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HomeMy WebLinkAboutMinutes 05-10-2007 FORT PIERCE HARBOR ADVISORY COMMITTEE Minutes of Meeting May 10, 2007 Convened at 3:10 p.m. Adjourned at 4: 1 0 p.m. This meeting of the Fort Pierce Harbor Advisory Committee (FPHAC) was held Thursday, May 10, 2007 at 3:10 p.m. in Conference Room 3 on the 3rd floor of the Administration Building, 2300 Virginia Avenue, Fort Pierce, Florida. ROLL CALL Roll call was taken. ~~~ Members Present: Mary Chapman, Chairperson Jeanne Hearn Pieter Stryker Commissioner Eddie Becht Bill Thiess Members Absent: Howard Conklin, Vice Chairman Councilman Christopher S. Cooper David Souza Gerald Kuklinski Also Present: Heather Young, SLC Assistant County Attorney Charles Grande, SLC Commissioner (District 4) Ray Wazny, SLC Assistant County Administrator Dr. Bobbi Conti Delores Johnson, Waterfront Council APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES: After a motion and a second, the minutes from the April 12th meeting were unanimously approved. OLD BUSINESS: Chairman Mary Chapman announced an open house that would be held at the Coast Guard Station on May 27,2007 from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Chairman Mary Chapman also said she had been to two of the open houses and thought they were very interesting. She said that she has asked the Coast Guard about security several times and has never gotten a satisfactory answer. Various bodies of law enforcement have addressed the Coast Guard and have not gotten very good answers regarding port security. Jeanne Hearn addressed the Destin Beach situation by saying, "I guess I could advise the Board to turn in anything you want to anybody and sign it anyway you want and everything's fine. The legal system will accept it and you get more time. The petition that Bell filed seven minutes before the deadline was signed by, it appears Michael Ravelo, who is not a property owner and who does not, as far as we know, have a lease or anything which is re . State to get a submerged land lease. Bell's signature was just printed. Commissi .'~ r'.:;' n \\ n ~ ') , ..I L_ eo. AUMìl1. CFFIC Fort Pierce Harbor Advisory Committee May 10, 2007 Page 2 Becht say's it is ok." Commissioner Becht replied, " No, what I said was that they said it was ok. I said that they were within their authority as far as I could see in saying it was ok. But I'm not the attorney that's been hired to challenge it. My own professional experience is when you challenge something like that, the court wants to hear it on its merits and in my opinion we're not going to have a problem having this heard on its merits because the right decision was made by the Cabinet." Ms. Hearn said as a taxpayer she feels as though she is helping support the financial status of this episode that we have been through in the last year on the submerged land lease. She also said, "I think personally I would hate to be running up personal legal bills like the City and the County and D.E.P. is doing to caudal this situation. I mean it's got to be resolved and in the courts apparently past history doesn't count. I guess I'm just resigned to the fact that when I sign papers anymore, it doesn't matter what I do." Commissioner Becht replied, "I think that would be an unfair interpretation of what has happened. The technical error, to the extent it is an error; there is a remedy for it later. The remedy that you want is that the appeal is automatically killed because he didn't file it on time. That's a pretty drastic remedy and that reviewing body didn't think that was an appropriate remedy at this time, but the City and the County, and to the extent that D.E.P. is suppose to be in our camp, the issue of non-signing or incorrect signing or signing without authority is not waived, its not moved. It's just that it is going to move forward, they are going to hear it on its merits and a bad thing happened. Then the County and the City would still have the issue of you know it was technically deficient and did not get filed within the time limits. My proposal is that there is nothing we could do. We can talk about it if you want to talk about it, but there is nothing any attorney can do for the City and the attorney can do for the County at this time. Heather, if you want to weigh in on it, if you disagree with me, because you actually get paid for legal opinions on this." Ms. Hearn said Mr. Veilhauer, the attorney for D.E.P., has said the reason they wanted the delay was because Mr. Sellers was working on a suit against the City. Commissioner Becht said there are probably ten people a day that threaten to sue the City. He also said he doesn't mind being proactive, but he is not going to be proactive on a mysterious suit that has not been filed. Ms. Hearn replied, "Well that's fine but that's more problems potentially and I'm concerned that we've just had our belly full of delays on something our comprehensive plan says is not a berth possibility and we're still dangling with technicalities out there and we're losing