Board of County Commissioners on 2026-03-24 9:00 AM

s begin by with an invocation by Pastor Blaine Albright, followed by the Pledge of Allegiance, which is going to be led by Ashley Western Good morning. Great to see y all. Let s pray together. Father, thank you for the opportunity that we have to come to you in prayer, the freedom that we have to do so. Thank you, uh, that you hear us, um, in a time when we can look around and we can see so much division. I m thankful, uh, for your word that reminds us, uh, that where there is unity, you command a blessing and so I pray for unity here today, um, in our county, in our region, in our, in our country, and even in our world, um, when we look around and we see anger and strife, we can look to you as the GOD who is kind and patient when we look around and see conflict and war, we can look to you, our GOD of peace. Uh, we look around and see unrest and anxiety, and we can answer your invitation, uh, where you invite us to come to you if we re weary or if we burdened and you promise to give us rest. Uh, you tell us to, uh, come to you about everything, to not be anxious about anything, um, but with Thanksgiving and our hearts to present our request to you and so we do that today. We come to you knowing that you re great and you re powerful and you in charge of everything, but you re also personal and you care about us, the details of our lives. As we approach this uh significant week, Holy Week, um, GOD, we remember what you ve done for us by sending us Jesus. GOD, I thank you, um. For the reminder of Palm Sunday, where Jesus wrote in Jerusalem on a donkey, and the crowds were cheering and just a short time later because he wasn the political savior that they desired. They turned angry and I could look around and relate to that. I can look in my own heart and relate to that, um, and so I pray the prayer that David prayed in one in Psalm 139 you would search my heart and know me and see if there s anything grievous in me and lead me in the way of everlasting, uh, Lord, I need your wi s d om and as servants of you and your people here, uh, we need your wisdom and so I pray that you would lead our thoughts and our words and our actions today so that we would be a reflection of your love for all people. Uh, thank you for this beautiful county for our leaders, for these commissioners, and for the citizens that I believe are doing holy work, uh, by working to be good stewards of what you ve blessed us with here and so MAY we be faithful GOD, uh, knowing that you were always faithful, and we pray in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. B of the and to the Republic for which stands one nation under GOD, individual liberty and justice for all. And you are a Marine. Please tell us a little bit about your service. I served 4 years in the Marine Corps, um, I did a year in Japan, Camp Fuji, Japan, and 3 years in Camp Pendleton, California. Thank you very much, MISS Western, MAY I say that, uh, you did a video recently for your department. As part of I guess uh our highlighting different departments. I thought it was fantastic. I thought, and I even mentioned it, I thought you did an excellent job. You really spelled out the services and what the department has, and I had heard from two people that said they had no idea that we offered those services. So well done. Thank you, thank you. Have a great day everyone too. Uh, we have several presets today at 9:05. We ll take public comment at 9:30. We re going to have a fire rescue update on the interlocal agreement at 10:30 we re going to have a, uh, discussion with Sheriff Budini, uh, about a state road 710. Um there s an additional item on the agenda. It is Department 6, which is the fire rescue update on the interlocal agreement. Uh, is there a motion to approve the agenda overapproval. Second, there s a motion in the 2nd all those in favor, I opposed that motion passes unanimously. Uh, we will first hear, uh, proclamations. The first proclamation is a proclamation, uh, honoring the lyric Theater s centennial celebration. Good morning, commissioners. The Lyric Theater opened on MARCH 15, 1926, and has stood as a cornerstone of arts, cultural, and community in Martin County. The theater has enriched the lives of residents and visitors alike through live performances, film, music, education, and cultural programming and has served as a gathering place where generations have shared unforgettable experiences celebrated creativ ity and built community connections. MARCH 15, 2026 is the Lyric Theater s centennial celebration Day, and it s 10 100th anniversary represents a historic milestone worthy of recognition and celebration, and here to accept we have Kai Fontaine, who is PRESIDENT Ceo of the Friends of the Lyric. Good morning, Chair, Commission, nurse, on behalf of the board of directors, staff, volunteers, donors, patrons, and the generations who have shaped the lyric over the past century. It is truly an honor to accept this proclamation. The history of the lyric is a story of community, commitment, and creativity. 100 years ago, the lyric first opened its doors as a place to gather, to be entertained, to be inspired, and to share experiences together. Over the decades, generations have passed through those doors, each leaving a little part of themselves behind. What makes the lyrics special is not simply a building. It is a community that has sustained it. When it mattered most, people came together with vision, determination, and generosity to ensure that this theater would endure, as the cultural heart of Martin County. Today s recognition belongs to our community. To the dreamers who built it, the visionary who saw it as an anchor for the revitalization of downtown, the advocates who preserved it, the artists who brought its stage to life, the staff and volunteers who care for it every day. The and the audience s who continue to fill it with energy and meaning. 100 years is a remarkable milestone, but it is also a reminder that we are just one chapter in a much longer story. Our responsibility now is to carry this legacy forward to ensure that the lyric continues to inspire, connect, and bring people together for the next 100 years. Because places like the Lyric are more than cultural landmarks. The fundamental to the quality of life in a community. Friends of the lyric remains committed to that purpose, to empowering, educating, and inspiring the leaders of tomorrow, while continuing to provide a home for the performing arts. Thank you very much for this honor, and thank you for recognizing the importance of the arts and the vital role that the lyric theater plays in our community. Forward forward you Are they going to sing or something? I don t want that encourage us, but I think we might take up too much of the time of your meeting. Again, thank you so much. Congratulations. All the fun stuff The next proclamation is a proclamation declaring American Red Cross Month in Martin County. In MARCH, we celebrate American Red Cross Month by honoring our neighbors who make its humanitarian mission possible in Martin County. Every day there are acts of kindness change lives, bring relief, comfort, and hope when help can t wait and this compassionate spirit runs deep in our community, just as it has for 145 years through the American Red Cross, committed to readiness, recovery, and long-term resilience, the American Red Cross supports communities across the Palm Beach and Treasure Coast before, during, and after disasters. And I don t know if Tracy snuck in or not. Uh, Tracy Mitchell Otherwise oh Please introduce yourself. Hi, my name s Jim Hagen. I m a, well, uh, employee of the American Red Cross. This is Mike Rose. He s one of our leadership volunteers. Uh, Tracy is in traffic somewhere. Trying to get here. So I m happy to accept this for her. Um, just briefly, the description of this proclamation lays out how our mission. How our mission is a humanitarian mission. We ve been around since 1880s, long time helping Americans with disaster relief and supporting the military and combatant victims of of. War and what most people know us for is disaster services. So my particular job is in disaster services. I organized the team of volunteers all across the treasure Coast and Palm Beach that respond mostly to house fires. And it is the number one disaster response that we have in the Red Cross. 