In Your Corner

Your Taxpayers Association has suffered a bittersweet loss as our President Don Pickard steps down to run for County Commissioner.  Don Pickard has been an excellent Board member and has served you extremely well the past three years as President.  Don’s wisdom, courage and patience will be missed. Even though your Taxpayers Association does not endorse any candidate for political office, we can’t help but wish Don well.  It is a very trying time in Martin County for anyone to take on a leadership position considering our falling revenue stream and increasing costs.  Thank you Don Pickard for your leadership and professionalism.

Your Board was disappointed with the initial comments made regarding budget short falls.  Most of us have learned that we cannot continue to do business as usual. We need serious consideration of our problems and long-term positive solutions.   We have to look at better use of our assets and deployment of our equipment.  We encourage our County Commission to follow the example of our City Commissioners in closely examining how their services are used and deployed.  We have to cut spending and reduce costs and to do so means we have to work smarter and more efficiently.

Our current concern is the propensity of local governments to address issues with unnecessary costly processes while in the midst of a painful budgeting environment. Without first determining the County’s future staffing requirements, without quantifying the space necessary to house their shrinking staff, without an inventory of existing County controlled space, and without a professional analysis of any anticipated economic impact associated with locating government offices downtown, the City of Stuart has engaged a land planning firm, the County has contracted with a former employee immediately on the heels of his retirement adding additional, unnecessary expense, and consumed the County Attorney’s time in pursuit of a solution which may prove to be unfeasible.

This looks to us like a classic case of putting the cart before the horse. We continue to firmly believe that a private sector, market based approach to these complex and dynamic issues will prove to be much more realistic, less wasteful and far superior to the narrow internal governmental approach.

We applaud the thoughtful clarity of Stuart city Manager Dan Hudson and City Commissioner Mary Hutchinson when they recently communicated that their true interest is in pursuing a downtown location of government offices in Stuart, and not necessarily at the Sailfish Park location. Sometimes, after thoughtful consideration, a potential solution to an anticipated problem, such as the proposed sale of Sailfish Park to the County, may just provide the seed for a final, well thought out solution. We think this may be the case with the City’s offer of Sailfish Park to the County as the proposed location for county offices.
 
Although we acknowledge that the Sailfish Park location may potentially provide a viable alternative to the County’s space requirements, this remains to be seen. We continue to encourage a thorough evaluation of the County’s dilemma as well as the City’s assumption that consolidating County offices downtown offers a potential solution to the City’s economic future. These are two separate and distinct issues that require individual assessment. Only after they are independently evaluated can the needs of the County’s citizens as a whole be properly served.

As a rush to judgment may initially provide some emotional relief, the long-term consequences to our citizens must remain paramount to the process. We don’t see how the Board of County Commissioners can possibly begin to make responsible decisions, or even investigate a potential solution, until the due diligence process is much farther along.