Michelle Lincoln, Monroe County Commissioner and Mayor Pro Tem, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s been going on in the county.
The board meeting on Tuesday had a lot of discussion about a variety of topics.
Lincoln said, “It was a very, very good meeting. A lot of times I say robust. We use that word a lot, but the word of the day for our county commission meeting was seamless, and we wanted to make sure that definitely we have taken the clerk of courts audit recommendations very seriously when it came to his recommendations for us with the Tourist Development Council. We had a wonderful update from our new director of the Tourist Development Council, and I have to tell you, she jumped into the deep end. She is doing a magnificent job of sorting everything out and with the background, understanding that the commissioners also have that everything needs to be seamless, that we can’t simply sever ties with our advertising services. We cannot sever ties with our digital services and our websites, and we can’t just sever ties with our public relations department, because our tourist industry is so very important and vital to our community on so many different levels, from the businesses that have invested in our county, all the way down to the human the human beings that work in the tourist industry, and how important it is that we protect their paychecks, that we protect our tourist vision in the world, when people think of the Florida Keys. So we want to make sure that we’re doing this the correct way.”
Contracts with the digital website service and the advertising service was dissolved and it is now open for bids.
Lincoln said, “Both of those agencies have the right and we do hope they both bid on the new proposal. Yet we wanted to make sure that we didn’t stop services, so we extended from 120 day to a little bit longer, extending their contracts to March 31 with the understanding if we need more time with them, we’ll take it, because we don’t want to mess up anything that has to do with our tourism. So I think that went very, very well.”
The next topic for discussion was the $35 million surplus in the bed tax that’s generated from visitors.
Lincoln explained, “This is not ad valorem. It’s not tax money that came out of our back pocket. It is taxes that our visitors paid to come and stay in our beautiful county, and we received permission from the Florida State because it is a state statute that runs the Tourist Development Council bed tax statewide, and we received a one-time carve out, our county only. We are the envy of all the other counties in the state of Florida to be able to take this surplus money, $35 million and be able to use it to provide workforce housing for our tourist industry employees. So we asked the Tourist Development Council, we asked our municipalities, and we asked our Community Task Force for affordable housing, members of our community who make up this Housing Task Force to give us ideas of what they feel would be the best utilization of those funds. What type of housing would be the best? Where should it be located? Should it include projects that have mandatory housing requirements? And so we started whittling away, and the commissioners all agreed unanimously that we want this for new housing projects, meaning, if you have a hotel that wants to expand its services or build a new place, and they’re required by the county code, to provide workforce housing, we don’t want any of our funds to be spent on that, because we feel that’s a private industry, private business who are going to gain the benefit of building workforce for their own staff. We want this to be additional workforce housing. So we all agreed with that. We all are still liking the idea of going into communities and purchasing houses that might, right now be in the vacation rental pool, and convert them to workforce housing for our tourist employees. So we’re making great headway. We still have a lot of work to do on this, but every month we’re doing an update on it, because we’re just so super excited to have something so wonderful and positive that we’re going to be able to help with our workforce.”
A number of people were honored at the meeting, including the Honorable R. Joyce Griffin, supervisor of elections.
Lincoln said, “For Joyce, just have the ability to honor her for her dedication to our county. She has been the biggest cheerleader of getting out the vote every year and she made some remarks to us about how her grandfather served in in two wars, her father served in a war, her ex husband served in a war, and just bringing home the reminder that that we’re so blessed in this country to have the right to vote, and how we really need to take it seriously and for women, we had to fight for our right to vote as well and people of color had to fight for their right to vote, and how important it is for us to honor the fight that our forefathers and mothers who went before us have done so that we have this ability. Joyce is amazing, and our county will really miss her and I wish Sherry Hodies the best of luck in filling those shoes, and yet Joyce has left us with an excellent staff, and we know we will be wonderful.”
Another major issue for the county is the ROGO decision.
Lincoln said, “Yesterday was the jam packed, I was so pleased to see that it was standing room only at the Government Center in Marathon, and John Rizzo was back, and he was giving us an update on how forecasting of storms has made so many improvements over the last 20 years, just the technology and it used to be, it was a three day cone, and now it’s a five day cone, and now we have additional breakouts into most likely time a storm will start, and the probabilities of when that’ll be and just different categories now that the weather service looks at and that the six hour update, the 12 hour update, how they’re in communication all day with our emergency management manager and the team, and just how much better we all are now at being able to map out when is a storm going to hit us, so that we have the ability to know exactly when to call for evacuations of our county. There were some questions by the audience, and I loved it that it was a workshop, so anyone and everyone could get up and ask questions and it was just wonderful. Some of the people were asking questions because there’s been this concern about, well, that’s great. We know what our 24 hour evacuation is in the Keys, but are we taking into consideration the fact that we then hit Homestead, and that all of the bottleneck in Homestead? It was nice to hear then that Shannon Weiner, our Director of Emergency Management, got up and she explained how, not only does she listen to the weather forecast and talk with John Rizzo, but they have their team that also speaks with the emergency management team of Miami Dade and Broward County, and they’re on phone calls with each other, two, three, four times a day as storms approach, so that Shannon Weiner is letting Miami Dade know, hey, we’re about to call an evacuation. We’re going to have X amount of people on the highway coming through your county and their county lets Shannon know when they’re going to do their evacuations. So even though, in what the state gave us on our evacuation model is just our county, our county does indeed interact with Miami Dade and Broward County to make sure that we have seamless evacuations from the Florida Keys out into the state of Florida.”