60,000 house fires a year across the country. Are assisted by Red Cross volunteers, and they go out day and night. So 24/7 365 service that we provide, uh, and it s all possible because of the support of our financial donors and our volunteers and then this sort of event where it highlights our mission is tremendously important, so I m sure Tracy, who again is, she MAY show up yet, uh, but she wanted to let you all know that it s very important and she appreciates very much that you. That you recognized us. Uh, and then a little history. Red Cross Month is a pretty old tradition. It started in the 1940s with PRESIDENT Roosevelt and continues to stay. So we appreciate your, your support and we appreciate working with your emergency managers and your fire department on a regular basis. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Like your today Yeah catching like still shop. It ll be over here. If she shows that we ll have to give her a minute I would, well, benevolence. My cornerstone. The benevolent one. Uh, now we ll have public comment, uh, you will have, uh, 3 minutes to address us if you would like to speak to us, please fill out a request to speak form and hand it to the bailiff who will hand it to me. The first request is from Denise Mazuleski. Followed by Terry Cogle, and if I ve mispronounced your name, please correct me. Good morning. Good morning, commissioners I m here today because I wanted to talk about illegal bonfires that have been happening on our Martin County beaches, um, for about 4 to 5 years ever since covid. I have noticed there are scars and littering of rusty nails from pallets that are dragged onto the beaches that leave really dang excuse me, dangerous situations on our beaches. Um, we recognize and we appreciate your Martin County Park workers who show up every morning with magnets who are raking the beaches where the night before a bonfires have been left. Sometimes they re still smoldering. And they re there every morning and we talk to them and they re tired and they appreciate appreciate us for recognizing their hard work. It takes them, if you could talk to him about 45 minutes, sometimes to just take care of one section. And my concern, I ve been bringing my kids to the beach now for 40 years. There are adults now and my concern is for the lifeguard camps, the surf camps our fishermen, fisherwomen. Our seniors, our grandchildren, my grandchildren, your grandchildren. Anyone that enjoys our Martin County beaches, and I m sure every one of you have been on one of our beaches. If you go in the morning, you ll see your workers. You will see them trying to make it safer for us. My hope, and I went to about 7 beaches yesterday and looked, there is not one sign that post no illegal bonfires on any of our signs. We have the bonfire pits that have just been, uh, taken up because of turtle season. You re allowed to do that in the pits. However, since covid I m not picking on any generation of people, but someone at night is doing illegal bonfires. I have called the Martin County Sheriff s Department to notify them of the dangers of this, and I was told that, well, it s code enforcement. You ll have to talk to the county. I called your department, MS. Vargas, spoke to your secretary, and I, I m requesting an appointment, um, if I had more time, I would have brought in a whole room full of people that love our beaches, that are complaining about the same thing and it s gonna come down to someone is going to step on a rusty nail or something bad they re not gonna know that they need to go get attention. They re going to wind up with an infection, and we re gonna have a serious problem, a failure to protect problem Um requesting signs be posted. I m requesting for possibly 2 to 3 weeks, maybe a month, nighttime, Sheriff County patrols on our beaches because our code enforcement aren t going to do that. They, they re not supposed to do that. If our beaches were protected and monitored at night for about a month, and you hand out some hefty fines to illegal burns. Ma am, your time is up. Thank you. Ma am, your time is up. Thank you very much, and I look forward to having you. Harry Kogle is next, followed by Kenneth Shepke. Good morning, commissioners ok. Uh, this is a phrase we re all familiar with and probably here or or see every day. The phrase was not intended to point fingers at anyone but to remind our fellow Martin County residents. Of why we need one or two evening meetings a month. In GOD We Trust is printed on our currency as a daily reminder for unity in our county. Country during times in national crisis. Originally, it was put on our currency following the Civil War, then the 1956, it was printed on our currency during the Cold War. We don t have a civil war, nor do we have a Cold War in Martin County, but we do have a loss of trust in our local governments. To bring our communities back together and unify our beliefs and trusts Can we please open up our meetings and make available our community meetings by allowing our growing working class daytime workers, evening meetings for them. Thank you. Thank you. Kenneth Shepy is next, followed by Christopher Collins. Good morning, commissioners. Thank you, Chair. My name is Doctor Kenneth Shepy. I m board certified in emergency medicine and the subspecialty of ems. I currently serve as the deputy secretary for Health for the Florida Department of Health, having previously served as the state ems medical director for this for Florida, but I m not here to speak in those roles today. Uh, my physician and I serve as medical directors for multiple fire rescue systems across South Florida including the city of Stuart Fire Rescue. I ve spent my career focused on one central principle health care exists for the good of humanity. And a well functioning emergency system must always place the patient and the community we serve above all else, and I would add that a very close second to that is that we have to advocate for the well-being of our pre-hospital professionals. As hospitals cut services, we see challenges like those discussed at your last board meeting and there are rational explanations for why physician experts advise when an emergency 911 service should and should not perform a hospital to hospital transfer that I would like to explain. I ve reviewed the data and it is clear over the past 6 years, Stuart Fire Rescue has consistently accepted emergency hospital to hospital transfers every single time they were asked, except for two. That I ll discuss briefly for one