St. Lucie County Property Appraiser Jeff Furst.

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FORT PIERCE — Jeffrey Furst, property appraiser for St. Lucie County since 2001, died Monday after suffering a stroke Friday evening at his Port St. Lucie home.

Furst, 68, was born in Buffalo, NY and had lived in St. Lucie County for 40 years, coming from Charleston, WV.

He had a long history of public service in St. Lucie County. He was a speech therapist for the St. Lucie County School Migrant Program and was a 12-year member of the St. Lucie County School Board.

While on that board, Furst was instrumental in establishing the first magnet schools in the county.

He later became a certified real estate appraiser and agent. It was his desire to serve the community that prompted him to seek the office of property appraiser for the county, which he has held since 2001.

Furst helped organize and was chairman of the board of the now-defunct Port St. Lucie National Bank. He remained a board member of Seacoast National Bank.

In recent years, however, Furst was best known for his task of assessing the overall property values in the county and the cities of Fort Pierce and Port St. Lucie.

With the economic downturn, that job was pivotal in allowing municipalities to set their tax rates for the next fiscal year. Furst announced the final numbers only last week in advance of a July 1 deadline to send to the state.

“First, he was probably the smartest elected official in St. Lucie County, great property appraiser, helpful to the commission and all those who worked with him, always put the people first, and he’ll be greatly missed,” said chairman of the St. Lucie County Commission, Charles Grande.

Fort Pierce Mayor Bob Benton echoed those thoughts.

“He was a fine man, a good family man. He was just an all-around good guy. He was a straight shooter. His word was good. It’s just very unfortunate that his life was cut short.”

Furst leaves behind his wife of 45 years, Delaine, an associate professor at Indian River State College; two daughters, Stephanie Harmody and Dr. Christina Namvar of Sebastian. He is also survived by his sister, Linda Gifford of Bullhead City, AZ.

Funeral arrangements are pending.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 6th, 2010 at 1:25 pm and is filed under obituary, St. Lucie County. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.