Craig Cates, Monroe County Commissioner and Mayor Emeritus of the City of Key West, joined Good Morning Keys on Keys Talk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s been happening in the county.
The budget was finalized recently. How did it end up?
Cates said, “It was a difficult year for the budget because of the oversight that we were getting from Tallahassee and with DOGE and with the list of concerns that they have, which weren’t really clear, so we’re not sure how they’re going to go, but a big one was helping on funding non profits, or funding organizations that are in competition with the private sector, efficiency, they didn’t really define efficiency. But who’s going to make that decision whether you are efficient or not, is makes it difficult to plan for so we definitely took it very serious, and 45 positions we eliminated, over half of them were unfilled positions that we weren’t able to fill. But the other one, some of them, we had to cut people’s jobs, which was very painful and but it had to be done because we had to downsize the government for sure.”
The budget has $43.6 million less than last year in spending. It is one of the lowest county wide millage rates in the state at 2.629 and the Human Services Advisory Board was still able to maintain about $1.1 million in funding.
Cates said, “I supported, given another 25% to them just this year, but set it aside in case Tallahassee was not going to allow us to do it. We didn’t fund them until after the Rules became a little clearer after the first of the year, but if we could fund them, but it wasn’t enough support there to move forward with that, which is, understandable. The majority voted not to do that. So we were going to put another $2 million in reserves, but we voted to not do that and lower the tax millage rate, not to collect that 2 million. So we’re very conservative with the budget which we should be, and I’m very supportive of that. I was just trying to give a little bit more money to the nonprofits this year if we could, because they lost some funding from Tallahassee. That was very painful for them also. So our nonprofits, as you well know, are very important in the Keys, and they do so much for us. So I believe more efficient than a lot of times government can do it for, so I support them, but that didn’t work out and we’ll see what happens through the year.”
It seems like this year has seen more oversight and a lot of statewide mandates and expectations than ever before.
Cates agreed, “The uncertainty is what the difficult part about it, as a legislature, the governor, the Senate, they were all arguing this year, and couldn’t agree on a lot of the issues. Then we had the ROGOs, and we went through that difficulty this year, and finally settled on the 880 or 900 for 10 years. That was very difficult, and that had a lot of people in the Keys upset with each other and their legislators. So that being said, it was a very difficult year, hopefully this next year will be a little easier and a little more certainty to what their decisions are, so we can plan accordingly.”
Has there been any update on what could happen with FEMA?
Cates said, “One of the big concerns was coming out of Washington, there’s that word uncertainty, again, we’re not sure what they’re going to do. Talk about downsizing FEMA, and the scariest part for us was that they would take the threshold for a disaster before that FEMA would fund it and raise it for the whole state, which is like $47 million I believe it is for disaster, maybe raise it three to four times that, before it meets the threshold to fund the rebuilding and all the different things that FEMA funds for us, which is very, very important, but we could get hit so hard in the Keys and never meet that threshold and not get any help and the state would have, we hope they would step in and help us with it, but there’s no guarantee on that also when their funding gets cut, because they get reimbursed from FEMA for a lot of the funding that they do. So that was what was very scary for us. We were trying to be conservative there, have money reserves for that in case something like that does happen. There’s a lot of things that have to go wrong to get to that point, I say, but it’s possible, and it’s our responsibility to be prepared for that.”
There still is talk on the state level of cutting property taxes statewide, maybe even eliminating them.
Cates said, “Our services that we provide are so important to our residents and our businesses and first responders, we fund all that with property tax and 90% of the property tax that we collect goes to the constitutional officers and the sheriff’s department and first responders. Only 10% is used for the budget for the county, what we fund and all the services we provide. So many people depend on that. The school board depends on that to fund the schools, so eliminating it would be, to me, impossible, but just any type of cut in the amount that we’re allowed to collect will make a huge impact on all of these different government agencies. So we’re very nervous about it with the uncertainty of where it’s going to go, but we are expecting some type of cut coming. What the percentage is we don’t know.”
A recent vote at a commission meeting decided not to amend the county’s comprehensive plan, which would have allowed more lanes on US 1.
Cates said, “Being involved with so many of these discussions and being in the Keys for five generations, I’ve seen so many other changes, and heard from my parents and grandparents about how it was, and we’ve seen the impact that has been has made. We know progress has to move forward, but we have to control it to some point. Everybody can’t come here. Everybody can’t live here and we have to come with that balance of our economy, our residents and our quality of life and protecting the environment. I believe that more people want more roads to allow more people to come, because they’ll say, and you build it, they will come. And that’s so true, because we’re such a wonderful destination, paradise. People want to come and live here or vacation here, they will come. So we have to restrict it in a way that doesn’t hurt the economy or the residents, but also slows that growth down. So I always support that, and I try to balance that. That’s what I was hearing from the residents.”
The airport has been expanded and renovated and that’s been a big help.
Cates said, “Absolutely and Richard Strickland, that’s been heading that up, the director of the airport for us, and all his staff and the contractors, did an amazing job out there. I just flew out of there yesterday, I’m up in Tampa, with my grandkids and my daughter for a few days. It’s so much better, although, I liked the old character of the small airport, but for our progress that we want to take cars off the road, it’s much better. We were rated for 500,000 passengers a year and now with a new facility, we expect to be rated for 1.2 million passengers a year. So it’s a huge increase, much safer and much more comfortable for our visitors and our residents that fly in and out of the Keys.”
Affordable housing is also an ongoing issue and will be helped by the $35 million from the Tourist Development Council.
Cates said, “We’re very happy with that. That took legislative change to make that possible, and we get support for that all through the state. The Florida Lodging and Restaurant Association supported it, which was very important for the legislative change, but that 35 million, we’ve had most of it allocated now to some nice projects, some public/private partnerships with some of the money, working with the housing authority in Key West to fund some of the units that they have permitting to build, but they didn’t have all the funds to do it. So we funded 10 million of that, which was 20 units which will be designated just for people in the tourist industry to be able to live in the affordable housing. So some great projects, and also we’re moving forward, we’re trying to help other developers with affordable housing projects, but we also have to understand that the impact that some developments will make in some neighborhoods, they’re just not right for certain neighborhoods, and we have to try to balance that, would not force them on the residents and protect their quality of life.”