Thousands of job-seekers are expected to descend on Indiantown this week to vie for a chance to help build Florida Power & Light Co.’s new solar energy plant in Martin County.

Workforce Solutions is hosting job fairs on Friday and Saturday to attract some of the 1,100 workers needed to construct the solar-thermal facility about 8 miles west of Indiantown.

Roughly half of the workers will be basic assemblers, said John Dinger, business services consultant at Workforce Solutions, the Treasure Coast’s workforce development organization.

“From what I’ve been told, if you can work a wrench and do some mechanical assembly, you can swing it,” Dinger said.

Other workers needed during the two-year project will include plumbers, carpenters, electricians and concrete finishers. (more…)

ST. LUCIE COUNTY — Alexander Wagner came to St. Lucie County in search of better waves and went home a shark bite victim.

Wagner, 31, of West Palm Beach, on Friday came to Walton Rocks Beach on a day off from work and was surfing about 200 yards off shore at the time of the bite, which left him with puncture wounds in his lower left arm and wrist.

“I should have used better judgment before I went out because of the conditions,” Wagner said Monday. “I was surfing alone at an unguarded beach in murky waters.”
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Along with status and prestige, Treasure Coast celebrities and CEOs bring in beaucoup bucks to the local tax collector’s offices.

Pop star Celine Dion just shelled out $171,040 in property taxes for her 3.7-acre oceanfront Jupiter Island estate on the 200 block of South Beach Road.

Dion’s estate, which is registered under her Montreal-based company Renlec Management Inc., is on the same street as Richard Fuld Jr., the former chairman and chief executive officer of Lehman Brothers. He changed ownership of the $13.3 million Jupiter Island home on 265 Beach Road exclusively into his wife’s name almost two months after the company had the largest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history.

Public records show the couple plunked down $197,194 in property taxes on Nov. 11.

Professional golfer Greg Norman, who slashed the price of his famous barrier-island estate from $65 million to $47.5 million last year, also shares the same ZIP code as the Fulds and Dion. Tax records show Norman paid a whopping $326,751 in residential taxes last January on his 8-acre property, named “Tranquility,” at 382 South Beach Road.

Tiger Wood’s 12-acre site on the 400 block of South Beach Road still is under construction, but his future property taxes could beat out Norman’s bill in the future.

County records show Sand Turtle LLC, the entity registered as the owner of the Woods property, paid a $70,744 tax bill in November. Woods is building a 10,000-square-foot, two-story home with an elevator, guest house, guardhouse and boathouse. The property stretches from the Intracoastal Waterway to the Atlantic Ocean.

Taxes seem a little more reasonable in Indian River County. Author and journalist Carl Hiaasen and his wife Fenia paid Vero Beach their $16,988 property tax bill on Nov. 5.

“I think these people, the celebrities, we do have here are very quiet about it,” said Janet Vizzo, a manager at the Martin County Tax Collector’s Office. “It’s not very well known.” (more…)

Employees at Pratt & Whitney in Northern Palm Beach County will receive five days off, without pay, as the parent company of both Pratt and Sikorsky Aircraft lowered its 2009 profit forecast and announced that 11,600 workers will be laid off in 2009.

Pratt’s portions of the sprawling facility along the Beeline Highway in Northern Palm Beach County will be shut down, along with all Hartford, Conn.-based United Technologies Corp.’s Pratt & Whitney locations in the United States, on April 13, May 22, Sept. 4, Oct. 12 and Nov. 25.

“The furlough program is a part of our overall efforts to reduce costs with a focus on ensuring a strong future for the company, our employees, customers and shareowners,” the company released in a statement.

The moves, part of an expanded $750 million restructuring program because of the deteriorating commercial aerospace market, are being driven by a decline in expected revenue, which is now seen totaling $55 billion this year, down $2.7 billion from a December estimate.

Besides the furlough days, Pratt & Whitney has limited hiring, decreased the use of contract and temporary personnel, cut back on travel and deferred merit pay increases for 2009. (more…)