A welcome compromise on St. Lucie road money

The only thing needed was a way to save face, and Port St. Lucie Mayor Bob Minsky finally found it: Let the apportionment of Metropolitan Planning Organization members stand, but move staff out of St. Lucie County offices, so they won't seem to be under the thumb of county government.

The simple solution, which Mayor Minsky said made him "feel 10 years younger," was a long time in coming. But it is welcome, because it ends the stalemate holding up distribution of state and federal highway money to both the city and county. Port St. Lucie has whined for months about plans to expand the MPO's board by two members, to 12, by adding another Port St. Lucie City Council member and a St. Lucie County School Board member. The MPO now includes four (of five) St. Lucie County commissioners, three (of five) Port St. Lucie and two (of five) Fort Pierce council members and a representative of Community Transit, a public transit system the Council on Aging of St. Lucie County operates.

Earlier, Port St. Lucie objected to adding a school board member and wanted the city to have at least half of the road planning group's seats because half of the county's population lives in Port St. Lucie. The county always countered that it represented the city as well, rather than just unincorporated areas. A Florida Department of Transportation spokesman agrees with the city that the county represents only unincorporated areas. Then Port St. Lucie began pushing to move the MPO staff away from county offices.

The road to settlement has been long -- almost two years -- and rocky. In a recent skirmish, Fort Pierce City Commissioner R. Duke Nelson moved to deny Mayor Minsky chairmanship of the MPO because Mayor Minsky threatened to secede. Before that, Port St. Lucie City Manager Don Cooper recommended that city council members withdraw from the MPO until the group agreed to give the city what it considered a fair share of MPO-directed money.

The board decides how tens of millions of dollars in federal money should be spent. Fort Pierce and St. Lucie County were worried that the money could be lost if Port St. Lucie boycotted the group. Given Port St. Lucie's projected growth, this is more truce than solution. For now, though, the compromise ends a threat. The MPO should be able to do what it is supposed to do: Develop the best plan for roads in St. Lucie County, and get them built.