The Village Manager of Islamorada Ron Saunders joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5 FM this morning to talk about what’s going on in the village.
Budget talks will happen in the village tonight at 5:30.
Saunders said, “We’re having a special call village council meeting. It’s our first public budget hearing. We had three budget workshops back at the beginning of August, and then we heard input from the public, from the village council, and we took that in consideration, and we came up with a proposed budget that we’ll be looking at tonight. We’re able to do some cost savings, so we’re able to keep the millage rate at 2.65 which is identical to the current millage rate. Our fiscal year starts October 1 through September 30. And so we have tonight, and then we have another budget hearing on September 16, and assuming that the village council votes to approve the budget will go to effect on October 1. But we were able to go in and find some cost savings and do some reorganization, because we’ve had some increasing costs that we have, for example, a collective bargain agreement with our firefighters, and they have some built in pay raises. We have a contract with the sheriff. He has some pay raises he had to go through and pass on to us and so we had some increased cost, so we had to find some places to make some savings, so hopefully we’ve got a good budget that the council will consider, and we’re going to get public input tonight and move on to the 16th and hopefully get it approved before October 1.”
What are some of the cost cutting measures?
Saunders said, “We’re trying to keep a lot of our costs down. We haven’t really been buying any property. Last year, they bought a church, for example, for $4 million and so it’s tougher budget times now. So we’re looking at trying to control that. We’re looking at some of the costs that we’ve been paying on behalf of employees. We had to cut back on our contribution to health insurance. A lot of our costs were getting pretty high there. We’re actually reducing our workforce, not as drastically as the county. The county did some serious cuts to their budget and eliminated quite a few people in positions where we didn’t have to go to that degree. We’re trying to be very fiscally conservative, certainly on the property tax side, it’s always good to get grants and get your share of sales tax and gas taxes so a budget can go up, and that’s not a bad thing. The bad part is when you have to raise property taxes, and so we really wanted to keep that as low as we could, because people have to understand that property taxes are a combination of an equation. It’s millage rate times assessed value equals tax. So, for example, we can keep the military the same, but if your values went up according to the property appraiser’s office, you may pay slightly more taxes. If your value didn’t go up or decrease, for example, you would pay the same or less tax to the village of Islamorada. The other thing to keep in mind is when you get your tax bill, it’s for everything. You’ve got on their solid waste, you have on their school board, county taxes. Then, depending where you live, city of Key West or Marathon or Islamorada, you have those local taxes too. So there’s a lot of taxes on your tax bill. Only a part of it is where you live. And so basically, we try to have a look at our particular part of it, but understand that we’re just part of that tax bill.”
A village owned properties workshop happened on August 27.
Saunders explained, “We want to get public input. We’ve owned the properties for over a year. We have, particularly three properties. We have the old county Community Church, which we paid almost 4 million for that. We have what’s called the Machado lots and the Island Silver and Spice property. So we have three properties that we can really use, because most of the other property we own are basically mitigation lots or conservation easement loss. We can’t put anything on them. But these three lots in particular, we’re really looking at workforce housing, because that seems to be a big need throughout the Keys, and making it affordable is a big part of it. Well, if you own the property, you can sometimes get a better price for whatever you can rent them for. So we’re looking at a couple of places where we can put some housing and make it nice, but make it affordable. The county went through a process where they were trying to use some tourism money to have some rental houses that came out at $3,000 a month, I believe for one bedroom, there was some backlash on that. So they tried to lower those rents. So we want to kind of avoid that situation where we come out with rents that are too high to make them truly affordable. So I think housing is a big thing. We’re also looking at maybe having a community center or civic center on one of the lots, but we want to get input from the public, because the public actually owns them. What the village owns, it belongs to the public, to our residents, and we want to make sure whatever we do with these lots makes the most sense. So we’re still getting input. No decision has been made, and I’ll be taking it to the council next week. We have a regular council meeting next Tuesday, so we’ll bring up some of the items we discussed. But certainly we want to make the best use of these properties and make it make the most sense for the taxpayer.”
Where would the construction costs come from?
Saunders said, “We’re always looking for grants. We’ve hired a grant writer, and we have a grant consultant now on retainer, and he’s out there actively looking for grants for us, because it’s a competition, but we want to get our fair share of state and federal funds, whatever grants are available. So he’s looking at things like that. And also the TDC has been very generous throughout the Keys, because we do collect sales tax dollars and tourist tax dollars here in Islamorada, we had to get our fair share of those back too. So we’ve been working with the TDC, have a very good relationship with them. As far as getting some capital funds, for example, to go ahead and reinvest best in the community. So we’ll be looking at all these avenues of funding and try to keep our property tax down, but look for all the grants that we can.”
There are a number of ways for citizens to have input in Islamorada.
Saunders said, “When I was first selected by the village council to start in April, one of the things I said was a priority was better communication with our public, the residents and business owners here in Islamorada. We have a newsletter, that’s been I think, well received. I’ve set up a couple of Task Force, additional committees that are already in place. We had a budget review task force, which is very helpful and has a lot of good ideas. We have the baseball field Task Force, in fact, based on some of their recommendations, I’m recommending that we eliminate one of the buildings that was planned by the school board on our baseball field. We own the baseball field in Founders Park, the village does, but the school board has offered to put some money into improving the field because Coral Shores High School baseball team plays their home games there. But there was a building that they want to put, the umpire changing room, player locker room, etc., which was probably going to cost between $1.5 and $2 million. But then I realized that at the end of first base line years ago, the school board built a building that hasn’t really been used. It already has a locker room, some of the things that they needed, and so rather than, spending money on a new building on our property, I’ve suggested maybe just renovating the current one and putting all those uses over there. So that seemed to be pretty well received. It saved some money, because the school board had tentatively scheduled to spend about $5 million on the ball field here, and the estimates came in about 6.1 so they were already at what they thought they might spend. And I want to make sure that every dollar that we save by not building that second building, if they choose not to do so, be put back into the field. We want to have the best field possible for our baseball team and other uses. And so basically, by not building two buildings, by only having the one with the concession stand and restrooms and press box, they can use those savings, hopefully to put it into the ball field and have that be a very good, world class ball field for the baseball team.”
Founders pool will also be resurfaced as well.
Saunders said, “Founders Park is really a jewel for the village, and certainly a big part of that is the pool. We have a community pool that’s very well used. A lot of residents use it and some visitors, but it’s been there for a while. So we were fortunate to get a TDC grant to help with the renovation of the pool, and so we’re going to be working on that. We want to make sure that when you come to the Village of Islamorada, particularly Founders Park, that you have a good experience. And so we will make sure everything’s up to date, safe, energy efficient, etc. So we certainly appreciate the funding from TDC and we’re going to make Founders Park and keep it as nice a place as possible. There’s a lot of information on the website. When you want to find out about our meetings, you can go there and there’s a tab called meetings and agendas, and you can look and see what items are going to be on the agenda. We also put backup materials there, for example, for tonight’s budget workshop, which begins at 5:30 at the Community Room at Founders Park. So we try put as much information out there as possible for the public, and we encourage them to participate, either in person or online, most of our meetings are on Zoom, you can watch them online. So we welcome public input, and we certainly appreciate it.”
For more information, click here: https://www.islamorada.fl.us/