of the cases, an emergency 911 unit was requested for a non-emergent hospital hospital transfer. When that happens, the emergency unit is taken out of service and is no longer available for the next life saving, the next life threatening emergency in its local zone. That is why these precious resources are reserved for true emergencies, not non-emergencies. Secondly, in rare cases the safest course of action is not actually movement is continued stabilization at the local hospital. Federal law and tala and Florida statutes and regulations establish a clear expectations Hospitals, even those without dedicated obstetric services must maintain the capability to evaluate, manage, and stabilize ob emergencies, including performing a delivery when necessary. This is not a theoretical concept. This is the current regulatory and clinical standard. It s also consistent with what you were promised that our local hospital would retain the ability to care for mothers and babies when they present in active labor. That s what happened here The 2nd patient arrived by private vehicle, not by 911. They drove themselves in to our local hospital already in active labor with regular contractions and severe pain, both of which are hallmarks of transitional labor phase, meaning delivery is going to be imminent. Taking a patient out of a hospital where there are physicians, nurses, blood products, anesthesia, operating room, into a much more limited resources of the back of an ambulance MAY actually increase risk rather than reduce it. There are plenty of precedents where well-meaning healthcare teams transfer to patient active labor only for disaster to strike before reaching the destination, leading to traumatic events for both patients and their pre-hospital providers. My team will never endorse limiting or delaying care, but we do try to protect patients from unnecessary risk. I look forward to collaborating with you all on improving the system locally. Thank you so much. Chris Christopher Collins is next, followed by Corey Crawley. Good morning, Mayor So I m thankful our medical director was here. I also wanted to speak to the ila conversation that you all be having shortly, um less so from the perspective of a mayor and more so as a father and husband, uh, to my family. I, I appreciate your previous conversation about this, and I m glad that you are talking about it. The ila is clearly outdated with Station 3 in existence. And I know that we all want to make sure that the closest to the call. Gets to that call so that residents are. Receiving the highest level of service, we all take very good care of our fire departments and make sure they re well staffed. But now with the existence of station 3 and then you know, Jensen Beach. That previous ila is outdated, uh, if there was a case in the past for the county picking up the slack for the city that does not exist anymore. Uh, if anything, the agreement that we have is now net positive for the city. Rarely will you see somebody advocating for a new deal when we are at the, uh, beneficiary of that deal, but for the sake of the public and making sure that people are not dying. This ila needs to be updated. In fact, your union initiated the conversation to update this ila and from the city s perspective we entirely agree. What we have asked is that there is a public meeting which I hope is not untenable to you all. I hope transparency seems like the most reasonable thing when we re discussing the, uh, health and safety of the public and pulling it out of the political gaming uh realm. So, uh, from my perspective is one of 5, if it is untenable to have a public meeting, even to have a private meeting to where we can update this ila so that ultimately residents receive the highest level of care and we re not waiting an additional 3 minutes from a dispatch from Britt Road to get to Jensen Beach with a city St station less than 1 mile away, this would be my goal. These are my comments this morning to you. So in your conversation today I hope that you know, the Cleveland Clinic issue does not take full all the air time because there is an ila that needs to be amended. Cleveland Clinic is really a separate issue and that has to do with them closing maternity and, um, if if you so choose to be the ones that have your taxpayers subsidized, uh, ambulance trips, and transport because of of their inability to or unwillingness to transport with their ambulances since they no longer want to have maternity and have taxpayers subsidize that. you know, but clearly you can hear from our medical director that it MAY in fact be less safe to be doing this kind of thing, so thank you please, uh please take those comments and as you guys entertain I m thankful for what you do and um thank you again. Thank you. Corey Crawley is the next request to speak for him, and MR. Crowley is the last request to speak for him that I have. Commissioners. Good morning. That s my son over there, by the way who I tried to compel to come up here but he wouldn t, so. Uh, 4 years and 29 years ago I walked this young man to a bus as he departed for Parris Island, uh, to join the United States Marine Corps. And the following day Russia invaded Ukraine. And none of our lives have been the same since, especially for the residents of Port Salerno. Uh, we don t get to quit being a father, but handing your son over to the Marines felt like graduation day. I had done my part, and they were gonna do theirs. I had planned on retiring and I flew to Spain. I rented a caravan and I started to explore. But after a month, I couldn t get to sleep. I didn t have a problem to work on. I didn t, couldn t find a purpose. So I flew home and started kicking around, and I own some properties at the time in Port Salerno and I went and decided to see what the cra thing was all about. I met Susan Corres at an APRIL meeting in New Monrovia, and we chatted for a bit and I asked her some questions and uh her answer to one of my questions set the stage for the for the history that we have now. I read your cra plan and it has hacked to pieces, a lot of what you comprehensive plan was supposed to protect. And so I asked her where are we going to park? And she said one word that will echo in the history of, of Martin County and her word was elsewhere. As if elsewhere with some other place that wasn t my neighbor s yard as if elsewhere wasn t, uh, you know, what s a magical land that wasn t on a map as if elsewhere it wasn t going to destroy Port Salerno. And it made me very, very angry because after visiting my son after he went to California, I had seen what California had become firsthand. The only way I put him on a bus on a Greyhound station was because he was a Marine. Nobody would ever put their their 19 year old boy on a bus at that Greyhound station in Los Angeles. Florida was never going to become California. And the reason Florida with California became California was because of good intentions but misguided policies and elsewhere is such a policy. So over the past 4 years, local governments have lost more power than in my entire lifetime. The state of Florida is usurping local control. The past 3 years have been a very tumultuous time in Salerno, and I ve been the cause of much of that. The past two years we ve seen the rise of artificial intelligence. And over the past year, the Florida State, uh, is going to propose amendments to get rid of property taxes. These things are changing these things are