INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — Opponents of the school superintendent’s decision not to let students see President Barack Obama’s nationally televised back-to-school speech live, lashed out at him Tuesday night.

“You have chosen to put politics in front of good citizenship and good patriotism,” Vero Beach resident Peter Hyatt said during a public comment period at the beginning of a school board meeting.

Hyatt called for Schools Superintendent Harry La Cava’s resignation.

Board members took no action following speeches by about 10 people.
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VERO BEACH - Cynthia Johnson, center, of Vero Beach, holds up her sign while protesting outside of the Indian River County School District offices on Tuesday morning in Vero Beach. (Sam Wolfe, TCPalm.com correspondent)

School officials announced Thursday that School Board policy requires the broadcast be first taped and reviewed to determine whether the material is educationally relevant. The decision outraged several residents, some calling the decision racist.

A group of about 40 people — made up of pastors, residents and others — early today showed up at the School Board office to protest the decision. They chanted and held signs throughout the morning in an attempt to persuade officials to reverse the decision.

One of the lead organizers was the Rev. Donald Brown, president of the Pastorial Association of Indian River County. He said the decision was “embarassing and disturbing to me.”

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VERO BEACH — Indian River County School District officials will not reverse their decision to prohibit the live broadcast of what has grown into a controversial address by President Obama to encourage students to work hard and stay in school.

The White House is expected to release the text of the address on Monday, a day before the midday speech is given.

However, because Monday is a holiday, the district would not have time to review the material in time to make any decision on the subject matter or provide parents enough time to let their children opt out of hearing the address, said Patty Vasquez, the district’s public information officer.

“We are not partisan. We do not allow political speeches to be made at school from politicians,” Vasquesz said.

The district announced on Thursday that board policy would require the broadcast to be taped and reviewed to determine if the material was educationally relevant.

Other Treasure Coast school districts are allowing teachers to air the midday C-Span broadcast, but accepting notes from parents who do not want their children to hear the message.

The White House has said the address will be about the value of education, not a policy speech.

Opponents of the administration contend the speech will be used to enhance worship of the president or to push a socialist agenda rather than foster a critical lesson, as the U.S. Department of Education now states.

The Department of Education has urged schools to offer the program.

In 1991, President George H.W. Bush’s address, carried on CNN and on public television, advised students on the importance of education. Vasquez said she didn’t know if the district allowed students to watch that broadcast.

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

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…)

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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WASHINGTON — Former Port St. Lucie and Fort Pierce police chief Gil Kerlikowske received Senate approval Thursday as the national drug czar.

Kerlikowske, a 36-year law enforcement veteran who has been the chief of Seattle Police since 2000, has said he will take a balanced, science-based approach to the job of director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. The position is commonly known as the drug czar.

The Senate approved his nomination, 9-1-1.
Fort Pierce Police Chief Sean Baldwin, who joined the local force a month after the city hired Kerlikowske in 1990, was pleased to hear of the confirmation.

“It’s nice to see a chief who has dealt with local problems, local drug problems, local issues in a community, now in charge in Washington, D.C,” Baldwin said. “It’s reassuring to know that the man who is serving as the drug czar has real experience with the problems that local law enforcement officers go through on the street.”

Kerlikowske could not be reached for comment Thursday.

Baldwin called Kerlikowske, who has a record of alternative-policing strategies and youth intervention programs, “an extremely progressive guy.”

The 59-year-old Kerlikowske said he will help develop a strategy to address drug-related violence along the Mexican border. While he and other officials would work to reduce the international drug supply, the biggest contribution the United States can make is to reduce demand for illicit drugs, Kerlikowske said. (more…)

PORT ST. LUCIE — Erik Bartkowiak’s baseball training facility in Port St. Lucie already was struggling when the economy started to fail.. Bartkowiak quickly found himself swinging at hardballs with a Wiffle ball bat.

In September, parents started coming to the Sandlot Baseball and Softball Academy saying they no longer could afford the $100-a-month membership for instructions and access to the facility’s equipment.

“One or two would say they just got laid off and ask for a break on membership,” Bartkowiak said. “In October, it was four or five a day. By January, I was down to about 20 members. It doesn’t work — $2,000 a month when I needed $20,000 to operate.”

With other training programs to offer and alternative business financing, he got out with his wallet mostly intact. But not everyone has been so lucky. (more…)

The $10 billion spending bill signed Wednesday by President Obama provides $183 million for Everglades restoration projects, including $4.5 million earmarked for the Indian River Lagoon.

The legislation was approved Tuesday night by the U.S. Senate; the House of Representatives approved the bill in late February.

Nanciann Regalado, spokeswoman for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers office in Jacksonville, which is overseeing the Indian River Lagoon project, said it wasn’t clear Wednesday evening where the money would go. She said the Corps has asked Congress for $4.5 million to design a reservoir and stormwater treatment area for the C-23 and C-24 canals, which drain much of St. Lucie and northern Martin counties.

“We’re still determining exactly how the money will be used,” Regalado said, “but it definitely will go toward the Indian River Lagoon Plan.”
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Beth Mazzouccolo, a widow with two children and her 86-year-old mother living at home, is concerned about landing a new job and being able to pay for health care.

But she’s hopeful that President Obama’s $75 billion housing plan will allow her to reduce her monthly mortgage payments.

With her unemployment benefits soon to run out, Mazzouccolo’s income tax refund has allowed her to catch up on her $1,600-a-month mortgage on the Fisherman’s Cove duplex in Stuart that is now worth nearly $40,000 less than the $195,000 she bought it for two years ago. (more…)