FORT PIERCE — Faced with double-digit unemployment and one of the highest rates of foreclosure in the country, St. Lucie County commissioners created a “local stimulus program” to speed up construction projects and create jobs in an economy desperate for them.

The plan included an ordinance to give local companies an edge in the bidding process and ensure that most workers involved in county projects live in St. Lucie.

But six months into the program, it’s hard to define how successful it’s been.
Economic change comes slowly, and even “fast-tracked” projects can take months to go through the design, bidding and building process. County officials, however, say their efforts have improved St. Lucie’s dire economic situation without raising taxes or increasing long-term debt.

“It’s incremental, but any jobs that we can add to the local economy absolutely has to help,” said Faye Outlaw, the county administrator.

Officials point to these milestones: (more…)

The medical business continues to boom on the Treasure Coast.

Lawnwood Regional Medical Center & Heart Institute in Fort Pierce announced last week that it plans to expand its intensive care unit.

The $16.8 million project will bring the hospital’s total bed count in intensive care to 54, making it the largest intensive care unit on the Treasure Coast. There are about 40 beds in intensive care now, said Jana Eschbach, a hospital spokeswoman.

The announcement comes just months after HCA Inc.-owned Lawnwood opened a
trauma center. The center, which has seen about 375 patients since opening in May, is the only one between West Palm Beach and Melbourne. (more…)

FORT PIERCE — St. Lucie County Sheriff’s deputies arrested 503 people this summer, seizing about $92,000 in cash, cars, drugs and guns during stepped-up patrols in some of the city’s most crime-ridden areas.

Deputies, who seized 10 guns and three cars during the operation, arrested people on 556 total charges. Of those, about 155, or 28 percent, were felony charges.

“The results were pretty outstanding,” Sheriff Ken Mascara said of the operation.

This is the ninth year that the St. Lucie County Sheriff’s office has increased patrols in the city during the summer months. The Fort Pierce Police Department usually participates in the effort, but couldn’t this year due to reductions in its police force, he said.

The summer operation evolved from the philosophy that “street-level crime (in Fort Pierce) affects crime throughout the entire county,” Mascara said.

“We wanted to target street-level dealers and vice,” he said. (more…)

Photo provided by the U.S. Navy shows a team from the USS Boxer towing the lifeboat from the Maersk Alabama.

Now, a museum dedicated to the SEALs will have a part of that historical day in April.

The National Navy UDT-SEAL Museum near Fort Pierce is expected to receive at 10 a.m. Friday the lifeboat on which Capt. Richard Phillips was held hostage after Somali pirates seized his cargo ship, the MV Maersk Alabama, about 280 miles south of the Somali port city Eyl.

The public is invited to attend Friday when the lifeboat arrives at the museum.

For museum officials, the lifeboat is a rare find and an important moment in the modern history of the SEALs.

“It’s a piece of history that comes in on the heels of the actual event,” said retired Navy Capt. Michael Howard, the museum’s executive director and a former SEAL. “We can’t believe it really. We’re kind of pinching ourselves.”

Over the years the museum — the only one in the world dedicated to preserving the history of the SEALs and their predecessors —has built up quite a collection. (more…)

FORT PIERCE — A new technology provider accidentally sent personal information from employees of the St. Lucie County School District to its other clients, school officials announced today.

Employees were notified about the error today in an email and through an automated phone message. School officials said the breach didn’t expose any of its nearly 5,000 employees to identity theft because the information was on a secure server and was not accessible to Skyward Inc.’s other clients.

The district has been in the process of switching to a new information management system, which includes payroll, personnel, purchasing, student records and other district operations.

FORT PIERCE - A new principal will lead Fort Pierce Central High School this fall, St. Lucie County Schools Superintendent Michael Lannon announced today.

Todd Smith, an assistant principal from the Palm Beach County School District, will replace Principal John Williams who Central at this year to work in the Marion County School District.

Smith had served as assistant principal at Palm Beach Gardens Community High School since 2006. He also was an assistant principal at Jefferson Davis Community Middle School and Palm Springs Community Middle School, all in the Palm Beach County School District.

Smith’s appointment was announced today during the school board’s meeting.

FORT PIERCE — A new principal has been assigned to Morningside Elementary, a school that gained notoriety after a teacher asked her students to vote on whether a 5-year-old boy could remain in class, St. Lucie County Superintendent Michael Lannon announced today.

Cortina Bell-Gray, an administrator who has been with the school district for six years, will head the school this fall.

“I come to it with much excitement, much humility,” Bell-Gray said of the appointment.

Bell-Gray, whose appointment was announced during today’s school board meeting, will assist in the search for an assistant principal, Lannon said.

The assignments come at the close of a difficult year for Morningside. More than a year ago, teacher Wendy Portillo asked her students to vote on whether then 5-year-old Alex Barton could remain in class after being sent to the office twice for misbehaving. The students voted 14-2 for him to leave.

The incident attracted an onslaught of attention, drawing email and phone calls from around the world.

That Alex was later diagnosed with Asperger syndrome, a form of autism, and had been under evaluation for it at the time only added to the controversy.
Portillo was suspended without pay, but will be allowed to return to the classroom in November. Her position, though tenured, will depend on vacancies within the district.

Several months prior to the vote-out, a reading mentor at Morningside was arrested on charges of molesting an 8-year-old girl.

Anthony J. Tripoli, 69, was convicted in May of sexual battery and lewd or lascivious molestation. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Principal Marcia Cully and Assistant Principal Patricia Gascoigne were reassigned to Fairlawn Elementary from Morningside at the end of the year. Fairlawn’s principal, Susan Lyle, retired.

Lannon has said the changes were not related to the vote-out incident.

Bell-Gray has been an assistant principal at several schools in St. Lucie County. She also was principal of Garden City Elementary about two years ago.

FORT PIERCE — For three months this year, the seemingly endless stream of new foreclosure lawsuits coming into the St. Lucie County Clerk of Court’s civil office appeared to be slowing.

The number of new filings had dropped to 625 in March, 455 in April and 567 in May, all down from February’s 817.

Clerk of Court Joe Smith said his staff wondered if perhaps, after about two years of watching boxes of paperwork arrive day after day, things were finally improving in St. Lucie County.

Then came June: 857 new foreclosure filings, the highest one-month total this year, and just below the 897 recorded in June 2008. (more…)

FORT PIERCE — The Coast Guard is searching for two boaters who were reported missing late Sunday.
Vincent Faulkner and an unidentified passenger were reported missing at about 9:30 p.m. Sunday after they didn’t return from a fishing trip, according to Coast Guard officials.

They were expected to return to Black Pearl boat ramp in Fort Pierce. The Coast Guard has a helicopter crew, a jet crew and two boats involved in the search.

FORT PIERCE — A 69-year-old Port St. Lucie man who volunteered as a reading mentor at Morningside Elementary was sentenced Friday to life in prison for inappropriately touching an 8-year-old girl.

Anthony J. Tripoli was convicted in May of sexual battery on a child less than 12 by a perpetrator older than 18, which is punishable by a mandatory life sentence.

Tripoli also was found guilty of lewd or lascivious molestation and sentenced to 25 years in prison to be followed by lifetime sex offender probation by Circuit Judge Larry Schack, who allowed the two sentences to run concurrently. (more…)