I’d like to think that some of what we’ve been seeing here recently is merely a rough stretch for a still-special community – and not that our poetically described “Mayberry by the Sea” is losing its small-town charm and neighborly feel to inevitable growth and development.
I want to believe we’re not becoming Port St. Vero.
But are we?
Just in the past couple of weeks, we’ve seen:
- Gunfire at Humiston Beach Park during a 2 a.m. dispute that involved at least one juvenile, who police announced Monday would not be criminally charged because he “acted in defense of another” when he shot a man in the stomach.
- School Board Chair Peggy Jones, a longtime educator who is beloved in the community, receiving hostile phone calls and emails – even death threats – after the local Moms For Liberty chapter brought in from North Carolina a known culture-war rabble-rouser to stir up trouble over library books.
- Another School Board member, Gene Posca, using social media to post or share fiercely partisan and antagonistic memes, including one that ignorantly compares Democrats who wore surgical masks during the COVID-19 pandemic to KKK members who wore white hoods, masks and robes to terrorize Blacks in the 1900s.
We’ve even seen graffiti spray-painted on the Barber Bridge.
That’s not the Vero Beach that welcomed me when I arrived in 1980, just out of college, to launch what has become a 40-year-plus newspaper career.
That’s not the Vero Beach to which I returned in 2002 to become the Treasure Coast’s sports columnist.
That’s not even the Vero Beach of 2014, when I joined this newspaper amid an abundance of civility, courtesy and consideration for others in the community.
Until a couple of years ago, most longtime residents couldn’t imagine someone throwing anti-Semitic messages on their neighbors’ driveways. But recently, it happened.
Now, we’ve got neighbors who earlier this year successfully pushed for the repeal of the School Board’s racial equity policy – a crushing blow to the county’s Black population, which saw its adoption in 2020 as a stand against institutional racism.
Only last month, a few Sebastian River High School students’ parents complained to the principal because they believed the parking decals, which were tie-dye colored, too closely resembled the rainbow-colored pride flag of the LGBTQ community.
The principal caved, despite the small number of complaints, and the school spent more than $1,000 to replace the decals.
Intolerance won again.
Compassion and understanding lost.
Clearly, something has changed here. Perhaps, it was inescapable, given the spike in the county’s population over the past few years, particularly during the COVID boom, when our warmer winters and low density made Vero Beach an attractive destination.
Truth is, we had been hearing for decades that we could fend off the South Florida sprawl for only so long, and that Vero Beach would eventually be overrun to the point where it would lose its sleepy ambiance.
We’re not there yet, of course, but we’re on our way.
New housing developments, along with the new businesses needed to serve an increasing number of newcomers, are being built or planned. And our roadways are more crowded than ever, especially when our seasonal residents and visitors are here.
The result is that more people from more places are now living amongst us, and many of them don’t know – and don’t care – who we were or how things used to be.
The mix has changed.
But we’ve changed, too.
If we’re going to be honest with ourselves, we need to admit that we’ve allowed the political partisanship and tribalism that divides too much of America to infect our lives and our community.
And if we’re serious about preserving some nostalgic remnants from the Vero Beach of yesteryear, we must stop the madness – because it doesn’t need to be this way. Not in this town.
I was here in November 1980, when Ronald Reagan, a conservative Republican, won the presidency in a landslide. Locally, county residents elected Tim Dobeck as sheriff and Dick Bird as a county commissioner. Both ran as Democrats.
The party didn’t matter.
The candidate did.
We need to get back to that. We need to recapture our sense of community – because despite the new problems and challenges we face as the county continues to grow, the Vero Beach area is still the best place to live on Florida’s east coast.
