Allison Higgins, resiliency coordinator with the city of Key West, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about going green.
A green fee campaign is being proposed.
Higgins said, “The city has a history of incentivizing green buildings. Actually, the city is mandated by the state of Florida that if we build something, we have to build it at least to a certification of green building that’s either LEED or Florida green building. This is a third party group that comes up with a list of check marks that you need to do in order to qualify your house as green. So what’s really interesting here in the state of Florida is our energy code is pretty strong, just in the Florida building code. So you’re actually really close to a bronze level for one of these certifications. But we’re really trying to get people to kind of gold and platinum, because that’s where you’re seeing 30, 40% savings on your energy bills and your water bills.”
One program is aligned with the BPAS program.
Higgins said, “The state has only allotted us X number of residential building permits to put out there. So it’s a competition. Every local government here in the Keys has their allotted amount, and they have to come up with a way to dole these out in a fair manner. So for us, our BPAS, the prerequisite was, you at least had to build to a bronze level of either LEED or Florida green building program, but then you got extra points if you went higher, or you did other things to your house. So we’ve got a history of doing this. But the one thing is, we actually didn’t have any teeth for this. There were people who pledged that they were going to do it, and because of that, got extra points and got a permit above somebody else, but they might not have actually done the job. So we are looking for a stronger incentive. At least 15 years ago, many other Florida local governments had looked at different ways to incentivize, so it might be, hey, if you build to this level, you can have some variance on your setback or your green space, or your parking. So a lot of these are kind of on the variance level.”
There are four that took it in a new direction.
Higgins said, “I believe it was Jupiter First, and they still had big areas that hadn’t been built, and they were really afraid of the McMansions. They said, okay, if you’re going to build something like this, they said, all building that’s more than 10,000 square feet, you guys have to build to gold. To make sure that you do, we’re going to take a 5% fee off the top when you pay for your permit, for the valuation of the job, and if you achieve that, we will give you your money back. That motivates people more. They’ve been doing that for 15 years now. Then along came Boynton Beach, and they did it incredibly differently. They said we only want just the big stuff. And they said, we’re going to put a fee on every single permit, but that fee is going to be point .05% so a 1,000th of a percent, but they take it across everybody. There is no have to build to gold, but they have a bunch of rebates for all sorts of little things that you might do. So if you do an energy project, you do a water project, you can get a little rebate and you can get some of that those funds back. Miami Beach did it. They also did 5%. The city of Miami did it, and they’re also at 5% but they also both of those were for only of a certain giant size. We don’t get anywhere close to those sizes down here. So we kind of did a hybrid between Boynton and these other ones, and said, okay, we are going to look at a fee for all permits. But when we looked at the permits that were out there, about 75%, 80% of them are for jobs that are valued less than $25,000. This is something that broke, right? This is something you’re trying to fix. This isn’t somebody coming in and be like, this is my fourth house, and I would like to re-do everything. This is you’re just trying to get something fixed. So we said, you know what? Everything that’s $25,000 or less, it’s only going to be half a percent. So when we did the math on that, it meant that the average was, like 40 bucks they got tacked on to your permit. That’s livable, but that from $25,000 up, that was going to be 2%. We thought 5% was way too high. There have been studies out there that says the average cost per building to one of these green certification levels, that between silver and gold, silver cost about an extra 1.9% more than the cost of building a code, and that gold was 2.3 the cost of building that level. So we said, let’s pick two and if you come in after doing this big job, and you can show that you got to any level, if you get to gold or platinum, you get 100% of your money back of that fee. If you get to silver, I think you get 75% back, and if you get bronze, it’s 50%. So you get something back. Let’s say you shot for a higher level, but you decided at the last minute, you didn’t want to do this one thing, but you hit a lower level, you still get something back.”
It’s the percentage of the permit fees that’s getting tacked on, right?
Higgins said, “Permit fees are about the valuation of the job. So if you’re doing a small job, it ends up being a small fee. But if you’re doing a very big job, then the fee would be larger. So that’s 2% of whatever that valuation of the job is. The other key thing, when we shop this around to commission about a year ago at budget, and we said, what you guys think? And they said, well, we like what you did with the 25,000 levels, but can we do something else that’s more equitable for our working families? We said, okay, let’s do this. If the property is 100% affordable or homesteaded, no fee whatsoever. The thing that we’re really kind of trying to target here is the folks that come in for their third home, throw out everything that’s there and just do whatever they want to do. That money that’s flowing, they’re the ones that will probably not think about the efficiencies of things. Technology is at a state today where your comfort level isn’t any different from putting in a smarter technology. It still keeps it to the temperature you want, it just does it more efficiently. So, we put in those caveats.”
How can someone get the fees back?
Higgins said, “To get your fees back, when you get your certification, you’ve got to come in. You’ve got six months from when you get your certificate of occupancy. If you’re having a hard time, but you’re still close, and you show us that you have contracted someone and you’re working on it, we’ll give you another six months. You’ve got a year to get that money back. But we also wanted to say, for those of you that are kind of just doing a little bit here and a little bit there, we’re not going to keep you to that one year, because it’s probably going to take you longer to get there. So you can take a one time, any time, and if you come in with any level of certification, we’re going to give you a $4,000 rebate back and just say hey, you did it. You took the marathon approach to get there. Here’s some funds back. So we tried to help everybody. Because if you’re paying in, you pay in at the $25,000 level, the half a percent, you haven’t put in that much money into the system, but we still want to reward you for doing that work, because you still put money into your property. The other key thing here is, what they found in other areas is that still with these rules, half of the people didn’t take that incentive. So they built it the way they wanted to. They didn’t get the certification. When that happens after that six months time level, they have reneged that money to the city.”
Green Drinks happens the third Tuesday of the month at 5:30 p.m.
Higgins said, “There’s about a half an hour of just mixing. The speaker starts at 6, and I’m done by 6:30 and then there’s a half hour of mixing questions.”
It will be at Sidebar in Key West and Higgins will be the speaker.
She said, “I’m pretty excited. We’ve been working on this for a while. It’s a big, complicated, new thing. So we’re trying to make sure that we’re double checking for any unintended consequences. I presented at the contractors quarterly meeting just last week. We’re actually pulling some stakeholders together in the days following the Green Drinks. The intent is we go to Planning Board in August. There are still tweaks to be made.”