Ron Saunders, village manager for Islamorada, joined Good Morning Keys on Keys Talk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on in the village.
May 12 will be the next village council meeting.
Saunders said, “We have several items and ordinances and resolutions, but nothing earth shattering. We are going to get an update, as we do every meeting every month, from the aqueduct authority on their road project. They are replacing the main water pipeline, and so that creates some disruption, but aqueduct is doing a good job of trying to inform the public through our meetings. We televise our meeting things, and we have a good response. And so it’s good to let people know when and where they’re going to be working to replace that pipeline, which is obviously necessary. And speaking of the aqueduct, we actually are partnering with them. There was a grant that they wanted to apply for. It’s a community development block grant. It only goes to cities. And so since the aqueduct isn’t a city, they came to us and asked if we’d be willing to apply for it with their assistance. And so we’re in that process. So we consider the aqueduct to be our partner up here, and so we were happy to help them with that. It’s a grant to replace the pipeline under a bridge, which helps everybody, including Islamorada.
The ride share contract is also coming up.
Saunders said, “We currently have a contract with Freebee. It’s similar to Conch Connect in the Lower Keys where you call up and they come to your house and take you to wherever you need to go to. That contract was expiring, so we went out for an RFQ request for qualifications and Freebee ranked the highest ranked of the two proposals. And so we’ll be looking at that on May 12. We also have some property up here called the Machado property. We went up for bids and we got two proposals. We’re going to have the better proposal coming up May 12, to put some units of affordable workforce housing, which is a big problem, not just in Islamorada, obviously throughout the Keys, and so the village is really working hard to try to provide some workforce housing in our area.”
The budget process has also started.
Saunders said, “Our budget year starts October 1, but we have to go through hearings starting in July, August. We already are talking with our departments and see where we can find some cost savings, etc. One interesting thing, I have a weekly newsletter that comes out every Monday, and I’m starting to do a budget quiz. And my question on Monday was in Islamorada’s village budget, what percentage comes from property taxes, 80% 66% 50% or 20%? I put the answer at the end of the newsletter, a lot of people did not get the answer right.”
The answer is 20% of the village’s budget comes from property taxes.
Saunders said, “About 19.73% is property tax there because we talk about budgets, everyone assumes it’s mostly property taxes. But we get a lot of money from grants. For example, we get millions of dollars, state, federal dollars, to do our canals and restoration and do things with our wastewater. And so we also get the sales tax money, gas tax money. So a lot of people, when they look at a budget, they think automatically, it’s property taxes, but really only about 20% of its property taxes. And so when people talk about the increase in budgets, I say, talk about the increase in property tax, not necessarily the increase in the budget. For example, last year, the village of Islamorada kept our millage rate the same. We’ve not raised the millage rate. And so we want to try to keep it under control. Because obviously, property taxes are tough for everybody, between property taxes and windstorm insurance, which we have zero input on, but we have to pay them. We want to try to keep our end of it as low as possible. So we are working to keep our departments efficient and effective. So we’re already starting the budget process.”
Future growth is also an important discussion topic.
Saunders said, “Tonight, we have a very important meeting. We have a workshop on our Islamorada comprehensive plan, which guides our land use, and Environment Protection and community character for years to come. We do it every few years, and this year is the one we’re coming up with it. A couple years ago, we hired a consultant and so tonight, at 5:30 at the Community Center at Founders Park, we’re having a public meeting where they’re going to come make a presentation, unveil the latest draft of the Comprehensive Plan, get questions and answers from citizens here. Also any questions and input that they have will be responsive to that. So it’s a good opportunity to learn what we have down the road for Islamorada. So that should be an interesting meeting there. So we have a lot going on. This weekend we have a bicycle rodeo in Islamorada. It’s at the Plantation Key school, and that’s from 10 to 2 at Plantation Key school to give out safety equipment. It’s a bike safety fair, but it’s called the bike rodeo, so that should be fun.”
Has the Founders Park baseball agreement been finalized?
Saunders said, “We’re still working on that. It’s still hung up. I think they turned over the negotiations to their attorneys. And as an attorney, I can tell you that sometimes lawyers take their time, and it’s a little frustrating. But I plan to kind of push that forward. One idea is that we just maybe move ahead with the field. We have a field and we also have a planned building there with the restrooms, concession center, etc. It appears a lot of the heartburn from people in the public and on the boards is on the building. So my suggestion to the superintendent was, let’s maybe just work ahead with the field. Both sides have agreed it will be artificial turf. We have a 5-0 vote on the village council side, and they had a 5-0 vote on the school board side. That will be turf. The problem has been, we haven’t ironed out the details on other things. And so my thought was, move ahead with the field, because baseball season, at least on the Coral Shores is over, thankfully, Key West Side, assuming they win this weekend, will keep progressing. Coral Shores big season is over, so there’s no reason not to start working on the field, and hopefully we can get that done relatively soon. My goal is to have some type of tentative agreement with the school board by the end of this week that at least on the field that I can take back to the Council on the 12th so I need to try to hammer that out this week, and hopefully we’ll get some success there. But it’s something that it seems to be a lot of consensus on, it’s like the House and Senate, unless you have exactly the same bill, it doesn’t pass. So if one word is different, there’s no agreement. So that’s what we’re working on now.”
