Lynn Landry, mayor of the city of Marathon, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on in the city.
The city has seen a number of capital projects moving forward recently.
Landry said, “It’s been a progress. With government and municipality, it takes the time to fund and move these projects forward. It seems that we’ve had a few all of a sudden move forward, which is great. So we’ve been touting that a lot, because we’re happy to see all these projects that have been on the burner for some up to years, move forward in the city. George is a great city manager here in the city of Marathon. He’s a great asset to us. He’s been around for a long time, lot of connections, and has the ability to do things for us, because he has been around for a long time and understands what’s going on in the area, and so it’s a pleasure working with him.”
Sombrero Boulevard is one of the projects with some forward momentum.
Landry said, “Talking about speed of government, that’s one of those projects that they had done some mitigation out there, and we found a couple of issues and corrected it, thought that would help, and we found that it didn’t. But this council and previous council, we pushed hard to move that project along. Fortunately, we had some grant funding we could move toward that project. Honestly, it’s probably one of the fastest projects I’ve seen through the city in a while move forward. There’s been a couple of small bumps in the road, probably because of the push and how hard we moved to push that along. But all in all, it’s a great project. I think it’s going to help that area out tremendously. And for a long time coming in the big picture, but a short time in progress for us.”
There will also be further developments in the marina.
Landry said, “That was one of the things that was on our consent on Tuesday night’s meeting. We actually awarded the contract to LPS Contracting for the redevelopment of the piers down there. So that’s moving along. We also signed an ILA with the county to get some money back through a program there, through our voter’s registration fees, to put some navigational buoys back out there, to get in and out of that marina as well. So that project’s moving along nicely.”
The deep water well project is also moving along.
Landry said, “We approved a $10 million line of credit because we are moving that project along at a pace a little bit quicker than normal for us, and we needed to have some cash flow to keep some of those contracts going out and awarded. We’re starting to ramp up and do all the infrastructure and lay the piping for connections between all of our facilities. Once that’s done, we’re still moving toward the deep well part of it, which it takes about a year to drill that deep well, so it’s going to take some time, but we did a facilities plan for the deep well, which is something they required for us to get into the funding mechanism through the state of Florida to help fund wastewater projects, and those are very low interest loans. So we’re trying to procure a couple low interest loans for this project as well, which will help move forward.”
Monroe County received the Stewardship Act funding again this year for $20 million, but that act could sunset.
Landry said, “They might, but those funds are actually really nice to have. Thanks to Holly for procuring that when she was our representative. But clean water is something that we’re all concerned about. I know, even for the city, the county, state level, and even the federal government. So I feel like it would be a pretty easy thing to continue funding, because the Florida Keys and the ecosystem are very delicate down here and making sure that we keep all our water quality where it should be for the reef system and for all our visitors to come down, I think it would be a pretty easy one to continue funding, which, thanks to the legislature, through the appropriations and Representative Mooney and Senator Rodriguez, they continue to fund that for us. So hopefully it’ll continue into the future, and we can move forward and get an interlocal agreement signed between all the municipalities, the counties, Key Largo Wastewater and FKA, get this ILA signed so at least we know if it’s appropriated, we know what we’re getting, and we can budget for that. For now, in the very near future, any of those funds will be going toward our deep well project, because of the clean water, and we’re upgrading that system there for the deep well, for all our facilities, wastewater utilities. So, that’s in the immediate future. That’s where that would be going.”
Landry is looking to run for reelection.
He said, “I had a nice conversation with my wife about it, and as long as she supports me, I will continue to run. But I feel like we’ve got some unfinished business. We’ve been able to move a lot of projects forward. We’ve done pretty well. We had a big issue when we ran the first time was vacation rentals, affordable housing, and I believe the previous council and this current city council, with the policy is to enforce our vacation rental ordinances, to find a balance between vacation rentals and local families in our community, and because of the controls that are put on us from the state of Florida, the only option we have is to enforce the rental rules and regulations that we have in place now since 2012. I believe the staff and code have done a great job of enforcing those. We’ve made a huge effort to control them as best we can and try to help those be integrated in our community, rather than be a nuisance in our community.”
Development continues to be a discussion in Marathon.
Landry said, “I think it’s going to be a fairly large discussion in this cycle, especially. But sitting on planning, it gave me a perspective and what I said before was it kind of puts you in a box. In planning, you kind of look at what they’re trying to do, and you try to stay within a box to just see if you can approve it or not. Then it moves to council, and then council takes a different view of it. We have a comprehensive plan and land development regulations that guide all development in the city of Marathon that’s approved by Department of Commerce. We still can look at things and put special conditions on it, because their conditional use is coming through for us, for the development, and try to look at those and do what’s best for the entire city. These developers come in, and they have a process through the conditional use, and it’s a pretty lengthy process to make sure that they’re following all our land development regulations within the comprehensive plan, and then we can put further conditions on it that may help a certain neighborhood or wherever that development is taking place. So that’s what we try to do, to find and strike the balance with the community and the developments.”
