Just days away from the new semester, school administrators in Martin and Indian River counties say that last year’s unprecedented flood of students qualifying for free and reduced-cost lunches will likely expand even further in coming months.

In St. Lucie County, the situation is about the same as last year, with no improvement expected.

More formal statistics won’t be available for a couple of weeks – after parents complete all of the paperwork – but early indicators show a massive spike in eligible candidates for the federally funded National School Lunch Program in the two Treasure Coast counties. (more…)

PALM BAY — Palm Bay High senior Tyler Laprade received a perfect score on the ACT, the only Florida student to do so this spring.

Laprade, 16, scored a 36 on the nationwide college entrance exam, which he took as a junior.

The average Florida student in the class of 2009 received a score of 19.5 on the test, but results for Laprade’s class aren’t available.

He also received a perfect score of 2400 on the SAT, the other nationwide college entrance exam.

“I was always raised to be the best,” said Laprade, who participates on the wrestling, swimming and track teams. “My parents expect me to be a high achiever.”

Laprade is enrolled in all Advanced Placement classes at Palm Bay High. He said he hopes to study mathematics next year and likely will become a computer programmer. He’s filling out applications to Harvard, MIT and the University of Florida.

He turns 17 Saturday and plans to go to Walt Disney World for his birthday.

By MEGAN DOWNS, Florida Today

FORT PIERCE — Some city commissioners are questioning why city manager David Recor didn’t include a job he held in Alaska on his resume and city application when he applied for deputy city manager in Fort Pierce.

But Recor said issues surrounding his Alaska job are misunderstandings.

Recor worked as a planning and land-use director for Matanuska-Susitna Borough, AK, from March 12, 2003, to April 14, 2003, according to Borough’s Human Resources Manager Rob McFerron. Recor was hired as Fort Pierce deputy city manager in April 2005 by former city manager Dennis Beach. Recor was then promoted to city manager in October when Beach retired.

Three days before Recor resigned from his job in Alaska, the Palmer Police Department arrested and charged him with shoplifting. The charges were later dropped and the case was dismissed, court records show. (more…)

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…)

PORT ST. LUCIE — A man found naked in the room of a 12-year-old girl with whom he communicated on MySpace and discussed having sex faces two felony charges, according to recently released arrest and court records.

The victim told police she spent most of a day in late June communicating with a man identified as Barrington Benjimen Smith Jr., 18, of the 500 block of Northwest Avon Avenue in Port St. Lucie.

They arranged to meet, she told police. The victim opened her bedroom window and let Smith in about 12:30 a.m. June 25, records state.
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MARTIN COUNTY — A $4 million federal grant announced Tuesday should mean restored oyster beds, cleaner water and about 100 jobs in Martin County.

The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration has allocated $4,024,969 to the Martin County Commission. At their meeting Tuesday, commissioners are scheduled to award a contract to build about 200 acres of oyster bed reefs in the St. Lucie River between the Roosevelt and Evans Crary bridges and in the Northwest Fork of the Loxahatchee River near Tequesta.

The money for the project comes from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, part President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus package. More than 800 applications for grants were made and 50 approved. Of the four projects funded in Florida, Martin County’s was the largest.

To qualify for the stimulus money, said Kathy FitzPatrick, a Martin County coastal engineer, the project had to be “shovel-ready.”

FitzPatrick said bids from contractors are expected Wednesday.

“If the commissioners award the bid on July 7,” she, “we’ll be out on July 7, 8 or 9 doing surveys on the St. Lucie and Loxahatchee rivers to see exactly where to put the oyster beds.”

Work could be completed in about a year.

FitzPatrick said “seven or eight” sites in the St. Lucie have already been permitted for beds. Patch reefs 30 feet in diameter and made of old oyster shells will be placed in the water near Martin Memorial Medical Center and Rio.

Closer to the Crary bridge, smaller reefs made of oyster shells in mesh bags will be placed in the water both as oyster habitat and to protect shorelines from erosion by boat wakes. Several landowners have signed on for mangrove plantings along their shorelines, FitzPatrick said.

County officials have identified 106 jobs that will be involved in the project, “everybody from marine contractors, barge operators, quarrymen for the huge amount of shells we’ll need, to nurserymen, scientists and ecologists,” FitzPatrick said. “There will be a lot of people employed by this over the course of the year, and almost all of them local.”

Oysters once thrived in the St. Lucie River, said Vincent Encomio, an oyster research specialist at the Stuart-based Florida Oceanographic Society.

“But over the years the St. Lucie has lost about 75 percent of its living oyster bed acreage,” Encomio said. “Creating more habitat for oysters will improve the habitat for all the other organisms that depend on the reefs to live.”

Oysters filter water at a rate of 40 gallons per oyster per day. With about 600,000 oysters per acre of reef, that’s 24 million gallons of water a day.

FitzPatrick said the bivalves will be able “to filter the entire volume of the river every month. That improvement to the water quality is very substantial.”

By Tyler Treadway

VERO BEACH — More than 1,000 Medicare patients were impacted by a decision by a health maintenance organization this month to end its affiliation with a local clinic, which has offices in Indian River and St. Lucie counties.

Quality Health Plans, of Tampa, which is contracted to offer a Medicare Advantage Plan through the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has terminated its contract with University Medical Clinics as of June 30.

The company “felt that this was necessary due to multitude of reasons; abrupt closures of UMC clinics thus affecting patient care and accessibility, UMC threatening patient abandonment, inability of UMC to maintain financial solvency,” according to an e-mail sent Monday from Quality Health Care.
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STUART — Signs of economic distress abound in Martin County and the outlook for next year doesn’t appear to be much better.

Martin County’s population dipped slightly since last year, school enrollment is expected to decline for two years, government revenues are down and new construction has dropped, several local and state officials said this week during government meetings.

The housing market is so bad two developers asked Martin County to rescind their hard won final site plan approvals for new subdivisions so they can delay paying impact fees and utility connection charges, said Growth Management Director Nicki van Vonno.

“That is a recent trend and it’s directly tied to the applicant’s ability to go forward or not,” van Vonno said. “Money is tight.”

The County Commission voted unanimously on Tuesday to rescind the final site plan approval for the Pentalago subdivision, 42 ranchettes on Citrus Boulevard near Interstate 95 in Palm City Farms. (more…)

Since March, Leroy Stennett has spent more than 10 hours talking to seven people in five departments at Bank of America about getting his mortgage modified.

In 2006, Stennett and his wife purchased a house in Port St. Lucie for $285,000, putting $95,000 down and adding another $5,000 in closing costs from the sale of their previous home.

“My house is worth $120,000 now, so, I’ve basically paid it off, but they don’t want to cut me a break,” Stennett said about his lender, Bank of America. “Every time I call, I talk to a different person, so I can’t get any real answers.”

Like thousands on the Treasure Coast, Stennett hoped President Barack Obama’s Making Home Affordable plan would help adjust his house payments after applying for a mortgage modification. But frustrated homeowners, who remain current on mortgage payments despite economic setbacks, say they are confused about the modification process and aren’t getting support or cooperation from their lenders. (more…)

INDIANTOWN — Another 3,500 job applications were taken Saturday at Timer Powers Park in Indiantown on the last day of a two-day job fair to recruit workers for the Florida Power & Light Co. Solar Power facility in western Martin County.

In all, 8,000 applied for some 1,100 jobs the project is expected to bring to the area before construction closes at the end of next year.

“That’s a fair but maybe conservative number,” said John Dinger of Workforce Solutions, which collected the applications and will immediately begin pre-screening them.
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