State must
keep oversight
The Governor and Cabinet Tuesday came to the same conclusion that
most of us in Monroe County have been at for the last year, and still
gave the county passing grades, for some reason we cannot fathom.
The Governor and his upper-level managers decided that Monroe County has
indeed not progressed as much as it should have in its state-mandated
work plan of protecting environmentally sensitive lands, establishing
centralized wastewater collection systems and addressing affordable
housing.
There’s a real surprise for you.
Yet the oversight group gave Monroe County passing grades this year,
which will result in more building permits.
Marathon has completed two more parts of its sewer plants. Layton is
well on the way to being done. Key Largo is putting pipes in the ground.
Islamorada is working out concrete agreements that will lead to a sewer
system in the very near future. Monroe County has spent the year trying
to stop progress by wresting control of sewers from the Florida Keys
Aqueduct Authority, and losing the fight. And despite that, FKAA managed
to finish Baypoint and Conch Key, but county leadership is still
waffling on the Big Coppitt, Rockland and Geiger Key system, has yet to
complete Stock Island hookups, and has barely looked at purchasing land
for the other areas, or even in partnering with FKAA for that land.
Our ruling triad of county commissioners calls that progress. We call it
spinning wheels with no traction in sight.
Yes, the county has said it will bond money. It has said it will devote
$20 million to Lower Keys sewers. That is a proverbial drop in the
bucket compared to what it will cost for the rest of the Lower Keys. Yet
our commission smiles and says we just don’t understand what true
progress is.
If that’s not a slap in the face for intelligent, thinking adults in
Monroe County, what is it called?
In the last year, as in the 20 preceding, the commission has done
nothing to prevent the loss of our existing stock of affordable housing.
It has in fact, condoned the disappearance of that stock by refusing to
establish a policy that protects existing mobile home parks and
multi-family units, instead preferring to allow the development giants
to gobble up those places and spit them back out as market-rate housing.
Now all this takes place as the housing market cools and more than 500
existing single-family residential units are on the market throughout
the county. If we can’t sell the 500 we have, how do we figure there’s a
market for the ones we allow to be built?
Maybe someone brighter than us can figure that one out.
The commission has been working on the Tier System of land mapping for
three years. They had an agreement with the state. They reneged. The
state threatened to pull the plug. The commission agreed again. The
state said OK. The commission reneged again.
The Tier System was presented to the Cabinet as the definitive answer in
protecting habitat, and resultantly the fragile eco-system of the Keys.
It seems like a good idea, and one that has been, sometimes grudgingly,
approved by both the development preservation groups in the county.
But the commission keeps trying to milk more developable land out of the
system. And they do this even as their own experts tell them that the
current number of buildable lots in the Keys will last for years against
the number of building permits we’re allowed to have.
And they call this habitat protection. Why?
Now, the Governor and his Cabinet want an approved Tier System on their
desks by March 21, or the county can forget those building permits they
so covet, and they say they must have to proceed with affordable housing
issues.
In the last year, the county has approved purchasing some land for
workforce housing. The body, however, has yet to put one stick in the
ground.
How does our leadership feel they have made progress when no bulldozers
are clearing land, no surveyors are turning in reports, no contractors
are waiting to roll, and no permits have been issued?
The state is trying to make our ruling triad see the light. And that
light is that lip service and political grandstanding are no longer the
rule in Monroe County.
The state wants concrete progress. The people want concrete progress.
The environment has to have concrete progress or we will eventually,
sooner rather than later, degrade it to the point where the eco-system
begins to fail.
Yet our leadership touts non-existent projects as progress in working
toward the goals we all tell them we want.
Why?
The state has demanded that answer. The people have asked for it for a
long time. Maybe we are all entitled to the answers.
|
