Ron Saunders, village manager 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.
Upgrades to the pool have been completed and it is now open.
Saunders said, “We had a grand reopening ceremony last Thursday. It’s been several months, the pool had never been resurfaced since it was built over 20 years ago, and there were some leaks, etc. So we went ahead and did a complete redo of the pool. We also improved the locker rooms and added some facilities for our staff, so the public is very happy. The pool is very popular. It’s a real attraction for locals and some visitors too. We actually got some money from the Tourist Development Council, because tourists use the pool also. So we thank the TDC for helping out with the project, and we certainly appreciate their assistance. And the pool is very popular. The other thing we’re working on at Founders Park is our playground. We have now an ADA accessible playground. TDC once again stepped up with some money for that, so the new playground will open at 10am tomorrow at Founders Park. The public’s welcome to come enjoy the new playground, so we’re trying to improve Founders Park. It’s a gem for us, so we always want to make sure that it looks great and is very open and receptive to both residents and visitors. And so we always welcome people to come to Founders Park at mile marker 87.”
What has been happening with the ballfield?
Saunders said, “For the last 25 years, we’ve had a ball field for the Coral Shores High School baseball team that’s been in need of repairs. So, the school board came to us over several years ago, actually, but since I’ve been here, I started in April last year, we’ve been discussing them about putting a field in there and making improvements. Our council months ago passed an agreement that the school board did not accept. They made some revisions. We’ve been going back and forth. So, on Tuesday night, I attended the school board meeting up here at Coral Shores High School, along with several of our council members, and we basically were there, but it wasn’t really much of an interaction. It was more of them just going through the agreement and making changes, and so we were there and listened to the changes. They want to have a little more control. They’re putting in up to $4 million that’s just the field, the fences, and the dugouts. And so they wanted to talk about whether we would terminate them or not. I think a lot of that stuff is more hypothetical. But anyway, they did pass an agreement unanimously, four to nothing. One of the members was not able to be there, and so the next step is I’ll be putting on the agenda for our next regular council meeting, which is on Tuesday, July 7. And so we’ll be considering, we, the council, and we’ll decide whether to accept that agreement as amended or come back with something else, but we’re getting kind of short on time. The next baseball season starts in January, but a new field takes months to install all the improvements, and so we’re kind of under a time crunch, but we think we’re close. It just depends on now what the council does, and we’ll see on the seventh. We certainly welcome public input, but we’ve been already reviewing the plans, we try to get ahead of it, assuming that we have an agreement. So, I think we’re okay with a lot of the improvements. It’s just some of the wording in the proposed agreement that we may have some issues with, but I’m hopeful that we’ll work it out, and we’ll find out on July 7.”
Will the village be continuing the Freebee service for transportation?
Saunders said, “The Village of Islamorada has had an agreement with Freebee since 2018. It’s been renewed several times. Then we had a renewal coming up the end of this month, actually on June 30, and so rather than automatic renewal, we thought it might be time to see what, who else might be interested in providing the service. So, we did request for proposals back in March. We got two responses. One is from B Free LLC, which is DBA as Freebee. That was from a company called Transit Circuit Inc. The Village Council didn’t want to accept the recommendation the staff made initially. They wanted to hear more input from the public, so we had a workshop a couple weeks ago to have presentations from both companies. After that presentation at the public workshop, then the council did vote to move ahead with renewing a contract with Freebee. I did have some people in the community say they’d like to have input on that contract, because I have the authority to execute it without any input, but we wanted input, so I asked some citizens of the community to serve in an informal task force. With that meeting last night, we had six members of the community show up as members of the task force, a couple more showed up in the audience, and we had four out of five council members come to sit in the meeting. So it’s great that we had council and members of the community talking about the contract, because it is important for an on-demand ride share. We had good input about what should or should not be in the contract and ways we can improve the service, and I’ll be talking with a Freebee representative today and try to get finalization of the contract, but we do appreciate the input from citizens. We’ve had numerous citizen committees and workshops, etc. Because I always think it’s great to get input from the citizens to be as transparent as possible. For example, we put the notice of last night’s meeting in our Monday newsletter, and I encourage people to subscribe to our newsletter, because we have a lot of information that’s online, so certainly we try to get everybody’s input and use it to get things done here in Islamorada.”
