Marathon Mayor Robyn Still joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s been going on in the city.
There are two open commission seats in Marathon and the five candidates gathered last night.
Still said, “It’s going to be interesting race. I just want people to know about this election for City Council is you have the ability to vote for your top two candidates, the two that you want to see on city council, so you don’t have to pick one. There are two seats available and the way Marathon City Council works is that the top two vote getters are the individuals who will get those seats. So it’s just important to know that, and to know that you need to vote for your top two. You get to vote for two. Sometimes people think like presidential you’re voting for one person. In this case, you can vote for two.”
Kenny Matlock is looking for reelection, and Luis Gonzalez will be terming out.
Still said, “Kenny has to get reelected to his seat, and Luis has served our community and is now terming out. So it’ll be somebody either brand new or Mark Senmartin, who has been on city council before. So it’s like I said, vote for your top two, whoever those may be, take the chance to get to know these candidates. I couldn’t imagine why it wouldn’t be like when I ran for election, we were all willing to sit down with voters, to talk to them, to get let them get to know us. Get to know where we stood on important issues. You could ask questions to us. So I urge everybody to get in contact with these five people who are running. Two of them will be on city council, and it’s important that you get to know them before the election, that way you can make an informed decision on who you want to vote for.”
The next Marathon City Council meeting will be September 10.
Still said, “I’ll be attending via Zoom, our Vice Mayor Lynn Landry, is going to run that meeting. Right now I’ve not seen the official agenda yet. It should be out I would assume today. It usually prints with the Keys Weekly. So that’s a good place if you’re interested in what’s going to be on the agenda, and you don’t want to navigate the Internet and the city’s website, the Keys Weekly, we always have to place the ad, and what the agenda is has to be placed and posted in advance of our meetings. Generally, it’ll give you a good idea of the topics that we’re going to discuss, the ordinances or resolutions that may be coming up, which would be on consent or which ones are actually going to be heard. You might look at that and then attend a city council meeting and notice that things are added to the agenda. At the beginning of the meeting, I’ll usually, if I’m running the meeting, I’ll ask, do we have any additions or deletions to our agenda? Sometimes city council members will have had something come up in the time that the agenda has been posted, and they’ll add it to the agenda. You can’t make an official vote on that, because if there’s going to be an ordinance or resolution change that has to be noticed, and you have to have a couple different hearings, but there could be something that would be up for discussion that could be added. For example, last meeting, I added the Landry Sayer clean the curb day. That’s September 21. Landry does this. She’s one of our elementary school students. She’s been doing this for several years. We usually start at Coco Plum Beach. The public’s welcome. It starts at eight o’clock in the morning, and we try to clean the beach, and if the beach sometimes has been very clean, and we’ll move to some of the streets in the city of Marathon. So that would been an addition. Occasionally you’ll hear either staff or a council member pull something off consent. That means that we want to hear more about that particular resolution or ordinance, and then there will be a discussion about that. So that’s a way that that agenda may change after it’s posted.”
A proclamation of diaper need awareness week is coming up.
Still said, “The Florida Keys Healthy Start Coalition is amazing. They help these families that are struggling. They provide diapers, wipes and other services for them. Their actual diaper drive is in February, but they will take diaper donations any time of the year. I’ve thankfully not had to buy diapers in a very long time, but I remember it wasn’t cheap then, especially I had two boys in diapers, one in pull ups, one in diapers. So I know what those costs were, and living in the Keys, we all know what our costs are. If you can help out, this is a wonderful organization to help with, but we’re doing a proclamation on the 10th for this organization.”
The first public hearing for the fiscal year ’24, ‘25 budget will happen on September 17.
Still said, “That will be the public’s first true look at our proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year, and we will be having discussions on anything we’d like to see changed, modified, some things lowered in our budget. We have a final hearing on I think it’s the 27th. The public is welcome to come to that also, and the public’s welcome to speak. When you come into City Hall, before you come into council chambers, there’s a table set up out front, and usually the cards are yellow in color, and you would fill that card out to say that you wanted to speak. This goes for city council meetings and workshops. You’ll fill that card out. Usually, you will put what you want to speak on, and you’ll take it to our clerk and then when it comes time for citizen comments, your name will be called and you can stand up and speak. City Council can’t answer questions back during a council meeting. During a workshop, that’s when we engage in discussions, but we can hear what you have to say, and then frequently what happens is city staff or city council will get in touch with somebody who may have had a question, or if you wait around, we can talk to you after the meeting, but that’s the perfect time that if you have questions about our budget, if you want to hear how your tax dollars are being spent in the city, that’s the time to come.”
Of course the big question for budget is the millage rate.
Still said, “Most of that is based on your property taxes and your assessments with your property taxes. We did set the millage rate, and by setting that, it means that it couldn’t go any higher than that. Our goal is to work to try to lower that and the way we do that is to take a look at the budget, look at the line items, and see if there’s anywhere that we can maybe trim that some. Right now, I know our finance department, the city staff, have been working on the budget. I’ve not seen any updates in the last several days, but had when we first took our look at it as a council 23 days in reserve, we had 23 days over a year. We had 365 days in reserve. We had an additional reserve of 23 more days. Basically, when you hear that, what that means is, if we had a national disaster or something were to happen, let’s say, I don’t want to say the word hurricane, but if we had something like that, then that means that our city has enough money set aside that we could run the city of Marathon with the same level of service to our residents for at least 365 days, and then an additional 23 days on top of that. So that’s an area that you could look at those 23 days, and you could maybe make some adjustments, and that would maybe help with lowering. 365 days is a healthy amount. You would like to think that the federal government would step in and help if you didn’t get back going quick, but that money is there in the event of an emergency, so I think that’s pretty healthy. Our goal when we’re looking at our budget is to make sure that we can maintain a level of service that our residents deserve and what people need to remember is every one of us on City Council are residents. All of us are paying property taxes. So what that budget is and what the millage rate is, that impacts every one of us as well. So our goal is to lower it for everybody, but in the end, it affects us also. So we are going to be working hard for everybody, including ourselves. Millage rollback, all of that’s very confusing. There’s a pretty good document on floridarevenue.com. It’s a Florida homeowner guide, and that talks about millage. That might be a good resource to go take a look at. It kind of explains it probably better than I could, so that would be excellent.”
There are a number of events coming up in Marathon.
Still said, “Today there’s a girls volleyball game at the high school. Tomorrow night, the home football game, and on Saturday, there are two awesome events, the Dolphin Research Center is doing a love our locals day, from nine to five. I believe locals are getting in free, if you’ve not been that is an amazing facility. They do wonderful things, and it is very calming and relaxing just to go sit on the benches, watch the dolphins and just watch the water. There’s a fundraiser for our high school football team. It’s called Meet the Marathon Team’s dinner. It’s a barbecue dinner. It’s at the Elks Lodge Saturday night. The tickets are $15 you can buy tickets at LJs Cafe or the tackle box, or you can buy them at the door if you’re not sure you can make it or not. The tickets are $15. There’s a silent auction and a 50/50. Those are really fun things to come out and do and support your community and just have some good family time.”