Ron Saunders, village manager of the Village of Islamorada, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on in the village.
It looks like Tallahassee may be getting closer to a budget.
Saunders said, “We had an update from our lobbyist in Tallahassee, and he told us, basically, they’re getting closer to an agreement on the budget. They’re obviously behind schedule. He mentioned some of the issues with the House and Senate the governor, and remember, they’re all one party, so this isn’t a partisan thing. It’s just basically fighting with each other over various issues. But he says that they’re getting closer to an agreement. So hopefully next week or so, we’ll get some numbers from the budget. We are particularly interested a couple things. The Keys get, what’s called Florida Keys Stewardship money, that’s split among the local governments here in the Keys for different things, such as land acquisition, canal improvements, things like that. So we’re waiting to see what the overall amount is, and then we’re going to be working with each other to determine the allocations of that. So that’s a big item there. There’s a couple smaller legislative items in the budget that we have for the county and for the various local governments, but for the most part, we think it’s going to settle up pretty quickly.”
Could there be tax cuts?
Saunders said, “One idea was to reduce the sales tax, of course, a lot of that’s paid by tourists. Then the other was reduced property taxes, which is great, except that’s what funds local governments and school boards, so things that sound pretty good, but when you look at the actual impacts, when people want fire protection and law enforcement, etcetera, schools, they have to be paid somehow and property taxe is the way to go. One thing to remember is that property taxes, part of that burden are paid by people that are not homesteaded, because, due to Save our Homes, that I instituted many years ago, that caps increase in Homestead assessments. So if you’re a homesteaded person and you have your property here in the Keys, homesteaded, you get a pretty good tax break. Your assessments are capped, and so therefore your taxes may be much less than your next door neighbor, who may not have a homestead here, who lives in another state. So I think when we look at property tax, you have to take a look at the equity of it and who’s actually paying them. But once again, the government has a cost, and if you want to have the sheriff’s department or fire department, you have to pay their salaries, etcetera. So that’s on the agenda. I don’t think that’s going to happen this session, but they did appoint a task force and Representative Jim Mooney, who represents the Keys, is on that task force for property taxes. So we’re going to keep a close eye on that. Once again, not going to happen this year, but it’s certainly something on the horizon. Another bill that came up this year that had some potential impacts was doing away with tourist development tax councils and basically turning it over the counties and the state, and that scared a lot of people in the tourism industry. That didn’t actually happen, but certainly something that people will be monitoring and who either supported or oppose it next session. So a lot of things were suggested this year that didn’t go through. But as everything else, you always have to keep a close eye on what’s happening in government.”
The Village Council met last night where transportation was a topic.
Saunders said there was a discussion about Freebee “from Monroe County Transit Executive Director Richard Clark. He talked about some various projects up and down the Keys generally, because people have to remember that, even though it may only be directly talking about the Village of Islamorada, what happens in Islamorada affects rest of the Keys. Anybody that travels up and down the Keys knows that what happens in Marathon affects Key West. What happens in Key Largo affects Islamorada. So we all have to kind of be aware that we have one highway in and one highway out. So what happens in one area impacts other areas. So he talked about some projects that are on the agenda for the DOT, some fringe replacements or fridge improvements, for example. So that was more of a general update. Then we talked about Freebee, which is a service that’s basically being operated with the county and some of the municipalities, and it’s almost like a taxi service. It’s a point to point thing, and there’s some grant money from the state. The problem is that all local governments are going through some tough budget times. There was a discussion about whether Islamorada should take over the part from the county, etc, and we’re going through our budget process right now. Our budget year starts October 1, and so we’re looking at the budget. The council asked me last night to make a recommendation whether we should continue the Freebee service, for example, because it’s going to cost us a couple $100,000 a year to operate. We’re looking at the benefits versus the cost. So that’s one thing we’re gonna be talking about. We also had one of our staff engineers talk about other projects, about what we can do to help relieve the traffic situation in Islamorada, so traffic was a big thing last night. Another issue that affects traffic was the Aqueduct Authority. They’re replacing the water line from Dade County, and they’ve been doing a good job. We got an update on their progress, and it’s going to happen. Our pipeline had a lot of leaks, and we were having bust up to the pipes in the last