ST. LUCIE COUNTY — Dog owners could find a new place to take their pets if County Commissioners allow dogs to roam Wildcat Cove.

The measure would let dog owners allow their pets to roam without leashes in the area so long as the owner is in control of the dog.

Wildcat Cove is located at 3399 North A1A in North Hutchinson Island just west of Pepper Park. The area has a riverside view.

Commissioners are expected to set a date for a public hearing at Tuesday’s meeting. The meeting is at 6 p.m. at 2300 Virginia Ave. in Fort Pierce, and the public hearing is expected to be in early October. If passed then, the space could be used as of Nov. 1.
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INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — A year after Sheriff’s Office employees got a $1,000 bonus in lieu of raises from retiring Sheriff Roy Raymond, current Sheriff Deryl Loar is expected to give at least some of them a bigger bonus, as much as $1,600 each.

It’s the product of an unusual situation, sheriff’s Comptroller Harry Hall said Monday. He said he expects to have $747,000 unspent at the end of the month.

Some of the savings, he said, came from budgeting $3.48 per gallon last fall for patrol cars’ gasoline and seeing prices drop to $1 less. And there haven’t been as many jail inmates hospitalized, he added.

“It’s like the planets all lined up,” Hall said. “It’s unrealistic to think this can continue (in future years).”
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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.

MARTIN COUNTY — If the Martin County Commission approves changes to the shoreline protection law next week, 28 properties with seawalls and hardened shorelines could develop marinas and restaurants within 20 feet of the water.

The change would allow the properties in Community Redevelopment Areas to expand within the current 20-foot wide protection buffer on hardened shorelines. The amendment includes a 10-foot construction setback for principal structures.

Commissioner Doug Smith, who proposed the change, said the amendment will allow waterfront properties to complete shoreline projects that could stimulate business. The waterfront was fruitful for development before the current shoreline protection law passed in the 1990s.
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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…)

MARTIN COUNTY — Defending themselves from election violation accusations, business struggles, market declines and a growing reliance upon credit cards were in part responsible for four of the five county commissioners reporting decreases in net worth over the past year.

The exception was Commissioner Sarah Heard. She shaved nearly $20,000 off her mortgage and reported increases in the value of her Rocky Point home and land she owns in Dixie County and a retirement account. She reported her income grew by more than $40,000 to $707,678. (more…)

ST. LUCIE COUNTY — Four of the five commissioners who oversee the county’s $587 million budget suffered personal declines in their net worth last year.

Commission Chairwoman Paula Lewis, on the board since 1996, was the only one to record an increase, growing nearly $20,000, even as her home dipped in value by $10,000 and liabilities grew by $3,000.

The largest drop was recorded by Commissioner Chris Dzadovsky, who was elected to the board in 2008. He saw his net worth down nearly $200,000 from the prior year, with real estate being the biggest reason. His two residential properties in Fort Pierce lost a combined $185,063 in value from 2007 to 2008. (more…)

FORT PIERCE — Resident Linda Salisbury fought for years to get city hall to begin televising public meetings so she could watch her elected officials in action from the comfort of her home.

In July 2006, Salisbury got her wish.

But with the city facing a $3.6 million deficit in the budget next year, Mayor Bob Benton said he’s going to suggest at an Aug. 4 budget workshop that the city do away with televising live meetings to cut costs.

The city budgets $150,000 to televise meetings and bills the Fort Pierce Redevelopment Agency and Fort Pierce Utilities Authority a portion for meetings, Finance Director Gloria Johnson said. (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…)

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