Monroe County Commissioner Holly Merrill Raschein joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on in the county.
The Stewardship funds are in the state budget again this year.
Raschein said, “Those dollars are safe. They’ve actually been in both sides of the budget throughout the entire process. So I’m grateful for that. I’m grateful for Representative Mooney and Senator Rodriguez. They’ve been championing that effort and it’s continued to stay in there and I think that speaks to the importance of that funding. So I’m very excited about that.”
It’s 20 million dollars from the state.
Raschein said, “That funding from the Stewardship Act is for water quality mostly, and also land acquisition, because that’s an equally important component of environmental stewardship, just like the access, but canal restoration, storm water improvements. I mean, there’s a whole host of things that we can use those funds for, that really lead to a better quality for not only our water, but our residents and our overall environment.”
Is the state still considering disbanding the TDC?
Raschein said, “I believe that that issue has been taken off the table. So the 35 million, that was separate, that was a one time bite at the apple that we went after last year in excess funds that we had left over from the major influx of tourism we had during the pandemic. But there was another issue that everybody was panicking about. But I really said the Senate will be the savior on that. And that was, of course, one bill sought to eliminate the tourist development tax, and that would plug the hole that changing the rate of sales tax that we collect, they were going to plug the hole with tourist development taxes, but that is off the table. I don’t really even see any tweaks coming out of that. So I think all of our tourism related businesses can breathe a sigh of relief.”
It’s also budget time locally.
Raschein said, “Counties and cities across the state are formulating their own budgets, and so knowing what’s coming out of Tallahassee is obviously pretty important, a pretty critical part, because we’ve actually done to our credit and our finance director, our own, I guess, if you want to call it DOGE exercise, we’ve really asked our department heads to dig deep, eliminate anything that’s superfluous, or unnecessary to conduct our business, and make sure that we’re still providing a high level of service to our residents and our tourists, but it is kind of hard to do that, but I think we’ve got an excellent foundation that we’ve started. We’ve pulled the numbers. Christine Hurley, our amazing administrator, she’s kind of got a few scenarios that she’s lined out. If the legislature does this, you can move forward like this. If they do this, we move forward. There’s always the option of doing nothing, but that’s a hard one to swallow, but I think we’re in a good spot. We are going to feel some tightening of our own belts. I think that’s important, and it’s actually one of the most important things we do is build that budget. So we want to be smart about it. We want to know what are the real numbers? And you’ll see that kicking off this month, actually, we’ll start having budget hearings.”
The Publix project in Tavernier did receive Planning Commission approval, which will include workforce housing units as well as a new Publix in the Upper Keys.
Raschein said, “It’s been a long process. It’s gone through many iterations, and the last part was the final Planning Commission meeting, and the Planning Commission, the last time they met, they really took a deep dive into the site plan of both the housing and the new Publix. Obviously, it’s kind of a combo there. It’s a big project. It’s going to provide 86 units of workforce housing and I think this is workforce housing done at its best. We are focusing purely on residents that live and work here, and we’re also prioritizing essential workers. So you’ve got teachers and health care workers, first responders. We want to see the folks that work in the judiciary have a spot. We hear about our state attorney or other legal departments are having a hard time housing even newer attorneys that typically would make a higher wage, but they come down here. They want to live and work here, but the cost of living and housing is just so so high. It’s numero uno, I think, in the state. So this is a project that I obviously have supported all along the way. I still support it. I praise the planning commission, because, again, going back to the site plan that was a part of the development agreement, we wanted to see exactly what was going to be in the footprint of that. It’s a massive piece of property that’s just kind of been sitting there. It’s an old cement plant, and now that’s going to be turned into something useful. I’m excited for a Publix. I’m a big fan of the store, but I’m a bigger fan of how we’re doing this right. We’re focusing on folks that that we need to make this community work and run smoothly. So again, hats off to the Planning Commission. They wanted to see some more green space. Make it more friendly for families. More barriers in between the actual store and the housing, so there’s a separation there. They also made a tweak to the traffic pattern that is the folks’ number one concern. I think it improves it. It makes a good project even better, greater.”
Are there any updates on Stillwright Point?
