Monroe Commissioner Craig Cates joined Good Morning Keys on Keys Talk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on in the county.
Monroe County selected a new mayor recently.
Cates said, “I served that term, and my turn will come around, maybe next time for Vice Mayor. But we picked a fantastic mayor this time with Michelle Lincoln, and she’s a president of Florida Association of Counties, which is a huge accomplishment, and just shows how good and respected she is all over the state. She’s up there now in Tampa, and she does a great job for the county, so we’re very fortunate to have her and David Rice with his experience of so many years in the county and on the commission. So we got a great team there, and look forward to working with them this coming year.”
The legislative agenda was released by the county recently that discusses issues coming up in the state.
Cates said, “The ad valorem taxes is how we we pay for so many things in the county. Over 90% of the ad valorem taxes that are collected in the county go to first responders, the sheriff’s department, the fire department, the constitutional officers, the judges, the expenses we have, their health department, and then less than 10% is what the county uses for their budget, which takes care of the parks and the roads that we’re responsible for and the bridges that we’re responsible for, the maintenance and all the other the building department, all these. So it’s very important. We’re monitoring this very closely. We have our lobbyists in Tallahassee and our Lisa Tennyson, that’s our governmental affairs directors that will be in Tallahassee most of the session, and any changes will have an impact, and we’ll have to be prepared for that.”
Insurance is also an issue that could come up.
Cates said, “Insurance is a big part, and that’s kind of been the unknown. It changes impact of a hurricane, and we could have increases because of that. We know we will have future hurricanes, we just don’t know when they’ll be but everybody is building much stronger and the impacts are less, but some of the older houses do have a huge impact and even as well as they’re built, marinas, parks, all that have impact for the hurricane, so it takes money to rebuild. So we’re monitoring that as closely as we can. But Tallahassee, I think this year is going to be a big push for the taxes, because everybody’s nervous about that, the impacts that’ll have. So we might not see too much on the insurance, but if we can at least have that cap on it, it will help.”
There’s a project in Dade County that Monroe County will be taking a look at.
Cates said, “This development of regional impact is called City Park. They named it. It’s about 14 and a half miles north of where Card Sound Road and the 18 mile stretch meet in Florida City, and it’s a big area of farming, 954 acres of property, and the project they’re going to put there is huge, and we really don’t have much say in it, except through our South Florida Regional Planning Council, which we are members of. Commissioner Lincoln is the chair of that and I’m also on the South Florida Regional Development Council, representing the county. So they asked them to look at this approval, and it’s called a development regional impact. So it’s affecting several counties with the size of it is and it actually, is on our evacuation route and all those models can take into consideration once they reach Homestead, the traffic’s free and clear for all these cars to keep moving further up, or they’ll be safe at that time, which is not necessarily the case we’ve seen that in Irma. So this project is is going to be over 1,000 homes, and it’s going to have single family attached homes of over 4,500, then multi family units of over 2,200 with 749,000 square feet of retail space, 500,000 square feet of office space, almost 900,000 square feet of industrial space, and three schools, an elementary school for over 1,000 students, a middle school for 1,200 students, and a high school for over 1,600 students. So that is going to have a huge impact, not only on the environment, but also our evacuation. And then there’ll be a lot more people coming down the Keys on the weekends because of that, which is a good thing for tourism, but it also increases the traffic, especially affect the Upper Keys, because there’ll be a lot of weekenders coming through there. I have the concerns of they’ll be getting their water out of the same aquifer that we do. So we drafted a resolution that address our concerns, to give to the south Florida Regional Planning Council as a county, so hopefully we can have some say in this, at least in modeling how it’s going to affect our evacuation for hurricanes.”
Has the project been approved?
Cates said, “It’s nowhere near being approved yet, but this is the only time we could have some say in it before it gets approved. Then it’s moving forward. So this is a time now we’re starting to stay on top of this and at least have some kind of input in there and address the concerns that we have in the Florida Keys. We’ll be monitoring it as it goes along, but it’s great that the citizens will be aware of what is happening just north of them and the possible impact it could have well.”
The loss of Key West Commissioner Mary Lou Hoover is incredibly sad.
Cates said, “I’d like to give our condolences to Mary Lou Hoover’s family. She was a good friend for many years. I met her back in 2008 and she’s always been community minded person, helping, just incredible what she’s done over the years. It’s a huge loss of community and her family. So our condolences go out to her.”