Monroe County Commissioner Michelle Lincoln joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s been going on in the county.
Where are we with the ROGO discussion?
Lincoln said, “This has been a process that started in November of 2023 when the Department of Commerce from the state of Florida announced to us, hey, Monroe County, we think we’re going to give you a chance to open up your Rate of Growth Ordinance, and here are some options, and they gave us everything from 8,000 to zero, and it really let us sit down and start examining where we were in the county and with our municipalities on the building permits that were given to us in 2012 and how we had spread them out over a 10 year period. Then we stretched it even further than 10 years. I know that the city of Marathon, they are out now. They’re looking at getting some extra from the state. We are almost out, and so it’s like, you know when you kick a can so far, it’s now at the end of the road, and we need to be deciding what’s our comfort level in, in how many we accept, if we accept any, and what that would look like if we do or don’t. So since November, we’ve been having a monthly discussion about everything that has to do with what that will impact, the school systems, the infrastructure, the environment, takings, legal liability. Kimberly Matthews has gone around the community, doing both monkey surveys and in person conversations with an interactive program. We have tapped at least 1,800 residents have participated in the process, and it’s really been informative.”
Even people who work and can’t attend meetings could still participate in the surveys.
Lincoln said, “I love the fact that the monkey survey allowed our residents who work all day and cannot come to a meeting for them to be able to weigh in with what their thoughts and perspectives are. So I feel like we really tapped the residents’ opinions very well. However, if not, we aren’t finished. We are still going to be conducting more workshops and more meetings in the month of November, I think the first week of November, we’re going to hold a meeting in Key Largo at our government center, then in Marathon at the government center, and then in Key West at the government center, all in the evenings, so that we can jam pack the room filled with our residents, and that will be presentations by our planning director and staff on where we are, what it’s looking like, and again, to get more feedback from our residents. I think we’re doing this in such a way that we’re kicking every stone over and looking underneath it and all the while listening to comments and presenting what they want to hear. So a couple of months ago, some of our residents said, hey, why are you still including our precious tier one and two land, and maybe we don’t need to include them. We had a discussion with our attorney yesterday on why we still need to include them, so that they don’t automatically get a taking case, but how we might be able to dwindle our number down even further. So started at 8,000 then we got to a number of about 3,000 and yesterday, we presented a number that is closer to only 2,000 and we asked staff to whittle that down even a little more. We might be able to take another 500 or so off of that number even, which makes it even a tinier number. Then one of the points that I made, that I’m adamant about, is somehow protecting these market rate units so that they’re only used for affordable and for full time permanent residents, not vacation rental. So we’re listening to our constituents, and we are responding in a very careful and methodic way. So we still have many meetings left to go before we get to our December final tally that we’ll then be able to give to all of the municipalities and in December, we’re having meetings with our municipalities, but then when we come up with our number for our ordinances, then it still allows the municipality, time to respond and put in an ordinance in their municipality, so that we can go into the January, February, and then when March legislative session starts, but have a package that we can then present to the state of Florida, who ultimately make up the minds, are the decision makers in this but we could hopefully be on the same plane and say this is what our county suggests.”
Does it seem like the sentiment of the public is to have maybe a smaller number of ROGOs?
Lincoln said, “We’ve never really asked them specifically how many, but more of a broad brush question on should we take enough for takings cases, should we take enough for takings plus some for workforce affordable housing? Should we take zero? So interestingly enough, on that question, I think about 80% of the respondents wanted some kind of a mixture of taking some ROGOs, whether it was enough to cover every vacant lot, or just for workforce housing, or just for a combination therein, and only about 18% said, take no more. Again, these aren’t scientific studies. These are a poll of the community. Somebody had made a comment that these aren’t scientific, and therefore we should throw them all away. And Dr. Rice’s response, which was totally accurate, was the only way it would have been scientific is if we did random sampling across the entire population, which we can’t do. We cannot require people to take the survey. All we could do is implore people, beg people, advertise it, and ask everyone to please jump online and take the survey. So with all that said, I feel like we’re really getting a great pulse of the community, of what they want, and that we will be responding accordingly. It looks like it might be very comparable to what the scenario looked like in 2012 and that we could then have control of the units and spread them out again slowly, as our infrastructure can handle any new development. So we’ll see. Again, it’s still a work in progress, but we are, I think, making some really good inroads here.”