Raschein said, “Another situation that’s extremely difficult to tackle or to come up with a solution that works for everybody, I don’t think that that’s possible. So we’ve been wrestling as a county for many, many years with flooding. We can debate whether it’s from the ocean, whether it’s from the ground, whether it’s from rain. We have it all. Stillwright Point is a larger neighborhood, it was built on, basically, filled mangroves. From its beginning, very low lying area, and as we’ve seen, the waters change and so on so forth. There’s a good amount of flooding and now that it’s rainy season, we’re even seeing it more these days. The Stillwright Point project is part of our overall resiliency plan. And these last couple of months, we’ve learned a lot as a community with regard to fees and assessments that would be necessary to make these projects work and make them whole. Well, as with anything, costs have gone up. The scope of some of these projects is massive. We’re talking about putting in pump systems and drainage systems and the operations and maintenance and obviously the initial capital cost of even building the project is astronomical. You see a fantastic success over in Twin Lakes. That’s our model project. We were able to kick and scream and get that started and get that funded, and that will be complete here pretty soon. But to the Stillwright Point projects and all the other ones around the community, we are going to be having a, I guess it would be a public meeting or a town hall meeting coming up in the middle of this month. We’ll talk about that. We’re going to hear from the residents. Do they want to go through that whole shebang, the big, complicated, expensive project? Do they want us just to throw some asphalt down and raise the road three, six, seven inches, whatever it is, do they want us to do nothing?”
A threshold was discussed at the last commission meeting.
Raschein said, “If 50% of the residents plus one wanted to go this way, well then that’s a pretty clear direction to move in. But I think the bigger question is, and something that we’ll be discussing in September, I believe, is what are we going to do? Are we going to I don’t want to say, scrap our plan, but are we going to have to look at it again, how we move forward? Really get into the community, specifically, ask them, if you want to pay an assessment, if there’s enough of you that are willing to do that, then we can, but we’re going to have to have help with that. We’re going to have to have skin in the game from the residents. I don’t have a crystal ball, but looking forward, I think you’re going to see some of these grants that we rely so heavily on to pay for these projects, they may dry up. They may not dry up forever, but the pause button may be hit here for a substantial amount of time, and we just can’t fund that on the backs of our taxpayers. So I think it’ll be really interesting come September. Obviously, we’ve got to tackle Stillwright Point because folks want to know what’s happening. There’s a bit of even for me confusion and questions, and I don’t have the answer. I don’t know if anybody has the answer, but we definitely need to figure out something and how to move forward.”
Are there federal or state mandates or regulations that we have to abide by?
Raschein said, “There’s water quality standards that we have to meet and the water that’s coming off these roads and neighborhoods may not be the cleanest and the best considering what’s surrounding them, Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, mangroves, things like that. But I don’t know that there’s mandates to put in these massive projects, but what we do face is a lot of bureaucracy to get these projects started. We have to have tons of agencies sign off, so South Florida Water Management District, the Army Corps of Engineers, Department of Environmental Protection at the state level, and obviously our own permitting system. But that’s a massive workload for our staff. It’s extremely painstaking and can be quite complicated and take a long, long time. So Mayor Scholl actually came up with a fantastic plan for our team to reach out to these agencies and say, how could we move forward and not have to maybe go through this cumbersome process? By no means are we trying to diminish the quality of our water or our neighborhoods, or making sure that we’re going back to being good stewards of our environment. We don’t want to shirk that. But what can we do to provide some relief to this massive flooding, and not necessarily have to go through these big projects and big exercises. So I’m interested to see where, where we head. It is complicated, and folks sometimes just need a little reminder that we do live on islands, flooding is an issue. People who live in Key West deal with it every day. That’s a historic part of our community, and it’s something that, I guess, when you live on an island, water and flooding is one of those realities that we have to face. But I think we can do better. I think we can come up with some solutions that are affordable and that actually deliver some relief. But I am not a water engineer, so I’m going to be learning a lot right alongside everybody else.”
Transportation and transit are also big topics.
Raschein said, “We’re going to be talking about Freebee with Islamorada, and the potential of expanding that or not. It all comes down to dollars and cents. So again, that’s another topic that’s not an easy solution, but one that I think is still a focus. Anything that’s going to make life easier on our one and only highway is a good thing. So maybe getting an update on that.”
Summer camps are also underway.
Raschein said, “We’ve been able to expand them through our parks and beaches department. John Allen and his entire team have done such a wonderful job with regard to access and the number of camps and how many kids, we’ve got lots of parents out there with little kids, older kids, kind of medium kids that still must work and this is a service that we provide to the community and to our county employees. So I’m excited that we’ve been able to expand that. We’re right in the beginning of summer, it’s going to be a beautiful, beautiful time, and having that opportunity for our families is super exciting.”