Item S1 S.1
Coty f � ,�� ,' BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS
�� Mayor David Rice,District 4
The Florida Keys � Mayor Pro Tem Craig Cates,District I
y Michelle Coldiron,District 2
James K.Scholl,District 3
Ij Holly Merrill Raschein,District 5
County Commission Meeting
August 17, 2022
Agenda Item Number: S.1
Agenda Item Summary #10871
BULK ITEM: No DEPARTMENT: County Administrator
TIME APPROXIMATE: STAFF CONTACT: Lindsey Ballard(305) 292-4443
TBD
AGENDA ITEM WORDING: Request to speak to the Board of County Commissioners by
Richard Boettger in regards to the County taking over Windstorm Insurance.
ITEM BACKGROUND: Sounding Board is a separate section of the regular meeting agenda
where members of the public are allowed to address the County Commission on a matter pertaining
to County government, excluding matters in litigation and complaints against specific personnel. No
action may be taken by the County Commission on an item on the Sounding Board agenda.
Individuals who wish to utilize Sounding Board must contact the County Administrator's Office in
writing in order to be scheduled on the agenda, must specific the subject matter of the presentation,
and must submit the request to the County Administrator's Office by the agenda deadline for the
requested meeting. The initial speaker may address the County Commission for a period of up to
five minutes. Subsequent speakers who are speaking for themselves on the same item may speak for
three minutes.
See, Section 1.03(b) of the Monroe County BOCC administrative procedures, as last amended by
Resolution No. 231-2019.
PREVIOUS RELEVANT BOCC ACTION: n/a
CONTRACT/AGREEMENT CHANGES:
n/a
STAFF RECOMMENDATION:
DOCUMENTATION:
Sounding Board- R.Boettger
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FINANCIAL IMPACT:
Effective Date:
Expiration Date:
Total Dollar Value of Contract:
Total Cost to County:
Current Year Portion:
Budgeted:
Source of Funds:
CPI:
Indirect Costs:
Estimated Ongoing Costs Not Included in above dollar amounts:
Revenue Producing: If yes, amount:
Grant:
County Match:
Insurance Required:
Additional Details:
REVIEWED BY:
Bob Shillinger Completed 07/21/2022 12:02 PM
Lindsey Ballard Completed 07/28/2022 9:45 AM
Board of County Commissioners Pending 08/17/2022 9:00 AM
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From: Richard Boettoer
To: Ballard-Lindsey; Rick Boettoer
Subject: Guidance on dept head
Date: Tuesday,July 19,2022 2:22:28 PM
Attachments: BP July 10 22 Self Insure.doc
CAUTION:This email originated from outside of the County. Whether you know the sender or not,
do not click links or open attachments you were not expecting.
Dear Lindsey,
I just spoke with Crystal, and she suggested I run this question by you.
Below and attached is a topic I want to bring up with the Commission, for
the August meeting as it is too late for tomorrow. In brief, I wanted to ask 00
the Commisisoners to authorize my working with an appropriate
department head on my proposal for the County to take over our windstorm 0
insurance,just as the State is currently doing.
It turns out we no longer have the catch-all time allowing us citizens to bring
up an issue that is not already on the agenda. Crystal tells me I would need
to have my proposal put forward by a department head.
So we have a chicken and egg problem. I am asking for guidance towards
the most appropriate department. But I would have to have it ;ut forward by
this very same department.
So: how can we go about this? Your guidance will be appreciated. I have
already forewarned the Commissioners, discussed with Bob, and published
the below in Key West the Newspaper.
0
Undercut Citizens
We Monroe County property owners are grossly
overpaying for our windstorm insurance. Everybody
knows it. But there is something we can do about it, if
our County Commission will help us replace Citizens
with a fair insurance program.
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S.1.a
The facts about how much we overpay are available from
Citizens themselves. From 2003-2021, we paid almost 3
times as much in premiums as we received in payouts for
windstorm damage—almost all of it for Irma, the only
year they paid us more than we paid them. And this was
over a period when we had 14 hurricanes that required
evacuations. The numbers were: $1.354 billion in
premiums we paid them, and $489 million in damages
they paid us.
That is, they made a profit of over $864 million—over
10% yearly of our entire County budget, that is, money
we pay to the State on top of the taxes we pay to the
County. This is NOT the money we pay for normal
insurance against hurricanes. This extra $864 million is
what we pay to cover, mainly, sinkholes in the
panhandle. In the massive foreclosure days I noticed that
the banks were including, as expenses in their final
judgments, large numbers for "subsidence" insurance.
This made no sense to me, as we do not have sinkholes,
or "subsidence," in Monroe. That's when I found out the
poor counties in North Florida, which have far more
voters than we rich folk in Monroe, were getting their
sinkholes paid for with our hurricane premiums.
Okay, that is enough complaining. I propose that we
actually do something about it. It is simple. Fire citizens,
and have the County insure us themselves. Oops, I said
"themselves," but remember, we ARE the County. We
should simply insure ourselves, at a fair rate. This is not
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S.1.a
rocket science. Note that the State was smart enough to
do this in 2002. Because so many private insurers had
pulled out of Florida, we simply decided as a state to
insure ourselves. Partly this was to protect the value of
our Florida real estate—we can't get mortgages without
various forms of insurance.
Right now, usurious insurance premiums are the biggest,
perhaps only, threat to the value of our homes in
Monroe. We in the County should try to be only as wise
as the state of Florida was in 2002. I have forewarned
our Commissioners, Administrator, and County Attorney
that I will be putting this formally before the Commission
0
LO
at its July 19th meeting next week. This is just the first
step. I will not be asking them to approve or even discuss
the merits of this proposal. I will only ask them as a first
step to authorize our Administrator, Roman Gastesi, to
allow any member of his staff he chooses to work with
me, and I presume FIRM, our nonprofit insurance
watchdog, to research how this might be done.
en
And here's the most important reason to at least make
any attempt at all to look into this. Right now, Citizens
doesn't give a damn about our complaints, and we need
to motivate them to do so. They use their phony science
to justify charging us any damn number they care to.
They don't even have to tell us how they judge our risks—
we argue that our building standards are so much higher
than the rest of the state, that we don't have as many
damage claims as the mainland does, and they blow us
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S.1.a
off.
We have a good enough case that they should be worried
about losing us. The real science behind evaluating risks
is the numbers I showed you, above. Their actuarial
models are just speculation. Eighteen years of actual
payouts versus premiums is the factual science that
should determine what we pay.
Of course, I realize this would be a complex issue on
many fronts. I would also hope the Commissioners might
authorize our very capable County Attorney Bob
Schillinger to lend his office's skills to inform my own
legal analysis of statutory ramifications.
0
Again, the best reason to start investigating this
possibility of the County self-insuring would be, at the
very least, getting the Citizens board to start taking our
objections seriously. One calculation they might make is
to reduce the amount they are gouging us. Nothing like
the threat of an expensive legal action to open one's eyes
to compromise.
So: the question is, will our mostly new County
Commission be up to this task?
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S.1.a
Rick
Richard Boettger
1402 Olivia St. #1
Key West FL 33040
2-4 pm: 305-294-3525
All other times, 305-294-8503, home landline with answering machine monitored daily.
No phones accept text messages
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