Maybe you noticed them while driving around town – white chevrons, outlined in dark blue, painted on the far-right side of some of our roadways.
I didn’t.
It wasn’t until someone posted a phone-shot photo on Facebook’s “Vero Beach Neighborhood” page last week that I became aware of their existence, began looking for them and started asking questions.
Here’s what I’ve learned:
- The roadway markings are ground reference points used in aerial surveys needed for mapping.
- Nobody in our local governments – including County Administrator Jason Brown, County Community Development Director Phil Matson, Vero Beach Public Works Director Matt Mitts and Vero Beach Regional Airport Director Todd Scher – knows who painted the markings or the project for which they’re intended.
- Neither the city nor county has received a request from or authorized any other governmental agency or private entity to paint the markings on our local roadways.
“It’s a bit of a mystery,” Brown said. “If it were some state or federal agency, you’d think someone locally would’ve been told about it.”
Dan Rodriguez, manager of the Vero Beach Public Works Department’s Streets Division, said he began seeing the roadway markings in May, adding that they were “not just in the city.”
I found a few of them last week – three along Aviation Boulevard near the Vero Beach Regional Airport and four on 37th Street west of Cleveland Clinic Indian River Hospital.
There also was one on Pickerill Lane, outside the parking lot of the Center for Advanced Eye Care at 3500 U.S. 1, and another on the sidewalk that runs along the west side of 27th Avenue between Aviation and Atlantic boulevards.
I’m sure there are more, but I was unable to locate them during a two-hour drive throughout the Vero Beach area last weekend.
It’s possible the markings are connected to some Florida Department of Transportation project.
But phone calls and emails to the agency’s Tallahassee headquarters and regional office in Fort Lauderdale produced no answers.
“We’ll check on it,” an FDOT spokesman said last week, producing no response by Monday afternoon.
A regional adviser from the National Geodetic Survey suggested I call the Florida Department of Revenue, which conducts aerial surveys for Property Appraiser’s Offices around the state.
Instead, I called our Property Appraiser, Wesley Davis, who acknowledged that his office is required by law to fund aerial surveys of the county every three years – but he said one was completed earlier this year.
“It’s not us,” Davis said, adding that the new markings could be for a survey to be done this winter.
“This is not the time of year to do an aerial survey,” he explained. “It’s cloudy, hazy and we get a lot of storms. I don’t know for sure, but my guess is that those markings are for a survey to be done in early 2022.”
Again, city and county officials say they’ve not been approached by anyone requesting permission to paint our roadways.
Mitts said his office has seen some of the markings and received a few calls from city residents who were curious about them, “but it’s not a big concern.”
Obviously, someone is planning to conduct an aerial survey of the Vero Beach area, if not the entire county. At this point, we don’t know if the marking has been completed, or if more of our roadways will be painted.
But we should.
We also need to ask: How could work crews stop traffic and paint these chevrons on our roadways without anyone noticing?
Because, apparently, they did.
Vero Beach Police Lt. Dan Cook said he was unaware of any calls to the agency regarding the roadway markings, but the matter will be investigated.
Eventually, I’m sure, we’ll find out who’s painting the roadways and why. Meanwhile it is anybody’s guess.
As Cook quipped during our conversation: “Maybe it has something to do with all those UFOs everyone has been talking about.”
