FELLSMERE — The City of Fellsmere hopes to leverage its property tax receipts nearly 10 to 1 with grant dollars this year, but will those state and federal dollars get tougher to come by now that Fellsmere’s Mexican residents are no longer considered minorities?
It’s been a long time since Mexicans have been the minority in Fellsmere, but now Hispanics, sometimes called Latinos, are no longer a “minority” in the United States, as of the 2010 U.S. Census.
People of Hispanic ethnicity have been rolled into the generic “white” category.
So despite the fact that Fellsmere faces the challenge of filling the needs of a community that is 68 percent Hispanic, that’s no longer reflected in the way many state and federal government agencies dole out grant money.
Grant writer and administrator Kathy Baker of Jordan and Associates municipal consultants out of Jacksonville summarized the city’s proposals for Fellsmere City Council members at a recent meeting.
Baker told the Council that although she was confident that the city was submitting solid and deserving proposals for grants this year, the ripple effects of the new ethnic criteria were yet to be seen.
“One of the situations that has caused you to have lower points is the Department of Housing and Urban Development has made Hispanics no longer a minority, and you are populated with a great deal of Hispanics,” Baker said. “So that brings that particular score way down while in the past we did score higher in that part.”
To compound the challenges Fellsmere faces, half of its residents were born outside the United States, more than a quarter live below the poverty line and roughly three quarters of city residents speak English as a second language.
Baker told the council the new minority criteria are “out of your control.”
She said there has been much discussion among governments and consultants about the de-categorization of Hispanics, as well as how and when it’s being applied, and added: “I think it’s incorrect.”
The change goes beyond not getting extra points for the Mexican residents.
Depending upon the granting agency’s policies, points are no longer being given for contracting with Hispanic- owned businesses or for having Hispanic employees.
African-American residents comprise only about 5 percent of Fellsmere’s population, so that doesn’t help much in the grant scoring process.
City Manager Jason Nunemaker said cities such as Fort Pierce with its large African-American population could see an uptick in grant application scores as a result of the decategorization of Hispanics.
Nationally, Hispanics number about 52 million as of 2011, or 16.7 percent of the nation’s population. In 2010 for the first time, more non-white babies were born than white babies.
The Caucasian race is swiftly becoming the newest minority. Only 13 percent of Fellsmere residents self-identify as white, non-Hispanic, according to census data, compared to 78 percent for Indian River County as a whole.
The total population of Fellsmere is estimated to be 5,229 and those residents, plus land owners and business owners who live in the city, will pay $494,000 in property taxes this year.
That’s only $94 per person on average.
In Vero Beach, for example, each resident pays an average of about $265 in property taxes to the city. Fellsmere’s 44 square miles encompass just less than $90 million in taxable property value. Much of the land is undeveloped or has agricultural exemptions.
In the big picture, Fellsmere’s nearly half million in property tax receipts compares to nearly $5 million in grant funding in the 2012-2013 budget.
In recent years, grants have fueled the vast majority of the infrastructure projects in the city, from paving roads and improving drainage and sewers to renovating the Old School building into what is now the Fellsmere City Hall and auditorium complex.
Just last week, City Manager Jason Nunemaker received a notice that Fellsmere had been awarded $364,000 it applied for to construct a two-lane road to connect County Road 512 with the Florida Organic Aquaculture company site one-half mile away.
Florida Organic Aquaculture has promised to add 52 jobs to its payroll after a natural gas line is extended out to its facility. With the natural gas, the company will be able to efficiently heat the tanks in which it raises its main cash crop of shrimp.
The construction of the gas line itself is expected to be paid for with $1.09 million in grant dollars, but the benefits go beyond the 52 jobs at the seafood farm. Much-needed construction jobs will become available to construct and lay the pipeline.
Then Fellsmere can market access to cheap, clean natural gas to other businesses looking for a place to expand or relocate.
The city just bought Police Chief Scott Melanson a Toyota Prius to help with fuel costs, and it’s also looking at converting its modest fleet of vehicles to Compressed Natural Gas or CNG engines, with the help of grant dollars available as part of green energy initiatives.
If a deal can be struck with the City of Sebastian to form some sort of natural gas utility district, the City of Sebastian could also benefit from access to an alternative to electricity and regular gasoline.
Fellsmere officials are hoping those grant funds don’t begin to dry up as Florida communities adapt to changing rules with regard to community demographics.
Prior to the change in the 2011-12 grant cycle, those added points gave Fellsmere a slight leg up in qualifying for much-needed dollars to improve areas of the city which are not only heavily populated by Hispanics, but which also don’t generate the property tax dollars to do the work out of the general fund.
Vice Mayor Joel Tyson, who has served on the Fellsmere City Council off and on since 1990, said he’s hopeful that his city will continue to successfully apply for assistance through state and federal programs for roads, drainage, parks, utility lines and other public projects.
“We’re considered agricultural, and most of our population is below the median income level, so we’ll still get consideration for that,” Tyson said. “I think we’ll still do okay when it comes to the grants.”
