George Garrett, City Manager of Marathon, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s been going on in the city.
Everyone is watching Tropical Storm Erin and Marathon is fully prepared.
Garrett confirmed, “We are. Actually, I believe here in the next week or so, we’re going to actually stand up our EOC, which, of course, is our council chambers, and kind of make sure that everybody in the room really knows what they need to be doing in the event than an Erin threatens us. The reality for me right now is not so much whether the senior staff knows what they’re doing, because I think, almost to a person one way or the other, senior staff has been through a hurricane and has done it one way the other, most of whom were actually in the city of Marathon when Irma came by. So a few others have been involved, for instance, our fire chief now, who’s our incident commander, where was he during Irma? He understands it. He watched Fisherman’s be rebuilt, and he was a part of that process. We’re ready and you never really completely feel that way, but we’re going to stand up the EOC, simply to make sure that the people that are going to end up really doing the work understand what they need to be doing too. I think the fortunate thing is Erin is curving around the Bermuda High, and that can stay there all year, as far as I’m concerned.”
A city council meeting in Marathon was held yesterday.
Garrett said, “We had a couple of officers there that we provided an award to, frankly, because, like many, many situations where something of an emergency happens, whether it’s an accident or a fire or some sort of an event, the sheriff’s department or sheriff’s office is frequently the one that gets there first, and we’re second because we’re called out at the same time through the 911 system. These gentlemen, expertly, and I think the sheriff was there to say, look, we’re qualified. We have AEDs in our vehicles and we’ve been trained to use them and so these gentlemen gave life support to an individual, until the EMT showed up.”
There was also a change to the code to clarify that Tiki huts need permits.
Garrett said, “What happens is some of the builders of these structures come around to people knock on the door and say, hey, I’ll build a tiki if you want. Oh, they don’t need permits. And then they build them, they become a problem because of setbacks or size or proximity to the house or something like that. Then it becomes a code enforcement problem and it wouldn’t be one or two that we’ve got floating around out there. That’s not an uncommon occurrence, so that’s a good change.”
Wastewater and stormwater were also discussed.
Garrett said, “Each year we come forward to council with a modification to our collection process through our tax rolls for both wastewater and stormwater. We have a wastewater and a stormwater utility, and the reason for that is not to increase rates, although we could do that, but it is not generally to increase rates. It is to update the roll and what’s happening there? Well, somebody buys a house, and therefore the previous owner is gone, and so we’re updating the name on the roll, or somebody builds a house this year that wasn’t there last year. So we’re updating the roll, because there’s somebody that’s new in the tax roll. That happens every year. And so that happened last night.”
There is also now an agreement with an engineering firm to do some design for 92nd Street in Marathon.
Garrett said, “It is the closest road in the city of Marathon to what happens, say, up in Stillwright Point in Key Largo, where tides routinely cover those streets. 92nd Street may not be quite as bad, but it is a problem, and we’re going to end up elevating that road. The advantage we have on 92nd Street is that one side of the road actually is on the water. So when we elevate that road, we’re not going to have problems with where the storm water goes. If you get some something where you’ve got properties on both sides, what do you do with the storm water that hits the street? Or if you’re now higher than the lots on either side, do they receive your storm water because you didn’t handle it properly? So 92nd Street is something we’ve been waiting to try to fix for two or three years as we sought grants, and we’ve now got the grants to both design and engineer and then to build it.”
The city of Marathon is working with the US Geologic Survey to put in a water pressure sensor on Coco Palm Beach.
Garrett said, “The purpose for that is for them to be able to monitor wave heights and strengths and things like that. It’ll be there for about a year. Of course, their purpose in doing that is to be able to gain information and data on what’s happening on our, sort of the leading front of our islands to what may be coming off, just routinely off the reef side of the islands. Of course, that helps them, informs their models as to what may be happening if we get bigger events like storms and so on. So we’re happy to work with them on that, because hopefully it gives them enough additional information to help out in the event of an emergency.”
A city council land development regulation workshop will be held at 5:30 on August 26.
