2018 Annual Meeting Beach & Parks Report – Charlene Adair

I am Charlene Adair, your Beach & Parks Chair. I also serve on the Keep Fort Pierce Beautiful Advisory Board and the Parks Committee. I coordinate approximately 50 volunteers to keep 9 parks and about 4 miles of beach clean and maintained – a lofty goal for sure! Our volunteers showed they are up to the challenge by working 2077 hours in 2017!  This is a 207-hour increase from 2016, and represents 1 full time employee for the City. Thank you, to all volunteers who work so hard to keep our beaches and parks beautiful.

We continue to need help during the off-season months when many of our volunteers are unavailable.  If you are interested in becoming a volunteer, please see me after the meeting or call me – there are flyers on the table. This is great job for those of you who enjoy the outdoors, and every hour is appreciated.

I would like to thank our Fort Pierce Public Works Department for your tremendous support. You have responded to numerous suggestions for improvement as well as reports of needed maintenance. They cheerfully provide 100% of our support with shirts, picker uppers, gloves, bags, and any other supplies we request. I would like to thank Mike Reals, Public Works Director, and Paul Bertram, Parks & Grounds Manager and our liaison, and others for the work that you do.

Our BlueTube program, spearheaded by the City and the Keep Fort Pierce Beautiful Advisory Board, has been extremely successful – the difference they are making is noticable.  We now have 26 BlueTubes in our parks and need sponsors for 2 more plus the Surfside Private Beach to have full coverage in South Beach. We are now working to expand to the west side of the Indian River from Harbor Point to the fishing pier and along Taylor Creek. These BlueTubes hold clean used bags for anyone to grab when going to the beach in order to pick up trash. You can then toss the bag in any trash can and bring more bags the next time you visit the beach. Some of our volunteers have sponsored BlueTubes, and many help keep them full of bags. This is a wonderful way to get all of you involved in our effort even if you can’t be a regular volunteer.

The Parks Committee will present their findings on whether there should be a dog-friendly beach within the City of Fort Pierce to the Commission Conference Agenda on March 12th at 9:00 A.M. Our next issue to be addressed is golf carts, which is state regulated.

Please also plan to attend the Great American Cleanup sponsored by the Keep Fort Pierce Beautiful Advisory Board on April 14th. One of the projects will be South Causeway Park.

Thank you very much for this opportunity to serve our community.