City, County, State, Neighbors At Odds On Homeless Shelter
Although Monroe County Sheriff Rick Ramsay is dangling a carrot to the city to get it to take the overnight homeless shelter off his hands, city officials are not yet sold on his idea of building a badly-needed senior citizen assisted living facility at that location.
City manager Bob Vitas said this week he is still pursuing the option city commissioners directed him to investigate that would involve relocating the Keys Overnight Temporary Shelter (KOTS) to the juvenile justice detention building, also on College Road. Vitas is traveling to the state capitol in Tallahassee at the commissioners’ request to meet with officials at the Department of Juvenile Justice to see if they would approve converting their facility to a homeless shelter.
But that may not be an option. State attorney Catherine Vogel said earlier that the state would not give an OK to the plan because federal funds were used to build the juvenile justice facility with the stipulation the building would only be used for juvenile delinquency.
If that’s the case, city commissioners might become more interested in Ramsay’s deal. He offered the property underneath KOTS as a location for a senior citizen assisted living facility, something city commissioners have long had on their wish list. Any property transfer would have to be approved by both city and county commissioners but Ramsay was trying to move the ball down the field after a joint meeting last week between the two commissions, which met to discuss a possible new location for KOTS but ended with no consensus after a three-hour meeting.
Frustrated that the joint meeting didn’t produce concrete results, Ramsay called Mayor Craig Cates directly to offer his deal, which would relocate the homeless shelter to the former Easter Seals building approximately one-eighth of a mile away on College Road. Cates supported the proposal but did not tell Vitas to cancel his meeting in Tallahassee.
However, Vitas was also directed by commissioners to meet with Monroe County Administrator Roman Gastesi, Jr., to talk about Ramsay’s new offer.
“I’ve already sent him an email requesting that meeting,” Vitas said, referring to Gastesi. “We’re going to get into a discussion on the limits of the property, where the property lines are.”
While the city foots the $440,000 annual bill for shelter operations, Ramsay’s office has housed the shelter in a building on its property for 10 years and also provides security and maintenance for it.
“The sheriff’s office has been carrying a lot of water on this for a long time,” Ramsay complained at the joint county-city commissioners meeting last week. “The sheriff’s office was never designed to do it long term. This was always supposed to be a short term solution.”
Key West officials are under pressure to look for another location for KOTS because of a lawsuit won earlier by the nearby Sunset Marina homeowners, who sued alleging the city didn’t adhere to its own permitting rules when deciding to install the shelter on College Road. A judge ruled that the city must make a “good faith effort” to find another location.
Whether a new location only a few blocks away from the current location will satisfy marina homeowners is questionable. Also, members of the nearby Key West Golf Club Homeowners Association, which has 390 homeowners, are also against moving KOTS to the former Easter Seals building. The association’s president, Russ Vickers, has said his members would pursue legal options if the city goes ahead with that plan.
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