There will be a big celebration on July 4 at Founders Park.
Saunders said, “That’s always a great event, very well attended. It’s also supported by the county and TDC. They support most of, I think, all the Fourth of July celebrations, at least the official ones. And so we do appreciate that help from the county, and we always encourage people to come over, they have one in Key Largo, Marathon, Islamorada, Key West, Big Pine, so wherever you live, there’ll be a celebration. It’s certainly special this year with the 250th anniversary of our founding of our country. So we encourage people to come to any one that’s near you, but if you live in the Islamorada area, certainly come here on Saturday, Fourth of July, 6o’clock to 10 o’clock, and it should be a lot of fun.”
In August, budget meetings will start up.
Saunders said, “Our fiscal years start on October 1. It ends September 30, and so we have to start the budget process. We’ve gotten notice from the property appraiser about the tax rolls, because they have to do a new valuation every year, and the way property taxes are determined, it’s millage rate times value equals tax, and so the millage rate is a percentage, and you multiply that times the property tax rolls, that gets the property taxes that will be collected from from taxpayers. The good news, I think, everywhere in the Keys, values have gone up, which means we will collect more money. That’s the good news. The bad news is our costs keep going up, because we have, for example, our firefighters have a collectively bargained 6% pay raise already included. We have obviously our cost of insurance, everything else, just like a resident does. Your costs are going up, our costs go up too. So we’re trying to be fiscally conservative and keep our costs down, but certainly it’s a challenge. You saw last year, for example, Monroe County eliminated 40 positions that eliminated their transit department. That’s gone from the county. We’ve taken that over here in this area. So the budget is going to be a tough year. We’re also keeping in mind that there’s a constitutional amendment on the ballot in November that could have an impact, not necessarily on this fiscal year coming up, but the next one, so we’re already trying to figure out where we can tighten our belt even more than we have in the past, and make sure that we’re spending every dollar we collect from taxpayers as wisely as possible. Last year I set up a citizens budget task force on the budget, and they gave us some good suggestions, and so we’re always open to ways to spend their money better, and we welcome any input that anybody has on our budget. It’s on public record, and I’m always available to answer any questions. So, we encourage people to get involved in the budget process. I think we have three budget hearings in August and so we’ll publish those, publicize those and encourage people to come in and give us their input.”
What could happen with the property tax vote in the fall?
Saunders pointed out, “We didn’t know what was going to happen until the legislature approved it, that only happened recently. One important part of it, it only affects homestead properties, it would not be a tax cut or tax benefit to anybody other than people who have homesteads, which in Monroe County is not a big number. It’s, I think, countywide, I’ve seen numbers, depending on how you calculate it, as low as 18% of the homes eligible are actually homesteaded. If you’re not homesteaded, if you rent property, if it’s your second home, if your commercial property, this amendment will really not affect you. If you do have homestead property, it basically increases the homestead exemption, so you’re still going to pay. They didn’t eliminate it unless your home is less of the value. I don’t think any homes in the Keys are worth less than 250,000. Those values are long gone. I was born and raised in the Keys, and you used to buy a home a lot cheaper than you can today. If it passes, it’ll help some homeowners who are homesteaded. The rest of them will not get a benefit, and the concern of some people is that they’ll just be a cost shift. In other words, homeowners that have homestead may pay less, but others may pay more, and so I think that’s part of the education process, is just let people know here are the benefits, here are the potential costs, fees may be raised, for example, I’ve seen the county talking about charging for parking and parks, they’re looking at already ways of changing the revenue stream, and so I think these are things that people have to take into consideration before they vote. The village is not allowed under law to advocate. We cannot say vote for or against the amendment. We can educate, and so we’re going to say here are the impacts, here’s potential could happen, and then make your choice based on the best information we can get you.”
Is the percentage of homesteaded properties in Islamorada the same as the county?
