lighthouse; that is a reflection of one of two things, either visitors going down or community
support going down; that is obviously not very good; and also not mentioned by Mr. Cranis, this
did not meet the minimum threshold to make it to the Board, they had to vote it, it did not make
the seventy-five points, so there had to be that special vote to get it to the Board. He continued
by saying what else was not mentioned was this was in the State Budget, and the Governor
line-item vetoed that, so the Governor’s Office said this probably was not a worthy project; he
spent some time with the economic impact study and it is important to understand the
economic impact study is given by the lighthouse, so these are the best numbers that one is
ever going to get because it states in there that all the numbers of attendance were provided by
the lighthouse; putting that with what was said at the meeting, Becky Zingarelli said that these
two lighthouse cottages would add 25 minutes of time to visitors; and he finds that very difficult
to justify, when attendance is going down, that it would create an extra 1,460 room nights. He
added he does not know how an extra 25 minutes at the lighthouse is going to translate into
1,460 room nights; assuming that is correct, even though he does not think that is correct,
1,460 room nights for an expenditure of $775,000 does not make any sense compared to any
of the other capital projects this Board has had; Commissioner Goodson had asked what was
different between this and the police, there are substantial differences; he had as many
problems with the economic impact study of the Police Hall of Fame, but at least they showed
they would create tens of thousands of room nights, and this was 1,460, less than one-tenth;
and on top of that, the Police Hall of Fame was getting dollars from the outside, and as was
heard here, 100 percent of this second phase funding would be coming from the TDC and a
bulk of the first phase, so the County would be funding somewhere in the neighborhood of
75-percent of this total project. He stated he does not think that is the wisest economic
decision; there are other ones; looking at attendance, by their own report, attendance is by
people above the age of 60; looking at the young folks, it is fair to predict that attendance is
going down and has continued to go down; if there really was support for this, the Board would
see some sort of buy-in from the community, some sort of grant, or the Governor’s Office say
this is a worthy project and be willing to support some of this; but there is not one good reason
that he can justify voting in support of this. He went on to say on top of the Capital Facilities
Budget which sits at about $1.8 million, this would decimate it down to less than $1 million
moving forward; he does not think that is fair to the future Commission to spend almost half of it
on a project that at best case scenario, for an extra 25 minutes is going to create 1,460 room
nights; those are the numbers; he understands the feeling is great and why they did not talk
about the numbers because they just are not sparkling and not worthy of this $775,000; it may
be fair to offer them the opportunity to respond to some of those numbers but they are right out
of the economic impact study that they supported; and he appreciates the Board's time and he
understands it is in Commissioner Goodson’s District, and that is why he had spent so much
time looking over it and not only listening to what the TDC had to say, but going over the
economic impact study.
Chair Steele stated he voted no at the TDC in regards to this particular issue, and he was very
candid with the fact that he did not like the limited access and other things; basically, he stated
that no matter what the EDC said he was not voting for this today, but today he is eating his
words; once he got into it with many of the people who were involved at the Space Center and
because of all the things that happened at the lighthouse, he found out how to get access, and
he started digging into the potential for something that he thinks is probably one of the most
important things in Brevard County’s history and in the United States history, is the launches
and the people that went to the lighthouses; it took a long time before coming to this decision
this morning; he had talked to a lot of people and the normal protocol is that if the
Commissioner from the District wants it they normally know what is best for the District; and he
knows that Commissioner Goodson would really like to have this project done. He mentioned
not only that, but he thinks it is in the best interest of the County; he gets a chance to travel and
he sees a lot of people with NASA hats on and the first thing they want to do is go to the Space
Center; once he started finding out what was going to be taught and told in regards to the story
