Monroe County Commissioner Craig Cates joined Good Morning Keys on Keys Talk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on in the county.
At a recent commission meeting, there was discussion about possibly bringing some commercial flights back to the Marathon airport.
Cates said, “It was several years ago they had Delta, I believe, flew in there, but they weren’t able to get enough business. But back then, 20 years ago, Marathon was a different destination. It’s become more of a tourist destination now with all the improvements that they made and hotels and it was more of a winter residence before, so it didn’t have enough business to sustain a commercial company. But right now we had an update from our airports director Richard Strickland about all the possibilities and potential costs of doing the conversions, and the update to have a commercial service in there was like $9 million in improvements would have to be made to the terminal and the we need improved fire trucks there, which Key West has a couple huge ones. We had newer ones there. We could purchase them from the Key West airport at a very reduced rate. So everything is out there to make those improvements, we’ve got to get a buy in from the community, because it’s going to help. They probably need a subsidy for the first year to get established. I think the community, Marathon, the Chamber of Commerce and the businesses there would really want this, and they would help also do a subsidy. So I think it’s the time is right that the Commission actually felt that way. So what we ended up doing is approving a terminal expansion, renovation project. We approved schematic design and an estimate on the cost to do all the work. So we approved that project for $188,000 so we are moving forward with that. And I think the commission feels that this is the right time having so does the community. All the money that’s made at the airport, because the grants come from the FAA, and Marathon’s an International Airport, also, all the funds that are generated there have to stay in the facility, in the airport itself. So none of the money it makes can go into the general fund or anything else. So improvements in Key West are all paid for by the airport, so we hope Marathon will be able to do the same thing and improve that community, improve the services, and take some cars off the road, which is so important.”
At the commission meeting yesterday, there was an extension of ROGOs for affordable housing on 79 units in Key Largo.
Cates said, “Gorman and Company is the applicant for 79 units that we reserve them for this project, and it’s a workforce housing development in Key Largo on Overseas Highway. But there’s been some delays on changing the comp plan with the new ROGOs, but that also brought up discussion, do we want that many units up there in Key Largo? Because the county has a project there with about 10 units in it, we haven’t been able to rent them all right for affordable and they’re brand new, and they may not have the market there for those size units. So we want to do a market analysis and evaluation of the needs for affordable housing in that area and also in the Lower Keys, because things have changed. So we want to evaluate that and make sure we’re doing the best for the community with these projects.”
A traffic study was also discussed yesterday.
Cates said, “We discussed our level of service traffic study, which all the new projects, the commercial projects, they depend on that traffic study to evaluate whether they can get approved, like the Publix facility and the affordable housing project there in Tavernier. So it’s very important this traffic study to be accurate. And so what that’s why we looked at changing the methodology of what is based on, and we had concerns with all the construction that’s being done in the Keys, how that impacts the traffic? And we know that we’ll have a certain amount of construction for many years to come because of the pipeline that needs to be replaced by the aqueduct, all through the Keys eventually. But the other one is also the impact on the local residents. You have more of an impact on the Upper Keys that we do in the Lower Keys, but the traffic, we depend on those cars coming down for all the tourism. So that being said, we want to make sure we strictly do the inspection, the study, in a six week period that starts in February, middle of February, and goes through March. We do the same time every year. That’s basically the peak of the tourist season, and it has the biggest impact on the traffic at that time. We approved that, it must be in that six week period, and the impact of construction on the highway, we’re not going to take that out of there, but we’re going to evaluate each one. Was it a major construction? Was it long term, or was it just a temporary repair? So those are things that we’re working through. Of course, there’s always something that could come up that you can’t have planned for. That being said, we’re trying to come up with the best methodology that we can to get the study done accurately.”
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis came back to Monroe County just a couple of days ago to unveil a new monument to President James Monroe.
Cates said, “It was a very nice event. A lot of us had forgotten, or didn’t even know, the impact that President Monroe had on the Keys, negotiating with Spain, the deal to purchase to Florida from Spain, and then the impact that he had on Florida while he was president. So it’s really fascinating, if you sit and start reading it, that monument there for him, the statue, and then it has plaques there, which tell the history. And it’s interactive, also, you can scan the barcode there with your phone and get that on your telephone of the history.”