It's Your Money

After several weeks of relative quiet during the holidays there were a number of actions by our local government entities last week that caught the attention of your Taxpayers’ Association. Several should be of particular interest to those living in Indiantown.

Probably the most striking and welcome was the apparent new relationship between the Martin County School Board and the Schools Superintendent. At the Monday meeting of the School Board the Chairwoman actively controlled the public input of a constant critic of the Superintendent. Even more surprising was her offering the Superintendent the opportunity to address the Board at the end of the public comment period. Last year the Superintendent was precluded from commenting unless a Board member asked her a question. We are hopeful that this is the beginning of a new era in the Board/Superintendent relationship. Our children, teachers and school staff deserve the best, coordinated effort of both.

On Tuesday the County Commission took the annual report from the Alliance of Information & Referral Systems or “AIRS” - also known as the 211 assessment, information and referral system of Palm Beach and the Treasure Coast. The report had several pieces of information of relevance to our Indiantown readers. The 211 operation has been serving Martin County since 2002 and in the past year answered over 176,000 calls and 37,000 e-mail requests for service or information from the five county area. During the year requests for aid, especially economic aid, were up by some 30%. However, the statistics indicate that there are far fewer calls from Indiantown residents relative to all other AIRS service areas in Martin County. This may be a good thing if it is indicative of a lack of persons needing help. However, it is far more likely that it is from a lack of knowledge of the system and/or a reluctance to use it. Dialing 211 from any phone is the action that should be used for all help requests that are not true time-sensitive emergencies. The person answering the 211 call will be an operator from AIRS and, according to their website; (http://www.211palmbeach.org/ ) will be able to coordinate your need/request with over 1,300 government and private agencies. They will assess the request, no matter how seemingly trivial, and provide an answer or refer the caller to some 3,300 community related services. These range from suicide/depression/elder-care counseling to a yellow page business directory or virtually any other local area information. All of this is available to anyone in the County by just dialing 211. We strongly encourage our readers to visit the website and make their friends, neighbors and family members aware of this free service. The caller will get better, faster and more comprehensive non-emergency service than from any other single source.

On Friday some 150 elected officials, county planners and residents met at the Tradition Town Hall in Port St Lucie to discuss the idea of forming a coordinated regional transportation system. There appeared to be considerable support from county officials for the concept of assimilating Amtrak, Tri-Rail and area bus systems into an integrated transportation network for Treasure Coast counties. However, there was also considerable concern expressed by State and academic participants over the lack of available funds and the method of equitably dividing the cost of such a system. We echo those concerns and that presented by a Port St Lucie resident that questioned how much such a system would actually be used. Her comment that “people are not going to take public transportation if they have to wait a half hour for one, and wait for the interconnecting route another half hour, when they could drive in half the time" is certainly a consideration. The number of riders and resulting cost per person transported by the existing Community Coach System has been an item we have analyzed and criticized in the past. In 2006 our review estimated that the total cost for each ride was over $30 when dead-head runs and maintenance were included. That was nearly double the $16.00 then advertised by Community Coach. We realize that the largest users of the existing system and many of the potential new Martin County riders are from Indiantown. However, we believe that before embracing any such system the true total coast should be considered and that realistic trials are used to confirm feasibility and acceptance by the community.