PORT ST. LUCIE - In a turnabout decision, the City Council Monday night gave an initial 4-1 vote to increase the property tax rate by 11 percent.

The council also unanimously approved a 2009-2010 revised total budget of $430 million.

A final vote on the property tax rate and budget is scheduled for a 7 p.m. Sept. 28 public hearing at City Hall.

Last week, the council made a last-ditch effort to avoid an earlier proposed 26 percent property tax increase and held a special meeting to discuss using half of the city’s general fund reserves to help offset a more than $18 million deficit in the general fund.
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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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PORT ST. LUCIE — City property owners may be able to avoid a proposed 26 percent increase in their property taxes.

During a special meeting Wednesday, the City Council unanimously agreed to use half of the city’s general fund reserves to keep the property tax rate at its current rate of $4.22 per $1,000 of taxable value. The council will formally vote on setting the property tax rate during scheduled 7 p.m. public hearings Sept. 14 and Sept. 28 at City Hall.

Using the city’s median home price of $112,000 with a $50,000 homestead exemption, an average city property tax bill using the current rate would be $261, excluding taxes from other agencies, such as the school and fire districts.
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TREASURE COAST — Two Treasure Coast hospitals have made a national list of poorly performing health facilities near travel hot spots.

USA Today included Indian River and St. Lucie medical centers on a list of hospitals with greater-than-average mortality rates near vacation spots. The national newspaper used statistics from Hospital Compare, a government-run Web site, to look at the mortality rates for heart attack, heart failure and pneumonia and singled out hospitals whose rates were worse than the national average.

Heart failure put Indian River Medical Center on USA Today’s list. St. Lucie Medical Center made the list with higher-than-average rates for heart failure and heart attack.
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VERO BEACH — New Orleans resident Lionel Sims broke a hole in his roof to be rescued from Hurricane Katrina’s devastating flood waters in August 2005, but he had to leave behind a best friend, his dog Peanut.

Rescuers said they couldn’t take the dog.

Sims didn’t know if Peanut was dead or alive for about two months, until an American Red Cross volunteer tracked it to the Humane Society of Indian River County and Vero Beach.

And the two were reunited.
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HOBE SOUND — Thirty-year-old fire station #32 in Hobe Sound will soon have a new 5,000-square-foot, hurricane-proof addition that will add eight dorm rooms and two bathrooms, enabling the station to finally separate male and female firefighters.

The $520,000 addition is being installed by Royal Concrete Concepts of West Palm Beach, which manufactures pre-engineered concrete building systems that arrive virtually complete on the construction site. Workers simply connect the utilities, add the flooring and other touches and the new wing is nearly ready for occupancy.

“It takes just one day to set the units up because they arrive on site from our Okeechobee manufacturing plant 95 percent complete,” said Jeff Wisinski, the company’s head of business development.
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HUTCHINSON ISLAND — The fizzling economy continues to keep progress at a standstill on the new Oceanside Resort hotel on Hutchinson Island.

The new resort, which is slated to replace the partially destroyed 184-room Holiday Inn Oceanside just south of Jensen Beach Causeway, was scheduled for completion by next year. But Huizenga Holdings, which now owns the complex, is still trying to secure all necessary permits and retool its business plan in accordance with the economic downturn. (more…)

The White House is reviewing the merits of the proposed Indian Street Bridge as a response to a U.S. senator who included the span in his list of 100 questionable federal stimulus projects.

The review is being conducted only because it was raised by U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., not because it is a concern of the White House.

The review could be quickly wrapped up as the White House has already determined that one-third of the items highlighted by Coburn in a report released Tuesday are not stimulus projects or are misleading characterizations of stimulus projects.
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St. Lucie County officials knew their 7,500-square-foot bunker of an Emergency Operations Center was undersized and low-tech.

“We didn’t realize how inadequate it was until we had to live there for 30 days,” former County Administrator Doug Anderson said, referring to the 2004 hurricane season, when the county took a direct hit from two storms in three weeks.

When Hurricanes Frances and Jeanne raked over the area, emergency workers camped out at the EOC to coordinate the county’s recovery. They slept on floors, in hallways, under desks.

They won’t have to endure those conditions again.

Last week, the county opened its new EOC — a $12.75 million, 27,282-square-foot building that replaces the 23-year-old center on Rock Road.

Juno Beach-based Florida Power & Light Co. wrote the county a $400,000 check last week to help cover the tab. In exchange, the state’s largest utility wants to use the state-of-the-art EOC as a backup hurricane command center, just in case its Miami and West Palm Beach centers end up in the direct path of a major hurricane.

“Then we would bring our team here,” Amy Brunjes, external affairs manager for FPL on the Treasure Coast, said at the EOC last week.

Unlike the old emergency hub, which was mostly underground, the new EOC at the St. Lucie County Fairgrounds was built with eco-friendly features: lots of natural light; chairs made from recycled materials.

The building has sleeping quarters, enclosed generators, a morgue available on site and a helicopter pad outside.

More than three years after Hurricane Wilma tore the roof off Island Water Sports’ building in downtown Jensen Beach, the 27-year-old surf shop is finally celebrating its reopening.

The owners are restocking kayaks, surfboards and skim boards — and slowly watching their customers return to their old location on the shore of the Indian River Lagoon.

“It was very hard,” said co-owner Chris Cea. “We lost a lot of the following.”

In the years since Wilma struck in October 2005, the business has operated out of four different locations.

The moves drained the resources of the owners, who didn’t get any assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency or the U.S. Small Business Administration, said Kristen Nielander, who co-owns the shop with Cea and her husband, Ted.

“We got turned down completely,” Kristen said. (more…)