transforming, not changing the way we have to approach governance and protecting our communities. Change has not just been hard for the residents, it s been hard for the government. I have been the victim of code enforcement and all kinds of other things. My main point is you guys here at the Sttius, MISS Elder, our county, uh. Commissioners this is a moment of transformation, not a moment of change. I ve fought tirelessly to save Port Saler I had been the victim of, of propaganda campaign, but we now need to come together. This is the moment. Thank you. Thank you. Would anyone else like to address us, and we will close public comment. And move on to commissioner comments. Commissioner Vargas. Ok, uh, there s a lot of food for thought, and I really appreciate all the comments for everybody who s taken their time. I think one lady talked about nighttime meetings. I m all for it. Once or twice a month, we do need to reach out to those folks that are working hard during the day and cannot make the morning meetings, meetings are for the benefit of our constituents, not for our comfort and that s why we re up here. So I m very strong for that. I just want everybody to know, and I did say that last time also. There was a mention about the illegal bonfires, and I think MR. Donaldson and I spoke about that. I know that we have the fire pits, so what can be done about that to monitor that so that we don t have a situation. I know we re right in turtle season. Imminently but outside of that time also. Yes, Commissioner, I know we spoke briefly about it, so I haven t had a chance to talk to fire rescue and some of the other issues, but I will bring, get back to the board on, uh, what additional regulations we can put in place, certainly during, um, turtle season, uh, they are not allowed, but, uh, and we can, you know, as far as code enforcement, the other issue is regarding just the allowance of fires in front of our public beaches. We regulate them at 2 parks, um, but, uh I ll, I ll get back to the board of the memo on uh on the options that we can do to increase uh, the regulation of fires in front of county facilities. Ok, what about the fires in front of uh private developments. They MAY own the beach. How, how we handle that at this point in time, I don t believe we can regulate the fires in front of private property. They can, uh, other than through our fire department, uh, on burn bands and uh the state can regulate in terms of um turtle nesting season. Ok, would it be possible to have signage um, that you can t just you know, have a, a bonfire there and certainly in terms of a public educational component, um, we can, uh, bring back to the board options on what it is that we can do, uh, but in terms of private property, uh, we are limited on what we can do in terms of signage on private property or enforcement of rules that we don t have the private property, I understand, and that would be for those owners to make that decision, but certainly on our public beaches, and we re getting ready to rebuild the. Yes. The uh cafe at uh Johnson Beach and we d like to have it there for quite a few years and also for the enjoyment of the beaches of everyone else that that comes not just locally but those that, you know, fly in to enjoy our area too. Um, I want to, I will reserve my other comments for another mention from one of our constituents that took the time to come here and talk about the fire department, interlocal agreement. I would like, however, for our CHAIRWOMAN Hurd to have the pleasure of talking about our budget and finance department and they were recognized uh by a an agency that uh does give state and local governments uh awards for preparing high quality budget documents, so I m going to leave that for our CHAIRWOMAN To make that announcement. We re very proud of MISS Mirley and her team. Thank you MR. Capps I ll be brief. Uh, I would like to reemphasize that I am not for evening meetings. Uh, for the county commission, you know, some of the smaller towns, uh, can manage to have meetings in the evenings, uh, that are reasonable in length, but, uh, the county uh, it s a much bigger jurisdiction, and there s always the potential for numerous public speakers to come in, which we appreciate very much, but there s been a history in the past, not so much lately, but there s been a history in the past of extremely long meetings, um, and it would be super cumbersome to deal with to start a county commission meeting at 5 or 5:30 in the evening. When that meeting MAY run 6 or 8 or 10 hours. Um most of our meetings now are run more in the 4 to 7 hour range, um, but, uh, there s the potential. If there s a controversial issue, there can be 50 public speakers, and there can be 2 or 3 hours of public comment which we greatly appreciate, but it s, it s uh, uh, you know, I heard it said one time, one of our, our former PRESIDENT Said that an exhausted pres PRESIDENT Is a dangerous PRESIDENT, and this PRESIDENT Was known for being in bed at 9 o clock every night. Uh, and getting his rest because he that was his comment and exhausted PRESIDENT Is a dangerous PRESIDENT, and I think exhausted commissioners are dangerous commissioners, so I m not for evening meetings. Uh, I think the evidence also shows that uh when public meetings go past 8:30 or 9 o clock, people start leaving anyway because they have to get up and go to work the next day. You re not going to have many people in the audience when you have a meeting that s running into 11 and 12 o clock at night. People have to get up at 6 the next morning to go to work, so it s counterproductive, uh, and I don t think it would be good. Uh, Commissioner Vargas is referring to an award that we got from the government finance Officers Association. Uh, they are pleased to inform us that our budget has been awarded the Distinguished Budget Presentation Award from the Government Finance Officers Association. This award is the highest form of recognition in government budgeting. It, it s attainment represents a significant achievement by our organization. This is a wonderful, uh, award, and we know that our budget office does a terrific job and this is well-deserved. So thank you, Budget Office. Commissioner Campi Thank you, MADAM Chair Mine s much lighter. I think each of us received an email from a gentleman in Tallahassee that wanted us to somehow acknowledge the 70th anniversary of the Lawrence Welk Show. Uh. i thought originally it was probably a joke but he did put his name and telephone number, so I called him. And it s, he s very serious about celebrating, uh, Lawrence Welk. Uh, and the show, and it s 70th anniversaries had over 100 counties, uh, and, and let, uh, governmental entities. Write a letter of congratulations and I would request that our chair write a letter of congratulations on the occasion of Lawrence Welks 70th anniversary of his show. Sure, thank you so much. On behalf of all the commissioners, you know, it s an excellent idea. Thank you. Long overdue. I think it s something a lot of us had on our minds and finally we ll be settling it up. Thank you Commissioner Hetherington. Yeah, I d just like to thank our cra staff and our public works department. We have the El Camino Trail. We ve been doing for the past 7 years so much in Golden Gate, we had the septic sewer project and that s not exciting to anybody to see underground infrastructure, but El Camino Trail really has our residents in the area very excited. You can