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…)

FORT PIERCE — A man authorities said “built out” marijuana grow house interiors was convicted Wednesday afternoon of conspiracy, trafficking in marijuana and racketeering.

Dennis Enrique Rondon, 32, of Port St. Lucie, is the first of about a dozen defendants connected to Global Home Builders Inc., a construction company authorities allege was a cover for a marijuana growing operation, to be tried and convicted.

On Nov. 27, 2007, the father-and-son Global Home owners, Roberto Alberto Cepero, 46, of Port St. Lucie, and Roberto Patricio Cepero, 24, of Miami, as well as Rondon and 18 other people, were arrested in raids yielding 10 marijuana grow houses and more than 400 pounds of marijuana.

Rondon was charged with conspiracy to traffic in marijuana and trafficking in more than 25 pounds of marijuana. On Dec. 12, 2007, a racketeering charge was added.

He equipped houses for growing marijuana; and during the trial that started April 1, jurors were shown light fixtures, wiring and electrical panels taken from seven of the grow houses, as well as numerous marijuana plants ranging in size from about a foot to about 6 feet tall.

“In all, there were more than 100 pieces of evidence,” said Assistant State Attorney Daryl Isenhower, “including over 100 pounds of marijuana, some of it still growing and some of it hung up and drying.”

Jurors deliberated about four hours before reaching the guilty verdict.

Rondon faces at least three years in prison, the mandatory minimum sentence for trafficking, and up to 90 years — 30 for each of the three first-degree felonies. Circuit Judge Larry Schack has scheduled a May 1 status hearing on the case.

By Tyler Treadway, TCPalm.com

TREASURE COAST — The Treasure Coast could receive $102 million in property taxes from Florida Power & Light during the next four decades because the power company has announced plans to run a 300-mile natural gas pipeline through the region.

It would also create 7,500 jobs, of which 3,500 will be for construction.

The pipeline, to stretch from the FPL Martin Plant in Indiantown north to Bradford County, west of St. Augustine, is to increase the supply of natural gas at the Riviera Beach and Cape Canaveral plants, which are being converted to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, said FPL spokeswoman Jackie Anderson. “We’re making them more fuel-efficient,” she said. (more…)

STUART — Even though Martin County detective Sgt. Bill McCaw grew up on the South Side of Chicago and lived amid gang violence, he didn’t have the slightest clue it existed when he was a child.

Few people did.

Heading the gang intelligence unit, the 20-year Martin County Sheriff’s Office veteran spoke to residents Wednesday evening to try to make sure that gang growth doesn’t go similarly undetected in Martin County.

The event at the Martin County Administration Building sponsored by Project Northland occurred two days after 16-year-old Torenda Youngblood Jr. was shot and killed at his Fort Pierce bus stop, the most recent of four shootings since Saturday.

At least two were “directly related to gang violence,” said Fort Pierce Chief of Police Sean Baldwin.

McCaw sees gang violence as a problem that continues to seep into the county.
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PORT ST. LUCIE — A confessed marijuana grower turned himself in Tuesday, a week after robbers bound him naked and stole dozens of pot plants from his Port St. Lucie home, according to police.

Jose Matilde Gomez, 60, of Miami was charged with trafficking and cultivating marijuana and possession of marijuana. He was being held Wednesday in lieu of $170,000 bail.

At least one of the men who robbed Gomez was taken into custody Thursday in Broward County on an unrelated matter, according to Gomez’s arrest affidavit. When detectives searched the suspect’s vehicle, they found 37 marijuana plants, the report said. (more…)

Greg Osborne has trouble sleeping at night.

Osborne, a former Piper Aircraft Inc. employee who got laid off earlier this month, wonders how he’ll be able to pay for his five prescriptions when his medical insurance runs out at the end of the month. He worries about how he’ll make rent this month and how he can delay paying for utilities.

But most of all, he prays that his kidney cancer doesn’t return.

“I loved my job. I loved that company, I loved my co-workers, it was my life. It was my family,” said Osborne, a former aircraft inspector at Piper for more than 11 years. “There’s days go by, I don’t even eat.”

Osborne joined other former Piper employees at a workshop organized by the United Way and Workforce Solutions of Indian River County Monday. The two agencies held seminars to help former Piper employees find social services and other financial assistance from the county and state. (more…)

FORT PIERCE — Despite the Florida sunshine, a nationwide report by California-based ZipRealty that tracks the hottest ZIP codes nationwide pegged an area of Fort Pierce as not being so hot.

The report, which tracks how offers submitted by buyers and accepted by sellers compares to a home’s original list price, said 81.75 percent of all homebuyers gave lowball offers to sellers in Fort Pierce’s 34949 ZIP code. (more…)