Before we get to what happened at last week’s County Commission meeting, let’s be clear about something:
There has been no meaningful community outcry to rebuild the storm-damaged boardwalk at Humiston Beach Park – not in the six months, anyway, since the City Council voted unanimously in June to replace the historic structure with a less-costly sidewalk.
City Hall has not been inundated with letters or emails demanding a new boardwalk. The topic has not been a major topic of discussion on the dais. The issue was barely, if at all, raised during the recent campaign for three council seats.
Indeed, the strongest rebuild-the-boardwalk argument offered publicly prior to the council’s fiscally responsible decision to settle for a sidewalk came from a nostalgia-filled former mayor, Tony Young, grandson of Vero Beach’s first mayor.
Young said the boardwalk, which dates back to the 1930s but was severely damaged by Hurricane Nicole in 2022 and demolished early last year after city engineers deemed it unsafe and unsalvageable, was “part of the fabric of Vero Beach.”
Hardly anyone, though, has rallied to the cause – which, for the most part, has been forgotten.
Why, then, did City Manager Monte Falls go to the County Commission meeting two Tuesdays ago to explore the possibility of sharing the cost of building a boardwalk?
Councilman Taylor Dingle asked him to do so.
And, as it turned out, Falls’ efforts weren’t entirely a waste of time: The commissioners ultimately instructed County Administrator John Titkanich to work with him on providing at least some funding for the council-approved sidewalk, which is projected to cost just over $700,000.
The commissioners expressed no interest in partnering with the city to build a boardwalk, however, especially one with an estimated $2 million price tag.
That’s understandable, in the face of the community’s apparent indifference – but the lack of any noticeable public support was never mentioned before the commissioners, in a 3-2 vote, rejected the boardwalk option.
Instead, two commissioners diminished themselves by trying to downplay the impact of Vero’s beaches on local tourism.
Commissioner Susan Adams, while voicing a willingness to help Vero Beach build the sidewalk, talked too much about spending any significant sums of money when such funds could be used to enhance amenities in Sebastian, Fellsmere and the unincorporated areas of the county.
At one point, she actually tried to compare – from a tourism perspective – the allure of bird photography at Blue Cypress Lake and bass fishing in Fellsmere to that of Vero’s beaches and oceanfront hotels.
“I’m tired of hearing that everyone is coming here for the beaches,” Adams said, later admitting that she was advocating for her constituents in the northern and western sectors of the county, where she claimed residents still make “red-headed stepchild comments.”
Commission Chairman Joe Flescher, who seemed to treat the 3-2 vote as a personal triumph, doubled down on Adams’ remarks, saying the city’s beaches do not generate all of the room nights at the oceanfront hotels – that some visitors who come here for events in other parts of the county stay there, too.
He’s right, of course: Our beaches do not generate ALL of the room nights.
Surely, there must be some visitors who come here for reasons other than to enjoy Vero’s pristine beaches and coastal ambience, but still choose to enjoy the first-rate hospitality offered by the oceanfront hotels, especially during our busy season, when the weather is often perfect.
But how many?
Let’s be honest: Most visitors who come here for in-season events in Sebastian and Fellsmere, or even in the unincorporated county west and south of Vero Beach, aren’t willing to spend the big bucks it costs to stay in one of our oceanfront resort hotels.
They’re more likely to book rooms at more affordable hotels on the mainland, perhaps near Interstate 95.
The same is true for visitors who come to town for events at the Jackie Robinson Training Complex, which, by the way, offers many participants on-campus lodging.
So the arguments put forth by Adams and Flescher have no real merit.
Clearly, though, there was something else going on at that meeting – something about the way some commissioners conducted themselves during their interactions with Falls that was puzzling, even somewhat disturbing.
Falls went to the podium simply to ask if the county might want to partner with Vero Beach on a project that would benefit both city and county residents. There was no hidden agenda. He wasn’t trying to sneak any precedents through the commission’s back door.
But anyone watching the proceedings, including the council members seated in the audience, could feel the tension that filled the chamber, where it often seemed some of the commissioners were talking down to the city, figuratively as well as literally.
Not only were commissioners being deliberately disingenuous – they claimed they didn’t know Falls was there solely to discuss funding for a boardwalk because the city alone can’t afford to build one – but their tone was too often dismissive and, at times, unnecessarily adversarial.
The reason was obvious.
In making his initial remarks on the issue, Titkanich raised the possibility of using tourist-tax revenues to cover the county’s contribution to funding the boardwalk, if the commission wanted to participate.
And the commissioners pounced.
As many longtime residents know: The commission has long been almost irrationally defensive in steadfastly refusing to share tourist-tax dollars with the county’s municipalities – and that includes Vero Beach, which generates almost half of that money each year.
To be sure, the county does cover the immense costs of beach-renourishment projects that include the city’s shoreline, but with funding assistance from the federal and state governments.
Even now, however, as the county talks about fostering better relations with its municipalities, the commissioners have shown repeatedly they will not budge on the matter of sharing even a small percentage of the tourist-tax revenues they hold eerily sacred.
At the very least, though, the commission should be willing to work with the city through some type of inter-local agreement to help fund projects that are mutually beneficial, especially as the county continues to grow and additional revenues from new residential development beyond the Vero Beach limits pour into its coffers.
Those types of agreements would greatly help Vero Beach, where the municipal government operates within the confines of a $35 million budget that is often stressed to provide the infrastructure, services and amenities to its 17,000 citizens, as well as to accommodate the daily influx of residents of a steadily growing county with a population more than 10 times its size.