see it coming to fruition throughout the neighborhood and our cra staff, uh, I wanna thank you and Public works because you ve been really putting a lot of time and elbow grease into working with the residents, making sure it s comfortable for them, making sure the project is on time and on budget. So thank you and we hope to have that completed soon and the soccer fields back up and running at Lamar Howard Park, and then I would also like to stay on the topic of meetings. I am fine with morning meetings. I am fine with night meetings. I think it is a terrible idea to switch back and forth. It gives um. It doesn t give a lot of predictability and consistency and causes a lot of confusion in the community, in my opinion. That s it. MR. Campi. Thank you. Just one other point about the CRAs and our Office of Community Development. There was a speaker this morning that was quoting, and I m not, I will take him at his word. He was quoting a verbatim conversation that he had and he mentioned her name, MISS Susan Corrus, I have had the pleasure of working with MISS Corrus, uh, in Palm City, and I know all of us have. She is our director, and I don t know what that conversation was, but I would just tell you that I don think, uh, in any of the experiences that I ve, I ve had with her and members of her team. She s not flippant. She not, you know, she might have said something in humor that someone s taking as a serious comment, if at all. Um, she is a very professional. She s got a tremendous uh resume and track record of doing an excellent job, not just here in Martin County, but in her earlier career, uh, and I didn t want someone to specifically disparage her, um, if maybe they were not trying to do that, but that s how I took it and I didn t want that, uh, that we would just hear that comment, let that go out there and without a response. We are very, very fortunate to have MISS Corrus, uh, as a member of our team. She does remarkable work in all of the, all of the cra areas, but especially, uh, I feel in Palm City without her guidance and leadership, we would not have accomplished nearly what we have. Thank you. MR. Donaldson, and nothing, thank you. MISS Eldridge. All right, we are. Uh, we will now take up our 9:30 preset, which is a fire rescue update. What is this thing. is. Oh, that s boom Yeah. Morning, commissioners. Can you hear me ok? I m trying to, it s a little bit different. So, um, my name is Chadianullie Farci for Martin County Fire Rescue and to my right. Good morning, commissioners. Matt Rush, Fire rescue Administrator. Morning, commissioners David Hayes, division chief. Morning, commissioners Joseph Alboso, District Chief. Good morning, Rocco Napoli Division Chief. So, uh, today we re actually here to just give you an update on the current interlocal agreement that we have with the city of Stuart and Martin County Fire Rescue for our fire services. Just to give you an overview of what we re going to go through in the presentation. It s going to give you a high level view of the operational impacts that we ve had along the way. This agreement has been in in inception since 2020. Um, we re gonna talk about some of those labor and delivery concerns that you just heard a little bit prior to me and then at the end of this we re looking for a pathway forward to shore up some of the things that you re find out in this pre uh presentation that need to be shored up and I, I will say this, I am glad that we do have some representation from the city of Stuart, um, as far as their mayor and their medical director, uh, it s important for them to hear this information because what I m gonna share with you is 100% fact-based. None of this is made up, and I m going to give you real world examples because you need to hear it and the residents of our community and the city need to hear it. So first, let s talk about why did we even develop an interlocal agreement that was a fee-based interlocal agreement with the city of Stuart. I m gonna take you back to 2015. What we noticed in 2015 we started having an operational impact on our mutual aid services with the city of Stuart. That s them requesting us to go into their jurisdiction. 2, I m gonna fast forward to you from 2015 now to 2020. That problem grew worse over time. In 2020, fire rescue Administration changed and we started looking at many different areas that need to be addressed with our services and with fire rescue in general. This was the biggest area that needed to be addressed was the imbalance that we had with their mutual aid with the city of Stuart and i m gonna discuss that in a little bit here, but first, let me talk about the fee-based portion of this. Why did we do a f ee-ba s ed interlocal agreement an interlocal agreement is not a foreign concept with your surrounding agencies that s a normal thing to do. The fee-based in a local agreement that s a little bit unique. The design of this was to put pressure on them essentially. It was to do one of two things. One, stop the city of fire rescue, shut their services down, merge with Martin County Fire Rescue, which would have been the most beneficial and efficient thing to do at the time, or two, grow your fire services within the city to meet the demand of the city residents which they were not doing. One of those two things needed to happen. That s why it was a fee based. Now, what did the fees come from? The fees came from a femma-based concept that every apparatus has an hourly rate associated with it for the simplicity of this document, we averaged out what those fees were on a quarterly basis we would send each other a bill for each agency that would run into the other county or city for calls and that s how we ve been doing it. But the principle of this inter interlocal agreement was public safety was putting the public first and then he built the agreement around that. That was the intent, but I m telling you now some of this information I m gonna share is gonna disturb you because that s not exactly what happened, so first let s talk about the geography. When we look at for the gender revealing public when we look at Martin County Fire Rescue and its services we provide in the county in the map, you re looking at the dark gray area, that is all of Martin County Fire Rescue responsibilities, roughly 540 square miles. We do that with 11 fire stations, not to include LifeStar and not to include Jupiter Island, which is a substation. Now, for reference in the upper right, you ll see the red area. That is the jurisdiction of the city of Stuart. If you can see all the county, all the county zones are surrounding in the city area, but if I for perspective, if I take you to the bottom right leg of the city of Stuart. You ll see Station 30 square miles is roughly 12 square miles. This is Port Salerno area. This is for reference. If you look at the city of Stuart and the orange strip you see on the side, is there a contract that they have Woods Sells Point Collectively, that s roughly about 9 to 10 square miles. Population of Port Salerno, roughly over 18,000 residents, population of the city of Stuart, roughly over 19,000 residents. This is perspective, City of Stuart has 3 fire stations to cover that area Port Salerno, we have one fire station which is 1 engine, 2 rescues, and then the supporting zones around there to shore that area up because it is a very busy area. So just for context for the general viewing public. Let s talk about the imbalance. When