Don Horton, Mayor of 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.
This weekend will be the big holiday celebration in Islamorada.
Horton said, “This is really going to be a special weekend. We’ve got our parade we have in the
Upper Keys here in Key Largo, and that’s always huge, especially during an election cycle, and and then turn right back around and start the festivities down at Founders Park and the fireworks and all of the great things that happen there, starting around 5o’clock on the fourth of July, so really looking forward to this weekend and especially celebrating our 250th year of independence. It’s going to be a great weekend.”
How did the state funding turn out?
Horton said, “We did fantastic. The governor line-item vetoed a little bit over $1.6 billion. The governor was kind to Islamorada. We actually are getting some transportation expansion and enhancement for public transportation of 350,000. We’ve got a sidewalk project that we needed to do, schools to neighborhood pedestrian safety project that we’ve come up with, and and asked for funding, and that’s another 350. The governor’s helping us with a breakwater project down on Sea Oats Beach to the tune of about $300,000 and that’s going to be fantastic. That’s kind of a short small offshore reef that we want to put in that acts as a wave attenuation device, so that we stop that erosion and the damage that happens to the highway down there off of the 74 mile marker, and then we were getting some capital project money for our Plantation Key pump station to the tune of about 375,000, so really it’s a significant accomplishment, particularly in the year where the budget saw high numbers of vetoes across a lot of the other projects throughout the state, so we’re very proud of the funding that we’re going to be able to bring back home to to the residents of Islamorada, and the projects that we’re going to be able to do that are environmental projects and important projects for for Islamorada. This council that we’ve got right now is coalesced and is really active and proactive at saving tax dollars and being able to put in good requests to the state.”
Congressman Carlos Gimenez visited Islamorada recently.
Horton said, “We’ve got an environmental project that is just, I think it’s never been done. We’re actually connecting six canal systems together, so that we get a flow from the ocean to the bay through these six canal systems, we’ve interconnected them with these really large culverts, and we’re just continuing to what I say is clean up the sins of the past, so the folks years and years in the 60s, 50s, when they were developing these canal systems, didn’t understand that digging them so deep and having them all dead end really eventually would catch up to us. And now we’re just going back, cleaning these canal systems up, and I’ll tell you, these canals are going to be pristine in no time flat when we are able to open up this flow from the ocean to the bay, so I think that the governor realizes, and our congressmen realize that the good works that we’re doing, and the steps that we’re taking to protect our environment here in Islamorada, and enhance our environment, and cleaning up the sins of the past, are being recognized and well funded, and we’re very happy about this.”
The pool at Founders Park is open once again.
Horton said, “It’s an extremely busy pool, so it was time to go in and do some enhancements. Thanks to funding from the TDC to the tune of almost $500,000 and of course matching funds from Islamorada, we went in and did a huge renovation to our aquatic center. We renovated the bathroom and shower facilities. We renovated the equipment. We drained that pool and did a complete resurfacing of that pool, doing some replumbing of the pool, changing out a lot of our chillers and heaters and coolers, and yeah, we sunk a lot of money into this pool, but it’s a pool that so many people, not just Islamorada residents, but swim teams from across the nation, and and classes that we have, and dive classes, and synchronized swimming, and it was time to do a renovation. We had a grand reopening, if you will, of the pool two weeks ago. Attendance was wonderful from the folks locally, and the TDC came, and we had a great grand reopening, and that pool is back as good as it was 25 years ago, when it was brand new, and hopefully we get another 25 years out of it before we have to go and do something with it.”
The playground has also been updated.
Horton said, “We put in a handicap accessible playground as well, again funding of well over $400,000 from the TDC, and they are a great partner. They recognize the benefit of helping Islamorada as a tourist destination stay nice and pristine, and we dedicated a brand new handicap accessible playground down on Founders Park Beach, and did beach renovation down there as well. Changed some of the layout of the tiki hut and the layout of where the playground is, and we were able to open that thing up, and our parks director was actually the first one to get to slide down the new slide, and that was wonderful to see, and we had, I bet you had 100 people show up, and it’s one of a kind playground, and we’re very proud of that to be on Founders Park Beach.”
The Everglade Foundation received some funding from the state as well.
Horton said, “Dr. Steve Davis is going to be coming down on the seventh to our council meeting and giving us an update on what’s going on at the EAA, and we did talk about the vetoes and whatnot, but the governor has budgeted $665 million for restoring the Everglades again for this fiscal year ‘26, ‘27 which is fantastic. I think that this funding was needed to complete the state’s portion of the Everglades Agricultural Area Reservoir, or what we call the EAA. It’s so important to all of the Keys, but especially to us in the upper Keys, that we get this water flow going the way it should be, and being able to clean up our Florida Bay, and it’s just another fantastic project. Anybody that gets a chance to to study this and understand what’s going on at that reservoir, and how the water is being captured and cleansed and filtered, and then redistributed waves, and coming flowing naturally back into the Florida Keys, has just got to pay attention to this, because again we’re cleaning up the sins of the past, where we’re trying to bring this back to where it should be, not because anybody did anything intentionally. They didn’t know back in those days what damage they were creating, but we’re bringing it back, and our governor is awesome in helping this happen.”