Presidents Message to the Martin County Board of County Commissioners

February 24, 2004

For the Record – I am Dave Shore – President of WAAM

I represent over 5 thousand residents who are members of WAAM. Most work and cannot be here today to speak for themselves, so I am going to ask that you allow me a little extra time to finish what I have to say.
(note - Commission Chairman Doug Smith refused to allow the extra time requested)

What’s wrong with today’s hearing?
The home buyout grant request was originally scheduled to be a consent item with no public input – your attempt to pass this item without public input, shows why we believe the process is a travesty !

Display map

This map of the airport represents where we are headed if you start down the path of buying homes. As you can see by the black boundary, the airport currently consumes a large part of the Stuart area. In fact, the airport is about the same size as the town of Sewall’s Point. The areas off of each runway depicted in red are dead man’s zones. Areas that will most likely be bulldozed for airport expansion. This has been done at West Palm Beach, Ft. Lauderdale and in fact, airports all over the country. Can Martin County expect less?

Mr. Moon working with the FAA would like us to believe that Martin County will be asked to purchase a total of 29 individual homes in select neighborhoods - that is a deception - you are not going to buy 29 homes - you are going to buy whole neighborhoods

Time after time we have been deceived by pro-airport interests in order to expand the airport. Time after time required procedures and regulations have been bypassed or violated in order to facilitate airport expansion, all at a cost to human lives in Martin County.

For example: a required federal environmental assessment was not done prior to the expansion of runway 12/30, the most damaging expansion project to date.

Mr. Moon has stated that at the time the runway was extended, in his opinion there would be little or no impact to the surrounding neighborhoods. In fact, Mr. Moon violated federal regulations by not doing the required environmental assessment.

No impact?

Tell that to the folks who live in neighborhoods and whose lives continue to be destroyed by airport expansion. Thanks to Mr. Moon, some of these people now find themselves 1100 feet from the end of runway  12,  the main jet runway at the airport.

If there was no impact
Why are you being asked today to approve millions of dollars to buy-out and displace people from their homes?

A grant request for 2 million dollars, part of which we are told will eventually be about $8 million dollars. Is a deception.

The $8 million buy-out dollar figure is bogus – designed to open the door to scheduled commercial traffic and continued airport expansion that will take Martin County down a road which will eventually destroy our community.

And then there is the estimated 15 million dollars that will be spent to insulate homes?

Add that to the $8 million dollar buy-out and you have $23 million dollars.
So why don’t we hear the $23 million dollar number?
I’ll tell you why – it would be political suicide for each of you.

But the horrifying truth is that the real number of homes that will be bought are more than 800 – and the projected cost to purchase those 800 homes will cost the taxpayers in excess of $200 million dollars.

And that does not take into account the loss of property taxes to the county for those bulldozed homes and the loss of property values to the remaining homes as the airport expands.

Back to the crisis at hand, the people who are living in danger because of airport expansion -

As a last resort, WAAM supports the buy-out of homes which due to their close proximity to an active runway, have put residents in immediate danger - under the following condition:

* That the county negotiate the conditions of any grant requested from the FAA/FDOT and eliminate all grant restrictions. Money to relocate residents whose homes and lives have been endangered by airport expansion, should not come with strings. Grant assurances can be negotiated. It has been done at other cities, it can be done here. To our knowledge, this county commission has never made an attempt to negotiate grants to protect Martin County residents – a remarkable lack of concern for the public on your part!

If your decision is  buying homes instead of stopping airport growth, you are not going to buy 29 homes - you going to buy whole neighborhoods.

Over $200 million dollars worth.

If staff doubts the numbers heard here today, then we would be delighted to meet with them and produce real factual data to back our claims, not the bogus numbers we have been hearing from Mr. Moon and the FAA.

To have 3 minutes to deal with an issue this complex is a farce. It can’t be done - but we initially weren’t even going to get the 3 minutes - and that was the point wasn’t it commissioners?