Cynthia Guerra, executive director of Monroe County Land Authority, joined Good Morning Keys on Keys Talk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on in the county.
What does the land authority do?
Guerra said, “The thing I think most people know the land authority for is protection of the natural environment in the Florida Keys by purchasing environmentally sensitive lands. That’s the first thing that I think people think of when they think about the work that we’re doing, and that’s where we buy a vacant or undisturbed property, and we restore or enhance the habitat that’s on it and keep it that way forever for the benefit of our local environment. But the other main component of our work is affordable housing, and we want to help provide housing that meets the needs of the population of Monroe County. So we often partner with different developers. One of our most reliable and long term partners is Habitat for Humanity up and down the Keys, Upper, Middle and Lower Keys. And we will buy a single family lot, and they will develop the lot and then find a family to help them build the house and live there. We also work on multi family projects. We’ve done several projects in the last few years with the city of Key West. Bahama Lofts is probably the most current one. It’s been very successful. They have both apartments and ownership units, and we helped to subsidize the ownership units in an area of Key West that really needs affordable housing. That’s been a great project, and this is not anything new. The land authority has been doing affordable housing projects since it was founded, but for some reason, most people just mostly think of us in that conservation box. We also do density reduction purchases for properties that are not necessarily environmental in nature, but we want to be part of the solution to reduce development pressures, maintain our hurricane evacuation clearance times, reduce demand on public facilities and infrastructure, and we also want to honor private property rights. So one thing that we also do is we offer to purchase parcels that don’t have environmental components on them but suit the density reduction aims of the county.”
Where does the funding come from?
Guerra said, “The land authority is not a general fund program, and we’re also not part necessarily of the state’s appropriations, although we do always try to solicit a little extra money from them every year, but we get the bulk of our operational funding comes, excuse me, from two sources. We get a half penny share of the bed tax that’s collected up and down the Keys, and we also get a little surcharge that people pay when they go to a state park in the Florida Keys, it doesn’t matter if they’re just there for day use or an overnight use, they pay a very nominal little surcharge, and that also helps to fund our operations.”
Because we are an area of critical state concern, what additional responsibilities are placed on the land authority?
Guerra said, “One of the things that we’re sort of seeing accelerate right now is that the county recently announced that this is their last ROGO quarter for building permits for the old allocations that were awarded 20 something years ago. Now the county is awaiting and the municipalities are awaiting new ROGO units, but they haven’t been programmed yet, and the counties and the cities all have to go through a lengthy, comprehensive plan amendment process to get those things programmed. So after this quarter, there’s going to be about a year, we’re hoping not more than a year, where there’s not going to be any building permits issued. But one thing that people can do, if they’ve been on the ROGO list for at least four years, they can apply for something called administrative release, and depending upon the facets of the property that they’ve got in the waiting list for a permit, that property could be referred to us for a purchase offer. So we’ve seen an uptick in the Board of County Commissioners referring parcels to us for purchase offers, and those parcels usually fall in the density reduction or the conservation category, and I think that’s probably going to be increasing until we get those new units programs.”
Is the land authority involved with the Big Pine Habitat Conservation Plan?
Guerra said, “We have been involved only in that since inception of the Habitat Conservation Plan and the incidental take permit. Monroe County, via the land authority, has been responsible for the mitigation that’s required under the plan. The mitigation takes the form of land acquisition. So the land authority has been very aggressively buying land in Big Pine and No Name Key, so much so that the mitigation that’s already been completed far exceeds the development that was allowable in the incidental state permit and the Habitat Conservation Plan. I’m not really sure what the future of those programs hold, because those those programs were intended to sunset right about now, but I do know the county is in negotiation with US Fish and Wildlife Service to sort of figure out what the future is going to look like, but we’re not really part of that discussion. If you’re on Big Pine or No Name Key and you’re looking at large tracks of vacant land, it’s either us, the land authority, managed by the Monroe County Land Steward, or it’s part of the federal refuge.”
What kind of maintenance needs are ongoing for the land that is acquired?
Guerra said, “Monroe County maintains a permanent Land Steward position. We’ve also got a couple of assistant land stewards that are with the land authority, and they are responsible for maintaining the lands that are required for conservation and some of the lands that are required for density reduction. So in the case of a conservation parcel, their primary jobs are to remove an invasive exotic species or to do restoration if the habitat needs a little help to be healthy. And in the case of density reduction parcel, we might have to go out and mow the grass if the grass starts to get too big or pick up some debris or trash, or somebody has put something on the property. So we do have staff and contractors that are out in the field every day helping us to look after all the land holdings. Last year, we treated invasive exotic species on about 1,800 acres. A major objective of the land authority is to manage the land in a healthy condition. Because the condition of the land impacts the condition of our surface waters, the reef, the bays, the Gulf. It’s all related and part of the same ecosystem. So we think it’s really important to be good stewards of the land.”