
Amid conflicting messaging from state leaders, the Monroe County Commission again denied a proposed moratorium on new building rights at its Jan. 15 meeting.
The decision comes as representatives from each Keys municipality will head to Tallahassee for the 2025 Florida legislative session with significantly different degrees of urgency in their need for new units. Some, like Marathon, will look to immediately combat a rapidly-approaching reported threat of financial liability from takings cases, triggered as each jurisdiction exhausts the last of its few remaining building rights.
In the 3-2 split vote, commissioners Holly Raschein, Michelle Lincoln and David Rice said the proposed pause would fly in the face of direction given by state officials with FloridaCommerce, who have reportedly instructed Keys municipalities to fully exhaust their existing supply of building allocations before requesting additional units.
But County Administrator Christine Hurley and Planning Director Emily Schemper told the commission that the moratorium would satisfy state officials’ second mandate: that existing units be used to prioritize workforce housing.
The pause, they said, would allow necessary comprehensive plan amendments to designate many of the county’s 92 remaining market rate building rights as newly-christened “workforce market-rate” units, reserved exclusively for ownership by those who live and actively work in the Keys.
Continuing to distribute the county’s existing market rate units while processing those amendments throughout 2025, Schemper said, would leave just 30 left to reclassify in 2026. The moratorium, both Schemper and Hurley said, would demonstrate a more complete commitment to workforce housing.
In October 2024, the commission unanimously elected to move forward with a request to FloridaCommerce for 220 additional building rights to be distributed Keyswide – the maximum number the island chain could theoretically absorb without exceeding its legally-required 24-hour hurricane evacuation time.
Two months later, a second resolution, approved 4-1, petitioned state lawmakers to change the hurricane evacuation clearance time from 24 to up to 26 hours, potentially paving the way for an additional 3,550 units.
However, in December, FloridaCommerce leaders reportedly said the department was unlikely to issue the additional 220 units until existing allocations had been exhausted, and in a Dec. 17 meeting with Keys leaders, state Rep. Jim Mooney said he would support a more limited ask of up to 500 new units for the Keys.
In a separate meeting with county officials, he also expressed support for the moratorium as a mechanism to preserve the remaining units as workforce allocations, Hurley told the commission.
“The county and cities have both been told by the state, both (FloridaCommerce) and the governor’s office, ‘no’ to the 220 units,” Mooney told the Weekly by phone the day after the Dec. 19 session.
“(500 units) was palatable – it would have allowed myself and (state Sen. Ana Maria Rodriguez) to go to our respective leadership teams and say, ‘Here’s where the governor is, here’s where (FloridaCommerce) is, and here’s what these guys want,” he continued. He said a push to increase development in the island chain while asking for budgeted funds to preserve its delicate ecosystem through the Florida Keys Stewardship Act could be seen as contradictory.
“We’re trying to find a happy place, but what I don’t want to do is jeopardize anything when it comes to appropriations,” he said. “If we could have just worked on the 220, it would have pushed everybody forward for a couple years, and they could have come back with such a clean slate.”
“It’s the chicken and the egg, but you’re not sure the egg will ever hatch,” Schemper told the commission. “You (could) use what you have and then ask for more, but if you don’t know if you’re getting more, you want to use what you have wisely, which in our world means stretching it out. That’s why it’s a really big conundrum.”
“Well, in my world, we call that a mixed message,” said commissioner David Rice. “They’re mutually exclusive actions.”
“We’re assuming we’re not going to get more, but I think the state understands they’ve got to figure this out alongside us,” said commissioner Holly Raschein. “Would it be prudent for us to play our moratorium card now? Or if we get axed at the state level, say, ‘Fine. Then we’re just going to hit the pause button altogether.’”
In addition to creating the new workforce market rate classification, Lincoln said the county could continue to demonstrate its commitment to workforce housing by eventually converting some of the county’s remaining 144 administrative relief building rights held in reserve.
With just 12 units held for administrative relief left to distribute, Marathon is the “canary in the coal mine” to test the reality of takings cases, Marathon City Attorney Steve Williams told the commission.
In a meeting with FloridaCommerce Secretary Alex Kelly on Jan. 13, Williams said state officials hadn’t mentioned a moratorium, but instead broached the idea of “sharing” the county’s remaining stock of units, an idea Hurley said could come with a hefty price tag if the state withheld additional units.
“We’re not trying to be a thorn to the county, but our needs come up slightly before your needs come up,” he said. “In our conversation with the secretary, it was crystal clear that (sharing) is what Secretary Kelly expected of all of us.”
“Marathon hasn’t put in a moratorium, and they just want more to spend,” said commissioner Craig Cates. “So how do we have to change our plans to cover that?”
Speaking with the Weekly by phone again on Jan. 21, Mooney confirmed that he had yet to file a bill in support of additional units.
“The 3,500 (building rights) is roughly 1,500 more than there are vacant lots, so this isn’t about vacant lots and takings cases,” he said. “I don’t see any movement in the governor’s office, and I don’t think that’s how this is going to work.”
In contrast, however, Rodriguez said the same day via text that her “inclination is to support lifting the evacuation time from its current form of 24 hours up to possibly 26 hours.”
“While it may sound like a large increase when translated into a number of permits, as a legislature we can set parameters on when these can be issued over the next 40 years,” she said. “I want to keep the dialogue open and continue listening to stakeholders so that we may pass the best possible legislation for our community.”
Greater clarity is expected later this month with the approaching deadline to submit bills to the House Drafting Service for the 2025 session. Due to winter storms, the deadline was extended from Jan. 24 to Jan. 31.