foot self-storage facility and the associated infrastructure where the outdoor storage currently exists. We're also requesting alternative compliance from Martin County Land Development Code Regulations Section 4.872, 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 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 land development codes don't take that into consideration. The proposed 63,114-square-foot self-storage use would require 43 parking spaces based upon one space per 1,500 square feet of gross floor area. The existing extra-space storage facility is 41,590 square feet and provides five parking spaces, which is equivalent to one space per 8,318 square feet of gross floor area. Based on this ratio, the proposed 63,114-square-foot extra-space storage facility will require eight parking spaces, which have been provided. The first floor of the proposed self-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. 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 in 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 this colored site plan. It shows the brown as the new building. And we've got the landscape buffer around the west side, as you can see, and 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. The upper right-hand area is the existing five parking spaces. Then we're adding the 13 below. I'm sorry, the new eight below for a total of 13. I wanted to just point out, behind us, we have a 20-foot buffer behind the building. And then we have a stormwater track, which serves the association, which is approximately 150 feet. So you've got about 170 feet to the residents 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 stormwater 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 bit about that. Here we've got the north elevation and basically the east, which is the front, the south, and the west. 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 front any roadway and it's not visible from Northwest Federal Highway. For discussion with staff, it was determined due to the lack of visibility from Northwest Federal Highway. The only elevation that would require compliance would be the primary facade would be the east elevation, which you see in front of you right here. The following minimum design elements are being provided. We've got defined customer service entrance with a raised parapet and suspended canopy. We've got faux windows. We're providing multiple changes in color and material texture with the use of split-face blocks, CMU, and cement plaster. The use of architecture details is such as decorative cornice features at the raised parapet. 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. The primary customer entrance and loading area is actuated by a projecting wall plane, change the material, raised parapet. Similar wall plane changes and parapet transitions have been provided on the other four locations along the east elevation. The proposed secondary facades have been designed to be consistent with the primary facade in terms of material finishes and colors. Really, when you think about this, we back up to the back of the shopping center on the east and north sides. The west, we're buffered by the stormwater track and the 20-foot rear buffer. So we've got about 170 feet 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, et cetera. 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, Mr. Campy.

Thank you very much. I think it's an attractive building. I know the location that you're speaking of is behind the main drag of US-1. I did watch you. It's amazing. Your presentation at the LPA was almost exactly what you just did. You well rehearsed. 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.

This is a public hearing. Would anyone from the public like to address us? Seeing none, there is a motion. Is there a second? I'll second it. Any further discussion? There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? That motion passes unanimously. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

We'll take up Department 1, which is Office of Management and Budget items, which require board approval. Good morning, Ms. Murley.

Good morning. Stephanie Murley, Director of the Office of Management and Budget. I'm here to present three items for you today. Our first item is permission to accept the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, or FDEP, Resilient Florida Grant Amendment No. 1. Our Public Works Department is requesting the acceptance of an additional $120,000 for the adaptation plan, which is consistent with the Florida Adaptation Planning Guidebook. There is no cash match required for this item. The second item is permission to accept Amendment No. 1 to the FY26 Mosquito Control Agreement from the State of Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. Our Mosquito Control Division is requesting the acceptance of a budget amendment No. 1 to the mosquito control contract in the amount of $7,731.94 for the purchase of chemicals used for arthropod control, and there is no additional cash match required for that. And our last item is a request for funds for the Emergency Management Risk Assessment. Our Emergency Management Division is requesting $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 risks. 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 Ms. Murley?

Mr. Capps?

Move approval.

Second. There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? That motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Department 2 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. We have one contract for your consideration today. This is our first construction manager at risk contract, so very exciting.

Very exciting.

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, 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 designee to execute all documents related to this request. And that concludes this item.

Questions for Ms. Brotherton. Commissioner Hetherington.

I just wanted to proudly move approval of this building. It's appropriately named after Larry Massing. And I'm so proud that we're using the CMAR on this project, too. So I know it's going to be very beneficial to the county.

Second. And I feel the exact same way that she did. And I like that you said Larry Massing's name three times.

Mr. Capps.

I like to rehearse old things. Tell us about CMAR and three or four of the distinctive features of that type of contract.

