Jim Scholl, mayor of Monroe County, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s been going on in the county.
With everyone keeping a close eye on Tropical Storm Erin, Monroe County is prepared for any emergency.
Scholl confirmed, “We are. Corey is doing a great job, and we had an exercise a few weeks ago up at the EOC in Marathon and fully manned Emergency Operations Center with all the different disciplines, planning, operations, logistics, all those things. The team got together, and that went very well, but the Florida Recovery Obligation Calculation, the FROC initiative is through the Florida Department of Emergency Management, and that’s going to streamline the process for public assistance funding to have the funds available sooner than the normal FEMA reimbursement process that we’ve done over the last couple of decades. Corey and his team, one of three in the entire state to max out on the score to be eligible for this accelerated reimbursement process. So again, just a testament to the professionalism of the Emergency Operations Management Organization that we have here in the Florida Keys. I was talking to Josh up there, one of the senior planners for the emergency management team and they constantly are being sought out as the, no kidding, technical experts on everything hurricane preparation and recovery related by the entire state and the country. So we’re certainly known for having a great organization to be able to deal with not only hurricanes, but any potential disaster. So my hats off to the whole team.”
We are also seeing some progress with workforce housing.
Scholl said, “The year before this last session, the legislature gave us $35 million for of TDC surplus dollars, and dedicated it for workforce housing, for private tourism industry employees and all of those dollars have now been allocated, and we have developers that have plans in the works to build those units. So that was a great success for workforce housing down here. We’ve got some other workforce housing projects in the works. Building permits are being requested, and there’s several of those items that will be on the agenda for next Wednesday’s county commission meeting. So we are making progress and the units down here in Key West, down at Truman Waterfront, the lofts are all almost completed. So I know AH Monroe is the property manager for that property, and they have been working through the applications, and I know have assigned the residences to individuals who are qualified. So that project is coming online, and that’s going to be a big help to the community in Key West for workforce housing.”
The Stewardship dollars also came through again this year.
Scholl said, “We’ve tried with the legislature to try to get that a permanent part of the budget, but we still are fortunate enough that every year that appropriation goes through. That was actually in the governor’s budget right up front that was submitted to the legislature, so that’s $20 million a year that we get down here to try to help maintain the environment down here and it goes a long way to helping us maintain the environment, which, of course, is essential to our economy down here. So Holly did a great job with that, and we certainly benefit tremendously from those annual funds.”
What does the budget look like?
Scholl said, “We had direction from the state, every lower level government, counties and municipalities had direction from the state for trimming budgets and trying to make sure that we weren’t using taxpayer dollars for non essential services and not the core functions that each level of government is responsible for. Health, safety and welfare are the three big legs of what governments are supposed to do and do what individuals can’t do for themselves. So police departments, fire departments, ambulance service, those are the big ones. Then on the welfare side that mostly is green space and recreation and those types of things for a healthy community. So we have to balance all of that, and certain things aren’t core functions, and we’re looking at reducing funding for those things. A lot of those are some of the nonprofits that we all have been supporting privately, as well as with some public funds. But those things from the state direction aren’t considered as core functions of government. So we’re getting a lot of input from our community with regard to those issues and our initial budget was to reduce the funding by 50% across the board for the services that are supported through the Human Services Advisory Board, and some of the organizations already had their budgets established and had planned on getting those revenues. We’re still looking at that, and we have the two budget hearings coming up. We had the budget workshop a few weeks ago, but the hearings will be the 3rd and the 10th of September, one in Key Largo, one in Key West, and that last hearing on the 10th will be when the budget is finally adopted. There’s still work going on and we’ll see what adjustments can be made. In addition to that, the whole FEMA issue is big, we think we’re not going to have a major impact this year, as far as the thresholds for a federal disaster and being eligible for reimbursement and on the public assistance side, which is what the FEMA reimbursement process is for government entities, I still think they’re going to remove some of the categories. Category A and B, the recovery funds that we use for cleanup is in that, and then also the preparation funds, but but some of the categories, like Parks and Recreation facilities will probably not be funded to renovate those or repair those, like we had down here at Higgs Beach, at the park, things like that. So in order to compensate for the potential for lack of funds being available, we need to increase our operating reserve fund. So we have a proposal to increase that by $4 million this year, sort of similar to what the state did. They put $750 million of extra funds in the state reserve, and looking to match that next year to get up to $1.5 billion, because disaster recovery is expensive, and you don’t want to have to borrow money to do that, because that even gets more expensive. So we’re trying to make sure that our reserves will be sufficient to be able to respond to a hurricane or any other issue that would require a disaster response.”
Have the funding cuts been decided from the Human Services Advisory Board?
Scholl said, “Those cuts were all in the preliminary guidance and it was 50% and we have to see how time plays out between now and the budget hearings. We still didn’t have the final numbers on revenue projections and certain other expense adjustments, so there’s still some room. But again those things are being scrutinized by the state, and, of course, the state’s being scrutinized by the federal government to try to make sure that taxpayers’ money is being used in the most effective and frugal manner. So we’re still using the fine tooth comb on the entire budget. So we’ll meet, we’ll have the discussions with the County Administrator and the finance department, and then we’ll make our final inputs in the budget hearings.”
The removal of the yellow submarine off Boot Key was a big deal recently.
Scholl said, “I know the individual who owned it bought it for, like, $10,000. Somebody was trying to build it for, I think, tourist purposes. Sold it, and then the owner never was able to make it into an excursion type vessel for tourism. So it became derelict and that was an expensive effort to remove that, but hats off to our Marine Resources director. She has done a fantastic job, not only taken over but streamlining the processes working with the legislature the last couple of years to get less stringent regulations for some of these derelict vessels that are harming the environment. So we’ve got a record year going with a couple hundred vessels removed, and really an amazing job. But that was the most difficult one so far. I think it was $175,000 for that removal of the submarine, but it’s no longer creating any kind of hazard to the environment, and that’s the whole purpose of doing these things.”