we talk about the imbalance of the mutual aid. I m gonna take you back to 2020 when we signed this agreement in 2020, if I take you with what exactly they had c of Stuart for 911 calls in total in 2020 was roughly over 7000 calls. Out of those 7000 calls, Martin County Fire Rescue was running 21% of those calls. Now, the question I would have for me is, well, what s normal? And that d be a good question. So let me take you to a neighbor ing jurisdiction for us north of us Saint Lucie County, south of us Palm Beach County are mutual aid with them less than 1%. City of Stuart was 21% and the problem wasn t getting better. It was getting worse. That s why we had to do this agreement. So now, let me take you into the negotiation side of this agreement when we sat down. Many meetings that led up to this final document that we have when we went into the room, we went in there to negotiate with the city of Stuart and again the number one premise of the agreement was public safety, doing the right thing. In fact, it was just mentioned here earlier about being there in a timely manner when somebody has a 911 call, right? That should be it. So what we offered initially was something called closer unit response. You just heard that prior to me coming up here. Closest unit response is it s a simple concept. Essentially the dispatcher gets a 911 call. They identify on their cad where that call is geographically. All of our trucks, city and county, are tracked by gps. It would identify that closest unit to the call. Tag that unit to the call and respond to that emergency. That is the most beneficial and efficient way to run a 911 service. That s what the community deserves to have. However, the city of Stuart was adamant that that is something they would not agree on. In fact, what they said, no matter of the response time, they wanted to exhaust all city assets before you look for county asset. And I m gonna get back to that, so hang on to that for a second there. What we did agree on in the room was something called an echo call. An echo call in a dispatcher world is probably the most critical call type that we can run. Examples cardiac arrest. Drowning, and difficulty breathing. An echo call what we agreed on is if that call does happen, no matter what it would look for the closest unit response, city or county doesn t matter, and then they would respond and address it and there would be no fee associated with that call. Now that is the right thing to do. Here s what gives me a little bit of heartburn. Over 30 years of doing this job, I cannot tell you how many times I have been dis dispatched to a call. That was not labeled as an echo call, because you have to understand it from a dispatcher perspective. It s whoever calls in this emergency, there are really reliant upon that information for the caller, it could be the first emergency they ve ever seen. It s hard to articulate the information they re trying to share with the dispatcher. Dispatcher at the mercy of that information and then they dispatch units accordingly. My point is, I have been on many, many calls that were not labeled echo calls, and I arrive on scene and it s a full blown cardiac arrest. You do not know what the emergency is until you get on scene. So yes, I agree. All calls should be treated like echo calls, but they have refused to do it. So let me give you a real world example of what that impact looks like. This happened in the not too distant past, city of Stuart had a 911 call in a most northern part of their jurisdiction, Windermere community. They would not look for any county resource s They only look for an available city asset, which is in the further southern part of their jurisdiction, and they attached that call to that apparatus. It responded to that Winderme development 15 to 20 minute response time. We have a county fire station less than 1 mile from that development. We could have been there within minutes. For that 911 call, but they refuse to go with that model. Now, before I go any further, because if you re not disturbed by that, I m gonna really disturb you with the next phase. What I want to be clear at because I know the keyboard warriors are gonna light me up after we do this presentation. The city of Stuart firefighters. This has nothing to do with them. They are doing a job they are told to do. They have policies and procedures they have to follow, and that s what they re doing. This has to do with their leadership and it has to do with their policymakers. This is wrong. So now let s go into labor and delivery. So labor and delivery, as you know Cleveland Clinic, APRIL of last, last year, shut down our labor and delivery services. One thing Cleveland Clinic was really good at was communicating that they were going to do that to give us plenty of time to prepare, to modify our operation because we needed to. When you have an ob patient, you need to take them to the appropriate facility. It is absolutely paramount to do that. So with our medical director DR. Wood, he was with us today. We establish ed policies and procedures of how to treat our ob patients and what we came up with is any ob patient 2 weeks of gestation or greater with any labor and delivery issues would be transported to the closest hospital that has labor and delivery services. It makes sense. The hospitals that we have closest to us would be tradition from Kalim Clinic, Saint Lucie Medical Center or Jupiter, just depending what part of the area that we re in, that s where we would transport. Let me take over to the city of Stuartside What did they do Did absolutely nothing. What they do is they take the patient to the closest facility no matter if it s labor and delivery ob concerns or not, and that s not something that is good for the community. So let me give you not two examples that we just shared with you, but I m gonna give you 4 examples that are real world calls. This is happening. There s more than this, but for the sake of time of this presentation, I m gonna stick with 4. So first let s talk about APRIL 2025. Cleveland Clinic had a walk-in patient 35 weeks gestation, contractions less than one minute apart. Well let me pause for a second. The walk-in patient, and it was talked about before I came up here. One thing that it s very difficult for the community as a whole to understand is Cleveland Clinic not having labor and delivery services. If they don t use the hospital systems and don t understand how hospitals work. The layman perspective is one hospital, it s a one size fits all, whatever your needs are, you just walk in and it s there. We know that s not true, but to get the community at 100% to know that for a fact is difficult to do. So these walk-ins are going to happen from time to time, but let s get back to the patient. 