Few people know that the State of Florida’s Department of State has published over a dozen “Heritage Trails” books over the last many years. Some of these books celebrate Cuban American heritage, British Heritage locations from the colonial years as well as French and Spanish from their colonization days. Martin County even finds it self on several of these publications. Though established in May of 1925 (one of the final four of Florida’s 67 Counties), Martin is still rich in heritage and popular destination for those seeking an attachment to historical lore. For example, on the Florida Jewish Heritage trail you will find the A.O. Kanner Courthouse- today the Martin County Cultural center. The original courthouse of Martin County, the cultural center was named to honor Abraham Kanner whose legal office was on the second floor. The state of Florida lists this location to honor Mr. Kanner as one of the state’s first Hebrew legislators. On the World War Two Heritage trail publication you can find two locations- Gilbert’s bar House of Refuge and Camp Murphy. The House of Refuge was a prominent U.S. Life Saving Service (now Coast Guard) location in WWII and Camp Murphy (now Jonathan Dickenson State Park) was a prominent Army Radar training facility during the war.

Another prominent heritage site is the Martin County Golf Course. Placed on the Florida Golf Heritage trail in 2017, the Martin County golf course still held 7 of its original 9 holes from its 1925 development by William Langford. Unfortunately, that is no longer true. Less than three years later, Martin County Parks and Recreation began extensive redevelopment of the county owned golf course. A top shelf hitting bay, high end restaurant and revitalized grounds were all on tap and would eventually be completed (and only 80% over budget!). In the process of revitalizing the grounds, 5 of the 7 historic holes were removed, and the remaining two were altered to better create the illusion of new and improved.

As is par for the course (plenty of putt- I mean pun- intended), our rush to create legacies for county commissioners and staff has required demolishing a small part of our history. To add insult to injury, that $4 million over run seems to be widely ignored as a simple “oopsie” to add to our growing list of “boo-boo’s” that occasionally happen in life. For perspective, that $4 million is sufficient to finance the ENTIRETY of the FY 2024 ecosystem restoration/management department’s list of major projects for the year. If you’re not a fan of the environment maybe you’d be interested to see the golf course’s over-runs equate to (nearly) the total Golden Gate CRA improvement’s budget for the next 10 years.

In a time when our county is more than $150 million in debt (almost a quarter of which is owed to utilities), it’s odd to think that a golf course is a priority. One would think that the 3rd sink hole on Kanner Highway in 5 years would be a cause for concern, and maybe a bit of investigation- but maybe not. Over the last month, FDOT has announced and then rescinded, their closure of Kanner Highway with not consideration to the disruption to traffic. Where are out commissioners and staff? They are having a private meeting to formulate strategy in their faltering defense of their biased pet shop ordinance. One would assume their time would be better spent addressing a multi-decade Martin County School bus driver’s home being flooded by over development on an undersized water conveyance plan- but again, I guess not.

Ultimately, it’s we the citizens who are to blame for this fiasco. Martin County is in the top 3 counties in Florida for taxes collected per capita, yet we are in debt with hundreds of millions more in infrastructure backlogs. Nevertheless, we re-elect the same old names; we don’t hold staff accountable to major mistakes and we ask for more and more shiny new toys.

The definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over again while expecting different results. I, for one, am ready for a change. The old is not working, so time to get someone new to do the job.