In Your Corner

About this time last year one of our Board Members came across public records indicating the Children’s Services Council of Martin County had purchased property on Central Parkway in Stuart. We requested a meeting with the CSC Executive Director and members to try to understand the basis for such a purchase. The deal was already final, but after research and meeting with CSC we were publicly critical of the land acquisition.

Our first issue was with CSC paying The Unity Church $525,000 for the 1.25 acre lot. This amounted to $420,000 per acre, purchased in the middle of a rapidly declining realty market and well above the County Tax Appraiser’s valuation. Our second problem was that CSC, which is funded by a separate line item on your property taxes, had just raised their self-approved millage rate for 2009 by 5.5% while all other County revenues/budgets were being reduced. Last, we correctly forecast: “… this will only be the beginning; next they will build a new building. As a tax supported altruistic organization (CSC) should be looking for the least expensive opportunity to fulfill their mission.

Several weeks ago members of our Board were invited to meet with CSC again. The main issue was the Council’s plan to build a new 10,000sq’ headquarters building on that Central Parkway property. This proposed facility will include three separate conference/meeting rooms as well as offices and support facilities for their 10 employees. They issued a preliminary building specification in February, received six design/build team quotations and have already selected a contractor team for the $2,000,000+ project.

Justification for this new facility is based on several points of interest. The first is that the new building has been planned for years and is using money “saved” in prior years plus the interest those “banked” dollars have generated. In essence the rationale is that this is not your current tax dollars and should not be looked at as such. Obviously we disagree with this argument. This money started out as our tax dollars and always will be.

The next reason given is that CSC is currently leasing 8,300 sq’ of office space for some $137,000 annually and there is a yearly escalation clause in their contract. Their “long-term-financial-benefit-analysis” and verbal arguments indicated that the new facility will “pay for itself” over time. It will allow for consolidation of some child/welfare related service organizations and lead to subleasing portions of the facility. We disagree with these conclusions since we disagree with the assumptions made. In today’s economy it should be easy to achieve a major reduction in their current lease and/or choose a new facility from the numerous vacant structures available in the County. Also, we were told that the estimated building costs were “about $200 per square foot”. This is a very high price in today’s construction market, especially when the structure contains three large conference/meeting rooms.

The last reason seems to be a combination of reluctance to re-look at the assumptions made in the long-term plan to build, need to justify money already spent on the Central Parkway purchase, or worry over the perception and possible legality of maintaining the $2-3 million dollars currently held in their reserve account.

Our recommendation is that the CSC re-negotiates the lease on their current adequate facilities and use the accumulated dollars to fund programs and/or begin reducing our taxes. Since they do not pay property tax it costs the CSC little to hold the purchased lot until it can be sold at a profit or a new facility is actually needed by CSC or another government entity supported by Ad Valorem taxes.