The Mayor of Monroe County, Jim Scholl, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM on Tuesday morning to talk about what’s going on in the county.
The Monroe County State Legislative Agenda was approved earlier in the month by the county commissioners, as were the ROGO and BPAS numbers.
Scholl said, “That ROGO issue, we’ve been working on it for the major part of 2024 here. We, unexpectedly, at least for me, got a proposal from the state of Florida to say, hey, how would you like to have 8,000 additional ROGO units? That took us all by surprise, not just Monroe County, but the municipalities and that was a very large number that I think was, again, for everybody, somewhat unexpected and our staffs, and when I say staffs, I mean the county staff and the municipality staffs worked on it from that time on, to try to determine what would be a realistic number of additional building permits, ROGO, BPAS units that would be appropriate for the Florida Keys, and given some of the limitations we had, like our evacuation timeline, which was tied to 24 hours by state statute. So a lot of analysis went into the proposal and it culminated Thursday, at a special meeting on the 19th where we made a proposal. We came up with some numbers. The first one being asking the legislature to extend the evacuation timeline number up to 26 hours, and then ask for up to 1,350 ROGO units, just for unincorporated Monroe County, up to 70% would be workforce and then we came up with an additional new definition of market rate workforce housing, because when we do affordable housing and workforce housing, those definitions involve using the HUD area median income to income qualify for those deed restricted units. So we realized, of course, that some of the management folks, or everybody down here in the workforce, some of the management folks actually earn more money than the income qualification would allow. So we had to accommodate that element of our workforce by coming up with a new definition of marketplace workforce housing, which would be deed restricted to employees earning 70% of their income in Monroe County, but wouldn’t be restricted to the income limits to qualify for traditional workforce housing. So a lot of moving parts on the ROGO piece.”
Was the total number of permit allocations actually 3,550?
Scholl said, “Well, what we asked for was up to 1,350 for unincorporated Monroe County. The municipalities asked for their allocations. We were asked to just submit for Monroe County, so for us, that’s unincorporated. So the five municipalities had the opportunity to make requests as well. So Marathon and Key West, Islamorada and I believe Layton might have even asked for some but, I don’t believe Key Colony Beach did, but those are the numbers that would be added to the 1,350 that the county put in our resolution.”
Didn’t the state throw a bit of a wrench in the works recently?
Scholl said, “Actually it was just only a week before our final meeting, where we got some feedback down from Tallahassee saying they weren’t interested in considering additional building permits unless all of the ROGOs were issued out, which the timeline that was in existence would be, everybody would be out of their ROGO or BPAS units for the city of Key West by the middle of 2026 basically July ‘26 and Marathon had expended almost all of their units, but the problem with that is, in order to get additional units, it requires a year or more of going through the process to update comprehensive plans and make administrative changes to be able to get the Department of Commerce to sign off on modifications that we could get past the 2026 end date. So without requesting now and protecting what we have so we can get to that date, it was going to be probably not very efficient. So that’s why, even though we heard that, there was a lot of discussions through our legislative affairs director and the commissioners with our state representatives and talking to Department of Commerce Secretary to say, hey, you’ve got to look at this a little more detailed than just a broad look. So, they go, okay, yeah, we didn’t understand. So basically, that’s why we crafted the language in the request to say, up to 26 hours, up to 1,350, up to 70%, so they have some opportunities to look at it from their end and make some adjustments, and of course, getting input from the voters down here and all of that. But it’s going to have to be coordinated through the Department of Commerce and then obviously the legislature and the governor’s office and, of course, the sense of urgency now is the legislature is going to be in session next month, so we had to have something for Representative Mooney and Senator Rodriguez to at least have something that could be drafted into a bill for the legislature.”
The 16th annual Southeast Florida Regional Climate Leadership Summit also occurred in Key West recently.
Scholl said, “This climate summit was, was very well done thanks to Rhonda Haag, our sustainability coordinator, and Allison Higgins from the city of Key West also was a big player in setting this up. But there were probably 400 people down here from the southeast Florida compact area, and I did get to sit on a panel with some fellow mayors that was moderated by Holly Raschein and just discussions about how the municipal governments are trying to coordinate and share information and discuss the issues to try to find reasonable options to harden our infrastructure, try to have that sustainability going forward, at least for the next 40 years. An example of that for the Florida Keys has been the road adaptation work we’re doing up in the Upper Keys, the Twin Lakes area and Stillwright Point are the two projects that have funding. Twin Lakes is moving forward with elevating the road and providing the proper, environmentally necessary storm water sewers, the storm sewer, but it’s a long time in the planning process. Then, of course, we got resilient Florida grant agreements in place to fund the projects, along with other funding sources, but it’s expensive, and these two projects will at least provide the demonstration, the pilot project to see if this is going to work the way it’s intended, during the king tide season is really what we’re trying to mitigate. So those two projects very, very important, and we’ve got a whole list of other neighborhoods that are in the queue for additional funding should all of this prove to be effective.”
The mooring field project will also be moving forward as well.
Scholl said, “The channel of Stock Island, to the north of Stock Island, which, of course, is a boundary with the Naval Air Station area. The mooring field has been there. It just hasn’t been managed and so we have tried to expand mooring field areas around the lower Florida Keys here, especially around Key West, because so many of those live aboards are employees down here, and that is their housing, but we need that to be environmentally compliant and safe and have an upland area, a permitted upland area for them to commute to and from with their dinghies or their kayaks or whatever. So that piece of property is out there on McDonald Avenue, and we we’ve gotten through all of the permitting hurdles for that upland piece that will provide, obviously, restrooms and shower facilities and also some limited parking. There will be an on-site manager there 24 hours a day. So that piece, along with permitted moorings balls out there, and of course, then the requirement for pump outs and making sure that the vessels are sea worthy enough to be moored in that mooring field.”
What differences could the country see with President Elect Donald Trump taking office in a handful of days? He has suggested taking over the Panama Canal as well as purchasing Greenland.
Scholl said, “I think both those things would be an interesting process to go through, but a lot of times, and especially with President Elect Trump, he likes to make bold statements right up front and some of his thoughts on things. But a lot of times those get pared down to a more realistic, achievable scale. The Panama Canal, it is an absolutely necessary resource for transiting for everybody’s economy, as is the Red Sea and the Suez Canal and of course, over there, the Houthi rebels have been disrupting our economic conveyor, so to speak, the ships that go up to the Suez Canal to get into the Mediterranean, and that saves millions and millions of dollars a year in transit costs, rather than having to go around Africa as the Panama Canal does to not have to go around South America. So 90% or more of the world’s resources travel on the ocean. I mean, that’s the most economic way to do it. So being able to maintain those sea lines of communication is very important to everybody’s economy, the entire world economy. The Panama Canal, I know President Elect Trump’s concern is the cost to the US, since we gave up the operation to Panama. So I think, I think negotiating that will potentially lead to better rates for the United States.”
Any final thoughts?
Scholl said, “I think all of us down here in Monroe County had a very good year. We avoided any major hurricane issues, and we did get to stand up our brand new EOC. I couldn’t believe of all the 67 counties in Florida, we were the only one that didn’t have a dedicated emergency operations center, but now we do. It was a good year for the county, and we’re going to continue to hopefully move forward in a positive way. I just wish everybody a wonderful and safe holiday season.”