Islamorada Village Manager Ron Saunders joined Good Morning Keys on Keys Talk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on in the village.
The Seaside Soiree will celebrate 60 years of the College of the Florida Keys tonight.
Saunders said, “I have some connection to this. My father, Jack Saunders, was a state legislator back in 1960 and he is a House member and Senator John Spotswood, our state senator, filed the legislation to create the college. It was created by the legislature, and then went into effect, I think, six years later. So my dad helped create the college, and then when I was in my early 20s, Governor Bob Graham appointed me to the College Board, and I became chairman. I mentioned yesterday at Rotary that I was the youngest Board Chair in history. That was the good news, the bad news that I was like over 40 years ago. So I’m no longer the youngest anything, but certainly I was the board chair. Then after that, I was elected to the legislature. And four years after I was elected, I became the appropriation committee chairman in charge of state budget, which was good timing, because the college campus was having a lot of problems with the buildings. We were able to basically completely renovate the campus, build new buildings, and to this day, the campus is a model of what a college campus should look like, and Dr. G. and the staff do a great job of the college and I always try to be supportive.”
A license agreement for the baseball field is available online.
Saunders explained, “For the past 25 years, the Monroe County School Board has had a partnership with the village of Islamorada. We own Founders Park, and 25 years ago, we had a partnership where basically the school district came in and paid for the field, and Coral Shores high school baseball team has used it. That agreement expired. We’ve been negotiating for almost a year now to get an interlocal agreement, which we now have, and then the baseball License Agreement, which we’re still negotiating. The issue, basically now is that our village council, on a five to nothing vote on January 8, passed our version of a baseball license agreement, but then the school board passed a different version. Just like budgets in the House and Senate, you have to be the same. And so right now, there are some differences. I did have a good discussion yesterday with school superintendent Ed Tierney. He and I have a good relationship. In fact, he’s on my Take Stock in Children board, and so we talk quite often, and we went through some of the differences and trying to see if we can resolve some of his differences. We do want to work together. We both want to have the field continue operation with the high school team, we’ve agreed to the proposal to have artificial turf, for example, there. We want a high quality field. We want to have input on the specifications and the drainage, etc. I think we’re close to some of these things, but we want to work out the final details. So he and I had a good discussion yesterday on the ball field, and hopefully we’ll reach a conclusion relatively soon.”
Island Fest is hosted this weekend by the Islamorada Chamber of Commerce.
Saunders said, “It’s going to be tomorrow, Saturday, and also Sunday, from 10 to five, and it’s going to be a lot of live music performances. We’re going to have a smoked fish dip contest on Sunday. We have a lot of events for the kids, and the admission is free to the Island Fest. I think that they’re going to charge $10 for parking to park inside the park, but I went to it last year, and it’s a great event. We have kite flying, sand sculpting on the beach. We have art for the kids, hula hooping, sand castles. We have all the food trucks, they’ll be showing up. So once again tomorrow and Sunday March 28 and 29th from 10 to five at Founders Park. Be aware that there’ll be some traffic backups, because when you have that many people show up at one spot, and some of them are crossing the highway, just be aware, if you’re coming through the Islamorada area you may experience some traffic delays.”
Plates and Plans will be held at Founders Park Community Center on April 15.
Saunders said, “It’s from 11 to one, our planning director set it up and basically is going to have some sandwiches, etc, just to have the community come in, probably most of the people that do planning, but also just, if you have any questions, we’re trying to do a lot more outreach to the community, and we’ll probably do with our building department, another type of thing like this. Because I think the more you let people know what you’re doing, the more they appreciate the services we provide. So we’re trying to have more input from the public. And this past year, I set up a budget review task force that had five citizens that gave us input on our village budget. We had a baseball Task Force to help give input on the interlocal agreement and the baseball license agreement. So I think the more you involve the citizens, the better. We currently have a charter review committee that’s been meeting, and probably is getting close to concluding, a five member committee appointed by the council, looking at possible changes to our village charter, which is like our Constitution. And so a lot of citizen input, which I think is important, and I think it helps people have more confidence. So I think that’s important to do, and we want to keep doing that.”
Affordable workforce housing continues to be an issue.
Saunders said, “Just as the rest of the Keys, we have a shortage of affordable workforce housing, and for example, a lot our staff commutes from either Key Largo or even from Dade County, most of our firefighters don’t live down here. They have to commute. And so we had a piece of property called Machado property, which is around mile marker 88.5 that we bought, and which has been sitting vacant. So we actually went out for request for qualifications, and we got two submissions, Wednesday, we had the opening of the submissions, and we got two of them. One is a company, not in the county, but the other one’s from Habitat for Humanity. So what we’re looking to do is we’ll put up the property, they put up the housing, and it has to be, obviously income restricted, but we’re looking at that so that we should have a committee doing those evaluations, probably soon, because we like to get it before the council and see how many units they can put on there, etc. So workforce housing, as the rest of the Keys, is important.”
Traffic is also a discussion topic.
Saunders said, “Right now we have what’s called Freebee, which is a point to point rideshare program. The Freebee was going to expire in June, and so we went ahead and put our request for proposals out to see if other companies wanted to give us the best price, we would look at maintaining the service, but seeing what kind of numbers there are. As far as financial we’re looking to make sure we get the best value. So Freebee is probably going to apply again, but also other companies may. So we want to see what they do. And in conjunction with that, we just got alerted yesterday that the Florida Department of Transportation renewed our grant. It’s a matching grant with Florida. So we pay for the Freebee rideshare. We pay half the cost, and then the state of Florida plays half the cost. So we applied for a grant for it’s actually a year from now, because DOT does things in advance. So we did submit for that. And so we’ve gotten approval now for the 50-50 so anything we can do to take cars off the highway, we want to do that. We’re actually looking at maybe a trolley or loop, kind of like Key West had with the Duval loop, where we have pick up and drop off around the village, and so that’s another thing we’re going to be looking at some funding for, and maybe go to TDC, etc. So I think, yeah, those are things we want to do to keep traffic off the highway.
Wastewater is another issue being worked on.
Saunders said, “We’ve had some issues with wastewater up here in the past. We have an aging wastewater system. We’ve had some leaks and breaks, and we’re working with DEP to fix that. We’ve got a project going on. We have what’s called a smart ball going through the pipeline, which will be evaluating the status of the pipeline for wastewater. So we’re looking at making repairs there. And we also have a group doing a rate study. We have not looked at our rates for years. We want to make sure we’re doing those properly. So that’s an ongoing study. We hope we’ll have those results maybe sometime in May. We also have what’s called the Green Turtle Hammock Nature Preserve, which is a great facility. There are a lot of nature walks. But we also have what’s called the Russell Cottage there. It’s an old house that we’ve turned into an Environmental Center. For years Florida Bay Forever has been the lead organization there, their executive director does a good job, but other organizations want to use it too. So we reached a tentative agreement where Florida Bay Forever can stay there. But then other organizations, like Audubon Society, Surf riders, etc, would share the space, and they’re going to do environmental education programs. So it’s a great opportunity for people to come in there and take a nature walk. We have a pavilion now on the water on the Gulf that they can use for various events. And so if you have never been to the Green Turtle Hammock Nature Preserve, it’s a wonderful place to go to, and we’ll be doing a lot of environmental programs. We’re also looking at, basically trying to just be better about our landscaping. We want to make this place beautiful. So we’re spending some money. We have a landscaping fund. We are trying to spend some money on landscaping.