35 weeks of gestation, contractions less than one minute apart. They are being assessed by the er physician and the er staff. They quickly identify this patient needs to go to the appropriate facility that has labor and delivery services, right? And what they do, 1st, 1st decision they have to make in their decision tree they have is to reach out to coastal care. Coastal care is their inner facility transport within the hospital. This is what they do when it comes to hospital hospital transfers. The problem is this was a timely issue and needed to happen now. Coastal care was not available within that 1st 30 minute window. The next step in that decision tree, call 911, and it s the right thing to do because Cleveland Clinic North resides in the city of Stuart. They are going to get a city of Stuart response, and they did. So, the er staff calls 911. They dispatch a city unit, city unit responds. In fact, the city even brings their battalion chief with them to help make this decision. The get on scene, they assess the patient, they interact with the er physician. They interact with the er staff, and then they say we re not assuming care of this patient. We re not going to take them. Think about this from the perspective of the er. They called 911 for assistance. This isn t optional for us. We deal with the set of circumstances that most people cannot deal with, and you mitigate whatever that incidence is. They called us for help, and then they go on to say, call 911 back and call for a second and call for a county unit. Call 911 back in 30 years of doing this job, I have never shown up on a scene and said, nope, can t do it, you know what? Call 911 a second time and see how your luck runs that way. That is the wrong thing to do for the patient, but they called 911 back, County unit responded. We picked up that patient, no questions, and we took that patient to the appropriate facility. Why? Because it s the right thing to do. Example number 2 SEPTEMBER of 2025. Stuart Fire Rescue, full term ob active labor contractions less than one minute apart. You re right, imminent labor, it s gonna happen, we know that and they still transport this patient to Cleveland Clinic North knowing they don t have long term labor and delivery services for the patient, the ob patient. There are complications could be during pregnancy post-pregnancy, and GOD forbid any needleatal care after the pregnancy for long-term care. Cleveland Clinic does not have those services. Don misunderstand me. Can Cleveland Clinic deliver the child? Absolutely they can. Can we deliver the child in the back of the rescue? We certainly can too. However, we don t prefer to do that. We prefer to have the patient and the soon to be born child in a clean environment, for if anything happens, the long-term services are there Let s go into this year, JANUARY of 2026. Walk-in patient again, 32 weeks gestation, contraction 10 minutes apart. What do they do? They reach out to CoastalCare. Coastal care is just not available within that 30 minute window. They have to call 911. 911, they called the city of Stuart City of Stuart again responds, assesses the patient. And then they say we re not assuming care of this patient. Call 911 back. Call for Martin County, and they ll do it. And we did. They called us, we go and we take that patient, no questions asked. And then the last one, I think I m driving a Point home. Stuart Firescue transported. Again, 3rd trimester ob patient active labor contractions less than one minute apart. And they transport that patient. To Cleveland Clinic North. Knowing that patient gets transferred out. Think about the mother and the baby, truly, you have to, if you deliver the child there and taking in the newborn and then go ahead and take the mom and the newborn, put them on the stretcher, put them in the back of a rescue, drive to the next hospital that has labor and delivery services through traffic. Take them through the front door of the hospital, get in the elevator, go up to the led floor and then turn over into the area they should be in the first place. That is just not right for them. It s not right. So stopgap. What did we do? So I had enough of watching this happen. And I reached out to Cleveland Clinic, and I spoke with some of the physicians. In fact, I have two of the physicians with me today and what we told them is this. If you have any labor and delivery concerns at Martin North er or excuse me, Cleveland Clinic er if you have any needs of transport that coastal care cannot handle, you call 911 and you request a county unit, and we will take that patient, no questions asked because you cannot have that delay of care. Problem is we are in direct violation of this interlocal agreement by doing that, so what I m asking for on a path forward is assistance from you. Here s what we did try to do, and this is fact. We tried to bring them back to the table and negotiate, renegotiate this in local agreement. The union doesn t negotiate interlocal agreements. This is the fire administration that negotiates in a local agreements. We had a date set up to do the right thing because we care. We have the city, uh, we have the county attorney with us, the city attorney we invited, the department heads were supposed to be there. We were supposed to do the right thing. It was all set up. Give us a shot. Let us work this thing out, let s right the wrong. And then no reason at all. They canceled the meeting Just cancel it And then the next thing I know, the interlocal agreement is at the city side and then it turns into this political and public spectacle and then they want to take this document and they want to negotiate it for political and public in the light of all of that. It doesn t make any sense. If this, if there s any apolitical document we can talk about, it s this interlocal agreement. So what I m looking for assistance from you is to help me force this negoti ation remove the nonsense from it. I don t want the politics in there. I don t want the emotion in there. I just want level-headed people that can help us do what s right for the community. It s the right thing to do, but the last question that I would ask if I was you, to me, why don t you just reach out to the City Fire Rescue fire chief. I m like, that s a great question. Well, a wood, but he refuses to talk to me. Back in 2020, when we were negotiated, this ila that he himself signed, who was still there today, he s been very emotional ever since, and refuses to communicate with me since then so much so 2 years ago when we had the training facility up and running, and we re gonna do mutual training with them. I extended the olive branch to him, and I called him and I said, we need to get together, we need to talk to mend this relationship, to build on it, what it s supposed to be, but he s still in his feelings and emotional and will not train with us and we ll not meet with us to discuss this ila. So there s the time where you have to put your personal emotions to the side and do what s right for the community and that s where I m asking for your assistance to do that. So before I turn it over to questions. Um, well, let me first, let me address that. So why do I have this running clock here? We have roughly over 20 minutes that just clipped through with me talking to you, right? What is that 20 minutes? Let me share with that 20 minutes actually is. In an emergency setting, 20 minutes is an absolute eternity. So, think about the perspective of this ob patient that needs to be transported. Let s break down the timeline. Er recognizes we have got to call 911. It takes 2 minutes to do the dispatch, right? They do the dispatch and then they have a couple of minutes to get on the truck, call it 4 minutes, let s round it to 5 just for sake of the argument. They have a 5 minute travel time, 5 minutes, now we re at 10 minutes. 