Monroe County is the only county with a dedicated weather service.
Lincoln said, “We are the only county with a John Rizzo. The other counties have to share a weather service department, some of them have up to nine counties. Granted, they might be smaller in the middle of the state of Florida, but still, we are unique, and the state of Florida and the federal government understands it. So it was a great meeting.”
The surveys were also reviewed.
Lincoln said, “Out of 82,000 residents, we had between 1,800 down to 800 respondents to those surveys that were conducted online. So we took into consideration the feedback that we received from those surveys, and then we took into consideration the feedback from the three workshops that planning department held two weeks ago. They did one in Key West, they did one in Marathon, they did one in Key Largo. I attended all three. A bunch of our commissioners attended different ones as well and it was nice just to sit back and listen and look at what who attends and who was interested in knowing more about this whole process. Again, we had a lot of great feedback. There is so much emotion around this decision that the county is making, that the municipalities are making on what is the magical number? Is it zero? Is it is it 8,000? Definitely not that. That one’s totally off the table now. Now, I think we’ve whittled it down to something under 2,000 and there’s a lot of high emotion around this. The commissioners and the city council people for Key West, for Islamorada, for Key Colony, for Marathon, we’re all now tasked with this decision of balancing taking the constitutional right away from a property owner, with balancing that with our environment and the safety of our residents and our infrastructure. I think we had to debunk, a lot of people were thinking, oh, this is just going to benefit developers, and reminding everyone that, no, these are individual vacant lots in established areas that are already built, that already have residential community around them. These are individual lots that people, individual human beings, own. So it is us definitely taking their right, their property right, it’s one of the biggest things we have in our Constitution, is the ability to own property, and to be able to balance that with the needs of the human beings that are already here. So, the one thing that it’s amazing, the community that’s come out, and all the neighborhood associations that have joined this ROGO coalition, and it’s so nice to have all of the community members there, and the one thing they asked us is to be completely transparent, to be objective and have data driven analysis. I believe that our county and our staff and our commissioners have checked off these boxes that anytime somebody from Last Stand or any of the homeowners association asks us to ask another question, we have. So we’re really drilling down on the numbers. At our next meeting, we’re going to have an outside consultant who’s been working for the past six months on our infrastructure. Because early on, we had the Florida Keys Aqueduct, we had the electric companies, we had the school board, we had everyone weigh in who are from those agencies, tell us where they think we are with our infrastructure and the community said, no, we want an outside source. We want somebody who’s not invested in this to look at us and tell us what our infrastructure levels are. So that’s going to be at our next meeting. I truly believe that we really are striving to have complete transparency, to be completely objective, and to make data driven decisions when we finally come up with what our number is going to be.”
By the end of December, a number will be decided.
Lincoln said, “I know we’re having another meeting on infrastructure. We’re going to have another county commission meeting, and then we’re allowing our municipalities to have their final December meeting. So after all of the municipalities have their number, then our county commission is going to have one last meeting where then we’re going to blend everything and hopefully have one ask that we will then be going to the state with by the end of December.”
Holly Merrill Raschein just completed her year as mayor.
Lincoln said, “Her leadership had such a professional flair. She brought the decorum from the state of Florida with her, and it was just wonderful having Holly as our leader for a year. The year that you’re the mayor, you have more phone calls, you have more meetings, you have more papers you have to sign, you have just so much you have to do. And Holly and her aide did a fabulous job. In the spirit of gratitude, because we are facing Thanksgiving week right now, I just want to first of all thank everyone who works for Monroe County, from our first responders to our road crews to our maintenance crews to our senior staff, anyone and everyone, our libraries, our health services, everybody who works for the county does such a fabulous job and my aide, I just want to thank everybody who works for the county for what they do. Then I want to thank all of our residents, all your listeners, for the faith that they have bestowed upon the commissioners and I am just so grateful to be a county commissioner in Monroe County, and I just want to say thank you and Happy Thanksgiving to everybody.”
Michael Stapleford of KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM added, “We are also thankful to you for your dedication and your service and leadership these many years, and we are grateful for that. So Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family and we also give thanks for our veterans. If people noticed, the Harvey Government Center in Key West and Murray Nelson Center in Key Largo were lit up green November 4 through the 11th. That was part of Operation Green Light for veterans, and we thank them for their service, and thank the county for recognizing that.”
Lincoln said, “Cathy Crane, the director of Veteran Affairs, does a marvelous job and thank you to all of our veterans out there as well.”