CHARTING A PATH

on the county. Meanwhile, County Administrator Roman Gastesi recently met with city managers throughout the Keys as the charter discussion rollout begins.

According to Shillinger, there was “general positivity” from city managers who wanted to learn more. Shillinger said the county is planning to visit commissions and councils up and down the Keys as early as September to present their intentions for a potential conversion to a charter county. Voters will have the ultimate say in whether Monroe should become a charter county. And then the question becomes whether county voters will support the penny surtax to fund transportation projects.

Charter County Conversations

Highlight Infrastructure Funding Need

JIM McCARTHY jim@keysweekly.com

Discussions among Monroe County officials over a potential transition to a charter county continued at a June 21 board of county commissioners meeting in Key Largo. Officials are examining the move to a charter county, which needs voter approval, in hopes to implement a 1-cent sales surtax, which also needs approval by voters, to fund expensive road and bridge projects on the horizon.

Currently, Monroe County is unable to levy a penny sales surtax to fund road projects, bridge overhauls and other transportationrelated expenses. That’s because Monroe is a non-charter county, isn’t a member of a regional transportation authority (RTA) and isn’t under an agreement with an RTA. Instead, non-charter governments can seek approval from state legislators to levy such a tax.

Requests by county officials to the Florida Legislature to implement a penny transportation tax, however, haven’t gained movement with Tallahassees’s unwillingness to burden Florida residents with another tax. A push to extend the charter county and regional system surtax to 47 non-charter counties didn’t gain momentum that supporters hoped to see during the legislative session. Many local governments are facing increased project costs for roads, transportation and transit systems.

Those costs are magnified in coastal communities, including the Keys, where king tide floods and heavy rainfall are wreaking havoc on local roads and communities like Twin Lakes and Stillwright Point in Key Largo. County officials are also seeking funds to replace aging Card Sound and Seven Mile bridges.

County Attorney Bob Shillinger informed three county commissioners in attendance at the June 21 meeting that staff is moving forward on putting together a charter, or written documents that confer power, duties and privileges

“If the voters would approve us being a charter county, the commission can’t just decide on their own to levy the transportation tax,” said County Commissioner Jim Scholl. “It has to go back out to the voters to approve. It’s an option that provides that availability to us. It’s better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it, in my opinion.”

Key Largo resident John Millhiser expressed some concerns over the possible move to a charter county. While it could give the county the chance to levy a transportation surtax with voter approval, Millheiser said charter counties can also implement surtaxes on utilities like water and electricity. Mayor Pro Tem Holly Merrill Raschein said that’s not something the county is seeking to do, and Shillinger said the county isn’t contemplating such an action.

Millhiser believes that Monroe isn’t big enough to be a charter county. Five charter counties that adopted a transportation sales tax have a population averaging 1.8 million people.

“That’s 1.72 million people more than Monroe County,” he said.

Twenty of the 67 Florida counties operate under a charter, and Shillinger said three-quarters of the Florida population live within charter counties. Eighteen of the 20 charter counties have larger populations than Monroe County. The other two are Wakulla County, with 33,760 residents and Columbia County, with nearly 70,000 residents.

“It has historically been larger counties, but it’s not exclusively larger counties,” Shillinger said.

Charters in other counties allow county rules to preempt city rules, meaning the cities of Key West, Marathon, Key Colony Beach, Islamorada and Layton would lose their autonomy and be subject to the power of the county. But county officials have expressed they have no desire in interfering with other municipal operations. County Commissioner Michelle Lincoln reiterated that a move to potentially become a charter county isn’t a power grab by the county on local cities.

“We don’t want to preempt our municipalities. They are our partners. That is something I don’t have an appetite for creating our new charter,” she said.

Shillinger, who agreed with Lincoln, said language can be crafted as it relates to municipal preemption, requiring a supermajority of the referendum of county voters to approve any change to the provision that protects local municipalities.

“I’ve had conversations with the Polk County attorney; they have a 60% threshold for changes to their charter,” he said. “It’s never been challenged. We have 60% for state constitutional amendments, so I think 60% is clearly defensible.”