money." Commissioner Becht asked Ms. Hearn what course of action she recommends the County or the City does. Ms. Hearn said to just be frustrated with her. Ms. Hearn said, "I really think that sometimes you have to step up to the plate and say we've had enough and we're going to take the risk and hope that we get a decent judge that will understand where we've been and where the situation lies." Commissioner Becht, "Well if you're assuming we could appeal this decision at this juncture, I'd have to defer to others, but my assumption is that no, we are not in a position where we can appeal." Ms. Hearn said she thought we have 30 days to come back on D.E.P.'s decision, the decision that allows the 15- day extension. Chairman Mary Chapman asked Commissioner Becht if he had seen the two letters that have been sent out. Commissioner Becht said he has seen a bunch of letters. Ms. Hearn stated she wants to make sure everyone understands the shenanigans that are just continuing and if we're talking about cutbacks with taxes and we're talking about ways to cut back we can't continue to play that kind of game. Fort Pierce Harbor Advisory Committee May 10, 2007 Page 3 Chairman Mary Chapman asked if there was anything new on the spoil site situation. Heather Young said she had not heard anything. Ms. Hearn said she heard Doug Anderson say Mayor Benton had given some proposed ideas. Commissioner Becht confirmed that he had and that he disagrees with one of Mayor Benton's ideas. He thought one of the proposed ideas Mayor Benton had was pumping the spoil material within pumping distance of waterfront. As he said at the last meeting, Commissioner Becht would have to evaluate it one a site-by-site basis. Ms. Hearn asked if there was any chance of the City and the County officials meeting on this issue. She would also like to see the City and the County partner on a spoil site because she thinks the City needs a spoil site. Commissioner Becht announced the City and the County would be having a workshop on May 24, 2007 to discuss for the first time trying to draft their respective budgets so they can maximize the use of their shared taxpayers. The agenda for this meeting will be composed of each commissioner, City and County, choosing two agenda items. One of Commissioner Becht's was the budget for the RFP on the Harbour Pointe property. He said there is no budget for the RFP but it was the only way to get the matter brought to the attention of the ten commissioners. The workshop would be open to the public. Commissioner Becht said, "I'm very excited about the workshop. For the first time, we're going to sit down before we set our budgets and say, where are you spending your money, this is where we're spending our money, where do we overlap, and how can we maximize the use of our taxpayers. Ms. Hearn asked if the City of Port Saint Lucie was invited to the workshop. Commissioner Becht said no. Ms. Hearn said she was recently at a City Commission meeting where Commissioner Becht said he would ask the County to consider giving up the park along the causeway. Commissioner Becht said she wasn't suppose to say anything. Ms. Hearn asked, "Well how are you going to get them on your page. I am working on your behalf as long as you're not going to riprap it. I need to know that, I sort of think the County might think about riprapping, we're riprapping everything. Do you know, Mr. Wazny?" Mr. Wazny said, "When we met with the consultants to do the design, and that's a shared project with the City of Fort Pierce, we made it clear that the area that is now used as a beach will remain the same. There are no plans on changing that at all. There may be a bulkhead arrangement or barrier to keep cars from driving on the beach. We want to keep the cars separate from the sunbathers." Ms. Hearn said she thinks that is very important. She has also seen wheelchairs in the water there and it is the only place she knows of that is safe for those types of visitors. Mr. Wazny stated there was an advocate that met with the commissioner and himself about funding, which was likely to be in the ten million dollar range. He said in light of the economic condition, in his limited discussion with the commissioners, there certainly is not a lot of support for the funding of construction right now. Ms. Hearn suggested "dumping it on the City". Mr. Wazny said that was one of the things discussed, perhaps getting CRA funds to do the work or maybe do it in a phase program approach to be able to fund it. Commissioner Becht announced the newspaper would show the City of Fort Pierce has formally discontinued all capital improvement projects out of its general operating budget. There are a few in the general operating budget. The City is fortunate enough to have the Fort Pierce Redevelopment Agency, which is suppose to be limited to capital projects. Commissioner Becht said the proposal he saw from the County was that the FPRA would pay for ~ of the project and the County would try to find the money through grants or something else for the other