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Martin County Board of County Commissioners (BOCC)
Building a home in Martin County? Your impact fees will be going up by 12.5% to 50% over 4 years. Impact fees have remained unchanged since 2013.
The EAR (Evaluation and Appraisal Report state mandated every 7 years) changes are mainly to update language for example referring to Indiantown as its own village now.
Power Systems Manufacturing, an aerospace and turbine building facility, is returning to it birthplace of Martin County. The 25-year-old company was created in Stuart, but then moved to Jupiter. It is asking for a tax exemption return. It promises 101 new jobs at 136% above Martin County’s average wage.
Commissioner Ciampi commented that he intends to pursue industrial and commercial companies because of the jobs they offer. Many do not know that Martin County has only 1.97% Commercial and Industrial combined. Whereas an economically healthy county should strive for 25% Commercial and 25% industrial. Martin County is too reliant on residential as a tax base. Remember, your homesteaded taxes can only be raised by 3% regardless of how valuable your home becomes. Eventually, we would not be able to pay for the services we have come to expect. Martin County needs to diversify our taxbase. The MCTA applauds Commissioner Ciampi’s efforts in this area.
Riverside Phase IV PUD will consist of 98 homes on Kanner. The homes are expected to be priced lower than the average home in the County.
A Union contract for County staff has been agreed upon. Considering record inflation and high turnover while not causing a millage increase, MCTA applauds Matt Graham, Asst. County Administrator for his work on this contract which will give workers a 6% increase or $2.50 more per hour which ever is greater.
MCTA fully supports the transmittal to be reviewed by state agencies of the 1.1 million square foot Martin Commerce Park in Palm City out past Stuart West and Cobblestone. They will provide a long-requested traffic light (normally a million dollars according to Commissioner Ciampi). A possibility of them donating the land for a fire station there was floated which is a good example of how the Commissioners can leverage a Planned Unit Development (PUD). This project will have little impact on traffic as it is next to I-95 and may even alleviate some of the traffic. The neighboring communities will likely not even be able to see the park as it will be approximately .5 miles off the road and buffered by a gas station. It will improve our tax base with impact fees, property taxes and tangible taxes. And let’s not forget it will provide jobs.
The Fire Fighters will get another 18 fire fighters through the SAFER grant which will pay their salaries for 3 years. Then the county picks up the costs.
Commissioner Ciampi recommended that the County “offload” the old Boys and Girls Club in Palm City as they have no use for it and the building has outlived its usefulness. The MCTA agrees and is happy to hear the recommendation to sell some land back to private enterprise as around half of the county is owned by some government entity currently.
Martin County School Board (MCSB) The school district and teachers union reached an agreement on a 3.1% salary increase for all teachers, and a base teacher salary of $51,034.
This meeting was a changing of the guard as Mr. William Corbin, Executive Director, took the reins from Dan Hudson, Interim ED. Welcome to Mr. Corbin. We wish him every success in his new role and our thanks to Mr. Hudson for his steady hand during the transition.
Mary Murphy, CareerSource, reported that the Treasure Coast unemployment rate is 4.2% compared to the State rate of 3.7%. Last year at this time it was 3.9% and there are 12,858 people on the unemployment rolls in the three counties. While there are 6,000 job openings, professional services and healthcare reported the bulk of the openings while manufacturing and financial services lost ground.
Jenni Fields, Property Appraiser, presented an overview of areas her office tracks with a focus on Tangible Property and the requirements on filing. The presentation then went over the increase in property values from 2023. 740 new buildings went up in the county which are a subset of 2,315 projects that added $888,819,557 in market value to the tax rolls. The main drivers of this were 1,994 residential units (63%) of which 646 were new, 6 all new construction of multi-family units (14.6%), 35 Industrial projects (8.5%) of which 32were new construction and 58 Commercial projects (5.5%) of which 24 were new construction. The website for the Appraiser’s office has added a new link titled “Proposed Developments” which will take you to the websites for the Metropolitan Planning Organization, Martin County and City of Stuart proposed development maps.
Power Systems Manufacturing, who we spoke about last month, received preliminary approval for an ad valorem tax exemption from the Board of County Commissioners on September 10th. They have until March 1st to purchase the equipment to begin their operations.
Kevin Crowder from BusinessFlare gave an update on aspects of business in Martin County. Single family home sales are slowing from the peak in 2021 while the median sales price is holding steady at about $600,000. Rents for apartments are averaging around $2,000/month.
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