Emily Schemper, Senior Director of Planning and Environmental Resources for Monroe County, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM yesterday to talk about issues facing the county.
The mission of the Monroe County Planning and Environmental Resources Department is to foster sustainable quality development in the county while conserving and promoting stewardship in the county’s fragile environment and the unique character of its diverse island communities. The ROGO issue comes up a lot.
Schemper said, “That was the big topic last year, and it sort of culminated in December and January, when the Board of County Commissioners and all the municipalities, they adopted official resolutions with their recommendation to the state of how we should move forward. I think a lot of people feel like things are kind of on pause, but what they don’t see is that my staff is working very hard in the background now to put together changes to the system that will start next year, and this is regardless of how many, if any, additional units we get from the state. So the board asked us to take what we have remaining and redistribute it, and the big change will be starting next year. Instead of just having our normal market rate permanent housing pool that most people apply for, like single family houses, we’ll have two different categories. One will be the regular market rate, and then the other one will be market rate workforce, and that is a category where it doesn’t have income limits or rent limits, like affordable housing, but it does require the occupants to work in the county, 70% of their income has to be earned here in the county. So it’s focused on full time residents who live and work in the Keys, whether owners or renters, and that will be one of the pools that people developing homes, so even single family homes can choose to go through the competitive point system to get an allocation. That’ll start next spring, probably it’ll go into effect.”
With the funding cuts happening in the federal government, is the Planning and Environmental Resources for Monroe County seeing any effects?
Schemper said, “I haven’t had much affect my department directly yet, but I do know that on the county’s priorities for the legislative session, and definitely there will be meetings on Thursday at Florida Keys Day, it is a long day of meetings for staff and the Commission, meeting with all sorts of key committee chairs and lawmakers going over our priorities. We do have a number of very big and important funding bills on there, the $20 million for the Florida Keys Stewardship Act for water quality projects. That’s a huge one. Then we have our $5 million set aside in Florida Forever funding. So that’s what allows the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to keep cooperating with our land authority to acquire land in the Keys. They have a really great system going right now. They’ve been buying up a lot of land, both for conservation but also for retirement of development rights. So we want that extended another 10 years, and then we also are trying to get a $4.3 million appropriation for mooring field development. So we’re working on the mooring fields down in the Lower Keys, and that’s one of our big priorities. There are definitely big funding bills going on. I haven’t been involved in detailed enough conversations to be able to have a good sense of is there a risk we won’t get them or not? But I know they’re big priorities.”
Floodplain management discussions with FEMA will happen at the end of March.
Schemper said, “I know a lot of people are eager to see something happen on this. So staff, County Administrator, county attorney, we’re going up to Atlanta on March 26 to meet with our FEMA district officials and present to them our case for changing the limit on below flood storage enclosures. So that’s the 299 square foot limit. We’re going to ask to eliminate that, and give all the backup as to why Monroe County should be able to do that. Also, there’s an inspection on sale program that’s in that same remedial plan that the county has been on for years and years. We’re requesting to eliminate that as well, the whole remedial plan actually, we’ve replaced it with other requirements, and we feel that it’s time that the county could be treated like every other county in Florida in terms of the limits and the requirements. So hopefully they will be amenable to that. We will see.”
Are there any updates to the comprehensive plan in the works?
Schemper said, “The last big adoption of the Comprehensive Plan was in 2016. It’s the year 2030 comprehensive plan. That’s like the planning horizon for the comprehensive plan, and we should be doing an update fairly soon, whether it will be as big as the last one, it probably won’t, but every certain number of years, we’re actually required to do an update and make sure that we’re still in line with all new adopted Florida Statutes. That’s coming up in the next couple of years. So that will be the next big update probably. I think in my past experience in more urban areas, I think every location has its own challenges, but I think the Keys is unique, and that sometimes is a challenge for us, because people think in more broad stream planning theory and terms. How it works elsewhere doesn’t work here because it’s so different. So I think that’s one of the biggest challenges also, is to help other people outside of the Keys understand what the challenges are here, because they’re not in it.”
What else will be addressed during Florida Keys Day?
Schemper said, “One of the things we’re dealing with is there are a lot of bills this year that have huge preemptions and restrictions on what the local government can control, and it kind of relates to what I was just saying about helping people understand why it’s different down here. So something that may be considered forward thinking, planning, good planning elsewhere, even things that promote additional affordable housing, you have to be careful down here, because we have other restrictions that could make that a problem. We need to make sure, for example, that, as most simply, that our ROGO system stays in place and doesn’t get preempted by the state somehow, because someone didn’t realize how they were writing a bill, could do that. So that’s a big part of what we do at Florida Keys Day is make sure people understand how the nuances of what’s going through the legislation could affect the Keys. But, our other big topics are more specific development proposals. Everyone’s watching the Publix proposal, and they have a special Planning Commission meeting on April 1 at this point.”
The differences between what a lawmaker in the Panhandle or North Florida might deal with versus what issues the Keys can have are vastly different.
Schemper said, “It’s definitely a busy season, and I every year I understand that more. Much of my day is spent right now, during the past month or so looking at the bills that get filed, and how could these affect the Keys, and trying to help. There’s a whole team of us who are looking at that and making sure that we at least know what’s in the bills. There are thousands of bills filed every year, and not all of them even make it to a committee.”