Garrett said, “There’s really two reasons, I think, for that. First of all, I mean, we’re in an election season, and I don’t want to stress that, but it is a fact, and it becomes part of, I think, almost any election that I’ve had in the 40 years I’ve been in the Keys, and so I think one of the things we want to do is really dispel any misunderstandings, I’m going to say, and misinformation about what the land development regulations mean and what they do and how it’s accomplished. There’s a lot of both misunderstanding and misinformation about those things. Then there’s a couple things that have happened, frankly. I mean, we know that this year we’ve gotten additional allocations that will be spread broadly through the Keys, including Marathon. So that’s additional permitting that is going to become possible in the future and we still have a lot of vacant lots, and we are always under the threat one way the other of takings cases. I would say right now, since Marathon has no allocations to give out, we’re subject to takings cases immediately, because if somebody comes in to ask for a permit and can’t get it, because we say, no, we don’t have any allocations, they could literally immediately and potentially sue for a taking and then we’ve also got some changes in regulations that actually came through the same legislation that gave us those units to protect coastal counties a little further in the event of storms, and particularly what happens after the storms. So there are demands being made on all coastal counties, really, all of the counties in the state of Florida, that they provide certain information back to the state and that they undertake certain things to make sure they’re prepared. So we’re in the process of doing that right now. So amongst a few other things, we’ll discuss and just simple mechanics of how we go through permitting, particularly from the planning side, will be discussed on the 26.”
A city council special call meeting will be on September 16 and it will be the first public meeting to discuss the budget.
Garrett said, “It’s been an interesting last couple of weeks. I think, the, I’m going to say, panic of the moment was when everybody kind of woke up to news that the county was making some very, very significant adjustments to their budget. I won’t get into that. I don’t even fully understand why it happened. It wasn’t Florida DOGE, in my mind, wasn’t federal DOGE. So just to get that off the table, I think it was simple budget management based on trying to get things under control from the past. From our own perspective, we came into this budget year with somewhere in the neighborhood of 16 months of reserves. The last two years, we’ve managed to meet rollback, which, as far as I’m concerned, doesn’t happen, and yet, we’ve managed to do it, it has meant that when you do roll back, typically, you’re having to compensate somehow for the fact that you’re paying the same amount of money for the same service, but it costs you more. It’s inflation. So how do you compensate for that inflation factor? Well, we’ve probably done it by taking it out of reserves, even though we’ve got such a robust reserve, even after doing that. So finally, those things catch up with you, and you can’t take money out of your bank account forever. So this year, I don’t think we’re going to make rollback. In fact, I’m sure of it. Council actually adopted a millage that was above last year’s millage, which would have been about 7.8% above what you would have paid last year. I think what’s going to happen is it’s going to as we come into that meeting on the 16th or the 23rd we’re going to watch a discussion happen with council that brings the millage that they adopted in July down to roughly what we had last year, which, again, it would be about a 7.8% increase on what you would actually write a check for when paying your tax bills for Marathon. I think that’s pretty good, because what it gets down to is we will still have over 12 months of reserves. We will have all the services that we’ve provided in the past. We will have given up nothing, and we will have added a person or two where we need them, particularly in the Public Works arena, because we have taken over the rights of way along the entire corridor of Marathon US 1. I think the fact that we did that was something City Council supported last year. We’re going to continue it. And frankly, I’ve already seen, the improvements in either edge of the other right away, because we’re now mowing the lawns along that strip between the bike path and the road, and it really looks better already. So we started that in July. So I think we’re in pretty good shape. Plus, we’ve made some changes to how both Parks and Rec and Public Works operate. I think Parks and Rec is doing a great job right now. We’ve got a new director, and so just we’re looking, I think, at very good things, and being in the next year and being in a good position with our budget. But bottom line is, if there’s something that you’re interested in or something that sort of draws your attention to our budget, then you need to be there on the 16th through the 23rd. In addition to what I think is good news and is positive, and how City Council has managed our budget, how the staff has helped them do that. Frankly, we’ve got some great projects going on. We’ve got a new skate park going in. We’ve got a new splash pad going in. We’ve got things happening at the quay boat ramp. We’re about ready to rebuild all the docks at Seven Mile Marina, and virtually all of that, with a little bit of add in from us is, is because we’ve got a great grant manager now, and something that, man, if you don’t have one, you ought to have one if you’re doing business in the public sector. So we’re doing well. I just, I really am very positive about where the city is and nothing’s perfect, and we can always look for improvement, but I think we’re doing pretty decently, and the council we’ve got has been a good council.”