Monroe County Commissioner Holly Raschein joined Good Morning Keys on Keys Talk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on in the county.
There are celebrations happening all over the Keys for the Fourth of July and America’s 250th.
Raschein said, “We are not without an opportunity to celebrate our beautiful country. Thank you to Mr. Richard Strickland. He’s our airports director. He always makes sure that that’s a priority to apply for grant funding to cover all these wonderful celebrations up and down the Keys. And we’re so blessed to have the opportunity, and we’re not talking about chintz firework displays, we’re talking about good 15, 20 minute displays out on the water. I mean, it’s so gorgeous, and I can’t wait. We’re going to be working at Founders Park. There’s obviously going to be food trucks and all kinds of fun things to do, and then, it culminates with the beautiful fireworks. So I’m fired up, and I’m ready to walk in the parade. I think this is my 23rd parade that I’ve had the honor of walking in. I’m super excited, and it’s going to be a warm one.”
The state budget has been approved, but the line-item vetoing has hit home. The governor vetoed a request for an infrastructure project at the College of the Florida Keys.
Raschein said, “I believe this is a large air conditioning unit, because the college, obviously the original building down there on Stock Island is starting to age, and obviously, it’s infrastructure and a pretty important piece of equipment. We don’t want our students and our professors and staff sitting in the sweltering heat, especially on these really super hot days. I know it strains the system. So, it was definitely a good request. It is a state college, so it’s definitely under the state’s purview to fund that project. I know Dr. Gueverra has been working so hard. He’s constantly up in Tallahassee, fighting for our college, as we all know, he eats, drinks, and sleeps, breathes that school, and we’ve seen so many wonderful things happen. Enrollment has risen. He opened up the new campus up in Key Largo. He’s changed the name. Actually, I helped him do that, because we became a bigger college and offering four year degrees, so a lot going on, and I know that through his leadership we’re going to be able to make this happen, and I’m just really, really grateful for the efforts of Representative Mooney and Senator Ana Maria Rodriguez. They fought hard for us this year, and unfortunately the governor, I’m not really sure, I’m not the governor. If I were, I would have gone out with less of a strong veto pen. I would have liked to have gone out and say, you know what? I’ve done such a good job for our state, and this is my last time signing the budget, you all fought hard for this, and here you go, but that’s not the route that he chose. It’s unfortunate. I believe the children’s shelter even had their funding vetoed, which, that was surprising to me, because they’re the one stop shop for our children, that may be having issues at home, or don’t have a home, and they take babies to 18 years, they’re our only go-to, and so those were two unfortunate items, but I know that we were successful in other areas, but you come back next year, and you fight even harder.”
The Stewardship funds made it through.
Raschein said, “We’re very grateful for that. We use those funds from Key Largo to Key West, and the county has with all the municipalities and the aqueduct and the Key Largo Wastewater Treatment District to come up with a formula on how to distribute those funds, and I compare it to how DOT has their work plan. Every five, ten years they have their project list, and they know the exact amount of funding that they need, and that’s what they go to Tallahassee and ask for. But we don’t have that for the Stewardship Act currently. We did in the past. We’re now working on that to make sure that we have a plan going forward and obviously going to be working on those funds year after year.”
The governor also vetoed $91.5 million to increase correctional officer salaries.
Raschein said, “Obviously being a corrections officer, that is a pretty hard job, and you see North Florida, it’s like land of state prisons up there, they have not received a raise in many, many years, and the secretary to the Department of Corrections, and I know that that is something that the legislature has been trying to give some attention to, and they definitely did this year, so very confusing. Those dollars really helped recruit more officers, I know that retaining these correction officers is very difficult. It’s hard work. There’s not AC all the time in these prisons. It’s not the most wonderful job in the world, but it’s very necessary. Again, not sure where his head’s at.”
Where does the property tax reduction issue stand?
Raschein said the governor made “a comment a couple days ago that he’s not going to be campaigning for the passage of the property tax amendment measure that’s going to be on the ballot, and again, very surprising, because he really leaned in on that this past year. You saw the Florida House passed a bill, it was very pretty similar, not super similar, but it’s similar enough to what the governor wanted. The Senate didn’t do anything during the regular session, obviously, the governor brought them back, held the budget kind of dangling over their heads, and said, you pass this, I’m not signing the budget until you do. That happened, and then you see now that the governor has signed a budget with his vetoes that we mentioned before, but very interesting move on his behalf, and his reasoning behind it is he said it’s not his plan. So I was like, okay, so what do we do now? Do we encourage voters not to vote it up, not to support it, and then we come back next session, because I know several of the gubernatorial candidates that are kind of moving along the campaign trail have supported tax reform, absolutely and what about that important thing called property insurance? There’s so many different things that we can be doing to save those precious taxpayer dollars, so it’ll be interesting to see the energy there if he’s not going to push it, who is?”
How will the county be affected overall if the property tax gets reduced?
Raschein said, “We did an initial analysis. I think the first year in 2028 we’d be down 13 million, and then that’s at the 150 level, and then when it rises the next year to 250, we’d be looking at, I can’t remember, it’s either 27 or $29 million hit to the budget. So, remember, once we fund the sheriff and once we fund the constitutional officers, we don’t really have that many dollars left. So, definitely scratching my head right now, and trying to figure out what that looks like, but I think we’re in a pretty decent position this year, going into our budget period. We’re obviously looking at vacant positions, eliminating those, as many as we can, but we’re being thoughtful about it, because we don’t want to eliminate too many positions, because then that will slow down our own processes, so we still want our functions to be happening. So I think we’re in a good spot. We’ve asked everybody to go through the exercise of eliminating 10% and we’ll see. I believe on the 15th, we’re going to see our initial budget presentation. I know our team has been working very diligently and trying to, as we did last year, go through everything with a fine tooth comb. And really focusing on reserves, and we’ve got to talk about emergency response, he FEMA change, and lots of different factors going into this when we compute the budget, so a lot of competing things, and everything is important in its own right. So, it’s figuring out what really is important.”
As we celebrate the holiday, safety is important.
Raschein said, “I wish you and your listeners and our entire Keys family and community a happy birthday, happy 250th birthday to the USA, to America. So super excited for the weekend.”