Sure. Sean Donahue, General Services Director. So CMAR's construction management at risk is different than design, bid, build, which is our typical delivery process for building projects. So in the CMAR process, the contractor is hired up front as a consultant, and they can provide services during design, value engineering, design services, reviewing plans, looking at cost efficiencies, better ways to construct, things in the process. So in doing that, you gain efficiencies in, number one, time, because you're getting the contractor in the project earlier on. But number two, you're having the contractor provide opinions in valuation engineering that will avoid 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 cap. It will only go down from there, and we get the value back if they go under the project maximum, and 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 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? Aye. Opposed? That motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Next up is Department 3, 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. Ms. Segura.

Good morning. Carla Segura, Real Property Manager. This item, as you mentioned, was a property that belonged to the CRA, and it was foreclosed on in 2011, and the judge at that time decided that the property needed to be redeveloped under the CRA. But the CRA abandoned the Indiantown section when the village of Indiantown 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 Indiantown CRA in 2018. The approximate one-acre parcel was acquired by the CRA for approximately $80,000, which, in addition, there were charges for demolition and other associated costs for the unsafe structure that was on the property at the time. Staff acquired an appraisal for this parcel after the village of Indiantown requested that we sell the property to them. Our appraisal was done in April of last year for $310,000, 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 Indiantown's board approved an offer for the purchase of the property at $275,000. Once the board determines an appropriate sales price based on the appraisals, a contract will be issued to the village of Indiantown and approved and returned to the board for final approval. I meant conditional approval. 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 designee at a price determined by the board. Following board approval, we will issue the conditional contract to the village of Indiantown for their approval and return to the board. If there's any questions. Mr. Capps.

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 Indiantown CRA, and then incorporation happened. So it's in the village. I understand they have some great ideas for the use of the property, for expanding the park, and I think they're the best people to deal with it. And I would move approval of the sale to the village for the price offered of $275.

Second. Question.

Mr. Campy.

Does the money go into our CRA fund, or does it go into the general fund?

That has yet to be determined.

Since the Indiantown CRA no longer exists, it will revert back to the taxing authorities that originally funded the Indiantown CRA, which would be the general fund.

You can't blame me for trying.

Mr. Fox, do you have a comment, or is it from Ms. Murley?

Just 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 behalf of the project? I'm on the fence. Any other questions from the board?

Ms. Krista.

Karen Krista, village manager for the record. We had been looking at this parcel since the village had incorporated, and as the board knows, 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 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 acquired, 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 half-cent sales tax for environmentally sensitive lands. Even though this is not an environmentally 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 recreational opportunities for the village.

If you were still with the county, you would have made us charge $310,000.

Well, with that said, you know, there was an indication that that appraisal was not based on, what would you call it, fair market?

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? Aye. Opposed. That motion passes unanimously.

Thank you so much. And we appreciate our cooperation with the county. We're trying to get along with our municipalities.

Thank you.

Next is Department 4, which is a discussion of a potential school zone on Southwest Newfield Parkway at Citrus Grove Elementary.

Good morning.

Good morning, Commissioners. I'm Michael Grisalka, the county engineer. I have with me Eric Ferguson, your traffic engineer.

Good morning. Good morning. He's going to give the presentation.

