In a recent column, the Martin County Taxpayers Association praised county
commissioners for delaying a tax referendum to preserve "our agricultural
land" and minimize the sprawl of 20-acre ranchettes. This delay was
appropriate because details of a workable plan for the money had not been
worked out.

To this point, the commission has limited its options to either purchase of
development rights or outright purchase, both very costly alternatives that
have little assurance of success. In fact, the $400 million projected to be
raised over the next 20 years would, at best, preserve less than 25 percent
of the 200,000 acres targeted for preservation.

This purchase approach not only fails to solve the problem of sprawling
ranchettes, but may even make it worse. Spreading 7,500 ranchettes over
western Martin County still presents major obstacles to providing government
services to these people.

The Friends of Martin County group continues to hold meetings to formulate a
workable solution. In one such meeting, a guest speaker from Stewardship
America outlined a planning approach that he claimed --

has been successfully used in similar situations;

would reduce the development footprint to just 10 percent of the land
projected to be used by current planning;

would create "villages" and "towns" surrounded by extensive areas of open
space to maintain rural character;

would permanently protect 90,000 acres of environmentally sensitive lands
with conservation easements; and

would remove the development rights from another 85,000 acres of agriculture
and open-space land.

The plan, titled "The Rural Lands Stewardship Program," takes a new approach
to land-use issues to create a comprehensive growth management policy for
rural areas. Stewardship America claims that this planning tool offers the
following simultaneous benefits for very little investment (less than $1
million):

Incentive-based.

Controls urban and rural sprawl.

Separates urban and rural uses.

Maintains asset value of rural lands.

Preserves open space for agriculture and natural environment.

Accommodates future development in well-planned, clustered patterns.

Allows for flexibility in location of future development.

Allows all landowners to economically benefit from development.

Allows landowners to choose options that offer future appreciation even when
protecting natural resources.

Sound too good to be true? We agree. But if it is true, wouldn't it be worth
hearing more?

The MCTA believes this planning tool is worth further investigation, and
accordingly will have Craig Evans of Stewardship America as our guest
speaker at our annual banquet on Wednesday, March 31 at Monarch Country Club
in Palm City. Cocktails are at 6 p.m., dinner at 7 p.m. Contact Debra Sopko
for reservations at P.O. Box 741, Stuart, Fla. 34995.

Public Propaganda

MCTA has been working closely with School Superintendent Sara Wilcox and
board members to improve the process used to build new schools, because
recent experience has been poor. Progress is being made. The school system
has a new master planning process that will help prioritize new capital
improvements at all schools. Budgeting, purchasing and contracting
improvements are also being made.

However, we must take exception to recent claims made in the publication
Class Report, published by the School District. On the front page it reports
the new Jensen Beach High School is on time and on budget. The article goes
to great lengths to pat the district on the back for saving taxpayers money.

It does not mention that the new high school was originally scheduled to
open in 2002, not 2005. It does not mention that the new school is far over
any budget ever published by the School District except for the most recent
one, and even that one excludes the land cost. It fails to mention that the
new high school is the second most expensive built in Florida in the past
three years by square-foot price and by student-station cost. A lot of this
expense is due to added security measures deemed necessary as of late.