Saunders said, “We have a lot of people who have second homes, we have a lot of rentals, etc. so once again, this proposed amendment would not affect them. The amendment is an increase in the exemption just for homestead of properties, and even the people who have homestead, it may not necessarily be a big decrease for them, because if there’s a shift, for example, charging more for admission to things or increasing wastewater fees, or stormwater fees, etc., the net effect may not be as great as you might anticipate, so we just want to get that information out there. If it passes, it passes. If it doesn’t pass, it doesn’t pass. But I think that the main thing is educate voters, have the information out there, and that way when people go to vote, I think an informed voter is the best part of our government. We have to have people know what’s happening, and that way they can either like or not like what the elected officials are doing for them. I think overall we have good elected officials in the Keys, and they do try to get the information out there, but sometimes people are just trying to make a living and trying to survive, and they don’t have time to go to candidate forums, or to listen to the radio or read the newspaper. So that’s always great when we try to, as many ways as possible, get that information out there, whether it’s on your radio show or a newsletter, trying to get the information of the voters. And once again, we encourage people, if you have a question, reach out to your elected officials. Reach out to managers like me and say, I don’t understand this, or why aren’t you doing this? And we’ll be happy to try to answer your questions.”
Could second homes, rental homes, see a reduction, even though they’re not homesteaded?
Saunders said, “When I was in the legislature, I was one of those anti-property tax legislators up here. I said I’m from the Keys, and we felt it before anybody else. Our high valuations, so many years ago, it seems like now, and it was many years ago, I also sponsored what was called Save Our Homes, because before your assessment, if you lived next door to a rich person came in and paid a crazy price for their house, your value would go up, because the market value went up, and that wasn’t fair to longtime homeowners, and so I sponsored and was on the ballot that passed Save Our Homes, which caps the increase for homestead of properties. Later on, we actually put higher caps on other types of property, but as my understanding of this amendment is that it’s not really going to benefit directly anybody that’s not homesteaded, and so, and that’s part of my concern, is if it’s just a cost shift to people who have second homes or rental properties, I have a couple rental properties, and my tenants, I try not to pass these increases along in the rent, but it’s very difficult when your property insurance goes up, your property taxes go up, the landlord, if they’re going to make it viable economically, has to pass those costs along, and then commercial property homeowners are getting hammered, because their values are going up too, and so I think overall property taxes are very stable source of income for homeowners. And then, in the Keys, at least we have some of the lowest millage rates in the state, part of that’s because we have high property values, but also it’s because we recognize that property taxes are tough, and the government bodies don’t want to raise taxes, as if that’s the cost you pay for services, and I think we have overall pretty good services here in the Keys, but there’s a cost to them. For example, if you want to have a good firefighter system or good law enforcement, they all have to live here, and so every year we have to pass that cost along when they come in for a pay raise, etc. So, basically we try to have a good situation here where you’re getting services you want, but not at too high a cost. It won’t be a tax cut for non-homestead. It’ll just prevent their assessments from going even higher than they would have, but for the cap. A homestead property could potentially see a decrease in their taxes. Other properties wouldn’t see a decrease, it just would – they wouldn’t see as much of an increase.”
Candidate forums help people understand how to vote.
Saunders said, “I encourage people to attend the candidate forums. In Islamorada, we have five council members, all five are up every two years, so up here, at least all five of our incumbents have filed for reelection, and this point they don’t have opposition, although there’s still a couple months to go until that happens, but we’re having, for example, this Saturday, it’s a candidate forum to get informed about our laws and regulations, that’s this Saturday morning, and you can find out more about that by going to our website if you’re interested in running for office, for example, primarily for our candidates, but I guess it applied to other people running, countywide, but so we have our all five of our council members up this election. We also have some charter amendments that will be on the ballot that would, for example, change the term of office for our for our village council members, because right now having all five up every two years is not probably the best way to operate, and so we’ll be talking more about those amendments as we get closer to November, but certainly we encourage people to attend forums and go online, check out the supervised elections website, for example, you can check out finances, who’s contributing to whose campaign. I think that’s all good information to have before you make a decision on who you’re voting for.”
For more information, click here: https://www.islamorada.fl.us/