Monroe County Commissioner Michelle Lincoln joined Good Morning Keys on Keys Talk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on in the county.
The affordable housing units in Key Largo were a topic of discussion at the commission meeting yesterday.
Lincoln said, “We know in the Keys, there is a workforce shortage across the board, whether it’s for those people making minimum wage all the way up to our residents that are upper management, and all of them are struggling to find a place to live here in the Keys. I know nationally, even a study has come out that we have lost our missing middle, our middle income. So when we looked at these units in the Upper Keys, we were targeting them for the individuals that make 120% of median income, so making 20% more than the average person would make, which would be the management level of even the tourist industry, because that’s what these were earmarked for. But with all that said, that price tag came as a sticker shock to a lot of people, and that is what we’re allowed by law to charge because of the HUD formulas that we use. But long story short, what we ended up deciding to do was to make the rent be actually 30% of a person’s income. So if they make 90,000 then that rent will be 30% of that. If, however, they make 50,000 we’re going to make the rent 30% of that 50,000, so you might be right next door to somebody in the exact same footprint of an apartment, but paying less or more, depending upon your salary as a tourist industry employee. But we had to do it, and be careful that we don’t lose money because of how expensive it was to build these units and how expensive our property insurance is, and originally, when we bid out the insurance, it was $1,000 a unit per month for the property insurance. But we were able to find something a little more economic. So excited that we worked through it. We talked through it. It’s such a complicated formula. When you look at the percentage of a person’s income and you hear the low, very low median, what exactly does it mean? And we kind of really broke it down and discussed it, and we wanted to do the right thing. And what I love about it is sometimes people might be hesitant to take a promotion at work because they’re afraid they’ll lose their housing because if it’s based on what your what your income level is, but now they can take that raise, they can take that that promotion, and then they’ll just have a little bump up in what they pay for rent.”
Are any of the funds from the Tourist Development Council being used to help defray some of the costs of these units?
Lincoln said, “Sure, yes. The fact that we were able to take that 35 million and purchase property, purchase buildings, and like these units that we’re specifically discussing, we bought them outright. And so the great news is, at least we don’t have that loan looming over our heads for that. But we do have to be very careful, because we don’t want to lose money, month after month. We have to be able to meet the cost because that unit, it also includes their water and their trash. But, yeah, we’re looking at it. And it’s definitely so expensive to do a workforce housing project. We had another one on the agenda yesterday for something that has been in the works since, I think, 2018 and that is the landings in Sugarloaf. Again, the price of the building and the permitting and everything has just gone up so much, the construction costs and the insurance costs that that project even is going to be more expensive. So we want workforce housing projects here. It’s just finding the developer who can withstand the years that it takes to get one from conception all the way to a ribbon cutting to people actually moving in. It takes some fortitude, that’s for sure.”
The commissioners are taking a hard look at spending in the county.
Lincoln said, “We are taking a very deep dive into our budget and into our spending, and we want to be efficient with our taxpayers’ money. So while we have made some very difficult budget cuts this year, and we had to lay off staff. That’s family. We had to cut programs, and we looked at what memberships that we belong to, and we debated stepping out of the South Florida Regional Planning Council and I am the chair of it, and I remained pretty much quiet in the discussion yesterday, because I certainly didn’t want to influence the other commissioners, one way or the other. However, being on the South Florida Regional Planning Council is a Florida State statute, and so while we would have liked to have possibly stepped out of it this year, we realized that would have cost us more, maybe with litigation and violating the state statute. We don’t want to do that. So I think what we might be doing this year instead is looking at a carve out for our county, legislatively, getting permission to do that. With all that said, though, the South Florida Regional Planning Council does contribute a significant amount of money and resources, not only to our county, but to our municipalities, they are the ones who help any planning commission with projects that they might be contemplating. The South Florida Regional Planning Council helps with our emergency hurricane evacuation processes, when there’s a storm. They’re the ones who help with brownfield. It’s when a land has had some kind of a pollutant on it, but they want to build on that land, but that has to be cleaned. And South Florida Regional Planning Council manages those grant processes. So there has been a significant benefit financially and also, a revolving loan for small businesses, over a million dollars to our county and 80,000 in cleaning up pollutants off of land. So there are some huge financial benefits for us remaining in that South Florida Regional Planning Council and for the climate compact, we’ve been a founding member. It really helped define resiliency in the coastal communities up and down the state of Florida. Again, it brought in Monroe County millions of dollars in resiliency programs and projects that we got funded because of our association there. They really wanted us to remain as a member, and so they waived everything but $5,000 for our membership. So we will stay in that one this year as well.”