Could the rate of growth continue in the future?
Landry suggested, “I think development as a whole has slowed down. I know just more recently, planning commission drives what comes to council as far as development and conditional uses. I believe the last three planning commissions, there’s been nothing on the agenda. So I think the economy has changed a little bit, and I believe development has slowed down. I think a lot of the more prime properties in the city of Marathon that were very easily developable have happened, and then there’s still some left that maybe I wouldn’t call them sub prime, but just not as easy to develop. So it makes it a little bit more difficult for a developer to do it. But I think growth overall has slowed down. I believe in the future we’re going to be looking at redevelopment is going to be the prime happening in the city of Marathon, with all our ground level homes and older homes and older businesses in the community. I think that in the probably distant future is more of a redevelopment that’s going to happen in the city.”
ROGO units given out will be 900 for the whole county for the next 10 years and multi-units are not a part of that.
Landry said, “That’s really something that’s going to hamper the city of Marathon is the fact that we are traditionally very not opposed to building affordable housing in our community, because we know how much we need it and really the only way that it’s accomplished with the constrictions that are put on by HUD and the income allowances is multi family development being duplexes, triplexes, maybe town home style, even into the apartment style building is the only way that we’re really going to accomplish that within the city. So under the new BPAS regulations that the governor just signed, it’s one per lot. So hopefully we can get with Rep Mooney and Senator Rodriguez and try to make some changes this upcoming legislative season for the city of Marathon so we can accomplish more of these affordable housing projects.”
Three new firefighters were hired in the city recently.
Landry said, “This time of year, we love to recognize people within the city of Marathon and outside the city of Marathon sometimes. We hired three new firefighters, David Conde, Alexander Martinez and Alejandro Ortega. We actually pinned two of those three. One had a family event. He couldn’t make it, but we pinned those at the city council meeting as well, which is great to see those young, new hires. And also Isabella Sanchez, was just promoted to lieutenant. And something she did, which was pretty phenomenal, was we did a driver’s test and a lieutenant’s test within six weeks of each other. Both are very rigorous in their training and the studies and the interviewing process, and she came out on top of both of those. So she’s a new promotion to lieutenant for the fire department in the city of Marathon. Just wanted to say congratulations to her. One thing I’ve thoroughly enjoyed in my time of service in city council is the fact that while we may not sing Kumbaya, we do have a lot of similar mindsets, but we like to debate and we do it professionally and courteously, and then we have a vote, and whatever happens, we move forward to the next item. I really appreciate that, and that’s why I love serving with this council so much.”
The city’s budget discussion will be on July 22 at 5:30 p.m.
Landry said, “We’re going to be looking at the initial budget, and primarily that night is to set the initial millage. One thing about that budget is generally what we’ll do is we’ll try to set that millage at a rate we know we can do everything we’re trying to do, and maybe a little more, and then hopefully we can work backwards down, back to something a little bit less, but the original meeting is just to set that original millage, something we can always lower, but we can’t raise it after that meeting. So that’s really important to get that out there to everybody, to understand that that meeting is to set it. We can always go down, but we can’t go up from there. Something unforeseen might come up through the budget cycle. The city is in fantastic financial shape. It’s amazing. Starting of this year, from the last fiscal year ending, we had about 16 months of reserves, which is a little bit more than what is normal. Normally, 12 months is about the standard. But the one thing that’s happening, and we’ve seen it all over in the private and the public sector, is the fact the cost of doing business keeps going up with inflation and all the contracts that we’re awarding, they’re actually going up exponentially, because people are feeling it, out in the in the real world, for inflation, and so it’s affecting us. Every time that our cost of doing business goes up, our daily rate and what it takes to run the city goes up. So it actually shrinks our reserves, because it takes more money to run the city on a daily basis than the year before.”
We are in hurricane season, so remain vigilant.
Landry said, “One thing that they’re talking about now is FEMA and the federal government raising the threshold of the amount of money it takes to get FEMA reimbursement. So we’ve spoken about that in the workshops that we’ve had, that if a storm only hits the Florida Keys, there’s a possibility we may not make that threshold for FEMA reimbursement. So that’s something looming over us here in the Florida Keys, but the City of Marathon is well prepared. Our new fire chief, who will be the incident commander for an event, has done a really good job moving us forward and keeping us prepared with all the city staff as well. So I think the city’s in a great position if we have a storm this year, we’re hoping that we don’t, of course, like everybody else, but we’re in a pretty good position in the city for that.”
A free Family Fun Fest will be held on August 2.
Landry said, “They’re going to do a 10 to 2, it’s just a Family Fun Fest before school starts. They’re getting hot dogs, school supplies, crafts, games. They’re actually going to have a touch tank there, an animal encounter. We’re having a bounce house there as well, but it’s going to be a nice little midday event for all the kids going back to school. We’re going to give away smoothies there as well, but it’ll just be a good family event getting prepped and ready to go back to school. It’s at the Kirk of the Keys in the middle of town, right across from the fire station.”