Michelle Lincoln, Monroe County Commissioner, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on in the county.
RL Colina was sworn in as the new fire chief for Monroe County this week.
Lincoln said, “It’s always an exciting moment to watch the incoming fire chief get sworn in and pinned, and his beautiful wife, Stephanie was there, and she did the pinning and for me, personally, I love when we have somebody who came up from the ranks, who’s been with us, been with our county, so we did not have to do a search out and bring a stranger in. We had someone right there who’s been working in our county for several years, who knows the fire department, who knows our community, who knows the challenges of living in the Florida Keys. So it was very exciting. A lot of his staff were there to watch and to celebrate and then I think what was really nice about it, he stayed for the meeting, listening in on some of the topics that were important to him. But then Congressman Carlos Gimenez joined us. He dropped in around 11 o’clock in the morning just to surprise us and say hello. Congressman Gimenez used to be a fire chief in Miami Dade. In fact, when he was speaking, he said that he has the distinction of being the only fire chief to ever then become a Congressman in the history of our United States. So it was cute, because RL Colina was still there, and so they got to get their picture taken together and that was a very nice moment.”
Transportation was also discussed at the recent commission meeting.
Lincoln said, “When we’re out in the community, it’s always the three things of importance, it’s workforce housing, it is transportation, and it is our environment. I think we had a lot of topics yesterday’s meeting that discussed transportation and the ease of traffic up and down the Keys, and when you combine that with workforce housing, you have a win/win with the Conch Connect program, which was a way for us to achieve the goal of first and last mile and to achieve the goal of getting cars off the road and to lessen the stress on parking that is always a problem in Key West. What we found, the research, the handout that Richard was able to provide us, showed that we’ve blown the charts on what we expected for our first year. We’ve had over 35,000 passengers who have used Conch Connect, which does have a minimal charge of $2 and that there was 92% satisfaction rate of those people who’ve used it. It was split 50/50 between males and females. The number that I really liked the most was 84.6% of the people who use Conch Connect were local, meaning we weren’t taking away from the tourist and from Uber and from any other taxi service that provides a service. We were truly meeting our goal of helping our residents get from work to their home, maybe from their home to the grocery store. In Stock Island, they don’t have grocery stores there yet, so it’s been providing a service that we really wanted to provide for our workforce. So very excited about that. We’re going to try to see what we can do to increase the amount of rides that are shared. There was only 5,860 shared rides. So we’re going to try to work on improving that statistic, but the commissioners all agreed that this program is working. We have the option of renewing it for two more years with our partnership with the Florida Department of Transportation and we all gave it a thumbs up.”
Where is Conch Connect going to in the future?
Lincoln said, “Richard was describing that in each community, just like each one of our Keys are a little unique, Conch Connect will be a little unique in each community. For example, when it comes to when we get it in the Big Pine area, it is actually going to go from a person’s home and get them to the bus station, because, as you know, in Big Pine, we have, miles long roads, and to get somebody from there to US 1 highway will be serving a huge purpose. I would imagine those then would increase the shared ride capacity, and that is what the goal will be for the Big Pine area. When you move into Marathon, it might look like something different. We also looked at our next spot we might want to expand. It will be the Key Largo area where we are also building a lot of workforce housing units. Again, it would be a way to get the workforce from where they are living to where they work. Then we also entertained the idea of taking over the Islamorada Freebee program. That is exactly where Freebee started, was in Islamorada, and they have come to us and asked if we would like to be their partner and/or take over their Freebee Conch, and we would change it then to Conch Connections. So we are working on a memorandum of understanding to see if we can’t do that and when we would, and their ridership is even a little bit different, because their peak riding times is more of afternoon, evening, dinner time, and their percentage of shared rides is much larger than what it is in the Stock Island area. So again, a different community. But again, we want to serve the needs of all of our communities and help make transportation up and down the highway smoother and less congested.”
The comprehensive plan was also a topic of discussion.
