By: Lisa Broadt, Treasure Coast Newspapers
HOBE SOUND — Voters in August will help make a historic decision: whether the southern Martin County community known as Hobe Sound should become the incorporated town of Hobe Sound.
The proposed 9.5-square-mile town would include 15,400 residents and would rival Stuart as the most-populous municipality in Martin County, according to U.S. Census data.
And yet, the decision to incorporate likely would have little immediate impact on residents' day-to-day lives, according to a plan proposed by the pro-incorporation group Protecting Hobe Sound Inc.
That's because Hobe Sound intends to adopt "government lite," a governing system that outsources most services.
It's a system that would allow an incorporated Hobe Sound to function as an "innovative, lean and progressive" municipal government, according to Joseph Mazurkiewicz Jr., president of BJM Consulting Inc., who wrote an incorporation feasibility study for Hobe Sound…