Jim Scholl, Mayor of Monroe County, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM yesterday morning to talk about what’s been going on in the county.
At this week’s county commission meeting, the assessments in the Upper Keys for road elevation and sea level rise was discussed.
Scholl said, “We’ve got the pilot project at Twin Lakes that has been underway for quite a while. So that’ll be the first neighborhood that gets the road elevations to try to alleviate the seasonal flooding that occurs when we have king tides in the fall and in the winter and on some of those days, those neighborhoods are not accessible, either by the residents, or by mail trucks or by trash trucks, or if needed it would be rough for fire or ambulance services to get in there, so obviously there’s a need to elevate the road to make it accessible. So we’ve gone through the process for Twin Lakes, as I mentioned, which is underway, and the next neighborhood was Stillwright Point. What has happened? These projects were planned several years ago, and you have to have cost estimates for these types of projects in order to apply for grants. It takes a while to get the grant funding. The grants get awarded, and schedule the project. But unfortunately, the costs have escalated significantly for the capital investment to do what needs to be done because of the rules and regulations that are involved regarding stormwater systems. In order to elevate a road more than three inches, you have to be able to prove that you can capture any runoff from the road and treat it appropriately before it would be discharged. So that adds a significant expense to the project. Of course, like everything else down here in the Keys, the cost of doing any construction or any work down here, the costs have escalated significantly. So the capital cost has gone up by more than half. Then, of course, there’s the operations and maintenance costs after the project’s completed because of the stormwater system.”
The county had to borrow money to get the Twin Lakes project going forward.
Scholl said, “There was not an expectation that their costs would escalate that high. So we’ve already talked about having assessments for the operations of maintenance, which the neighborhood and the residents knew about, but they weren’t aware that with the escalating costs, that there may be an assessment for capital. So again, Twin Lakes, that project will be completed, and we will be able to determine if it’s functioning the way it was intended as a pilot project and I’ve asked the county staff to look into going back to the regulators like South Florida Water Management District, the Army Corps and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, if we could get some review for the unique circumstances of the Florida Keys. The regulations for stormwater treatment are basically a one size fits all. But of course, the Florida Keys is unique and the type of flooding that we’re trying to alleviate is due to sea water tides, not from rain water. The tides have been coming and going and coming and going and coming and going on a daily basis, forever, yes, and the water comes up, and when it recedes, it goes back to the ocean. I don’t know if that’s a environmentally sound argument, but we should at least evaluate whether or not we could get permission to do another pilot project without the elaborate stormwater system. I would like to at least see if we could revisit that or the other challenge would be, then we may not be able to do any of these projects because of the cost if the residents aren’t willing to pay a portion of the initial cost. So we’ve got to figure that out. It’s going to be a challenge, but right now, from the discussion we had with the residents of Stillwright Point up there, we would require easements to support the stormwater system and the utilities, so the residents don’t seem interested in granting the easements. If we don’t have the easements, we can’t do the project. So that’s where we are today. Each property owner would have to grant the county an easement to be able to complete the project as it’s designed.”
Building height limits were also discussed at the commission meeting.
Scholl said, “The building heights have been in place throughout the Keys and the different municipalities have different rules and regulations, but the county is basically 35 feet height limit above the crown of road is the datum plane we use for measuring height for the most part. I mean, otherwise it would be the original grade of the property, but usually the crown of road is more advantageous. But of course, with sea level rise, all new homes have to be elevated, and you use a base flood elevation, and FEMA determines that. Several years ago, they did a complete LIDAR mapping of the Keys to determine land elevation throughout the Keys. Then FEMA takes those numbers and what the predicted mean high tides are going to be, and develops what they consider to be updated flood maps. They’ve done all of that, but they haven’t approved the flood maps yet. But to get out in front of that, I put the item on the agenda that we should discuss elevating the building height limit from 35 and we agreed consensus again, no determination yet, but at least the staff was given direction to prepare updates to our comprehensive plan and our land development code to go up to 42 feet for single family homes, two stories over the elevated parking or below house enclosure that would not be habitable space. So the staff is going to work on that, but that should get out in front of the new flood maps and allow new homeowners to build to the building height, and then for any future flood damage to rebuild, you would at least have the opportunity to elevate as well. So it’s just thinking ahead and trying to make sure that any new construction or reconstruction will be less prone to flood damage. Then for certain residential, like multi family workforce housing, there can be certain exceptions for height above that, but for non habitable space type things like air conditioners or elevator shafts, things like that.”