couple of years, and so they were placing a new pipeline. The problem is, obviously that impacts traffic. They’ve done a good job coordinating with DOT and the sheriff’s department as far as keeping the traffic moving. It has had some impacts, but they seem to be making good progress. We consider the Aqeduct Authority to be our partner. So we’re having we have them come every month and give us an update on what’s happening with the pipeline replacement project. So transportation issues and the impacts on transportation were discussed for quite a while last night. We also talked about what properties we have. We own properties on Big Pine Key, Little Torch, Key Largo, outside of village limits. Those are primarily mitigation lots where they were given in exchange for doing something in the village and we’ve been talking to county about maybe doing an exchange because Monroe County owns some property in the Village of Islamorada. We talked about the baseball field that has a lot of interest up here. The Coral Shores High School baseball team plays on a field that’s owned by the village in Founders Park and Monroe County School Board has voted to spend up to $5 million, it could be even more when they’re done, to make improvements to the field. Right now, there’s no buildings, there just dugouts, and they want to put in a press box, concession stand, restrooms, etc, and that’s generated some discussion from citizens and from our council. So we’re looking at various designs. It’s a partnership with the County School Board, and with the Village of Islamorada. They’re going to put the money up, but we own the property, so we need to reach some agreements there, and we’ve been having some good meetings with the school district, and we’re going to do updates on that. So, so we’re working with various entities up and down the Keys. We’re looking, for example, of working with other municipalities in the county on the Stewardship money that hopefully will be forthcoming soon. We’re going to have a formula where that’s going to be distributed for land acquisition. So we’re trying to have partnerships up and down the Keys where we all work together.”
Some of the Publix project in Tavernier could have an impact on Islamorada.
Saunders said, “’I watched the planning commission meeting. Decisions made, for example, in Key Largo affect Islamorada because it affects our level of service on our highway, because they added, for example, thousands more trips as people are visiting Publix or living in the housing that’s going to be part of that project. We wanted to bring up the fact that decisions made up and down the Keys affect other areas, and so there’s really not much we could do about it. It did come up in a discussion that what they were doing as far as the Publix approval would impact Islamorada but basically we had no say in it. Just as the county doesn’t have a lot of say sometimes in what we do within the village. But we just wanted to make the point that we’re all interconnected. As mentioned earlier, about transportation, it’s not just road projects that impact people. It’s also, as you approve developments or grocery stores or whatever, that impacts other areas beyond just the immediate neighborhood.”
Resiliency projects were also discussed at the meeting.
Saunders said, “We have the same issues here as other areas, with some flooding of some neighborhoods and some streets, so we’re looking at that. We’re looking at beach erosion. We’re looking at some potential ways to prevent that, with maybe some wave attenuation devices to try to reduce the wave action on our shoreline. We have, for example, turtle nesting beaches we want to protect. We have shoreline there’s very sensitive. We also want to make sure that we’ve been around in Irma, where we had some parts of the highway within the village of Islamorada wash away, and we had to get those restored pretty quickly. So we want to make sure that the wave action, it does not adversely impact US 1 because that’s our only evacuation route, and so obviously it winds through a bunch of different local government areas. But from the Islamorada standpoint, we want to make sure we can do whatever we can do to prevent erosion of our highways and our beaches, and so we did hear about some resiliency projects that we’re looking at doing to protect our shoreline there. So we’re trying to stay on top of things, and we’re working with the county and other municipalities to kind of have an integrated effort to protect our environment, protect our near shore waters. We’re looking, for example, at trying to improve access to the water. We’re running out of boat ramps. A lot of boat ramps are closing or being sold if they’re part of a hotel, for example. And a lot of our fishing guides are complaining that they really have nowhere to put their boats in the water with their customers. So we’re trying to locate some viable sites, but the problem we run Gino is there’s no parking for when they let the boat off the trailer, where do you put the trailer? So we’re looking at things like that, because fishing guides are a big part of our economy, but we have to find places for them to be able to put in their boats safely. Also looking at the impact on nearshore waters. You don’t want to put in boats where there’s a bunch of coral or sea grass that might be adversely impacted. So there’s no easy answer to those, but those are things we’re kind of looking at. We want to help our economy, want to help our fishing guides, but we also want to make sure we protect the environment and the neighborhoods.