Good morning. I'm here to give a presentation on potential school zones on Citrus Grove Elementary on Newfield Parkway. For some history, Citrus Grove Elementary School and Newfield Parkway from 714 to Port St. Lucie Boulevard were built in around 2008, 2009. At that time, Canopy Creek on the west had a very limited number of housing units, but a traffic signal crosswalk and sidewalk were included with the roadway project, anticipating that students would walk across Newfield Parkway to the school. This next aerial photo is an enlargement of the configuration in 2009 as 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, school pavement marking messages, and notably at the time there was no school speed reduction when it was originally designed. Over time, as Canopy Creek built out, staff received a number of requests for a reduced school speed limit zone. Staff at the time reviewed it, and we identified several additional safety measures, which are shown on this aerial photo. These include an additional be prepared to stop flashing beacon that flashes when the light's yellow and red for southbound traffic. 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. That conflict was eliminated, and it also moved the crosswalk further south, away from the curve for southbound traffic. We performed a crash history, and we went back the past 10 years. That's as far as our database has information. There were seven reported crashes. Notably, there were no crashes involving pedestrians or bicycles. 43% of the crashes were rear end, 43% were off-road, and 14% involved a left-turn conflict. Now I'm going to give 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 the statute says we work with the law enforcement to determine it. Typically, we get a lot of requests for let's make school zones longer, and really, the intent is we just reduce the speed limit at an uncontrolled crosswalk, a crosswalk without a traffic light, the one that's immediately at the school where students cross. 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 the school zones are really meant with the speed reduction limit at a single mid-block crosswalk where students have to cross a roadway. The county engineer's existing longstanding policy has been that we only employ school zones, reduce speed limits at mid-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 before the crossing guard enters. We find that the school zone and the traffic light, as you deploy more signs and flashing lights, a driver can only process so much information. There's potential that all these extra signs 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 for the school schedule with the calendar. So, based on our review of crash history, our determination is that there's not an operational deficiency or a crash pattern at Citrus Grove Elementary that would necessitate establishing a school zone speed limit. We prepared several options for discussion. The first would be to accept staff's determination to not have a speed limit reduction. The second would be to establish a 20-mile-per-hour school zone speed limit. We estimate that would cost $80,000 for the additional flashers and to relocate the existing flashing beacons. And we do have adequate funding in the traffic safety funds for that, and that could be completed by the start of next school year. The third option would be a pedestrian overpass. It's a longer-term solution. We estimate high-level cost would be $5 million, and funding has not been identified for that. That completes my presentation.

Thank you. Questions for Mr. Ferguson. Mr. 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 original crosswalk was coming, and it required us to do, you know, it was just lay a sidewalk down, but it's a lot more to it than that. And we did that. 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 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, more specifically Palm City is up to Port St. Lucie Boulevard and Becker Road and Port St. Lucie. So a lot of folks that are coming into Martin County from Port St. Lucie come down this road, and they're driving quickly. You can see there's some, like, 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 right-hand 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. There is a traffic signal there. I guess a question to our folks, to you, Eric, would be, does the crossing guard have one of those clickers where she can control the signal?

She pushes the button on the pedestrian. Just like anybody would. Just like anybody else would.

Yep. I know at Martin Highway and Palm City School Avenue, 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 haven't looked recently. But I know they used to be able to control the signal. 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 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, 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. I think it's a school zone, but it could potentially be more dangerous. I'd like to leave it alone. I'd make a motion that we leave it alone for the time being, but that you both gentlemen would indulge me and make the same presentation to the school board during one of their meetings, and if also potentially either take this portion of this meeting video and send it to the 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. 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 genuinely bring us the result that they were hoping for. I did mention 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 enrollment is. Not all of them are going to walk across. We're not going to build a $5 million crosswalk, overhead crosswalk for them. Just a suggestion, because I know that road's busy, but I think between what you have there is enough for the time being. Thank you. That's my motion. Mr. Donaldson.

Yeah, I was just simply going to suggest that staff could also simply look at the striping and the signage if the reflectivity is deteriorated at all, that we could upgrade the maintenance of that so the visual of that crosswalk and everything pops to the maximum extent that it can. I can answer that easily. We did the north half from the roundabout, the new roundabout, up to Singlesby County last year. This year it's funded and it's on the program to be done 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 bump out to the west, a signal is under design for that right now because they're building a new road, new – it's under construction off to the north. That's where that, what is it, 600-unit multifamily is going to be, and we put it in – it's in the approval for that, that that multifamily has to have the signal up and running along with that road. Where's that 600-unit –

It's part of Newfield. It's part of Newfield. It's just a phase, yeah. You're scaring people when you talk like that. You're scaring me, too. I'm like, what do you know? It's part of – it's another phase of Newfield. It's another phase of Newfield, correct.

Yeah, it has not been completely approved yet. I mean, they have not gone to construction. But the road work has got approval, and it's gone to construction with the master drainage system that's going in it currently.

