Jim Scholl, mayor of Monroe County, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s been going on in the county.
With all the recent meetings in Tallahassee, how successful have the conversations been?
Scholl said, “It’s always good to be able to go up there during the session and meet with our legislators and a lot of the staffs. We met with the governor’s chief of staff. We met with the Department of Commerce, which is very much involved in our ROGO proposal. Of course, met with Representative Mooney and just so many of the legislators and their staffs, and then the department heads and their staff so, so and we show up in force, and our legislative director does a great job with our lobbyists that we work with up there, and getting everything prepared and getting the schedule set and just long days of going around the Capitol and trying to advocate for our issues down here. Of course the ROGO issue is at the top of the list, and so lots of discussions there, and trying to make sure everybody understands the necessity of going through that and making that request.”
With the two opposing bills from Senator Rodriguez and Representative Mooney, could there be a compromise?
Scholl said, “It’s still in the term up there, and I think we make progress every day, late yesterday, the feedback we got was that there’s an option to look at increments of maybe 10 years, and as our proposal said up to 40 years, up to 26 hours, up to 3,500 ROGOs. So it looks like things are getting closer together between the three legislative bills that are out there, two in the Senate, one in the House, but we’re trying to get it all refined down to an agreement so that there would be one Senate bill and one House bill and they would be identical. That’s the ideal situation to have that legislation go through and it is getting closer. So I’m optimistic that it will resolve itself into something that we can all live with.”
The wildfires in Miami Dade County are 30% contained.
Scholl said, “The Miami Dade Fire Rescue Department, they’re the ones that are doing the lion’s share of the work up there and trying to get this fire contained. They did bring in some aviation assets, helicopters with buckets on them, trying to not only extinguish the fire, but also put fire retardant down to prevent the spread of the fire, but it’s certainly a huge task to try to do. There’s very limited access to that actual property and with the winds that have been blowing, it’s really made it a challenge for the responders to get in there and actually get that fire contained and extinguished. So, it’s probably going to continue for a while, but depending on the wind and the visibility and the potential for the fire to get to the roads, it might close the road some more, but everybody just needs to be patient and be safe and hopefully you’re somewhere where you can spend the night and not have to sleep in your car.”
The Florida Association of Counties met recently in Tallahassee.
Scholl said, “Monroe County and our elected officials were part of the Small County Coalition, so the smaller counties get together collectively to try to look at our common issues. One of the big things that that came up is term limits. That’s been proposed by one of the legislators up there, and she’s very adamant about wanting to continue to pursue this, tried it last year. It failed. This year, her proposal is to have it be on a statewide ballot and have the entire state vote on having term limits for the elected officials, the county commissioners, and also school board commissioners, but the small counties certainly oppose it. In fact, we were in that committee, the most recent committee hearing on that particular bill, and many of the legislators got up and spoke, and a whole another group wrote in on the public input that we oppose that legislation, and in fact, there was not one person at that hearing in the audience that got up and spoke in favor of it. It was all in opposition. The item, though, did pass in that committee to move forward, although it was not unanimous. So that’s an issue and the big concern there is that the highest population counties have the majority of the voters, and they can control that outcome for the entire state, and the small counties really don’t have enough voters to prevent the larger counties from making the decision for all of us.”
The home rule versus preemption was also discussed.
Scholl said, “A lot of times the state will push things through with preemptions. The one that’s affected the entire state that we hear about from everybody is the short term rentals, the vacation rental issue. The entire state was preempted from having local regulations. If you didn’t already have short term rental ordinance regulations, you couldn’t create any and if you did have regulations, you couldn’t modify them, or they would be extinguished. So very difficult to maintain what was traditional workforce housing when there’s an opportunity for the property owners to convert long term rentals into short term vacation rentals. So that’s one of the biggest examples of the preemptions.”
Scholl attended the Florida Defense Support Commission as well.
He said, “We do that quarterly, where we meet in person, but we go through issues that affect the communities around military installations, and we try to support them, whether it’s encroachment issues around military instrumentations by buying property or working with communities to make sure that they can control that. Then we talked about the installations and the resources on the bases. We get updates from around the state, on all the installations, and I provide the input for Naval Air Station Key West and the installations down here, but the whole purpose of this commission is to support the communities around the military installations and making sure that the resources in the community are there to enhance the mission capabilities of the installation and the state has funding that goes through the support commission to, for example, try to improve roads that will prevent traffic jams around the installations, and we also support the schools that are on the military installations and spouses and their ability to have licenses if they transfer, say you have a dental hygienist coming from Virginia to Florida. Well, Florida has a cooperative licensing issue where those folks can come here and start work right away and not have to go through the process of getting a state license. It’s like reciprocity and school teachers and any other professional licensed folks for the military spouses to be able to come down here and have employment without being delayed. So lots of issues that have gone through the commission that help support the military members and their families.”
The Blue Angels and NAS air show coming up next weekend should be amazing.
Scholl said, “Saturday and Sunday out at Naval Air Station, Key West the Boca Chica field open to the public. It’s free. It’s a great opportunity, not only to see the Blue Angels, but many other aircraft doing performance demonstrations, and then lots of static display airplanes park so you can go look at the nation’s finest military aircraft and civilians too. It’s always fun, and I’ve been to a lot of air shows and I never miss one. Everybody’s invited and it’s always a great event.”