Voting Records Do Count in Indiantown
Who’s to blame for Indiantown’s higher taxes?
Indiantown residents remember all too clearly the mantra of incorporation: “We can do this without raising taxes.” That was 2017.
Now, seven years later, the tax rate will jump from 1.604 to 1.825 in October, with a forecast it will rise at least a little — if not a lot — each year going forward. Still, it’s just a fraction of other municipalities in and around Martin County.
Those who voted against Indiantown incorporation, though, are saying, “See, I told you so!”; however, higher taxes were NOT inevitable.
They are the direct result of actions by the FIRST Indiantown Village Council, of which only Councilwoman Janet Hernandez remains. All the rest have been booted off by voters or have resigned.
Hernandez is now running for re-election, but trying hard not to be held accountable for her previous record. “I was just 20 percent of the vote,” she’s fond of saying often. “I am just one of five council members.”
Hernandez’s past actions as a council member speak louder as to what voters can expect in the future than her attempt now to distance herself from them.
Hernandez voted:
— YES to hiring Howard W. Brown Jr. as village manager the first day she met him, taking his word his resume was accurate. It wasn’t.
— YES to increasing Brown’s annual salary by $30,000 and retirement benefits after only three months’ of employment.
— YES to giving herself and other council members retirement benefits, voting to make the payments retroactive to their first meeting nearly a year earlier.
— YES to dismantling the citizen committee charged with crafting the village’s Comprehensive Growth Management Plan, the village’s most important document next to the village charter itself. Her action opened the door to Brown’s backroom deals with shady developers
— YES to giving Brown the power to hire more than 20 employees, none of whom lived in Indiantown, a dozen or so consultants without vetting, and creating new village departments to take over all government functions the council had already contracted with Martin County and other agencies.
— YES to growing a large government bureaucracy, instead of limiting government operations — but not its authority — as incorporation intended. Her vote forever altered the course of Indiantown as a rural village.
— NO to the newly formed Indiantown Community Youth Athletics Association in 2019 when they asked for council support, and again in 2022 when funds were being distributed from the Indiantown trust. The largest trust fund award since incorporation, $8,000, went to the application by Holy Cross Catholic Church submitted to the committee by Hernandez.
— YES to discarding the council’s original strategic plan calling for purchase of the decrepit water utility after four years to ensure the village could afford repairs. Hernandez insisted in 2019 the overpriced plant should be purchased immediately, ignoring the engineers’ estimated $29 million in repairs. “We don’t need to meet Martin County’s standards,” Hernandez said, and defended Brown’s unvetted consultant — whom Hernandez called “an expert’s expert” — saying that only $9-$12 million was needed to renovate the utility. Today’s estimate is more than $60 million. (He had been fired for mismanagement by the City of Ocala after 10 years as their utilities director.)
— YES to ending the village’s contract with Martin County to maintain its roads and improve drainage, although County Commissioner Harold Jenkins implored the village council NOT to take that action. “Now is NOT the time to take over roads,” he told them during a 2019 council meeting, explaining that roads are a “hugely expensive undertaking” and that Farm Road and much of Booker Park were in the county’s CIP (Capital Improvement Plan) to spend $6 million over five years. The village took over the roads anyway, and now Hernandez complains at nearly every meeting to Utilities & Public Works Director Pat Nolan about potholes and repairing roads. She wanted Nolan to hire more people. “If I hired 10 more people, it wouldn’t make a difference,” he said, “because we don’t have the equipment.” And Indiantown does not yet have the means to purchase it.
— YES to moving out of the Martin County Government Complex on Warfield Blvd., where they had NO lease to pay in order to lease the former INPHI building on Osceola Street for more than $3,500 a month.
— YES to spending $1.45 million to purchase above-appraised-value land on Warfield Blvd. to build a new village hall.
— YES to designing a new village hall on Warfield by the same architect who designed Holy Cross Catholic Church, perhaps because Hernandez and other council members would have their own private offices. The estimated cost to build was $14-$18 million, while little was allocated for the water utility or roads.
— NO to the state Department of Environmental Protection’s requirements to qualify for the $11.2 million loan/grant already awarded to Indiantown three months ago for the water plant by increasing the village’s water and wastewater revenues through higher rates. The rates were supposed to have been raised by around 3 percent a year after the water utility’s purchase to cover the annual rise in costs. That did not happen. Hernandez was not daunted by voting NO to the possibility of ever receiving a DEP grant again for the water plant.
— YES to giving raises each year to Village Manager Brown after her near-perfect performance evaluations, except the last year when she voted YES to pay $13,000 for one course at Harvard University. No one knows if expenses also were paid by the village, because of missing financial records.
— YES to every single request Brown made of the village council. By contrast, the only council member ever to give Brown a low evaluation score or a NO vote was Susan Gibbs Thomas, who resigned effective Oct. 31 in order to run for county commission.
— NO to accepting the application of former-County Administrator Taryn Kryzda in January 2023, retired from the county after 30 years of service and one of the most highly regarded city managers in the state. The list of Kryzda’s accomplishments in Indiantown is long, but when she discovered that 18 months of financial records had disappeared and expensive software to bring transparency to the village’s financial transactions had never been installed, she was appalled. Kryzda also was incredulous that not raising the tax rate seemed to be set in stone. It was the only point that the village council seemed to remember from the promise of incorporation — even after it was hurting the village profoundly.
Hernandez’s free-wheeling spending decisions clearly demonstrated the validity of the incorporation’s original promises. Plenty of tax money would come into the village to support government operations IF Hernandez had stuck to the “government-lite” plan.
Hernandez also exemplifies the polarization and racial divisiveness first instigated by Brown. She has falsely claimed to her fellow Catholic parishioners that only she can represent Indiantown’s Hispanic population, ignoring the fact that another daughter of Guatemalan immigrants, Angelina Perez, now serves as a councilwoman on the village council.
Indiantown’s budget for the 2024-2025 tax year and new tax rate will be discussed at the village council meeting Thursday, August 22, at 6:30 p.m. in the Indiantown Village Hall. The public may weigh in regarding their priorities.
By then, the Indiantown Village Council election will be over, but Hernandez will still hold that seat. It’s anyone’s guess how she will vote.
— Barbara Clowdus