Does the 2,000 number of ROGOs include municipality allocations as well?
Lincoln confirmed, “It does. I think the number for Monroe was, I think 1,200 maybe, and again, I think we’ve asked them to crunch that down maybe some more.”
Could affordable housing be looking at some grants?
Lincoln said, “Up and down the Florida Keys, what we hear constantly is we need quality workforce housing for our folks that live here work here and are not retired, but need to work and need a place to live that is a nice place to live. As part of the land authority governing board, we have a pot of money, and some of that money is specifically earmarked for the city of Key West, and they have come in with three extremely exciting projects that total about $18.8 million and we awarded all of those funds yesterday. One of the projects is for our homeowners that own homes, that is going to help them offset the cost of that home ownership. So it’s similar to a Habitat for Humanity, but it’s not through Habitat, and this is for 28 homes, and these are in perpetuity. So whenever that homeowner decides to sell that house, they’re going to have to sell it at the reduced rate, so that another qualified homeowner that is working in Key West can then buy that home from them. So this stays in perpetuity, and I’m super excited about that, because not everyone wants to live in an apartment complex. We do have a lot of our families who want a home here, and I want that as well. So super excited about that project. We have another one that would be earmarked for, like Mark House, and it is for a 20 bedroom property that would have, like, four bedrooms with one kitchen shared and I’m super excited about this as well. Then a third one, which is to offset the costs of either a 45 to 54 affordable rental units on a track of land in Key West. So again, these are all very exciting projects that will help our residents find a quality home in which to come back to every day after they have worked really hard for us.”
A discussion of the $35 million from the Tourist Development Council was also heard.
Lincoln said, “These are all super good, happy, happy, happy conversations and we asked for the Tourist Development Council to give us input on where they see these funds going. This really isn’t in the Tourist Development Council’s wheelhouse. They’re really good at generating tourist excitement, and have never really thought about, hmm, where should the employees that are in the tourist industry live, and what would that look like? So it kind of stretched their imagination in a very good way, and so we’re going to get some more feedback from them. Randy Sterling, who does an amazing job as the Monroe County Housing Department is going to attend their meeting to give them some more insights, and we’re also going to engage with our municipalities, because we realize that we can put together a wonderful program, a wonderful housing opportunity, but if it’s in the any of the municipalities, Islamorada, Marathon, Key West, it’s going to take their buy in as well. So we’re going to do this the right way. One of the ideas that I’m personally pitching, is to repurpose already built residential homes that maybe are earmarked right now, are we being used for vacation rental, maybe they’re not, but in a community where a house is already built, and maybe it’s a three bedroom, three bath or a three bedroom, two bath, and repurposing that for workforce housing for our tourist industry, and that’s exciting, because they’re already built. So they won’t be in the ROGO process. They won’t be in the trying to get a building permit. They won’t have to go through a comp plan change. They won’t have to go through all the red tape. It would be an immediate fill, which we know we need immediately. So the commissioners were excited about that as well, as well as staff. So I think we’re going to be looking into that as well. So I’m super excited about the direction our county is in. We have really taken the request of the community to make some changes in workforce housing. We know we’ll never solve it completely, but I believe we are really being good stewards of coming up with solutions.”
The results of the audits from the County Clerk’s Office have continued.
Lincoln said, “We really took this seriously, as we should, and I believe we’re being very responsible now in what the audits requested and suggested we do, and we’re going to have a monthly update from Christine Hurley and all of the departments that are involved to ensure that this doesn’t happen again, and that we’re making all of the necessary changes that were requested of us to make. I’m very happy about that. At one point in the meeting yesterday, we discussed, do we need to do this every month still? Can’t we just have an email update? I made the point of, no, we have to do this every month because our public needs to hear the process and that we did take this seriously, and we are being very cognizant of how we can make good improvements. So very happy about that as well. And as far as the Tourist Development Council audits, again, we have this beautiful new director of the Tourist Development Council who was at our meeting, and she’s listening to what we’re saying, and she understands completely the importance of transparency and the importance of being good stewards of the money that comes through tourist development taxes. She has a background as an attorney, so she gets it, and she is making all of the necessary changes.”
Don’t forget the upcoming election.
Lincoln said, “Don’t forget to get out and vote. This is our rights, our duty. Our veterans fought hard for us to have this freedom, and let’s utilize it.”