Kristen Livengood, Public Information Officer for Monroe County, joined KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s been going on in the county.
The possible judicial consolidation of Monroe County with Miami-Dade County is a big issue. There has been discussion at the state level to consolidate Monroe County’s 16th Judicial Circuit with Miami-Dade’s 11th Judicial Circuit.
There is a survey out right now where your voice can be heard
Livengood said, “It’s opposed by basically everyone that I spoke to. It’s got, I think close to 400 shares on Facebook right now, on our social media page. Please take this survey, this would be terrible for the Keys. I don’t know if they know the consequences of getting red rid of our local representation.”
There are more than 50,000 registered voters in Monroe County. In Miami-Dade County there are 1.5 million voters.
Livengood said, “Their voters aren’t going to pick the guy from the Florida Keys, who’s running. They’re going to pick the Miami-Dade guy. So to lose that local representation, we’ll just lose our special face that we have down here that we’re able to put forward, where we’re able to really focus on things that our residents care about. We really truly care if somebody gets caught with 5,000 short lobsters, and we’re going to prosecute that down here way differently than someone in Miami who was having to deal with murders and carjackings, and things like that. So it’s just a really, really, really important topic.”
The survey can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=687724643399691&set=pb.100064864831004.-2207520000
Livengood said, “It is a very cumbersome survey. It’s very repetitive. It’s a state survey. It’s going to ask you the same question 14 times in a different way each time. I was able to do it in about 10, 15 minutes after I put my information into the blocks because it will ask you to expand details when you say yes or no to whether or not you think this is a good idea, I was able to skip some of those blocks so I wasn’t repeatedly saying the same thing over and over again. So there are some workarounds so that maybe if you only have a short amount of time, it is still very, very important that you go on there and give your opinion on whether or not you think this is a good idea or not.”
Even some of the legislators seem to have been caught off guard by this consolidation – the judicial process could get incredibly backed up if this were to happen.
Livengood said, “That could definitely happen. Other scenarios that could happen too, is that the judge would only come down to Key West once a month, and when you think about it, when you’re sending judges from Miami down to Key West, staying in hotel rooms, where is that cost really going to be negated at? It could really damper the processes that we have down here. The local access to the court systems would just be severely impaired, regardless. We do feel that that would definitely happen if we had Miami judges, and a Miami state attorney and a Miami public defender. It’s just something that down here, we’re very lucky to have this local representation and these people who really, really, really know what we care about, what our public cares about. So it’s definitely thing that we don’t want to lose.”
The disaster preparedness sales tax holiday will be August 26 through September 8.
Livengood said, “That’s two weeks where people can really stock up on what they will need in a hurricane. Batteries, flashlights, coolers, smoke detectors, tarps, generators, all these things are going to be tax free for those two weeks. It’s actually the second one that the state’s done this year, they also did one in May. So this is the first time that they’ve added a second one that is during, right before the height of hurricane season. So people can really stock up now that it’s very close to the top of their mind right now. One of the things I thought was different on there too, is that they’ve added pet supplies, dog leashes, and things like that, so that you can have these things to be able to evacuate safely with your pet as well or be able to keep those things on hand for your pet, seven days of supplies for you, your family members and your pets. If we don’t have an evacuation, we could still lose power, or water or something like that. Definitely very, very, very important.”
The Board of County Commissioners will meet on September 20.
Livengood said, “The Arterial Time and Delay study (for US 1) is going to be discussed at that point where we got that rating of the D. I believe that the National Violation Tracker, what we’re doing with those potential 1,900 properties that are on that, we will know more by then. We have to definitely know something by September 30, for that, but our building department right now is going through each one of those properties to see if over the years, whether or not it’s been demolished from hurricanes or whether or not they’ve made repairs to their properties, or every single one of those properties area a foot or more below base flood elevation. So they’re just going through and seeing what can be done.”
The delay study for US 1 was apparently done during some of the water main breaks and construction happening in the Upper Keys.
Livengood said, “On top of that, though, the study did say that it took into account those things, the methods were in the same exact time, so they wouldn’t move the time because they want to keep the, I guess the data that they collected the same from the data two years ago, and two years before that, so they don’t change the time. But they did say that they took into account for that. Unfortunately, it didn’t pass a couple years ago, either. They changed some of the methodology so that we wouldn’t have to put a moratorium on building, but it’s definitely going to be a hot topic of conversation for sure at that September 20 meeting. That’s something that we will definitely be following.”