Monroe County 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.
The commissioners met yesterday and discussed nonprofit funding.
Cates said, “It has worked well over the years, but because of direction from the state and budget cuts, we had to address this. And they came down with some priorities that they’re looking for, and one of them is unnecessary use of taxpayers funds to support NGOs, non governmental organizations and non profits and then decide what’s core services that has to be rendered and what is extra and spending on activities that are trendy or low ROI. So those are some of their priorities that they’re going to be looking at for our budget. And of course, when it comes to nonprofits, how do they classify them is an issue that we’re having and we’re trying to address that. We’re trying to break them down to what’s medical and what’s quality of life, and what services that are required for us to furnish. And we’re now with the director, we’ve got a couple options not to do anything or or start a Children’s Services Council, which is, you can do that, but that could get complicated. And so the direction we gave staff is to look into funding these nonprofits, to the health department. The Director of the Health Department was there, the past director Carla Frye, she is moving to Hillsborough County, but she’s still very involved here, and has a lot of experience in the Keys. She got a promotion over there. So she says, we fund a lot of these organizations already, we paid for them to do so we could expand that. But in theory, it is better because those are professionals in the medical field, in her department, to know exactly what’s done. We’re not professionals in that. So, yes, that could be money spent more efficiently. And also the other ones with the quality of life, which would be like a positive step of Boys and Girls Club, sailing club, literacy, volunteers, Special Olympics, those were quality of life nonprofits that we give money to. So are they going to allow us to continue that? We don’t know, but we’re preparing. And possibly the big concern is like Mark House, we gave them $200,000 year before last, then we cut everything in half. We were giving away 2.2 million to all the nonprofits. We cut that in half to 1.1, but what they do is they get a multiplier, and it’s the money that they put in their share. And they put 320,000 in and the state gave them $3.2 million but they have to have money of their own to put in there, and we were part of that. So they went and got the private sector to donate them some, and they lost quite a bit of money. And other organizations that help them and fundraisers to raise that money, so it’s a multiplier of what we give them, what they’ll get from the state and federal government, and which is our concern, and my concern was with the directors go through the Health Department, which is a state organization, and give them the money, which we can legally give them the money, because all this has to be legal. That’s a whole issue here. Will they use that as their part that they’re putting in if the state gives them money to use for the state to give them more money. It doesn’t sound like that will happen. So that’s one of my and the Commission’s big concerns as we work through this. The core services would be like, Acres Away for addiction, the domestic abuse shelter, Florida Keys Children’s Shelter, funding Florida Keys Outreach Coalition, Grace Jones daycare center. We consider them core services that the county should fund and help with and then we’ve got the medical services, which are AH Monroe, Autism Society, AHEC, the Keys Healthy Start, and Mark House, those are the kind of things would be the medical, so anyway, how do we break all these apart, and where do we fund them? And will we be able to fund them through these other agencies? Because I believe, and I think most people believe, that those are important nonprofits to this community. They help with the quality of life. They help the residents be able to stay here with a daycare and the dentist AHEC, what they do for the kids with the dental work is just amazing and so important to our community, our residents. So we’ve got to come up with a way to work through this. And I feel they’re very, very important to our community. And I think the whole commission does.”
The state is even going to be looking for another 10% budget reduction analysis for the fiscal year 2028.
Cates said, “The residents have come to enjoy the services that we provide, and as you expand those services, which makes quality of life much better in the Keys, they also come with a cost, and that raises taxes. And so it’s a difficult balance, but it’s something we have to do, and that’s what I tell people, that’s what I signed up for. So I’m going to do the best I can at it.”
Higgs Beach will be transferred to the city of Key West on May 1.
Cates said, “It’s a win/win for everyone, especially the residents of Key West, because you’ve got the dog park there, you’ve got the children’s playground down there. You got the pier, Reynolds pier that the residents use and go and swim off of. We’ve got the beach there. You’ve got West Martella Towers there, where the Garden Club is, and the pickleball courts and the tennis courts are just a beautiful piece of property in the heart of Key West. And now the citizens of Key West will have direct input on what is done out there. Improvements or changes have been made that they can be fine tuned for the community itself.”
What’s been happening with the mooring fields?
Cates said, “We’ve settled that appeal on our permit application. We’re moving forward. We’ve got a few more permits, but they’re not as difficult to get, but they had to get these other ones first before it could go to the next ones. I believe there’s three more permits, but that should move quickly. The mooring field in Key West, we will start that we expect by early 2027 and that will not take too long, because we do not need an upland facility, because we are working with the city of Key West to use their bathrooms and showers, which they already rent out to the people that are staying out there, and charge them a daily fee and use of that so that will be able to just transfer over and use them, and they’ll have their agreement with the city of Key West, and we’ll be able to move forward with that. And then the Boca Chica mooring field that needs the upland facility, but we have the money. We got the money last year to do the upland facility. That’s going to be a total of like $6.7 million with state and federal funding. At the end of the day, when it’s completed, the county will be putting in, out of all this, about 200,000 of our tax dollars. They’ll get these two awesome facilities up and running, and it will make the water much cleaner, and that they’ll be required to pump out once a week, required to have insurance. The boats have to be maintained. They can’t be derelict. So then the 90 day anchoring rule will become into place and any boats cannot anchor unless it’s in a designated anchorage area within 10 linear miles of the mooring fields.”
Seven new firefighters were welcomed by the commissioners to Monroe County Emergency Fire Rescue.
Cates said, “That comes from one of our directives to find out how to save money in the every department, every department head and the chief has come up with this plan to show where he could hire 15 more firemen and actually save in overtime, because our overtime amount was $2.2 million last year, And this way he’ll be able to have more firefighters and actually save about $500,000 at the end of the year because to bring a firefighter in, he said, by the time you hire one to go through the training and all the requirements, it takes about four to six months before they can actually be on their own at a firehouse. So you can’t just go and hire somebody tomorrow, so that’s why we have to use the overtime to work the firemen that we have now to pick up some extra shifts. And what happened is that’s more difficult 24 hours on, and then another 24 hours on is quite an ask of these firefighters. So we’re going to try this plan and see how it works out, and that’s one of the things we’re doing, just to try to save money, preparing for maybe cuts that we might have in the future.”