Monroe County Commissioner Jim Scholl joined Good Morning Keys on Keys Talk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on in the county.
With the legislative session underway in Tallahassee, the county is planning trips to the capital.
Scholl said, “Legislative day that we’re going up for, January 21, so next week, the county commission and senior county staff will be up there, and we’ll meet with Representative Mooney and Senator Rodriguez, and, of course, other elected officials depending on our small county coalition group, and then also some of the departments, the staffers, whether it’s Department of Transportation and Department of Environmental Protection, we get a chance to meet with the heads of those departments. So it’s a good opportunity. Again, just to reinforce the legislative priorities that we have. We’ve got an unbelievably successful and just professional legislative director for us, Lisa Tennyson, who works all year long, communicating not only with the legislators in Tallahassee, but also up in Washington, DC, for programs that are federal programs that we work with. She does a fantastic job, and she keeps us informed on the status of all of the issues affecting Monroe County and our perennial list, I guess, is always, property taxes, water quality, our land acquisition program, affordable and workforce housing, insurance affordability, environmental resilience issues, those types of things that are always important to the Keys, and then sometimes there’s other things that come up. We were up there a little over a month ago to meet with the governor and the cabinet sitting as the administrative commission to adjust the language that was in Senate Bill 180 last year that was a little bit contradictory and would not allow us to move forward with using the ROGO allocations that were provided in that same Senate bill last year. So there’s always something going on and a need to be up there, and the more often we can be present and actually get to have face to face meetings, it really helps us have the visibility we need when they’re preparing the legislation, items and things that are going to affect us. So it’s important and we like to do it.”
Having a voice in Tallahassee is important.
Scholl said, “Michelle does a great job. She’s been working her way up through the senior leadership of the Florida Association of Counties, and now serving as the president of that organization. So all 67 counties in Florida belong to that and we get great support from the staff up there at the organization, and realizing how many small counties there are in Florida, the small County Coalition collectively have a very big voice too, because obviously, Florida is very diverse in sizes of counties and sizes of cities and the population variation. So FAC really does a tremendous job of taking care of all of the county’s needs and making sure that all of the sitting legislators understand that everybody knows their own county or their own municipality, but Florida is big, and you have to understand it in total and try to balance it all and make sure that that the resources are properly spread out throughout the state.”
Being an area of state critical concern continues to provide funding for Monroe County.
Scholl said, “It’s typically for environmental preservation, environmental restoration. For us, it’s canal restoration program, where the canals, they get clogged up with either mangroves, or they get silted up and they lose their ability to flow and make sure that the water maintains a higher quality. So we’re going to put $7 million into the canal restoration projects up and down the Keys, which are, again, very important to the environment, but there’s other water quality improvement projects throughout the Keys. Then Marathon has their wastewater deep well stations they’re working on. So they’re getting some funding for that. The wastewater treatment plant also, Key Largo wastewater treatment district doing some upgrades there. So it’s all focused on the environment and we’re grateful every year that that 20 million dollar recurring fund is there, and we’re going to try to make sure that gets extended for another 10 years at least. We always lobby hard for that, to make sure that that is in the governor’s budget and then makes it through the appropriation process.”
How do international issues like what’s happening Venezuela affect the Keys?
Scholl said, “Every couple years, there’s a national economic strategy, and then you have a national defense strategy related to that. But it’s important to understand that the world economy can be disrupted by some smaller impacts that really do have an effect on the world economy, like the Houthi rebels over there in Yemen closing off access to the Red Sea, which goes to the Suez Canal. So a lot of the world’s commerce, well over 90% of the world’s commerce goes by ocean, tanker ships, cargo ships, container ships, whatever, and when that gets disrupted and in that case of Yemen over there, their ships that go east and go west, and they travel non stop around the world all the time, and stopping in different ports. So it’s important to maintain that just for the world’s economy and of course, the military. This job isn’t necessarily always to go fight, but the presence can make sure that things don’t escalate that do impact world safety and world economy. So there’s a lot of moving parts, and of course, China is way ahead of us now in shipbuilding, because naval presence is what maintains like, I say, the basics of the world economy in today’s world and the Navy can also shut down things for the world economy. And China, of course, has been saber rattling for a while about Taiwan, and, of course, the United States is doing a little saber rattling with regard to Greenland. So there’s important strategic things that happen, and even small countries can have impacts on things that will affect the rest of the world. You have to understand the relationships and really, a stable economic environment is good for the entire planet, and you don’t like anything that could disrupt that.”
What about the oil in Venezuela?
Scholl said, “This goes back to what I just talked about, the world economy, where you have sanctions against bad actors, but then there’s no enforcement of sanctions that are levied and the oil was going primarily to China and Russia and obviously we’ve got issues with both of those nations that the interdiction of the Venezuelan oil will hopefully improve the diplomatic opportunities to cure some of the differences that are there. But those ships were basically illegal. They weren’t allowed to do that under international law. So, yes, the Coast Guard is our law enforcement arm of our military services, working for the Department of Homeland Security, and they’re the ones that are allowed to exercise law enforcement actions. The military typically does not do that. And in fact, when Navy ships are involved in that, we have Coast Guardsmen on board, and they will actually take over command of the vessel when they’re actually doing law enforcement patching. So there are our own rules and international rules for how that can be done. So the Coast Guard is the service that does that, and they do it very well.”
Last weekend’s Wounded Warrior Soldier ride was a great event.
Scholl said, “They had, I think, 32 wounded warriors coming down here. It’s the 22nd year they’ve done this. The wounded warriors, those that have served the nation and have been wounded in combat situations and are recovering, we owe them everything we can provide for them. And the Soldier Ride is something that has become very, very valuable for them in their recovery and the camaraderie that that builds, and the opportunity for them to see communities that come out in force to support them is a good way to get them back into somewhat of a normal life, as normal as it can be for them. So I hope we always support that and the Key Largo event, the Marathon event and the Key West event, all went off very well, and we had quite the crowd down here at Bayview Park.”