Monroe County Administrator Christine Hurley joined Good Morning Keys on Keys Talk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on in the county.
Higgs Beach is now in the hands of the city of Key West.
Hurley said, “I’m super proud of this. It has been talked about for probably 10 to 15 years, to my knowledge, and probably longer than that. The event was beautiful and local. That’s what I loved about it. There were some locals there, and I got to talk to some of them, and they reminisced about what they used to do at that park as a child and with their families. And it truly moved me. I’m running the business side of things and working on the agreements and how to fund and transfer money so that the initiatives the county started can continue with the city. And the interlocal agreement we passed, of course, was complex. A lot of paperwork. The deed will be recorded today, and we had to make sure it aligned with all the tenant leases and operating leases, but to see the locals be excited that they will be able to contribute to what goes there now and help make those decisions on how to improve the park and maybe bring back some of the traditional things they lost was really exciting. And also I liked seeing the relationship between our commission and the Key West Commission. It was very, very nice. So I’m excited for Key West, because they’re now in control of it, the operating, and then our county staff will no longer have to even go into Key West and operationally for us, that is a really big deal, because it was the only thing that brought our parks department into that island. And so now we can turn our focus on some other new things we’ve been working on, and not ready to reveal that yet, but maybe in the next couple months we’re going to have something exciting. So that was great.”
The state has signed and approved a number of mandates for the county budget.
Hurley said, “They passed a bill that will become law. It will be effective for not the budget we’re currently working on, which is fiscal year ‘27 but for fiscal year ‘28 but frankly, the requirements within the bill are very complicated, and so basically, what the bill has done is, number one, everything has to be put online now in a very transparent way. We put a lot of our budget online already, but all the way down to publishing every employee’s salary on the web. So we are working on software and things that will help us be able to do that. The next thing, this is the hardest part of it, is they are asking, or they are telling us, we must show our board and hold a workshop so it’s going to be a presentation to the public and demonstrate legally obligated, mandated programs versus the rest of the services or programs we provide. In other words, each department now has to and they know these things, but they’ve never had to put it into financial form. They have to know what programs are mandated by the federal government, the state government, and then our local government, link the cost of those programs to those mandates, then the balance of their budget will go into a different category. That is really what we’re calling, kind of quality of life programs. So unfortunately, and this is always the case, it seems, over the past couple years, the quality of life programs are what the public love most, right? Libraries, parks and recreation. You’re not mandated to have those services like you’re mandated to have a fire rescue or you’re mandated to have a dog catcher. So dividing the budget into that scenario is what we’re working on now. It’s the beginning of our budget, and even though we’re not required to do it this year, it’s so complex and we want our board to really see what it means before we have to use it officially. So we’re going to go ahead and start that this year. Now also every year we have to show what’s called a 10% reduction analysis. So the board does not have to cut 10% because I was even thinking of this, if that was a law over 10 years, we’d disappear. But we have to show the board, literally 10% cuts of our entire budget. So we’ve got some legal questions. All the constitutionals except the tax collector are included in our budget. And some of the questions we have is, does that mean the constitutionals have to be part of that exercise? We fund them, but the bill is silent, so we’re going to be also working with Florida Association of Counties and other associations, Department of Revenue, to try to make sure we understand all the bills’ impacts. But it’s rough because it feels like every year now we’re reinventing ourselves, which is not a bad thing. It’s always great to double check yourselves, right? But it’s hard, and that’s where we’re at.”
Will the quality of life programs possibly be cut from the budget?
Hurley said, “I think it’ll draw visibility to that, and we cannot legally cut mandated programs. So what we don’t know yet, because we’re working on it is, if you add it all up into those columns I explained, would the discretionary programs or the quality of life even equal 10%? If it doesn’t, then we have to look at maybe like our locally mandated programs, things our board has adopted in law, but that would then take policy changes to undo programs that they value very highly. So it’s going to be a tough analysis, but our staff is prepared. They’re very professional, and I just try to keep emphasizing to them, and I hope their employees hear this message, it’s an analysis. It doesn’t mean the board has to cut that 10%, so when the paperwork is revealed, it can really affect morale and I hate that. I hate that people will see the program they work for, that the community loves on a potential cut list. And that is the hardest part of all of this.”
Nonprofit funding has also been changed a bit.
Hurley said, “I know it’s scary and everybody’s worried, but after working with the Health Department closely on all this, the medical side of HSAB, I think is going to work better, because the health department, we learned throughout this process, was also supplementing some of the same nonprofits we were and this will let people with medical experience that know the services within the community that are missing work on making a holistic approach in the medical arena. The other thing we’re going to do, and this is the harder part, I think, is our Community Services Department is going to and I’m using this term, it’s not a real term, but I’m calling it that, evaluate the special needs organizations that are not truly medical but believe it or not, our health department publishes a plan that indicates the types of services needed that are not purely medical. So we’re really working hand in hand with the health department, and hope that what we come up with to show to the board, I’m going to guess it’s going to be around June, if we can get it all done, both health department and community services are going to be reaching out to each organization, meeting with them in person, to try to develop what we present to the board in June.”