George Garrett, City Manager of Marathon, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning live from Tallahassee to talk about Florida Keys Day.
Officially, Florida Keys Day takes place tomorrow.
Garrett said, “We are meeting with some folks today as well. We’ve got a number of issues in front of us and of course, just to run down very quickly, of course, we’ve got two companion bills concerning the Rate of Growth Ordinance and Building Permit Allocation System. There’s discussions going on, I think, as we meet privately with folks about bringing the Stewardship bill or process back to a non competitive process where we simply come to the legislature each year, seek appropriations, and then, kind of, if you will, divide the money up amongst the all of the parties in the Keys through a memorandum of understanding. I think, a much easier process. Of course, we’ve got this issue of a potential bill that would eliminate property taxes. Frankly, if we did not have property tax or the capacity to levy property taxes, you can essentially write our capacity as local governments to do business, we can write it off. In the Keys where so much of what we do is based on our tourist economy, we depend on property taxes hugely, because we don’t have the big malls, we don’t have the big commercial and we don’t have the high rises, etc., that generates so much property tax revenue.”
With the ROGO issue is there a third bill out there with the 26 hour evacuation time, but no units?
Garrett said, “Well, that’s the big one for us. Bottom line with that, and particularly related to the Shands case, the two things come together at this point in time, and it’s critical. Shands really brings into question how many potential lawsuits are out there, like Shands? With Shands, we’ve actually prevailed pretty handily, until now. Now having difficulties with the third district, we’re certainly going to appeal, and more than likely, I will have retired by the time this is all resolved. But I think the fact that this case has gone forward, we’ve lost with the Third District Court, means that a lot of properties that are still in private ownership, that were down-zoned even as far back as the 1986 plan with the county means that there’s a lot more potential lawsuits out there than there were before the third district court opinion.”
State Representative Jim Mooney and State Senator Ana Maria Rodriguez appear to have opposing viewpoints on the ROGO issue.
Garrett said, “We’ll see how this this plays out. We are certainly going to meet with Representative Mooney, and in fact, here in about an hour, we’re going to meet with our State Senator Ana Maria Rodriguez. We’ll see where it goes. Potentially, I hate to say it, it falls flat. On the other hand then, fine, let’s line up for the lawsuits, because I’ve heard stuff on the radio in the last few weeks that Shands doesn’t matter. You know what? Wrong. Our attorney is meeting with the Attorney General’s office and they are taking this case seriously. The county attorney’s office will be present, and they are taking it seriously.”
Is there a potential change in the Stewardship funding?
Garrett said, “It’s a nuance issue, and I think probably for most people, they wouldn’t care or understand as long as we get the money. But the appropriation has generally been about $20 million per year, $5 million of that, typically has gone to land acquisition. The issue is that, as it came to a sunset, but at least in the legislature, we’ve continued to get authorization for Stewardship. What’s happened is they’ve made it a competitive process where virtually anybody could apply. What had happened in the past is, if an appropriation occurred, we simply had an agreement amongst the entities, cities, the county, as to how we would split the money up, which just eliminated the competitive nature of that and made sure we all got a piece of it. So we’re seeking to do that, and everybody’s on board there, because it just simplifies our lives. It means that we can assume that there’s going to be money in the budget, and we can budget for it, etc. We’re trying to get back to that sort of a process.”
If property tax is eliminated, it could make it tough on municipalities.
Garrett said, “That’s another bill out there right now, and it really does propose to eliminate property taxes statewide. If that happened, we would literally as a government would be out of business. I’m not saying we wouldn’t get some money. We’d get the taxes back, we’d get gas taxes back, etc., but that’s a very, very small part of how we operate on an annual basis. We’re certainly going to be here opposing that bill, and I think it’s going to die anyway, because it doesn’t have a companion in the other House. So I think we’re going to be okay. But still when you see a bill like that, it literally scares you, and you just go, Oh my God, what is happening here? This is honestly crazy.”
Another funding source is the Florida Keys Water Quality Improvement Program.
Garrett said, “Two years ago, we got an additional authorization under that program. It was something that Peter Deutsch as our Congressman, many years ago, 20 some years ago, achieved, and we’ve been operating to get appropriations through that program for 24 years now, and it was reauthorized two years ago to become a $200 million authorization, as opposed to a $100 million authorization. If appropriations happen, the difference between an authorization and appropriation. Authorization says you can ask, an appropriation says you’ve got the money. Congress has to do that and we go to Congress every year we ask for it, for an appropriation. Typically, we’ve gotten $5 to $6 million and much like we were just talking about the Stewardship bill, we then have an agreement amongst all of the governments in the Keys to split that up and not so much controversy there right now, we’ve got the authorization. We’re seeking appropriations again this year. But that goes to funding a significant amount of capital projects that we do for wastewater, stormwater, canal restoration, and it’s a very important to us. The other part of the discussion right now is the deep well project, we’re seriously on the federal and state side, we’re seeking both grant money and loan money to accomplish those projects, unless people think that we’re waiting for those things to come through, we are not. We are actively and aggressively going forward to get the deep well project done. We’ll probably end up on the state side getting state revolving loan funds money, which is a normal capital loan process, through the state of Florida Department of Environmental Protection, and then, of course, through the Florida Keys Water Quality Improvement Program. So we’re going to do it and I think the only issue we have right now is just, well, the difficult issue is there’s only one well driller in the state of Florida that can do a deep well and they’re two years waiting, if you will. We’re getting in line with them, but that’s going to be one of our impediments. Doing the engineering, doing the permitting is probably, at that point, the easy thing.”
There’s a new proposal to create a new cabinet position of Commissioner of Government Efficiency, and do away with the Lieutenant Governor position on a statewide level.
Garrett said, “I’m going to make this slightly personal, lest you think that it’s only the federal government, my son has a cousin who is in the northern part of California. She’s working on salmon research as the Klamath River dams are pulled out and historic migration of salmon begins to happen. Well, who was she funded by? She was funded by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. She’s out of a job, and she’s an employee of Humboldt State University. So it comes downhill a long way.”