The property tax discussion in the state seems to be continuing.
Saunders said, “Property tax has been on my calendar for a long time. I was one of the sponsors of Save Our Homes, which put a cap on the increase in assessments on homesteaded property, which has protected a lot of people in the Keys. In truth, a lot of people would not still be here but for that cap, which is finally approved by the voters, it was a constitutional amendment, but I thought it was important because people were being affected, and I think Save Our Homes has worked very effectively, it caps at 3% or the cost of inflation, whichever is lower. And so I think a lot of people, if they look at what they would be paying versus what they’re paying now, it’s been a real savior, but it’s shifted the burden to rental property, second homes and commercial property. So there’s still a tax burden. And so it’s become a kind of a political football in Tallahassee, where everybody’s talking about cutting property taxes, which is fine, except, for example, in our case, in case of most places, most of our property taxes go to just two areas, law enforcement, and firefighters. The majority of our property tax money goes to those two entities, which are very important, obviously. So I tell people, you want to cut taxes, property taxes, what do you want to cut firefighters or sheriff’s deputies? The Sheriff’s Department is our police department, and once you put it that way, it’s a little tougher argument. I think in the end, the legislature is going to have a special session, and they’ll do something. My best guess is they’ll do something, maybe to increase the homestead exemption that has been increased in years, and it does impact residents, as opposed to people that don’t live here full time. So I think that’ll be the most likely outcome. It’ll still go on the ballot in November, so the voters will get a chance to vote on it. And I don’t really see a problem with expanding the homestead exemption, because that does impact longtime residents and helps them out. But we’ll see what happens.”
What about the redistricting the state is talking about this week?
Saunders said it “is a very political and controversial thing. I’ve been through that a couple of times. I went through it in 1990 as the legislature, then again in the year 2000. We saw that coming back again, and we dealt with it in 2012 when I was back in the legislature. It’s a very political process. It’s talking about Congressional seats, and that’s part of a national conversation where state by state, if you’re a blue state or red state, depending on your point of view, it’s either really good or really bad what’s going on. I think it’s difficult to do it mid census. In the past, it’s always been done every 10 years when you get the new census figures. But because of the national political climate, it was decided that some states would move forward and change it halfway through, and it has some mixed results, I guess, on both sides. So it’d be interesting to see what the legislature in Florida does, because sometimes you try to get a little greedy and it backfires. And so as you try to make more seats for your own party, you necessarily then make a lot of the existing seats more purple, meaning not leaning as far, one way or another. So I think the outcome is up in the air. I’ve heard from some friends in Tallahassee, and some of them are saying they’re kind of nervous about maybe just taking this too far. So hopefully they’ll come to some consensus, but we’ll see what happens.”
The village committee application period is open now.
Saunders said, “We just concluded one very important committee that was a charter review committee that was appointed by the Village Council. They met several times, did a great job. The charter is like our Constitution. It doesn’t change very often, but it’s been several years since it’s been looked at. And so they had several public meetings. They’re making some recommendations. The recommendations come to the council. I’m scheduling it for the next meeting on May 12, for discussion. They may not put them on the ballot, but it then goes to the ballot. In other words, the final say is by the voters, in the November ballot. If they do approve any recommendations, they have to convert it to ballot language. So they may take a couple meetings to do that, but they’re looking at extending the terms. For example, right now, we have five village council members elected up every two years, so the entire village council, all five of them, we have an election this November, and they’re staggered terms. So it’s a totally new counselor, maybe the same one. But the other thing is, two years is not really a long time to learn a lot of the issues, like the budget, etc. So one of the recommendations is to extend it to three years terms, and then within that, perhaps staggering them so that maybe you’ll start off a two year and a three year term, but then that you won’t have all five up every two or three years, whatever it ends up being. There’s also some talk about increasing the compensation. Everybody thinks that elected officials make a lot of money. For the most part, they do not. I think our Council makes $1,000 a month, and when you factor that into how many hours they put in, that’s not much per hour. Once again, the voters will decide, but we’ll see what happens there. If you want to read our newsletter every week, just go online and we have a subscription there that you get free. We email it to you every Monday. So we encourage people to stay in touch with us. And we started what’s called a fix a ticket for public works, for example, if you see a problem, a pothole or whatever, in the village, you go online, you submit a ticket, fix a ticket, and we send our public works right out there. It helps us keep track of the issues, but also it makes the public not have to find me. This way, we actually have a program in place that’s called fix a ticket. Go on our website, you can do that too. So as long as we’re trying to get more input from the public, be more transparent, have better communication, one way is to get our newsletter. So we encourage everybody to stay in touch with us.”
For more information, click here: https://www.islamorada.fl.us/