Cynthia Guerra, executive director of Monroe County Land Authority, joined Good Morning Keys on Keys Talk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on with our land.
The acquisitions list for the land authority will be discussed soon.
Guerra explained, “At our next county board meeting, which our governing board takes part in, we have a few procedural items that we take care of at the end of the year and the beginning of year, and one of them is that we deal with election of our new governing board chair and vice chair. Commissioner Mayor Pro Tem David Rice is going to remain our chair, and we’ve got a new vice chair this year that is Commissioner Raschein, but the other thing that we do is that we take our acquisition to our advisory committee in December or January, and then it goes to our governing board in the next available meeting, which for us will be the end of January, and that’s just the list that sort of guides our acquisitions for the coming year. It’s not a specific list of properties in most cases, but it prioritizes conservation purchases and it will prioritize specific affordable housing projects. So that’s a really important part of our planning for the year that we do. I don’t really have any new projects coming online. Some of the ones, for instance, the Landings at Sugarloaf, which is approved by the governing board last year, that’s a project that remains on our list, as do some of the projects at Poinciana in Key West.”
The Lofts at Bahama Village has seen completion recently.
Guerra said, “That’s a really exciting project that was well underway before I joined the land authority. I was fortunate to go to the grand opening late last year to see the property. It’s really beautiful. The units are really nice. The way the land authority contributed to that project was that we provided some funding to support folks that were interested in the home ownership instead of the rental units that are there. So we subsidized 28 units, and we had 15 closings at the end of last year. Some of the families were able to be in place for the holidays. So that was really nice. We’ve got another six closings coming up. They should be completed by the end of February, and that will leave about seven units that, I think all have assigned owners that’s managed to the city of Key West, but that will be closing later in the year. So that’s a really great success story to get people into permanent affordable housing in Key West, where it’s so badly needed.”
Where does the funding come from to acquire the land?
Guerra said, “Most of our funding comes from tourist impact taxes, which are a portion of the bed taxes that tourists pay when they come and stay in Monroe County. So that’s a really nice way to generate revenue that’s not generated by local residents. And the other primary funding stream is a surtax on State Park admissions in Monroe County. So all the state parks that charge an admission fee in Monroe County, we get a small contribution from each one of those admissions. Then recently, we’ve also had a really robust partnership with the state of Florida, where they’ve been our 50/50 partner on a lot of purchases, or even 100% partner on a lot of purchases. Unfortunately, Florida forever funding was cut last year, so we’re not realizing those funds at this time, but the session’s about to get started, and we’re going to be up in Tallahassee, reminding folks that that’s a really important part of helping us increase our rate of acquisition.”
Are there still opportunities for landowners to sell their land to the to the authority?
Guerra said, “We have a couple of programs that are not funded right now. The less than fee program is probably the one that was most popular. That’s just sort of suspended for now. We’re hoping to resolve and get back to purchasing at some point in the future. But anybody who’s got a piece of property that they’re not interested in either developing or they want to sell it to us for conservation purposes, we’d be happy to talk to them and talk about whether or not we can offer an alternative to selling it to a future developer or something else. So you can reach the land authority at 305-295-5180.”