The other recommendation, I guess, if there is – when you speak to these entities, if there is speeding issues that we can have the sheriff's office put our – because it's not the crossing guard's responsibility to do traffic control, but we could have someone up the road, or in this case, north and west, stop people from speeding into the zone.

Yeah, and that's why I mentioned the signal. That signal will start slowing down that whole corridor.

Mr. Vargas.

So, 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 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, if you're speeding down Canter Highway, you can start at over $150, and depending how many – five miles per hour or depending on the officer's mood, then you'll definitely have a nice bill to pay. So that's always a deterrent, too. But I think some of the recommendations, well, nice, but not affordable, $5 million, no. And then I accept the status quo right now that the staff is recommending for this. Look at it again.

Commissioner Hetherington.

I was just curious whether you had conversations of some kind of different delineation of pavement markings, whether it be green or a paver. Does that help identify the crosswalk and potentially – I'm sure you've discussed this. I wasn't a party to some of the conversations. But does that assist at all, delineating that crosswalk instead of the stripes with something that stands out a little more?

I believe currently we have out there the high visibility, the ladder, the keyboard one for that crossing as well, because that pops more than the two parallel lines.

Is the keyboard the stripes that were in that picture? And they're all getting – like I said, it's in this year's program.

I just don't know how far down it is. We started our long line stuff. This contract's went out, I don't know, a month ago or so, and I don't know where it is. But I know 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. Or I'll lend you the money until you get your money.

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 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 this?

Yeah. Any further discussion? There's a motion. Is there a second? No.

Yes. Approved. There's a motion and a second.

All those in favor?

Aye. Aye.

Opposed?

That motion passes unanimously.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

We'll take up Department 5, which is a 25th anniversary presentation on the Martin Ship Pump-Out Operation Program, which is called Ms. Poop. Good morning. Good morning. Nice to see you on land.

Good morning. I am Brittany Bassett. I'm the Assistant Director of the Utilities and Solid Waste Department, and I'm accompanied by?

I'm Daryl Shuler, Project Manager with Utilities and Solid Waste, and also the Program Manager for this particular program. Chair, Commissioners, thank you for allowing me to present to you this morning, or us to present. In the summer of 2000, late Mr. John Polley came to my office with a file, and he says, Daryl, we have a grant here for you to start a mobile marine sewage pump-out operation program. And he says, and you had until late October to launch your first boat. Well, I did. I got it done. And we started pumping boats. 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 five days a week with two full-time operators. And as of December 31st, 2025, we have completed 60,000-plus pump-outs, and they've removed 2.5 million gallons of untreated sewage that could have potentially ended up in our waterways. As a matter of fact, boat operators are actually complaining right now because they're having to service between 40 and 60 boats per day. So I just, and they're doing it, bless their hearts, without overtime, which is why we're running the full-time, two full-time operators. At this time, Brittany has a short PowerPoint presentation that'll 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 boaters 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. And the MS POOP stands for Martin Ship Pump-Out Operation Program. And it's funded in part by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Clean Vessel Act through the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. I have a video, but I don't know if it's going to play. We're going to skip that. So the program began in October 2000 as a part of the Clean River Initiative. And FDEP absorbed 75% of the costs for the initial purchase of the equipment. And since the program started over the last 25 years, we've seen an increase steadily over those last 25 years in requests for pump-outs. 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. It supports safe boating, 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 pump-outs between October 2001 and December 23rd, 2025. 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. Lucie Estuary, St. Lucie 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's support and believing in our department could do this. So thank you. And Madam Chair, if it's okay, would Sam be able to say a few words? I just wanted to ask before we started talking.

I presume. By all means. I'll be brief. Thank you, Commissioners. Sam Amerson, Utilities and Solid Waste Department Director. It's been a great pleasure working with Daryl all these years. 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, pipeline, pump-out 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, 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 shout-out for that. Thank you.

So, Mr. Amerson, we could say that Daryl is 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 pump-out?

We have a phone number that we have had since the very, very beginning of the program. Residents who are 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 we'll just put you on the list and come pump your boat out. What's the phone number?

Okay.

7-7-2-2-6-0-8-3-2-6.

So then what do you do? You call those people back and you arrange a time? No.

