How could the federal funding pause affect Monroe County?

Chief Resilience Officer for Monroe County, Rhonda Haag, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on in the county.

With some pauses set for federal funding from the Trump administration, what could that mean for some of the programs in Monroe County?

Haag said, “Well, almost our entire Resilience Program at the county is funded by state and federal grants, just an update on kind of where we stand. So we are definitely on pause for the moment. Like our breakwater repair projects in Rock Harbor and Tavernier, those are $3 million of federal funds. Those are on pause. We have the Harry Harris Park resilient redesign. That’s 200,000 of federal funds, the Watershed Management Plan that’s federally funded a half a million dollars. What that does is we have to renew our community rating system approach, how we have to do it every year. Every five years, we have to update the Watershed Management Plan. That helps us get lower flood premiums. So if we don’t do that plan every five years, our flood insurance rates can go up. We also have some living shorelines in Long Key and Duck Key. They’re very anxious about their breakwater repair, combined with the living shoreline, that’s $3 million there. That’s fully federally funded. We have some water quality sampling. We just hopefully get the grant we were just awarded. We haven’t received the document for $400,000 of water quality monitoring of all the restored canals in the county, so we can better evaluate how well they’re working. Because there’s a billion dollars worth of canal restoration projects, and we always want to evaluate them to see how well they’re doing. Then we have 12 and a half million dollars from the Restore It. That’s federal funds. It goes through the Treasury Department. We’re waiting for that grant to come any day now. That’s on temporary pause. Those are going to do the canal projects in the Avenues. So, very interesting set of resilience projects, all on temporary hold for the moment.”

Do we know how long the hold may last?

Haag said, “I think until February 8. It could be much sooner. I think from what we heard yesterday, the first round, is really more focused on the DEI program. So hopefully none of these projects will be effective, but we don’t know, ultimately. Sometimes in some of these grants, there are those type of conditions, equity and some things like that, so they might not be the focus of the grant, but it might be some terms and conditions in the grant. So we don’t yet know how these are going to be affected. So yes, they’re all on temporary pause. Not only that, then our road projects, we have seven road projects underway for just about $300 million. Well, there’s $175 million there. So we have, for instance, in Flagler Avenue that’s $56 million in federal funds. That’s under design right now, Stillwright Point in Key Largo, that’s $20 million in federal funds. Big Coppitt road elevation project in the Lower Keys, that’s $61 million in federal funds. Winston Waterways in Key Largo is $37 million. So a lot of money in federal money tied up in the county’s Resilience Program.”

When a grant is awarded, does all the money come at once?

Haag said, “The first set of projects I discussed the living shorelines, the smaller ones, the breakwaters and all that, we get the grant documents up front. They don’t give us the money. We have to spend the money then we get reimbursed. It’s never up front money. Now for the roads, it’s a little bit different. They only fund the design up front on these federally funded projects. So all the projects that I mentioned, except for Twin Lakes, and Stillwright, I mean, Twin Lakes is under construction and Stillwright is wrapping up, but all the rest are moving in the design phase. So we hope that they’re at least safe. We don’t know about the long term construction portion that funds have been set aside, but they don’t hand them over to us. We have to follow the guidelines as we go along. It’s a good time to sit back and take a look at what we’re doing and how we operate. Grants, I’ve always said, they should never be the only way we fund our resilience program. It’s certainly an important piece. But you can’t rely on grants alone for, number one, this type of reason and number two, there’s just not going to be enough grants. We’re going to be competing against all of Florida, and on the national level for resilience funds. Those needs compound every year by, I don’t know how much, but by a lot. So it’s just good reason to sit back and take a look and we need to develop alternative sources of funding for our Resilience Program here in the Keys so we can ensure that we can keep our projects moving.”

Has any of the work been put on hold for these projects?

Haag said, “We haven’t been advised yet. We’re waiting for advice from the funding agencies. Now on some of the other ones, like the break waters and the canal restoration projects, even though we haven’t received the grant yet, we have been advised that that’s on temporary pause until the situation resolves itself. So we’re just waiting for some feedback. This is all less than 24 hours old.”

With legislation from the state looking at a potential $500 million in immigration funds, could that affect some resiliency grants?

Haag said, “It’s too early to tell, but that $500 million has to come from somewhere, and it doesn’t come out of thin air. So that’s when you have to pull from other projects that are not deemed as important, or not the priority that the immigration deal is. Now when Hurricane Irma struck back in 2017, the state focused on recovering after the hurricane, and so a lot of our local project funds were pulled that year. We didn’t get any of the $20 to $25 million that we normally get for water quality improvements and canal restoration was pulled entirely. So those things happen along the way, when other priorities emerge, then sometimes your local get pulled and get redirected. I’m anxious. We’re waiting. We applied four or five months ago for that water quality funds, and we haven’t heard yet. So we’re sitting here waiting. We did hear that our Stillwright road elevation project came in number seven on the grant list, and normally that would mean it was going to get funded. We haven’t received formal notice of award, but we’re anticipating notice of award for that. So that would mean the Stillwright Point project would be hopefully fully funded, because we have the state funds lined up and already have half the federal funding. Now you understand where we are at that point. We’re wrapping up design here in the next couple of months, so we’d be ready move forward with construction. We’ll see. These are transportation projects, typically they don’t get messed with as much as some of the other type of projects. So we’re very hopeful. But we follow the laws and we follow our guidance from our federal and state partners and our legal office and everybody else, and just move forward as we can, but we’re doing an analysis in the county. Keep your fingers crossed.”