Emily Schemper, Senior Director of Planning and Environmental Resources for Monroe County, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about the environment.
Landscaping with Keys native plants was a recent topic of discussion.
Schemper said, “I know a lot of people think of our department has really mostly been about regulation, what are you allowed to do? What are you not allowed to do? But we really do try to promote sustainability as well through our regulations. So our environmental resources team, that’s part of our department has been working on a guide regarding landscaping with Keys natives. Our special projects administrator has had the greatest hand in this, she really has done an incredible job, she produced all this in house and had a lot of help from our land steward as well. They put together a guide for property owners on selecting native plants for your own personal landscaping needs. It’s really great. I myself am not a biologist. So this is the perfect level of detail for me. It gives you the background and the advantages of these plants and the benefits for the environment, but also the advantages to the property owners. Things like native plants that don’t require as much irrigation, they don’t require as much pesticide and fertilizer, because they’re all adapted to the conditions here in the Keys. As you can imagine, a plant living in the key is not an easy place to live for a variety of reasons.”
The guide is in print in some libraries and some county offices have it as well. It’s also available online.
Schemper said, “It has a table called the Quick Glance table, and it gives you this matrix of all categories of information that you might wonder about these native plants. Is it a canopy tree? Is it an understory tree, is it a shrub? Where is it native to? Upper Keys, Lower Keys, both? Because you’d be surprised there are actually some plants that really are only native to the Lower Keys or only native to the Upper Keys. It also gives you its special status. Is it endangered? Is it regionally important? Is it salt tolerant? And this is the level of detail is it salt tolerant for water? Is it salt tolerant for wind? Because it’s different depending on the plant. How much light does it need? Is it suitable for screening? Does it have a showy flower or fruit season and when is that season? Is it a butterfly plant? So some of these plants are used by the butterflies for nectar. Some of them are actually host plants where the larvae feed on the tree before they go through their metamorphosis. So it gives you the summary chart and then you turn through and it’s a beautiful book, Julie did such a good job. Then you go through and for each plant there’s a half page description with photos. It tells you about the species it gives you its common name, its scientific name. It’s not as much detail as like a plant identification book, but I’m sure for the general homeowner you would also end up using it for that. You may wonder what is this tree in my backyard? If you flip through this book, you might be able to figure it out. Incredible the number of native plants as well. I’m impressed and I’ve been here for 12 years and I didn’t even realize there were so many. I mean there’s six pages of this table listing native plants.”
There will be a community meeting taking place later today and a Harry Harris Park redesign meeting happening today at 5:30.
Schemper said, “I believe so. The Harry Harris meeting is run by Rhonda Haig. Because that is a grant that they got for a resilient study, I believe, and I hope I don’t misspeak. But it’s a public meeting to talk about the conceptual design options for Harry Harris Park, to make it a more resilient park. There was damage after Irma, for example, after Hurricane Irma. How could you redesign the park to minimize damage, but not just build a six foot concrete seawall all the way around it? So there’s a level of resilience that you can put in with other things like living shorelines, etc. So they’re going to go through some of those concept meetings. The other committee meeting tonight is the planning department. It’s a request for a tier amendment on Cudjoe. It is about six parcels kind of in the middle of Cudjoe, on the ocean side, on the south side of US 1. They are holding that meeting at the Harvey Government Center, I believe, yes, in the BOCC room at five o’clock. So that request is a tier amendment from Tier 3A, which is a specific category that was to protect large, intact areas of hammock habitat when the tier system was set up. They’re requesting for it to be changed to simply tier three, which is a less environmentally sensitive category. This is the initial community meeting for the applicant to go over what they’re proposing and to get some initial public input from the community on their thoughts. There will be a staff member there to take notes on that and answer simple questions. But there’s not an official staff recommendation or anything yet on that.”
There will be a BOCC meeting on April 17.
Schemper said, “I did just want to mention two items to make sure people know and to clear up any possible confusion. One, of course, will be our continued discussion about ROGO, the rate of growth ordinance. We’ve said that at every BOCC meeting we will try to offer an opportunity for at the very least public input but also staff updates on that. So staff will be given a staff update. That is item J4. We also have item J2. This is a new type of item for our board because I don’t think we’ve had one yet. It is officially called an impact meeting. It is regarding the Cemex Publix proposal in Tavernier. This is a meeting that is required by our code if somebody proposes a text amendment to our comprehensive plan that would have a countywide impact. This project has like countywide impact because it is requesting some of our early evacuation ROGO units, which are otherwise reserved for liability throughout the Keys, up and down the whole Keys. So if they’re moved to this property that does have a specific county wide impact because they’re not in that pool anymore. It is required to be in Marathon. That’s one of the things I wanted to make sure people understood. It’s not in Marathon to pull it away from the site. Most of the other meetings will be in Key Largo but it’s actually required by the code to be held in Marathon because it is specifically about the county wide impact of the proposal. So that is item J2 also on April 17.”