Lincoln said, “The way our comprehensive plan is currently written, it states that all bridges and through lanes will be maintained with only two lanes and we’re now looking at our at our population and the time it takes us to travel and our bridges, and as our bridges are aging, and as they’re getting lined up to be in the phase of PD&E with the Florida Department of Transportation, now is when we would want to say FDOT, would you like to research this and tell us, if we spend all the money to make a bridge and it’s two lanes, what would there be a benefit to making it four lanes? We wanted them to do this study and to let us know so that we have more information to make a decision. Well, the Florida Department of Transportation came back and said they will not do the study and evaluation if our comp plan still states you can only have two lanes. So they want us to change our comp plan before they would then do the study, and then the study would show if four laning the bridge would help with hurricane evacuation. Would it help with the everyday flow of the traffic? We also discussed, if we’re going to do that, would we also want them to look at four laning, all of the rest of parts of US 1 highway where it would make sense, because they also did say just doing the bridges probably won’t solve your problems. They do know that we want them to put in the through lane wherever they can, and turning lanes wherever they can, to help ease traffic on US 1 highway. But we had a long discussion about it, and we realized that some of these bridges now have been pushed out on when they’re even going to start their PD&E studies and plans and development, and some of these bridges aren’t even going to start construction for another 10 years, and some of the road improvements would not even happen for another 15 years. And it’s like, why would we handcuff the next generation by just keeping it to two lanes if a study would show that there are areas where it might benefit us to go to four? So, long story short, we agreed to have the comprehensive plan changes go into effect. So we’re going to start that process. There’ll be a community meeting, a development meeting, hearings. This isn’t a decision we just made, and it’s final, we’re starting the process of opening up our comprehensive plan and adding the ability to go to four lanes, if that is the desire of the Florida Department of Transportation, of our community and of the commissioners. Whenever that decision would be made.”
There will also be meetings in Tallahassee with legislators coming up.
Lincoln said, “Congressman Gimenez was so essential for the Upper Keys with the Twin Lakes and Stillwright Point neighborhoods with their ongoing flooding, and Congressman Gimenez has been one of those who does ask for earmarks and has actually got a lot of money into our Upper Keys for those road improvement infrastructure projects that we would not have gotten if it weren’t for him. We get funding from the state of Florida, but those are always matches. We got $20 million from the state of Florida, but we needed another $20 million, and Congressman Gimenez was able to get those infrastructure funds to us. So one of the questions we had for him yesterday is in light of President Trump’s slashing of federal spending, are we in jeopardy? And I don’t think our funds are in jeopardy. I feel like the conversation we had with him was more of some of those went to entitlements or to outside government agencies, and this was him as a Congressman asking for these funds, which is different, but definitely when I’m in Washington, DC at the end of this month and March, 1, 2 and 3, that’s going to be one of the topics that I’ll be discussing to make sure that those funds are secure and that our FKQWIP funding that we use for wastewater treatment is also secure.”
The Tourist Development Council has also seen some changes and a Tourism Advocacy Workshop is scheduled for next Tuesday at the Tennessee Williams Theater at 5 p.m.
Lincoln said, “We are a tourist driven economy, and we always have to remember that, and our residents sometimes feel slighted in the fact that a lot of the tours that come in might be more than what they want and this is a great opportunity for our residents to come in and to state what they would like out of the tourism industry. I think it’s an opportunity for all of us to strengthen our collaboration with the Tourist Development Council. We as a county, part of the funding that they bring in from tourist bed tax we get to ask for capital improvement projects that a tourist might enjoy, but so do our residents, for example, our beaches and our parks and to improve the playground equipment on one of our parks, instead of us using ad valorem taxes, if we could ask the Tourist Development Council for funding to get new playground equipment, we could put in that request. So this is a way for our community to maybe, at this meeting, let us know better ways we can utilize those funds that, again, it has to fall under the Florida State statute of what we are allowed to use with the money, but to hear from our community on how they would like a better partnership with our tourism that as they live here with us on the same island chain.”
The Key West International Airport is continuing to set all kinds of records.
Lincoln said, “We are so fortunate to have Richard Strickland with us as our executive director of the airport. He is the director, not only of Key West International, but also of Marathon. He’s had the vision that our county has needed on how to improve the quality of our airports, and he has a marvelous team that work with him, and they’re doing amazing things, and this was quite an honor for him to be named the FAA southern region airport manager of the year. Very, very nice honor for Richard. Congratulations to him. We also recognize and pinned Cheryl Sullivan for her 10 years service with Monroe County as our director of waste management. We have gone through a lot this year with rolling out our new garbage cans and what we’re doing with recycling and reusing, and it’s just been an exciting department for her to be the director of and she does a fabulous job, and she, too has wonderful staff that that help her achieve the goals and vision she has for our county. So congratulations to Cheryl as well.”