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.
The hurricane hunter c130 aircraft was on the runway at Marathon airport on Tuesday.
Scholl said, “It’s a great airplane. It’s specifically configured to do what it does as a hurricane hunter, and it’s Air Force Reserve aircraft, and the crew are all reservists, but, and it’s specific to that hurricane hunter mission, and its configuration is unique. They have a meteorologist weather station in there, and they’re configured to drop detection devices they use to drop through the atmosphere and through the hurricane to determine all the meteorological parameters, obviously wind speed being one of the most important ones, but temperatures and all those things so, that’s how they they go out there and determine what the development of a hurricane is, or even a potential hurricane and tropical storm early on. But a very interesting aircraft and the crew, one of the gentlemen, had a patch on that said 100 hurricanes that he’s already flown through, and said he’s working on 110 but they are a very specialized career, not only aviators, but meteorologists that that are trained and love what they do. And I was asking some questions, one of the things for modern day aircraft measurements is they have all sorts of sensors on their aircraft to determine how much wind forces, and of course, G forces, because you get in those types of storms, and there can be very, very strong vertical winds. And of course, that airplane is very robustly built to begin with, but just interesting the number of parameters that get monitored. And when they get back, the maintenance crews download all that information, and they know exactly what happened to every inch of that airplane. And then they also can monitor if the pilots did anything wrong, which is always something you don’t like to hear. But I don’t mean anything seriously wrong. But they could have some things where they didn’t do it exactly right. It’s just interesting the upgrades, because in the first generation of F14 that I flew in, they had little counting accelerometers on different parts of the airplane that would measure different g loading on the aircraft. So that was fairly primitive to today’s very, very fancy electronic monitoring that’s available in the aircraft.”
Could commercial flights be coming back to Marathon airport?
Scholl said, “We’ve tried commercial aviation a couple times up there since I’ve been here, and it just didn’t have the customer volume needed to support having one of the major airlines operating it. But there’s been a lot of changes since the last time that Delta was flying there for about six months before they had to stop because they just didn’t have the ridership. But now the changes that have happened, there’s so many more hotels and, of course, vacation rentals and things in Marathon that has made that a more in demand vacation destination. So with those potential increases in demand, we’ve got a couple airlines that are interested. There’s going to be some investment made at that airport to be able to handle the TSA security requirements and the proper support equipment for the airlines to be able to operate there. And we did satisfy the FAA separation rule from taxiway to runway. We actually moved the runway about 75 feet to the north, giving it greater separation from the taxiway, so it meets the FAA requirements. The funding for all those major upgrades to the airport were all done through the FAA and Department of Transportation, federal government dollars.”
Conch Republic Days kicked off last night.
Scholl said, “This is the 44th year of the Conch Republic. So that’s just amazing. Today is the official opening ceremony at 4:30 at Mallory Square, the raising of the colors, and that formal part of the 44th independence celebration. Then there’ll be the kickoff party down there at Springer wharf bar at seven o’clock. But the annual great naval battle this year is next Friday, April 24 in the evening, at 7pm but it’s going to be the great independence naval parade, because, unfortunately, this year, the Coast Guard is still restricted somewhat in what they can do, just due to the Department of Homeland Security funding issues that have been going on. So we shall see, but it will be a great event. The whole week will be a good time to come down and celebrate, what is the Conch Republic and every day there are many events, and it’s always a great time and relaxed and a heck of a lot of fun.”
Higgs Beach will officially be transferred to the city of Key West on May 1.
Scholl said, “The county, of course, officially approved it at Wednesday’s meeting and granted Christine and our county attorney the authority to make all those signatures on all the documents and approvals to go forward and make it all happen. I think that’s a win/win all around for the county and the city of Key West. I walk by there several times a week, and it’s a great park. And the nice thing about it is it actually generates revenue there with a restaurant being there, and then the waterfront vendor that’s there. So it’s not a a big financial burden when you’ve got revenue generated on the property that sustains it. So I think it’s a good transfer.”
How did the discussion on nonprofit funding go?
Scholl said, “We were given very strong direction as a county government, that level of government, to go and review all of the nonprofit organization financial support that was being done through taxpayer dollars and this was part of the state of Florida’s DOGE process of looking at either unnecessary or excessive spending. And what was determined was that on the medical side of things, for example, Womankind, which is an absolutely great organization, and they do provide medical services that the Monroe County Health Department does not and they’ve been partners for years. So in that case, it’s important for the county health department to be able to vet these organizations that provide medical services to make sure that there’s not an overlap, and a potential competition for the state funds that are already being provided. But more importantly, for the Department of Health, they can actually have contracts with the folks that are in the medical provider part of the equation for social services, and then determine that they already have some funding streams available to support those types of nonprofit organizations that are out there. So they’ll be able to vet that and determine if they can do it through their own health appropriations. And then the same is true for the social services side. We have a social services department here in Monroe County, and that is not only social services, but the Veterans Administration side of it and all of that. And they also have dedicated funding streams that are already appropriated in the state that can be used to support many of these nonprofits that are out there, and then some of them are very unique types, and those are the ones that I certainly envision that the county will continue to support like our Special Olympics, and some of the other unique organizations that we have. So we’re trying to be good stewards of the taxpayers dollars and use them where they are appropriate, and then also piggyback on the funding streams that are already there that can be appropriated through the Department of Health and through our county social services. So we’re not saying we’re cutting off funding for every one of these organizations that’s out there. What we’re trying to do is match up the appropriate vetting process and funding streams to keep them operating, to provide the services that are necessary for Monroe County.”
The commissioners also talked about Big Pine Key and the Habitat Conservation Plan.
Scholl said, “The conservation lands that are out there, most of the conservation lands, all of the conservation lands in the Florida Keys are either owned by Monroe County or owned by the state of Florida, and are regulated as such. But the discussion always gets into the habitat issue of it, and especially with the key deer and honestly, the key deer are doing quite well. In fact, the herd has migrated significantly further down the Keys from Big Pine Key, and there’s key deer at Boca Chica now, which haven’t been there in the past. So the key deer are doing well, and we did have US Fish and Wildlife Service come down to evaluate the issue that came up a couple weeks ago with the deer on the property at the old road prison there, some of the local key deer advocates were worried because they were inside the fence there and didn’t appear to have food or water sources. But it was determined by US Fish and Wildlife that they were doing just fine there and they figured out how to get in there, and they’ll figure out how to get out. But people do get concerned about the animals, and I understand that, but we also have to to base our decisions on good information and facts and so we did vote to allow an ordinance change so that the county can, under very specific and controlled circumstances, allow uses on some of the conservation lands, but it would be a fair occurrence and one of the examples was running a redundant utility line for Keys Energy services that is important, and that would have to cross some conservation land and those are things that aren’t necessarily contemplated when you make absolute restrictions on property that eventually you find out, well, we need a mechanism to be able to make some approvals for public purposes.”