April has been proclaimed as Fair Housing Month in Monroe County.
Scholl said, “There can’t be any discrimination for any type of access to housing and I think, down here in the Florida Keys, and certainly down here in Key West, it’s pretty visibly obvious. So it is an important thing, and everybody deserves the chance to have decent and fair access to all housing.”
Has there been any news with the ROGO issue?
Scholl said, “That process continues to move forward, both in the House and the Senate. Of course, I think there’s only 11 days left in this session, which will be next week and the week after, to finalize the legislative input to the budget and other issues like our ROGO issues, which is tied to the evacuation timeline, and currently, the Senate bill from Senator Ana Maria Rodriguez and the House bill from Representative Jim Mooney are tied together and have the same proposal for a 24 and a half hour increase of a half an hour to the evacuation limit that was 24 hours, so with that extra half an hour that equals 825 additional ROGO units, building permit units that would be distributed county wide amongst the municipalities in the county, and they would be issued out over the next 10 years. So that is the bill that is supported right now from the county, with our Senator and our Rep, and the one that has the other conditions in there, that 70% of those units would be dedicated to workforce housing, meaning people that 70% of their income is earned in Monroe County. We’re also creating an additional category of a market rate workforce unit, because so many of our more senior level folks, directors and supervisors and things earn more money than is allowed under the traditional income limits for workforce housing. If you use HUD money from the federal government or Florida Housing Finance Corporation money, those limits are very strict, so we need other funding streams we can use and call it affordable workforce housing, but would exceed what are traditionally the limits for qualifying for those units.”
The TDC funds set aside for affordable or workforce housing will also be available.
Scholl said, “That was last year’s legislative session. We got a one time ruling that allowed us to take $35 million of the surplus funds that were in the TDC and able to use those for workforce housing, but specifically designated for tourism industry folks on the private side of the tourism business down here. Those are distributed among the District Advisory Council (DAC) regions based on the revenues generated in those regions. But it also, though, allows for money to be transferred between the DACs, if one or more of the DACs don’t have the land available to do as much development with the monies that are allocated to those DACs. So that’s another opportunity, again, to add workforce housing that we didn’t have before. So we’re always looking at ways to enable these projects to be funded and developed.”
If we do end up with a little more than 800 ROGO units for the next 10 years, can we ask for more in the future?
Scholl confirmed, “Absolutely. This will be a very good start. County wide, there are approximately 3,550 single family lots that could be developed. So that was our going in request and that’s why we said up to 26 hours that would accommodate that number of additional permits, and over a 40 year span. That’s why it was cut back, because it just seemed to the legislative body to be too long and they didn’t like that initially. So that’s where we are today with the 24 and a half and the 825.”
Has there been any further discussion about the sales tax increase or property tax elimination?
Scholl said, “Those items are still being considered, but it’s just interesting that you have the governor wanting to eliminate property tax, and the House wanting to reduce sales tax, the Speaker of the House. One thing that did come out this week was that the normal funding available for school districts in the state of Florida, for Monroe County, it’s a reduction of over $2 million of state funding to the school district. So that’s concerning. Of course, the assumption is that if the federal government Department of Education is closed, that those funds that would have gone to the Federal Government Department of Education will now be distributed among the states, but the fiscal year for the state starts July 1, but the fiscal year for the federal government doesn’t start till October 1, so that’s a lot of uncertainty for the school district to have to put their budget together, not knowing whether those funds would be available later in the year or not. So it’s going to be a tough issue for the school board and the school district to figure that out.”