JUPITER ISLAND— The town is coming to the aid of bicyclists, offering a reward to catch whoever may have tried to sabotage bicycles this past weekend by spreading carpet tacks across the bicycle lanes of South Beach Road.

The Jupiter Island Police Department has offered a $1,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of whoever spread the tacks on the bicycle lanes over Labor Day Weekend. Several bicyclists reported ending up with flat tires because of the tacks.

“It’s just unfortunate on so many levels,” said Gene Rauth, deputy town manager in city press release. “It’s dangerous, it’s criminal and it undermines the goodwill and understanding that the town has actively sought and built with the local cycling community. To help restore that trust, we’re going the extra mile to make sure the road is safe again for cyclists, motorists and pedestrians.”

Anyone with information about the tack-spreading culprit can call Jupiter Island police at (772) 545-0112.
The release said the town is also going to hire a street-sweeping crew to comb debris and hazards off the roadsides over the weekend starting Saturday morning.

The town and bicyclists have been engaged in a bit of a debate in recent weeks after a town commissioner proposed restricting bicycle riders along South Beach Road. Today bicycle riding groups and the town reached and agreement governing the size of groups that can ride on the island together and the ordinance has been withdrawn.

A former Jupiter Island Town Commissioner died Monday in Rhode Island in what police there are investigating as a possible suicide.

Finn Caspersen, 67, was found dead Monday at the Shelter Harbor Golf Club in Westerly, R.I. from what police believe is a self-inflicted gunshot wound, said Westerly police Capt. Edward St. Clair.
Caspersen a philanthropist, was first elected as town commissioner in Jupiter Island in 2005. He resigned on Aug. 4. Caspersen also had a home in the Shelter Harbor Golf Club where he died.

“As a public servant, policy-maker and overall gentleman, Finn Caspersen exceeded every standard of good measure,” said Jupiter Island Mayor Charles Falcone. “Stoic and soft-spoken, he did a lot of listening during town meetings before carefully weighing in with insight and informed expertise.”

An assistant reached at Knickerbocker, LLC said the family did not want to comment. No funeral information was available.

Caspersen served as the chief executive officer for the Beneficial Corp., a major financial holding company, from 1976 to 1998. More recently he was serving as the chairman of Knickerbocker, a private management company that oversaw numerous trusts and foundations. Caspersen personally donated money to Harvard Law School in Massachusetts as well as the Morristown Memorial Hospital, and schools such as the Peddie School and the Drew University Caspersen School of Graduate Studies, all in New Jersey

Longtime friend Tom McNicholas described Caspersen as “approachable and genuine” and said: “Each time I would refer to him as Mr. Caspersen he would peer over his glasses, softly chuckle and say, ‘Call me Finn.’ He was a friend and always fair to everyone.”

As a town commissioner, Caspersen was pushed for a town referendum on whether to bury power lines on the island underground. He also got involved in Martin County’s contentious debate over real estate development, paying $17,000 out of his own pocket in 2006 to bankroll a phone survey of 500 Martin County residents about their views of population growth. He also created a political action committee, Keep Martin green, that ran advertisements opposing rapid growth in the county.

“Finn had strong convictions towards protecting our environment and he invested a lot of his own money and time to support local causes like Keep Martin Green which focused on smart growth and environmental protection,” McNicholas said.

This is the second longtime Jupiter Island official to die in recent months. Town Manager Joe Connolly, a friend of Caspersen, died of Lou Gehrig’s disease just days after Caspersen resigned from the town commission in August. Deputy Town Manager Gene Rauth said the town is considering a memorial to Caspersen.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

Here’s the good news: Multi-billionaire Bill Gates may be shopping for waterfront properties in Martin and Palm Beach counties.

Here’s the bad: His peeps are low-balling the pants off sellers.

For more, click here.

When the Martin County Commission fired Duncan Ballantyne from his $147,250 a year job as county administrator on St. Patrick’s Day, a pot of gold awaited the seasoned bureaucrat.

For starters, Ballantyne remained on the county payroll for a month after he cleaned out his office because he was entitled to a 30-day notice of his termination.

Since his official last day on April 23, Ballantyne has collected a total of $84,451 as a result of the severance package he negotiated when he was hired in the fall of 2005, county records show. And his initial severance period doesn’t end until Aug. 23.

Ballantyne’s severance package is not unusual for local government managers and attorneys on the Treasure Coast. In fact, 13 local government managers and attorneys in Martin, St. Lucie and Indian River counties are entitled to severance pay for six months, or longer, if they are fired without cause. (more…)

Detectives with the Martin County Sheriff’s Office Criminal Investigations Unit in partnership with the Division of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco conducted an undercover operation on Thursday, when they checked 17 convenience stores throughout Martin County to see if they sold alcohol to minors.

One-hundred percent compliance was reported on that date. No sales were made to the concerned citizen volunteer that worked with detectives.

This operation was the second conducted in the past thirty days. Two arrests were previously made on May 7, 2009. These operations continue year-round.

The buzz on Jupiter Island is that golf legend Greg Norman, a long time resident until he filed for divorce in 2006, is moving back to his former marital mansion, a place he’s been unsuccessfully trying to sell.

He’s taking with him his new wife, former tennis champ Chris Evert.

Want more? Click here.

JUPITER ISLAND — Rene Angelil, the husband of soon-to-be Jupiter Island resident Celine Dion, has been at the hospital for the past few days.

No one’s saying why, but there’s speculation he may have had heart surgery.

For more, click here.

In these tight times, pay cuts and layoffs are affecting all ranks of school district employees from office staff to administrators.

But during the 2007-08 fiscal year, more than 61 Treasure Coast school district administrators earned more than $100,000. Now, some of these top earners are bracing for budget cuts.

Treasure Coast school superintendents made top dollar with Indian River County Schools Superintendent Harry La Cava taking home the biggest paycheck at $192,750.

However, for the 2009-10 fiscal year, La Cava is volunteering to take a 10 percent cut from his base salary, which equals about $17,500.

“If everybody is taking some kind of hit, we’re right in the mix of it,” La Cava said.

(more…)

Matt Fritchie, with the Martin County Sheriff's Office K-9 Unit, follows his dog, Bella, while looking for a suspected illegal immigrant at the Hobe Sound National Wildlife Refuge on Jupiter Island on Tuesday. Photo by Sarah Grile.

JUPITER ISLAND — Martin County Sheriff’s deputies, Jupiter Island police and federal agents scoured parts of the Hobe Sound National Wildlife Refuge looking for a man running from authorities.

At about 11:45 a.m., sheriff’s deputies and police responded to the north end of Beach Road where workers doing mosquito control reported seeing a suspicious man in the area, officials said. The witnesses reported to Jupiter Island Public Safety that when they approached the man on an all-terrain vehicle, he fled, according to sheriff’s office spokeswoman Rhonda Irons.

Initially, it was believed the man might have been a migrant crossing the ocean to get to U.S. soil, so crews from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection also arrived to the scene.

(more…)

Tiger Woods

Woods, his wife, Elin, daughter, Sam, and new son, Charles, won’t be moving into their new home on Jupiter Island anytime soon.

While much of the shell of the 10,000-square-foot, two-story mansion is complete, there is still a lot of work to be done.

(more…)