10 minutes, and then they got about 3 minutes from getting the stretcher out of the truck to get to the patient, right? The one they re supposed to transport, so now we re at 13 minutes and then they look at the patient and they re like, yeah, no, we re not doing it Call 911 back. So let s do that again Dispatch 911, another two minutes. And then another 5 minutes of travel time. And then we get there and assess the patient. My point is, 20 minutes has clipped by where this patient who needs to be transferred out is just time you are not going to get back. So that s the point of the time. So what I would like to do real quick is invite up Doctor Dayton and Doctor Wood. He was our medical director, and they can share their our perspective. Doctor Wood is our medical director that is also an er physician and he can give it from his lens, and DR. Dayton has probably delivered half of the children in Palm City that I know over the last 20 years, so it ll be good introspective for everybody. So anyway, gentlemen. Your kids Thank you Board of commissioners for having me. My name is Doctor Wood, Donald Wood. I ve been practicing emergency medicine 26 years and 16 of those 26 years has been here, ok? So as former chief of all the Martin er system before we became Cleveland Clinic and then we divided it up. Other than that, I am sitting as the PRESIDENT Elect for the medical staff and I m the CHAIRMAN Of the peer review. I m also the Martin County Fire Rescue Medical director. So with that said, I d like to just kind of. You guys got a great picture of what s going on. I m gonna take you through a little bit more personal picture from a physician s side Uh, I wanna, you know, start out with, you know, recognize Doctor Schlepky. He s still here, yep, good. I met him years ago Um, so as the physicians, we can deliver a baby that or a pregnant woman that is in, you know, active labor that is crowning and is about to deliver any minute, and we do that. We don t like that, and as you guys know, if you think about yourselves, your family, your daughters, um, you know, how would it be to deliver a baby in the er? I mean, really, if you, if you had a choice, would you pick that choice? If you lived in the city of Stuart, would not. So with that said, um, to DR. Schlepky s point about Mtawa law. Ok, I m gonna clear this up real quick. Yes, it s it s, it s definitely valid. However, it is a definition of unstable, and that definition is determined by physicians, paramedics, whoever happens to be performing a medical screening exam on the patient. So if I ve got a patient that is in labor and they re 10 minutes apart, that s a stable patient to be transmitted, I m sorry, transferred 20 minutes, ok? And just so you know, it takes about 7, it s 7.77 miles exactly from here to Saint Lucie Medical Center, which has that capability. It s exactly 21 minutes driving normal, not driving priority, ok? In a, in a fire rescue. So with that if you re one minute apart it can still take hours, ok? And to Chief s Point, you know, 20 minutes to register the patient, do an assessment, get everything tucked in, is, is, is pretty much a long time, but that s what s gonna happen when they drop them off. So as a doc, I m sitting here going, man, I haven t delivered one of these babies in 15 to 20 years. You know, I m capable, I can do it, and DR. Dayton and I put on some education for the system but it s not comfortable, it not comfortable for me. Doctor Slepy, is it comfortable for you? Probably not at this point, you know. So I m just saying it is not a comfortable situation. What we can do it in emergencies and we do. That said, um, I wanna take you guys through what it s like to get the patient out of the er. The chief pointed out that, you know, they gotta make the phone they got we make the phone call they gotta get there to get the patient out. The hospital does have transport available. The problem is they MAY be taking another patient to another hospital, because we re unique Martin Health before it became Cleveland Clinic, we have a footprint in two counties. So we do strokes primarily, especially interventional strokes at tradition. We do cardiac at North. We do orthopedics at South and oftentimes we re moving people from location to location and those transports are not in service and they re not available in in the timeline that we re looking for, which is 30 minutes. So, um, that s just a function of reality, you know, if we were in Cleveland, Ohio, there d be one building, one building with everything right there on site, but that s not the case here. We re spread out. So it s often 2 to 4 hours just to get an accepting physician to take one of these patients at another hospital, we have to hang on to them during that time, possibly deliver them during that time. It is definitely not comfortable for the staff, the nurses, or the physicians, and that s if everything goes smooth. Alright, so, you know, we don t always agree with the fact that we don t have uh lnd services in our hospital system, but we have to work with what we re given and what we re given right now is the situation that Chief Chan ul I you know, kind of like painted the picture for you. Um you know, I looked up Stuart on the way over. I just thought this is kind of fun, maybe I ll look it up. Stuart, everybody, anybody know the definition of Stuart? The meaning of the name, if you named your kid, Stuart. It means to be a good steward, ok? So all we re asking people to do is step up, do the right thing, be a good steward of the community. I agree with uh Doctor Schlapy. We need to put the patient first. And again, you know, 10 minutes of labor pain, you know, that s stable, that can be transferred to the closest facility 20 minutes away. If it s, uh, one minute, it could potentially be stable as well. I ll let DR. Dayton point that out. We take trauma patients to the locust local, the closest trauma center available, ok? Trauma patients go there, that s a state mandate, um, obviously lnd is not. I get that, but we take them there. We take pediatric emergencies when you re in the, the bigger areas, say like Palm Beach and Broward County, we take them to Peed s Hospitals. We don t take them all the way to the community medicine adult centers, so we kind of triage that in a very respectful way for the patients because it gives them the best care and the fastest time to get there. Thank you. Good I m Peter Dayton I Dayton. I m the medical director for patient safety and quality at the Cleveland Clinic. I ve been practicing here for 41 years. I m old, but you know. Uh, I have delivered about 6000 babies in this community. And I care very deeply about this community and the health care that we provide. Uh, we do have a logistical problem at North. As you all know, Martin closed their obstetrical services APRIL 1st of 2025, and the reasons are beyond the scope of this discussion. The fact is there are no obstetrical services provided at Martin North, which means we do not have an obstetrician able to respond in a timely fashion. We don t have neonatal support, pediatric support at Martin North. We don t have ambulatory monitoring or fetal heart monitoring. We have nobody to interpret that monitoring. We do not have the connectivity with the tradition hospital. We, we ve tried to work on those logistics and it s not been able to be done. So we have a hospital system that is divided as DR. Woods said, Strokes and interventional neurology go up to tradition and our ambulance service moves these people constantly from er over to the other er. Same thing for cardiac, our, our, um, interventional cardiologists work out of north, so if you have a heart attack and, and you re gonna get a cath. Oops, excuse me, you come down