five million. He said the idea was banted at the meeting and said that if they were going to drop five million dollars into a County park, he would rather own it. Mr. Wazny said he has asked Debra Brisson, Parks and Recreation Director, to do a recommendation to Fort Pierce Harbor Advisory Committee May 10, 2007 Page 4 the Board regarding the South County Regional Stadium and the Causeway project, on the public information that is out there about the potential transfer fees on whether it would be good for the County or not good for the County and under what conditions. Chairman Mary Chapman told Mr. Wazny that Jim Eagan, Marine Resources, gave a fascinating speech not too long ago on what would happen if riprap were put in that area and it was not good. Ms. Hearn said her concern was that the County had riprapped all the way around to the boat ramp. Mr. Wazny said the marine center and the historic museum have been riprapped and they feel as though they have pretty good hurricane protection to protect their assets. Mr. Wazny had the Road and Bridge Division run a scenario on if a hurricane hit. Since the beach is the most likely place to get wiped out, how quickly could they fill that in and get a road built across there to provide emergency service to the island after a hurricane. The response Mr. Wazny got from the Road and Bridge Division was three days and that sealed his recommendation to the Board that that's a reasonable period of time and that they should leave that beach the way that it is. Ms. Hearn said, "Since you all did some work on that, is the concern for erosion in the non-riprap area because of the riprap areas on both sides because I lived in that area for years until they dredged the inlet deeper, then we had some erosion." Bill Thiess said what he thinks helps that beach a lot is the flat out in front of it because it breaks up the wave action. Mr. Wazny said the D.E.P.'s take on that is that that will naturally acre and decree as the tides move out, but in a hurricane event there's no question what's going to happen to that. Commissioner Grande weighed in on photographs of erosion that have been in the newspaper due to Subtropical Storm Andrea. Ms. Hearn stated she had a couple of question for either Mr. Wazny or Heather Young. Ms. Hearn asked, "Do you know the County's position on the $195,706.67 that apparently Destin Beach is claiming we owe them for the Taylor Creek Dredging?" Mr. Wazny answered, "The position has been and remains that we don't owe him anything." Ms. Hearn asked if there had been any correspondence or anything to that effect. Mr. Wazny said there has never been a number that he was aware of, but if she had something different he would like to see it. Ms. Hearn replied, "I just have a letter signed by Michael Ravelo back on August 16, 2005 from Destin Beach Inc., Lloyd Bell, President, and it says we also discussed that Attorney Mcintyre will furnish us a letter addressing how to resolve the matter with the land owner being owed $195,706.67 due to delays of the Taylor Creek project." Mr. Wazny said, "Our position on that has been and remains we don't owe him a penny. We're not going to pay them a penny. They know that. Mr. Ravelo knows that, and Mr. Bell knows that." Heather Young stated, "There may have been a letter, you said back in 2005. It seems like I saw something. I can look through our files." Mr. Wazny said this committee had asked staff to look at getting a hold of the Coast Guard relative to the drainage culvert pipe that comes with Harbour Isle; it's just south of Chuck's Seafood on the causeway. He did speak to a Petty Officer with the Coast Guard and he said he did not consider that a navigational hazard. The Petty Officer said it's not what they consider a navigable waterway. They consider that any other shoreline obstacle in the water that a reasonable boater should avoid. Ms. Hearn asked Mr. Wazny if they were aware the pipe was completely covered and that it cannot be seen during high tide. Mr. Wazny said he and the Petty Officer did talk about that and he said it was just like any other underwater obstacle that may be in the water. Ms. Hearn said she hopes the County or City is not held liable for having permitted it. Ms. Wazny stated it was probably permitted as part of the drainage system for Harbour Isle and there may be some kind of liability. Ms. Hearn suggested finding out who actually owns the pipe and reminding them that they may have a Fort Pierce Harbor Advisory Committee May 10, 2007 Page 5 liability on their hands. Commissioner Becht suggested speaking to H. Dean Kubitschek, the manager of the Fort Pierce City Marina. NEW BUSINESS Ms. Hearn brought in a video about two communities and it shows them fighting the Port in Long Beach California. The port is now stacked with containers and has semi trucks going through neighborhood streets. It has consumed two towns; the people lost their battle. They were not able to contain the port. ADJOURNMENT: At 4:10 pm the meeting was officially adjourned. The next meeting will be held Thursday, June 14, 2007 at 3:00 pm in Conference Room 3, on the third floor of the Administration Building. Respectfully submitted: Stephanie Bush FORT PIERCE HARBOR ADVISORY COMMITTEE MEETING May 10th 2007 At 3:00 P.M. In Conference Room 3 on the 3rd Floor of the Administration Building 1. Roll Call 2. Approval of the minutes of the April 12th meeting 3. Old Business 4. New Business: View the Long Beach California video about stacking containers. 