Are those costs significant relative to other costs in terms of us continuing with associations in other organizations?
Lincoln said, “Not really, but we are looking at it. I mean, that’s just it. We are looking at every single penny right now because we’ve set our millage rate, and we now have until September 3 to balance the budget. So our staff is really looking at everything. I know the governor is sending his DOGE people out into different counties, and our county filled out all the all the paperwork, turned everything in that was required of us and we are auditing, and we’ve had our clerk of court, has been doing an excellent job of auditing different departments within our county, and we are truly trying to be the most efficient we can with the funds that that we have from our taxpayers.”
Decisions can be quite difficult for the commissioners.
Lincoln said, “Let’s talk for a minute about the not for profits in our wonderful county. I know that there is a move right now for everyone to send the commissioners emails, and we have received hundreds. I can say this, that all the commissioners are active on non for profit boards. The majority of us, all five of us sit on not for profit boards. We’re on the board of directors. We understand the services that are provided in our community. All the commissioners attend fundraisers and donate up and down the Keys to so many organizations, not just those that ask for grant money this year, but there are hundreds of other ones that don’t ask for grant money from the Human Service Advisory Board. Our county takes a slot of money, and we have a board that then reviews those people who turn in applications, and it’s a robust program, the amount of paperwork they have to fill out. So what I’m trying to say is there are more not for profits in our county than just those that have requested funding, and so the county looks at that, but as a local government, our first responsibility is to protect the county’s fiscal health, our financial health. We have to deliver essential services to our residents, and this year, with the changes that FEMA is potentially making with funding from going from reimbursing us at 95% for the first 30 days to 75%, that’s a huge amount of money for our little county when we’re talking the debris cleanup, we’re talking about what needs to happen immediately, and we had to look at that, and we have to say we have a responsibility to make sure we’re fiscally sound to be able to withstand that. We have millions in our reserves for disasters, but not enough. So we want to make sure that we put a few more million into that pot of money, and with the rising cost of operating, we had to make tightening our own belts and make some tough decisions, and the HSAB funding is not a mandate. It is not a Florida State statute. And yet it was something that was so important to all five of the commissioners that we agreed we were going to save $1 million in it, and just like staff is making cuts everywhere, at one point it was on the board to cut it 100% and we said, no, we didn’t want to do that. So we have at least kept 50% of the money in that fund. And so I think that’s needs to be mentioned. And at the same time, we still have a very rock solid Human Services Department in our county that runs the congregate meals for seniors, that does the Meals on Wheels. We still provide help to indigent care for individuals who are struggling to do improvements on their home to make their home more hurricane worthy. We still run transportation for the handicap and people at risk, so we are still contributing millions of dollars into our county for services for those who need help.”
Has the FEMA funding been finalized?
Lincoln said, “I think we’re all still waiting to see. However, one thing that we did, I want some good news here, we were able to recognize our Monroe County Budget and Purchasing staff because they received the highest ranking possible, they received 100% perfect score on this program where they filled out all the assessments and applications and abatements, and out of 441 participants, only two agencies received this 100% grade, and our county was one of them, which just, I think, reflects on our county’s excellence and our disaster readiness and our financial accountability. So even though we don’t know what FEMA is doing, we know that our staff is writing up there and ready to pursue whatever funds are available. I wanted to do one more really big good news story that is something that’s been near and dear to my heart forever, and that’s Grimal Grove, and that is property that is in Big Pine and Patrick Garvey purchased it years ago and has converted this piece of land and made it just a beautiful place to go to learn about what can grow in your community and everything he’s doing with breadfruit and with educating our community, and we finally were able to, in our hearing, acknowledge that that property has been an existing institutional use, and now allowing him to have that proper designation that that land is, and has been, but just never had the right terminology on it, and it got stuck in land development and codes, and it’s taken forever, but I’m just so happy that it is now properly identified as an institutional property.”