Ron Saunders, village manager for the Village of Islamorada, joined Good Morning Keys on Keys Talk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on in the village.
While there are no major storms forecasted, it’s always important to be prepared.
Saunders said, “We’ve got our fingers crossed. We’ve had so far so good but we always have to be prepared, and we always encourage everybody to keep tuned to the media to learn what’s happening out there. I was born and raised in the Keys. I’ve been through quite a few of them, and preparation is the key. We have a website. We have a lot of information on our Islamorada website, as does the county. So it’s always important to be prepared, have a plan and be ready, just in case.”
The budget has been finalized in Islamorada.
Saunders said, “We had several budget workshops, we had a couple public hearings. I had a Citizens Budget Task Force that I appointed, and we had quite a bit of public input. And on September 16, we had our second and final budget hearing, and the council unanimously approved our proposed budget, which kept our millage rate the same as the current year. Our fiscal year ended on September 30. So basically, we kept the mileage rate the same because we tried to be as efficient as possible. And I think people appreciate that. We had no public comment. The meeting was over in five minutes, which I think is probably a new record. So we’re very happy with the fact that people were apparently pleased with what we did. And moving forward, we’re still looking for cost savings and ways to run the village more efficiently, but so far so good.”
Listening to the citizens is very important.
Saunders said, “When I was appointed by the village council, one of my main goals was to have transparency. I think a lot of people felt like they were disconnected, sometimes from government at all levels. So we’ve tried to be more transparent. We have a newsletter that’s pretty well received. We have a website, a couple of citizens task force for the budget. for our baseball field at Founders Park. I think it’s important to get public input, because we represent the constituents here, the residents and business owners of the village of Islamorada. We want to hear from them.”
Village council will meet on October 7.
Saunders said, “We’re going to meet at 5:30 at Founders Park Community Center here at the 8700 Overseas Highway in Islamorada. It’s our monthly meeting, so we have a pretty good agenda. We have a Founders Park master plan. Prior to me coming on, we had hired consultants do a master plan for the park, which is our jewel up here, and so we’re going to hear the final plan presentation next Tuesday, and every meeting, we get an update from the aqueduct authority on their transmission main line replacement project, which has been impacting different Keys for a while. I think the aqueduct authority has been doing a good job of getting the project done, but also through their contractor, but also keeping people informed. So we’ve asked them every monthly meeting to come and give us an update. They’ve done a good job on that. We’re also going to be talking about our wastewater system. We’ve had issues in the past. I’ve had a couple meetings with the Key Largo Wastewater Treatment District board members individually, but also with their general manager, who is a longtime friend of mine. So we’re trying to improve the cooperation and communication between the Key Largo Wastewater District and Village of Islamorada. We’re their biggest customer, so we’re trying to have a better relationship with them. We’ve got some contracts we’re approving, which is just kind of generally what we do. We’re trying to run this like a business up here, so businesses spend money and get things done. We’re trying to do that. We have a couple of resolutions that we’re looking at. We’re extending our lobbyist up in Tallahassee, we have two very good lobbying firms because, having been a former legislator, we understand the impact that the legislature can have on local governments, and so we have some issues we want to have our lobbying team work on. Particularly look what happened with property taxes. The legislature is looking at making some changes there. We’re also looking at the impact of what was called Senate Bill 180 which has some impacts on controlling local governments. We have some concerns with some of the details of that.”
Grant money is also important.
Saunders said, “Certainly, we were entitled to our share of state and federal funds. We have a full time consultant and a full time staff person working with us to identify grants so we can get down here, for example, canal restoration, protecting nearshore water quality. We’re also looking for some grants to help our transportation issues. We have a lot of traffic congestion in the Upper Keys, and we’re looking for ways to work on that. We’re going to have our lobbying team working. Legislative session starts earlier this year, actually starts in January. And so Representative Mooney and Senator Rodriguez are already up in Tallahassee for committee meetings this week, and next week, and so we’re going to be working with them. So a lot of issues on the agenda and also getting ahead for legislative session coming up.”
Any change on property taxes would have a direct affect on the Village.
Saunders said, “Most local governments, a big part of their budget, not the major part, but a big part of it is property taxes. I’m certainly aware of that. As a legislator, I helped sponsor the Save our Homes the legislation to help control tax increases on homestead property. I think it’s very important to protect the residents who bought their homes many years ago and through no fault of their own, the values have gone through the roof, and why should they pay more taxes as people are coming down and paying high prices for homes near theirs? But I do think that, we need to tighten our belts. We tried to do that this year at the village of Islamorada. I know that Monroe County went through a but bunch of budget cuts. Marathon kept their millage rate the same. So I think local governments are aware that we need to do as good a job as possible of controlling any increases in property taxes. But if you want to have firefighters and law enforcement, if you want to have all the services that counties and cities provide, you need to have a funding source and it’s not property taxes, which are pretty stable. Then look at other things like sales tax. But the problem is sales tax, which has been one of the proposals, is that it’s number one, very cyclical. It’s not really a steady source. It also gets to be very regressive, and so there’s some real problems with switching it out for sales tax, but certainly we’re going to be watching very closely, and hopefully they’ll be listening to our input.”
The village may take a look at some properties it owns.
Saunders said, “We have several properties. A lot of them are conservation properties where you can’t really build on them. But we do have three particular properties. We have the Islamorada Community Church. We have the old Island Silver and Spice property. We have a property called Machado property. So those three, we actually had a village workshop for the public coming to give us their ideas. We’re looking at various proposals that we may take a look at. One thing we are looking seriously at is having someone partner with us to build affordable workforce housing. That’s an ongoing issue throughout the Keys, and so we have one particular piece of property, the Machado, that we will probably use for that. So we’re looking at all different options, but we certainly welcome public input on any potential uses. We have my weekly newsletter comes out every Monday, so we welcome people to subscribe, and you can subscribe on our website and find out what’s happening in the village of Islamorada.”
For more information, click here: https://www.islamorada.fl.us/