Can John Dial Stop Sarah Heard?
The news spread like a whirlwind through Port Salerno in April. A businessman, environmentalist, and marine industry advocate, John Dial, signed up to challenge 24-year incumbent Sarah Heard for her District 4 Martin County Commission seat.
Defeating the commission chair means thwarting Heard’s plans for turning historic Salerno into an Abacoa-like development.
And that’s not just election hype. The development plans, soundly rejected by the Port Salerno Neighborhood Advisory Committee more than once, already exist.
They were slipped into a county commission-approved Business Development Board plan by Heard and county staff called, “The Innovation Hub.”
They are near-identical copies of the development plans presented by Colombian developer Corey Crowley to the Salerno Neighborhood Advisory Committee as an “updated” plan for the Port Salerno Community Redevelopment Area (CRA). The BDB touts the Innovation Hub plans as fulfillment of the Port Salerno Community Development Area vision plan. They are not, when examined.
Heard, who attends NAC meetings only with Crowley, if she attends at all, presented a portion of Crowley’s plan to the BOCC in January 2023 as her own ideas — her own priorities — which included maps that were identical to Crowley’s hand-drawn maps he had presented to the Port Salerno NAC.
Dial would need to act quickly if elected, because the Innovation Hub plans will not need to go through the normal development application process. They simply will be fulfilled as projects of Martin County’s Public Works Department and the Metropolitan Planning Organization, a process that already has begun.
Previously a Heard supporter, Dial was unaware of the Innovation Hub and the struggle that both the Port Salerno Commercial Fishing Authority and the Port Salerno NAC had with Heard’s heavy-handed treatment of this historic fishing village and its working waterfront, one of the few remaining in the state.
The Dial difference is that he respects and learns from his constituents. He gets in the trenches and listens to more than one point of view. Dial is now a formidable opponent of Heard’s.
His affinity toward Port Salerno’s fishing community clashes with Heard’s disdain for them. Her goal of ending the county’s lease of the waterfront to commercial fishers was dashed by former Commissioner Doug Smith, who engineered a long-term lease between the county and the Port Salerno Commercial Fishing Authority just prior to leaving office two years ago.
That move stopped Heard’s relentless push to get the working waterfront off Park Street in Salerno. She was successful, however, at ending their plans for a fresh-fish market, classroom, museum, and much-needed parking on DeSoto and Park streets by returning to the state a $2 million Stan Mayfield Working Waterfront grant from Florida Forever more than a decade ago.
Over area residents’ objections, Heard also finagled the building of the upland facility for the Manatee Pocket Mooring Field on a .65 acre of county property on the waterfront, Manatee Park, by making it a public works project. Heard met secretly with only the residents of Park Street to select the building’s design, calling it a “public meeting” to fulfill the terms of the grant needed to build it.
The other involved residents of Salerno were in the Port Salerno Community Center for a NAC meeting at the exact same time, and only heard about Heard’s “public meeting” the following day.
Heard dismisses the idea of Salerno ever having ownership of that portion of the waterfront, but the record shows otherwise.
Documented by former Martin County Building Director Michael Sinkey during the May 7, 1996, county commission meeting, we know that Benjamin W. Mulford deeded the land to then-incorporated Town of Salerno on August 31, 1922, to preserve Salerno’s fishing industry along Manatee Bay. It was part of Palm Beach County then, not Martin County.
The deed was recorded in Palm Beach County’s Deed Book 134, page 192. Mulford also deeded land to townspeople for their community center, their fire station, and their post office; however, the deed book mysteriously disappeared after the Town of Salerno was absorbed by Martin County in 1935.
Nonetheless, a new plan for Manatee Park was created by CapTech Engineering at the county commission’s direction more than 20 years ago. After former-Commissioner Elmira Gainey lost her seat on the commission, however, the plan was never completed. The neglected park became the site of the mooring field’s office and upland facility.
Heard’s unrestrained distaste for Salerno fishermen’s hold on the waterfront is displayed during the first agenda item of the March 10 county commission meeting. The board approved an agreement with the Port Salerno Commercial Fishing Authority to use one of four restrooms in the new upland facility on the land once dedicated to preserving their fishing heritage.
Heard favored reserving the entire facility for use only by the boaters renting space in the mooring field. After other commissioners disagreed with her demand to have names and addresses of any fisherman or dock worker using the one restroom reserved for them, she voted “no” to having any keys distributed to the Dock Authority.
“We don’t require names and addresses at any other of our public restrooms,” said County Commissioner Ed Ciampi, “why should this one be treated any differently?”
Can anything speak more loudly about Heard’s disdain for working fishermen—for the working class generally—than wanting to deny restroom access?
Should Heard return to her District 4 commission seat, Port Salerno can expect to see a quick transformation, all to fulfill her “legacy.” Others will simply call Port Salerno a mini-Abacoa.