Pave Mobility until the cameras were operational. “The agreement was to have boat ramps covered by your company, and it’s not happening. … You need to come up with a game plan to get our boat ramps covered.”

Councilman Jeff Smith also expressed doubt in the cameras’ ability to accurately identify violators in areas with unconventional layouts and traffic patterns, a concern Mouw said should be rectified by personal review of each violator’s video footage, as detected by artificial intelligence through the cameras, before ticket issuance. Councilman Lynn Landry suggested additional overarching video surveillance at ramps as a way to confirm violations, pinpoint damages or vandalism and enforce additional restrictions, such as a two-axle trailer limit at the Harbor Drive boat ramp.

Developer’s Permit Fee Waiver Request Denied

In a split decision, the council elected to deny a request by developer Vestcor to waive building permit fees for its upcoming 124-unit affordable housing project, colloquially known as Seaview Commons, on Coco Plum Drive.

Speaking on behalf of Vestcor, attorney Bart Smith explained that the waiver in the requested amount of $196,014 would help offset expenses of $3.6 million incurred by the developer due to accrued interest and rising construction, insurance and miscellaneous costs while the project’s building allocations were affected by the Third District Court of Appeals’ 2022 revocation of 1,300 housing units across the Keys. Citing similar fee waiver practices more common in unincorporated Monroe County and Key West, Smith said Vestcor also intended to request a wastewater fee waiver of $496,186 in the near future for the project.

If the council had chosen to grant the waiver, as Finance Director Jennifer Johnson explained, the city would be required to transfer a matching amount from its general fund or affordable housing fund to its building fund, designated exclusively for reserves and expenses by the city’s building department. According to Johnson and Garrett, though the city granted a similar waiver in the past for a Habitat for Humanity housing project, the Seaview Commons waiver would have been the first of its kind granted by the city to a for-profit company.

“We’ve got tax money subsidizing this project (from the state) on top of this, and then we’re going to waive this and have to pay out of our funds to meet the state requirements,” said councilman Kenny Matlock. “Looking at the scale, it’s for profit. … The bigger developments make money, or they wouldn’t bother.”

“To look at the whole picture, these are extenuating circumstances,” said Landry. “We had allocations, they moved forward to build, and we no longer had allocations. They closed the loan, and they’re paying interest on something they can’t build. … Maybe you can say it’s our fault, because we issued something that got taken away.

“But we need to look at all sides of this. There’s a reason why builders don’t build affordable housing.”

The council voted 3-2 to deny the request, with Landry and Gonzalez in favor of the waiver.

In Other News

• Led by Still, the council recognized Marathon’s EMS and fire rescue personnel for their role in the treatment of a shark attack victim last month. Still said staff at Jackson South Medical Center’s trauma were so impressed by the work of Marathon’s crews that they called the city to compliment their life-saving measures, including administration of tranexamic acid to curtail the victim’s bleeding.

• Smith renewed his request to formalize agendas for the council’s monthly workshops in advance and review topics for each upcoming meeting at the council’s first session of each month. With July’s workshop earmarked for budget discussions, the August meeting’s tentative topics are the city’s code and land development regulations as well as workforce housing.

• Following complaints from the Sister’s Creek Townhomes regarding a business’ use of city right-of-ways on 25th Street for vehicle and trailer storage, the council agreed to add a parking discussion as a future workshop ordinance. Landry also renewed his request to examine a residential lighting ordinance throughout the city at a future workshop.

• As design firm K2M Design continues development of plans to revamp Marathon’s 33rd Street corridor, the council elected to postpone evaluation and consideration of an unsolicited public-private partnership proposal submitted by Chris Tel Construction to design, build and finance a replacement fire station on the street.

• Ordinance 2023-10, approved unanimously at its first public hearing, will alter language in Marathon’s code of ordinances throughout the city to better protect sea turtles with lighting regulations in areas near nesting sites. The change provides for closer alignment with a model ordinance from the state, enacted in 2020.