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 irrelevant to us. We log every single pump-out on log sheets, 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 a requirement of the grant documentation.

It's a terrific service. Does St. Lucie County and Palm Beach County offer the same thing? Not to my knowledge. So if someone's from St. Lucie 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.

Correct. And we do go all the way down. As a matter of fact, I contacted the boat operator this morning because the newspaper wanted to do an article. And he was already down in Jupiter Island.

Yeah.

So we have four or five boats that customers down there that we service on a weekly basis.

Well, fantastic. Well, you're kind of a big deal, Daryl. Well, thank you.

Thank you for the presentation.

You're quite welcome. You're well done.

Thank you.

That brings us to the end of our meeting. Mr. McChrystal, would you like to address us?

Mr. McChrystal's been busy. He spoke a couple times last night at the City of Stewart meeting. He's busy. He's like on a tour. He speaks on every topic.

Mr. Campy, sometimes I like the way you think.

Most of the time.

Like, hey, don't bring your St. Lucie poop to our rivers. Oh, brother.

What are you going to say?

Let me start off on a positive note. Last meeting, I wasn't here, but my neighbor got awarded. He got awarded for the unique things he did to do something special. Who was that guy he gave an award to last time?

It was a safety award.

No, no, the guy who does surveying. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. That was amazing. 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 big. Anyways, 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 Stewart wants to remain independent. And what he failed to mention was how the ball game got changed with Stewart building that fire station to the north. 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 Crimea 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 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's 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 this? We'll move back to Commissioner Comments. Commissioner Hetherington.

I'm all set for today. Thank you. Commissioner Campy.

I was going to respond to that, but I won't. And I received a request for a proclamation to be given to an Eagle Scout, Mr. Kevin Joseph O'Connor. No, we handled those. Okay. We already handled that? Yep. All right. I have nothing else. Commissioner Capps.

Yes, I thought I would like to comment just a little bit about some of the state legislature actions taken in this legislative session. And, you know, preemption is really on the rise. I think they're enjoying the power trip up there of sort of beating up on the counties and the cities and trying to control us and to erode local control. There were a number of land use bills that were advanced that were really troublesome to local governments. Most of them did not make it through both houses of the legislature. There was one called blue ribbon projects, which would be for large chunks of land that were 15,000 acres or more, 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 preserve like 60% of the land, you could 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. There was one down in Dade County. There's a there's a strip of land between the urban area and the Everglades. And it's it's always been preserved, according to the codes that were one of the legislators down there advanced the idea of 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. You know, when you think 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 ag 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 those are the two biggest ones. But these kind of ideas are circulating. And 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, 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 ag area. And in places where the line kind of wiggles, if there's like a cutout there where there's some urban development around the edges, the enclave bill would basically say, okay, we're going to straighten out that urban services boundary. And that ag land that is kind of in one of the cutouts there, we're going to allow development of that parcel without county commission approval and without comprehensive plan amendments and zoning changes, there would be 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 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 those areas. And as I understand it, like if one of the borders of that enclave is like dense apartment buildings, then the developer can say, yeah, I'll take that. I'll take that as my zoning and my land use. And let's build 3,000 of them. 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 without county commission approval, without comp plan amendments, without zoning changes, this is 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 because it appears that we could have some enclaves. You know, we don't know for sure who would be applying for an enclave. But I'm really surprised that the statewide environmental groups have not picked up on this, like A Thousand Friends of Florida or other ones, that there's not been a lot of exposure to it. And I think the reason for that is because the enclave concept really doesn't apply to that many counties. 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 where it could apply. So watch out for the concept of enclave bill. If the governor signs it, it's coming our way.