5. Public Comment 6. Adjournment I~ ~... cr~.ºAC'i.CJ...;.D S"S'TI¡ ~I JJ HI":" C _~_ 2007 jo GO. AgMIN. OFFICE Douglas Anderson, County Administrator .. Florida Department of Environmental Protection Charlie CJ Goven RE: Destin Beach Submerged Lands Lease Application Marjory Stoneman Douglas Building 3900 Commonwealth Boulevard T.n.na."". Florida 32399-3000 Â ~ ~\~\i' eV C" Þ ~~G .J tí1J1I) ft) 0 ~1 (\ ~ Jeff Kottka: Lt. Goven J~~_~_.......__~ ~ ~___'- _ . ~.______. ~..._.- _.'~-~~.'---- -_..-~~----,",,--- Michael W. S Secret May 7, 2007 Terry E. Lewis 1700 Palm Beach Lakes Blvd., Suite 1000 West Palm Beach, Florida 33401 f~ if Dear Terry: As we discussed, it seems there is some confusion as to the Department of Environmental Protection's role in this matter as we move forward with the administrative proceedings. To clarify, the department is staff to the Governor and Cabinet, acting as the Board of Trustees of the Internal Improvements Trust Fund. Accordingly, the department has and will continue to defend the Boards action in the matter. --- In addition, there have been some misconceptions about actions taken by the Board and the department since Board considered the lease application in December. I enclose a copy of a letter to Mayor Robert J. Benton, III from the City of Fort Pierce. The letter explains those actions. If you have any further questions as always, please call me at 8502452199. Sin~~, / J j /~Úb Ha~old G. Vielhauer Deputy General Counsel End: Letter to Mayor Robert J. Benton, III ;. Florida,D~partinent 'of Environmental 'Protection , Marjory Stonèmm Do-qglas Building , 3900 Commonwealth Boulevard . Tallahassee, Florida 32399-3000 CharlieCri , Govern· JeffKottkan Lt. Govern .~~ Michael W. S( Secret: Apri127,2007 . The Hon~rable Robert J. 13ento;n, ill , Mayor of the City of Fort Pierce; Florida . Office of the Mayor , 'City Hall 100 NoM. U..S. 1 , Post.omce Box 1480 . ,Fort Pierce, ~l9rida 3~954-1480 . . RE: Destin Beach subrri.er~ed lands application 'Qear Mayor Benton:' Thank you fòr your lett;erto Governor. The Governor's office has ¡;lsked me to respond. The Board of Trusteef? of the Internal Improvement Trust 'Fund and the Department of Environmental Protection applaud the City's efforts to revitalize the Port of Fort Pierce and ,to prote~t the Indian',River ·Lag90n. ' The Governor and Cabinét, 'acting as the Board of Trustees ,of the Internal ImprovemeÌlt ,Trust Fund (the "Board") and the, dePart:meÌlt 8.!e ~so concerned about the health of the natural resources. However, when the Board considers a request 'to use sovereignty submerged lands 'Ít mU,st balance the social, economic and enyirpnmental cost of the projects ':with the'riparia~rightS of the upland landoWner. ,As you are aware,. the Board weighed those interests wfu,le reviewing the Destin Beach submerged land lease àpplicatio~. On a vote of two opposed and two in favor the Board denied the leas.e . finding the leaS~ req~est' cont:t:ary to the'public interest. , While the application"was under consideration, the Board and the department, acting a1 staff t9 the Boa1;'d"encourage!i Destin Beach, Inc., the City of Fort Pierce and St. Lucie County to meet and find a resolution to the dispute. During these discussions, the patties ~grëed to cons ide! allowmg Destin Beach, Inc: to conduct the cargo operations i . Berth 1. After the Board denìed tþ.e application in December, representatives from the loc~,goVe!I.1I~lèntS assured the BC?ard and staff that they would continue to yJ'ork with Destin Beach to find a mutu~y a~eeable solution. . ' The Honorable Robert J. Benton, III Page 2 . . Apri127, 2007 In February, Board staff received a timely request for an extension to file a petition. Staff granted the request because the reasons stated for the requ,è,st wer~ consistent Vfith representations received from the dtyand'the county. After granting a limited extension, we received letters f1:om the city and county indicating that the Destin Beach applic~tion to use ~erth 1 yvaslncomplete and the city deemed the application ~active. As you .are aware, Destin Beach just filed a petition cha11ênging the Board's action. No",! that,we know the position of the local governments we will act accordingly. Rest assured, Board.staff has kept the city, county and'local'dtizens groups apprised of the events in this matter as they occur. We will continu~ to do so in the future. Thank you again for you interest. in this matte! and feel free to contact me if you have any further questions. . '" S¡I1J!¿ Harold G. Vielhauer Deputy General ~ounsel .¡ .. Cc: Diana Sawaya-Crane