The Monroe Board of County Commissioners has authorized their legal staff to take “any and all legal action” to stave off a threatened suspension from the National Flood Insurance Program.
That, according to Chief Assistant County Attorney Bob Shillinger, is precisely what the legal staff will be doing in the coming weeks as county officials wait for the Federal Emergency Management Agency to blink.
FEMA has threatened to suspend Monroe County from the federally-subsidized flood insurance program because the county hasn’t yet begun the process to implement some controversial land-use regulations.
The regulations have been ordered on Monroe County by the courts as a settlement agreement between FEMA, the US Fish and Wildlife Service and conservation groups. The groups sued USFWS more than 20 years ago, claiming the agency charged with protecting endangered species had fallen down on the job by allowing FEMA, through the flood insurance program, to continue to write policies in sensitive species habitat.
As a settlement to the long-running suit, USFWS offered a series of Reasonable and Prudent Alternatives that could be followed to minimize further impact on habitat. Those alternatives were accepted by the court.
The only problem county officials have found with the settlement agreement is that it forces Monroe County to act as the watchdog against development in the habitat areas. And as the watchdog, local officials fear that when the federal agency’s maximum acreage of impacts are reached, Monroe will be the entity that has to deny any further permits, thus putting itself on the front lines for what officials estimate could be tens of millions of dollars in land takings cases.
The county, which has twice tried to get their concerns noted by the courts and been rebuffed, was told by FEMA early this month that county officials would have to implement the RPAs by January 12, 2012 or face suspension from the NFIP.
The Monroe Board of County Commissioners met behind closed doors Wednesday afternoon in an attempt to determine what its next steps should be in an attempt to shunt aside a mandate from the Federal Emergency Management Agency that commissioners believe could cost county taxpayers more than $65 million in eventual land takings cases.
And according to Brad Loar, chief of the mitigation division for FEMA, not adhering to the federal agency’s mandate could spell expulsion from the National Flood Insurance Program for Monroe County residents.
A nearly unprecedented event occurred last week in Monroe County.
The elected officials from four different south Florida counties got together at the Murray Nelson Government Center in Key Largo for a regional climate change summit.
Continue reading ‘Regional leaders accept realities of sea level rise’
Florida officials have given Monroe County the next 15 days to provide them a plan that leads to 100 percent financing of the Cudjoe Regional Wastewater system through local sources.
After that, the county might not get a good review during its annual work program review from the newly formed Department of Economic Opportunity in front of the state’s Administrative Commission made up of the Governor and elected Cabinet. That yearly review is part of the county’s requirements for being an Area of Critical State Concern. Once all aspects of the work program are completed Monroe County could ask to be released from the nearly four-decade-old ASCS designation.
County officials received a letter from Doug Darling, executive director of DEO Dec. 5 that questioned the county’s ability to fund the development of the Cudjoe Regional system within the existing deadline of Dec. 2015.
Former Florida Keys Aqueduct Authority Executive Director Jim Reynolds has publicly stated several times that the Dec. 15 deadline cannot be met. In light of that, several county officials have already said they feel they will have to go back to the state Legislature next year, possibly this year, for a further extension.
Still, the state’s hard-nosed attitude came as somewhat of a shock to local officials.
With a new management structure in place and more changes soon to come, with himself pushing for better efficiency and a culture change, and with a new working partnership with local contractors, County Administrator Roman Gastesi had high hopes that the days of really bad reviews from folks trying to pull permits in Monroe County would soon be behind him.
And while he admits things have improved, they are not near where he wanted them to be at this juncture.
For 12 years Moxy and her owner shared a good, quiet life in the Florida Keys.
But as so often happens in the Keys, financial circumstances forced Moxy’s family to move to another town, all the way out west to Oklahoma.
Unless Monroe County agrees to act as the enforcement agent for the federal Endangered Species Act here by Jan. 12, 2012, it risks being booted from the National Flood Insurance Program.
That was the highlight of a letter the county received last Friday from the Federal Emergency Management Agency in response to the county’s concerns about implementing new growth management rules through its flood plain management ordinances to limit impacts on endangered species in Monroe County.
The issue stems from a two-decade-old lawsuit that was settled in January. In that suit, environmental groups sued FEMA and the US Fish & Wildlife Service claiming that USFWS was failing in its duty to protect endangered species because it continued to allow FEMA to issue federally subsidized flood insurance in sensitive habitat for human development.
As part of the settlement, FEMA and USFWS outlined new rules the county would have to implement to prevent those impacts in the future.
Under those rules, it would be up to Monroe County to monitor the acreage affected and when certain impact plateaus were reached, to cease issuing development permits.
That, claim county officials, would put the Monroe County taxpayer squarely on the hook for what is estimated to be more than $60 million in possible land takings cases over the next 20 to 30 years.
Big Pine resident and 24-year veteran of the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department Tom Petek Wednesday announced that he is seeking the county’s highest law enforcement office.
After 24 years as a deputy, Petek said he’s running because he wants to see the department return to its community policing roots.
Monroe County has run out of money to fund further wastewater projects.
State-mandated central collection systems are either finished, underway or soon to start in every unincorporated area of the county except the Lower Keys where the proposed Cudjoe Regional system is slated to serve some 8,800 units.
Continue reading ‘Administrator changing stance on sales tax extension needs’
When voters go to the polls January 31 to select a Republican nominee for President, they will also be asked to allow the Monroe County School Board to continue to shift a half mil tax levy from their capital projects account to operations.
“Without the money, the consequences to the district could be dire,” said John Dick, school board chairman.
The loss of that tax revenue could mean a $9 million shortfall in next year’s school budget, a loss Dick is unsure the district could make up without wholesale cuts at all levels, including the classroom.
“Just a few years ago the schools had $94 for operations. Now we have $80 million. Next year it will be down to $76 or $78 million. Take that $9 million away from us and we’re at $69 million,” said Dick. “We’ve had the same general number of students that entire time, we’re just doing more with less.”
Regardless of the vote outcome, school tax bills for local property owners won’t be affected.
“We will continue to collect the half mil, we’ll just have to put the money back into capital accounts instead of operations and find another method to fund operations,” said Dick.
He says student achievement has been climbing in the past years, “but any deep cuts will have to affect student achievement. It’s our students that will definitely feel the sting.”
Continue reading ‘Chairman: Consequences dire without half-mil tax’
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