Emily Schemper, Growth Management Director for Monroe County, joined Good Morning Keys on Keys Talk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on in the county.
When it comes to growth management, traffic is a big deal.
Schemper said, “Every two years, the county has a consultant do a traffic study up and down US 1, and the results of that study determine whether or not additional development can be permanent, essentially, it’s called concurrency management. So we have that for traffic, water, sewer, all types of things. You have to show if you’re doing a large development that there’s capacity for it. The traffic is measured based on a methodology that the board adopted many years ago in 1991 and it’s sort of a custom methodology for the Florida Keys, because we have such a unique setup here with the one roadway up and down the Keys, we can’t really measure it the same way other communities do. So it’s based on the speed that you travel on US 1 and they adopted a level of service and one of those measures is the overall highway from Key Largo all the way to Key West, can you travel back and forth with an average speed of 45 miles per hour? That’s one of the measures. There’s also, then a segment by segment analysis that’s a little more specific.”
That traffic measure was adopted in 1991.
Schemper continued, “It was updated a couple of times in 1997 and then again, more recently, in 2020, 2021, but in the fall, when the board was adopting the most recent study, there was some concern over the timing of the study. It had been delayed by a couple of weeks because of those brush fires that were up on the stretch. So there’s a six week window when the study has typically been conducted, and it’s the, I guess you’d call it the peak of the peak in terms of traffic, the Florida Department of Transportation has a peak season, a 13 week window that every year they measure, and they say, okay, this was the peak season this year. And that study has always been in the peak six weeks of that peak season. So the peak of the peak. But it wasn’t officially in the methodology that it had to be during that time period. So the board asked the level of service task force to be reconvened and to review that timing, and also to look at construction delays.”
If there are severe construction delays, it gets counted out of the study because it’s considered an anomaly.
Schemper said, “So that task force met three times and held a community meeting once in the last few months, and that recommendation is now going to the board for their decision on what to do with the methodology, whether or not to update it. The task force recommendation was to yes, put that six week period into the actual methodology. So that would be the last two weeks of February and the first four weeks of March. Then also a recommendation, though, if there are unforeseen situations, such as the brush fire, for example, that prevent data collection during that period, then the data could be collected the first two weeks of April, and that is to avoid having to go back to the board in an emergency situation when you may not have time to get there, to get to a board meeting before the data collection happened. The recommendation for construction delays was to leave the way those are treated as is. There was a lot of discussion about that and ongoing construction, how we’re going to have construction for a long time, but it’s also rolling up and down the highway. You never know. It changes from year to year where that’s going to be so and I can’t speak for each individual task force member, but the reasonings were, it changes location, the worst of the worst is counted out, but the more minor construction delays are actually still counted in the study. And some arguments about consistency, we’ve done it this way for years, and it should truly measure how traffic is changing on US 1, we should keep the methodology the same. So the recommendation on that was to keep treating it the same as has been done in the past. So that will go to the board next week. They’ll review it. They can ask questions, discuss, etc. They can choose to adopt that recommendation. They can make changes to it. They can choose not to adopt those changes. But that is the the item next week.”
Food truck regulations will also be discussed at the commissioners meeting next week.
Schemper said, “The board asked the planning and environmental resources department to start working on amendments to the land development code to make specific regulations for food trucks. Right now, they’re treated like restaurants, essentially, which is a pretty high hurdle to get over, to get your permanent permit for that. So you can get a temporary permit more easily, but to get an actual permanent location for a food truck right now, it’s a pretty big hurdle to get over. So the department’s been working on that, but is holding two community workshops to talk about those potential regulations. Again, this is just for unincorporated Monroe County, and the goal is to get some insight from local stakeholders. So those who have food trucks, those who are patrons of food trucks, those who have concerns about food trucks, those who are restaurant owners, other business owners, all kinds of different stakeholders who may have opinions on this. So there are two workshops scheduled. The first is Wednesday, February 25 5:30pm, that one is in Key Largo at the Murray Nelson Center. The second one is on February 27 at 5:30pm, that’s on Stock Island at the Bernstein Park conference room, but then understanding that people have jobs, people have kids, sometimes it’s hard to get to these meetings, we also are posting an online survey that includes discussion prompts and includes some of the questions that are going to be asked at those workshops. So the workshops will be interactive, where people can give their ideas and answer certain questions. The survey will have the same content, essentially, so people can participate in that way. Moving forward if we need to schedule additional meetings, we’ll do so. But these are the first two. So February 25 and February 27 at 5:30pm Key Largo and Stock Island, Bernstein Park.”