Michelle Lincoln, Monroe County Commissioner, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s been going on in the county.
There are a number of meetings coming up and the ROGO and BPAS discussions continue to be a priority.
Lincoln said, “Kimberly has been doing a magnificent job getting up and down the Keys. I think she has hit every Chamber of Commerce, up and down the Keys, all the Rotaries, all of the business professional women’s organizations, homeowners association. It’s like anyone who will have her, she is giving her presentation to and it’s not just a presentation, it’s a give and take. It’s a survey. She has to give a little information, a little education, and then hits a question, and it’s very interactive. I’ve had the pleasure of seeing her the past two evenings in a row because she was in Marathon on Tuesday at the government center to give a presentation. However, it was the same night that Marathon City Council had their meeting, so attendance was low. Then last night, she was at the Marathon government center to present it to all of the people who might not have had the opportunity to interact in any of the organizations. Then tonight, she will be in the Key Largo government center to give the presentation again to any resident in the Upper Keys who might not have had an opportunity to hear it and participate. We are really, really asking our residents to participate with us in this decision that will affect our county going forward. We are also on September 4th, she’s going to give it in Key West, I think at the end of the day, I know we have September 4 is becoming a wonderfully fun day. We’re going to have a workshop in the afternoon for all the people who have to do with infrastructure are coming in. So our utilities, the aqueduct, Keys Electric, FDOT. We want to hear, how is our infrastructure now? Is it meeting the need of the people we have now, and can it meet the needs of more people? So we’re going to have that discussion, which will be a little bit different than a study we’re also conducting right now, to see where are we with everything, with schools, if we brought in more residents, could we handle it all? So, it’s just another step in filling in all these pieces of the puzzle to make sure that when we make these decisions this fall, that we’re making them with all of the information at hand. So I encourage everyone to participate in that meeting.”
After that will be the first budget meeting.
Lincoln said, “This is the first of our hearing of our budget. And then we will, right after that is finished, Kimberly will be giving that ROGO hurricane survey presentation again that evening. So that should be wonderful. At every one of our county commission meetings, we have a discussion on, where are we? Where is the team? And the team consists of the planning department, the legal department, the Emergency Management Department, strategic planning, and our PIO officer. So that is the team and administration. That’s the team that is overseeing this whole process. So it’s very comprehensive. We tasked them this last time with drilling those numbers down even more. I think we’re at like, 2,200 and a lot of feedback we received from people were like can we get it down even more, look a little deeper? So, we really want to come up with an accurate number of what our liability would be, how is our environment going to handle this? Is there room and how we make it work?”
There are also infrastructure projects coming up.
Lincoln said, “We had the groundbreaking at Twin Lakes a few weeks ago, and it was, gosh, years and years in the making, and it was just so nice to finally be able to get a shovel in the ground and start that for the residents that live in Twin Lakes that have been enduring king tides and flooding roads. So that was a wonderful partnership. It involved our Congressman Jimenez, who helped us receive federal funds. We received Florida Resiliency Funds from the state of Florida. So it really took the combination of all these funds to be able to afford this project and again, hats off to our resiliency officer and to our engineering department. Projects of this enormity take a lot of staff time and energy, and I’m just really happy that that we’re finally getting that one going. We also received good news last week that we received $12 million for the Sands subdivision project. So I’m waiting to get a little bit more information on that. I just kind of received a quick text from Rhonda Haag just with that announcement. So I feel we’ll probably be doing a bigger announcement on that later. We also are about to open our Emergency Operations Center, that brand new, beautiful building that’s located on the southwest side of the Marathon airport. That grand opening will be on September the 23rd, right in time for us to finish the height of storm season. It’s going to be state of the art and we look at where we sit in the state of Florida, and we get hit by storms from all sides, an Atlantic storm, a gulf storm and it’s really imperative for us to have an Emergency Operation Center that is storm proof. All these years we have been in the room that is not rated to withstand a hurricane of a three, so this was something that we really needed to do, and we didn’t want to waste the building. We didn’t want it to be a building that was only being used when there’s a declared state of emergency. So all of the emergency operation department will be housed there all the time. The sheriff’s 911 department will be housed there all of the time. The Monroe County Fire and Rescue will be housed there all of the time. So that building will be utilized every single day, and so we’re super excited about that.”
A meeting on the vulnerability assessment will be coming up on September 10.
Lincoln said, “Those are both on a zoom call, and I believe you can view those later, because it’ll be recorded. I was actually at the Marathon City Hall last night for Kimberly’s presentation. So I’m going to jump on Zoom and watch the vulnerability assessment that occurred last night. Last night’s one was all on roads and water and where our vulnerability is. So I will be watching that. We do receive a very comprehensive report. This is a state mandated requirement every year that we do these vulnerability assessments. Every county goes through them. The municipalities do. So it’s always interesting to get a good view of how our assets look. So the one we’ll be doing on the 10th will be on our physical buildings and our infrastructure, to see how we’re doing with all of our buildings that we own to make sure that they’re that they’re in top notch shape.”
The recent grand jury report from the indictment with Trauma Star employees is a great example of how the county practices accountability.
Lincoln said, “We’re being held accountable as well. And I am not taking this lightly. This is first and foremost, let me say this is not a reflection of the dedication and hard work of our Fire Rescue. This is about leadership, and leadership failed, and it failed all over, on all of us. At our last county commission meeting, Craig Cates asked that we do an internal audit on Fire Rescue, and I said, we need to take it a step further, and the independent agency that is going to come in needs to do a comprehensive review of our entire organization, not just Fire Rescue, and they need to be doing this. We need we need this review to be done to identify areas that we can improve, our accountability, our transparency, our fairness. I think we created a culture that became a little toxic, and we need to fix that. A true leader looks at themselves and does a self assessment and takes a hard look in the mirror and says, where can I improve? It’s not that a leader doesn’t make mistakes, because all leaders do. All people make mistakes. It’s how you acknowledge the mistake, how you improve from that mistake. I think that’s where we are. So we will be doing a deep dive into our entire organization and see how we can make it better to honor the hard work of our Fire Rescue staff, to honor the hard work of every one of our departments. I’m standing here talking with you, bragging about all the work our Public Works does and our resiliency officers do, and every department, our department, the people who work for our county, are wonderful people, and they’re dedicated and leadership failed, and we need to bring back accountability, and we need to bring a sense of accomplishment for all of our departments. So I am humbly looking at myself in the mirror and seeing what I could have done different and what our leaders all could have done different. So that’s where we are and all while we’re doing this, we’re still working on our ROGO and we’re still working on our budget, we’re still working on our canal restoration projects, and we’re still providing the best services we can for our residents and our tourists alike.”
The Key West airport is also close to completion.
Lincoln said, “I saw a picture of the jet bridges for the Key West International Airport we’re driving down the highway. So we are getting even closer to completing that airport. If anyone out there wants to talk to me more about anything I’ve spoken about on the radio, I’m always available. So don’t hesitate to reach out.”