Where is Resilience in the Budget?

Cars drive through street flooding on Crandon Blvd during a heavy rain, June 16, 2019. The Village Council is considering a proposal to nearly double the storm water fee to build new pumps and drains, but the plan faces opposition from condominium groups. (Key News/Tony Winton)

The Village needs to act on resilience in order to protect its bond rating, residents’ quality of life and properties. At some point in the near future, a General Obligation Bond (GOB) will be required to move forward with the vast majority of the work and projects that will be needed to ensure this community can withstand increasing sea levels and storm risks.

But there are certain aspects of resilience for the Village that need to be represented in in the 2020 budget which cannot wait for a bond.

It is clear that sea level rise, flooding, increased storm risks and rising temperatures will continue.  Bond rating companies have put vulnerable communities on notice that if they do not invest in resilient infrastructure and urban planning their bond rating will be negatively impacted. In fact, Moody’s recently acquired a company to help them evaluate climate risk.

Key News recently reported that Fitch’s bond rating report for the Rickenbacker Causeway, covering $30 million worth of debt held by bond holders, noted that the causeway “is more exposed to sea level rise than most of the other Florida assets are.”

The Village needs to establish the framework in the 2020 budget to set it up to plan for larger bond resilience projects and to demonstrate a greater commitment to resilience it its operations. Ultimately, we will need a long-term action plan for what the Village of Key Biscayne will do to adapt to sea level rise and increased storm and flood risk

Village operations will need to weave climate preparedness into procurement, building, zoning and planning, public works, permitting and most, if not all, of the ordinances, codes and governing documents for the Village.  Over time, certain land use will have to transition to make room for water retention and flood attenuation.

The manager’s budget memo wisely identifies collaborating with Miami-Dade County and City of Miami Beach resilience staff to facilitate development of resilience programming. However, the prioritization of resilience needs to be reflected in budgeting, staffing, projects, and in developing expertise among staff to facilitate implementation of the work needed.

The following additions are needed in the Village’s budget:

1.  A full commitment to hiring the staff and outside experts needed to develop and implement an enhanced capital plan and resilience master plan. The manager’s memo and budget waver on these issues. It says: “In the event the Village determines we in fact have a communications issue and not a resilience competency issue, we may not need a Chief Resilience Office.”

It’s unclear what that means.  There is no question whether this Village needs a Chief Resilience Officer.  It does. Resilience is not a function that can be interchanged or replaced with communications. Funding for the level of expertise required for a Chief Resilience Officer position should be included in this budget.

A more realistic budget for a resilience master plan and a clear understanding of what a resilience master plan is defined to mean — in the context of the budget — is called for.  Council should be asking hard questions regarding what the Village would get with the $50,000 budgeted for a resilience master plan.  This is a nominal amount and it’s unclear what the Village expects to accomplish with $50,000.  The amount budgeted is certainly not sufficient.

2. State law requires the Village to incorporate sea level rise planning into the update of its Comprehensive Development Master Plan, which the Village is in the process of updating per state requirements. The Village needs a budget for developing sea level rise planning aspects of the Comprehensive Plan and to incorporate those into its update.

3. Energy resilience needs to be integrated into undergrounding efforts, including some kind of micro-grid with energy storage to support emergency operations and hurricane recovery on the Key should there be a problem with the grid.  The budget should provide for funding to engage in the at the Public Service Commission and with Florida Power & Light to advocate for energy resilience priorities for the Village and a budget to design and build a resilient micro-grid for the Village’s emergency operations, electric vehicle fueling and hurricane recovery center.

4. The budget should improve access to clean energy for residents and the Village. This includes money in the budget for ongoing sustainability work at MAST Academy, and a pilot compost project. The budget should additionally include resources to support energy efficiency and renewable energy deployment in the Village, including the work needed to make Key Biscayne solar friendly through Department of Energy Sol Smart certification to cut red tape and permitting costs for residential solar. Further, the Village can finance energy efficiency upgrades to its own buildings through establishing an energy performance contract and pre-qualified pool of energy performance contractors, as provided for in Florida law.

5. Water quality issues in many ways fall into a separate category than resilience.  However, it’s worth noting there are significant water quality challenges facing this Village between sargassum overloading the beaches, swim advisories for enterococcus with multiple likely responsible sources.  The increasing level of the water table and sea level rise contributes to septic tank failures. Pumps deployed to keep the streets dry in Miami Beach during king tides concentrate runoff, nutrients and bacterial pollution that pollute Biscayne Bay and the waters surrounding our beaches.

While this year’s budget includes $50,000 for water quality testing, the sources of ongoing contamination have not been identified and the Village needs experts working on its behalf to advocate and implement effective solutions to water quality problems.

Fortunately, the Village is not starting from zero in terms of resilience.

The Village is a member of the Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact and as such has signed on to plan around the unified sea level rise projections. In addition, the Village and Key Biscayne Community Foundation have contracted for vulnerability assessments of the Village.  Those reports and analysis serve as important first steps in informing adaptation and resilience planning efforts. These studies can provide some of the baseline information needed to inform development of the required adaptation planning.

We need commitments to funding and projects that will keep this Village moving forward on a path that will protect our community from climate change impacts and our access to credit.

The budget needs to better reflect funding to put resilience experts and staff in place, and budget for energy and planning projects that need to happen this year.

The Village Council has committed to resilience.  The budget needs to be adjusted to reflect this priority.

Julie Dick is a 9-year Key Biscayne resident and is senior counsel at Pathman Lewis, where she focuses on environmental, energy, land use, resilience, and sustainability matters. She frequently lectures on those topics.