One bill that has been passed, has been signed by the governor, is the bill regarding the paid consultants doing development review, in which the county development review is bypassed altogether. That's right. And we are forced to approve some developers' 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, yes, everything that Commissioner Capps had spoken about, I'm well aware of. We have our legislative representative and also our chief of staff that does present information to us. 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 fast-moving and fast-moving here where the developers will just go through an administrative walk. And we will be cut out, and that means our residents will have no say in what happens in their beloved Martin County. One thing that I did want to bring up today, and I appreciate we have our Director of Tourism Development here, Nerissa, please. It was brought up to me actually several times, and we're talking about the short-term rentals. Having said that, the sheriff had spoken to the Indian River Plantation HOA yesterday, was talking about actually arrests that they made right on Alice Street in Jensen Beach. Each this past week, 10 individuals were renting the place on a short-term basis, but yet they were calling, defrauding folks of their information for their bank accounts, and some people were actually giving them information. And 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 dispatch the sheriffs, and they were able to arrest the fellows and ladies. And they lived in St. Lucie County, actually, and they were renting a place here in Martin County. Not saying every short-term rental is as such. I owned a short-term rental at one time on the other coast, another county. And so there are many fine people that do come. However, we do have our residents that are here, and I've explained to them that if there is a nuisance or there's, you know, public actions that, you know, are not suitable, that they should call the sheriff. But what I had asked also of Mr. Donaldson, and I did ask Mr. Rissa 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 insofar as ordinances that will address this. So in Sarasota County right now, they are pursuing those owners that have not paid the business tax development to the state or to the respective county. And 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 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, you know, that you have, VRBO and those others, vacation rentals, and rentals to cull 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, we had to submit reports, and I believe it was quarterly. It may be monthly. I can't remember. It's been a while. So that we would submit it to that county, having 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, Narissa Okie, for the record, the tourism director here, there's a lot to unpack with that. We are preempted. It started in 2011, and then 2014 there was changes made. And we're preempted from regulating short-term rentals taking place, the duration of those, or the frequency. In 2024, we were very hopeful, and this board completely supported a short-term regulation bill that passed the House and Senate but was vetoed by the governor. And that would have kind of cleaned everything up and put everything at a restart. So, again, kind of that preemption discussion you were all just having were preempted from a lot of things. However, that being said, 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 Florida Association of Vacation Rentals. There's a Treasure Coast chapter. And then the tax collector 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. 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, 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, et cetera. It culls 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. But, again, this is a priority of the TDC. The TDC chair is here, and she's been pushing hard on us to make sure that we are really monitoring this and working to get every little bit collected. So, baby steps, but we're trying to find ways, and Melissa's here. She's been part of these meetings, as is Elise. She was our attorney way back when. So, we've made a lot of progress. We continue to try to get more of that taking place.

I feel, and then, again, without doing this constructively in myself, looking 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. 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, 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 tax is remitted to here in the county. A lot of counties do it differently. So, everything goes to our tax collector first, and we can double-check those addresses if there's concerns with that, and we do that a lot. So, we do 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. 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 calls through at least who's renting, and then we work with the tax collector to match those addresses up. It's part of the RISE agreement. So, I can see everybody 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?

We have a meeting on Thursday with the tax collector's office, and it has become a priority of the TDC. 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 a big concern.

Yeah. 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 is the end? The TDC meets four times a year, mandatory by statute. Our next meeting is coming up in July, and we do have a list of things that we've been kind of working through on the – so, I'd say after that – I'd be happy to speak to that as the chair, if that's okay with the chair.

So, 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 it was one of the goals, and we have been working through, we have been meeting with the tax collector, and I think the best solution is to have the TDC, who's working on this, bring back some recommendations and suggestions on how the Board can actually implement, because it is one of the goals of the TDC in the strategic plan. So, my suggestion is to 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 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 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 the TDC bring back recommendations to this board based on the strategic objectives in the strategic plan for initiating bed tax collections, and then we bring back those recommendations to this board.

Okay.

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 claw back 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, ten years, whatever it may be.

So that's my question.

Melissa Petrick, Senior Assistant County Attorney. Regarding a look back, 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 two years, we'd have to back that up to say over the last two 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? The neighbors will talk. The neighbors will let you.

Well, yeah, but we would need the solid evidence beyond more than just the hearsay on that, yeah. 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 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 would like to second Commissioner Hetherington's proposal that 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 and 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. 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 Moran 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. Yeah, I appreciate that. Thank you. Commissioner Capps.

I was just going to second.

Okay.

Okay.

There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? That motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Donaldson. All good. Thank you. Ms. Elder.

All good.

Thank you. Anybody else? We are adjourned.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.