George Garrett, city manager for the city of Marathon, joined Good Morning Keys on Keys Talk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on in Marathon.
Florida Keys Day in Tallahassee is always a good chance to have our voices heard.
Garrett said, “We go up there every year, and I want to thank former state Rep Holly Raschein and current county commissioner. This is her legacy with her leadership Monroe County class. It’s an annual event. It’s something that typically happens in the early parts of the legislative session, and it gives us all a chance to get up there and speak our minds concerning the issues of the Florida Keys and important, because I think we’ve always felt that going up there as a group is is going to be important to the overall mission, which we all share, from Key West to Key Largo. I think we had a great time up there. Met with the appropriations chair, certainly both of our legislators here, Anna Maria Rodriguez and Jim Mooney, met with the governor’s office and we met with the Department of Commerce. Also had a little time with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. So, I think we really pushed with Department of Commerce and with governor’s office, the need to modify the city’s Memorandum of Understanding concerning those permits that it typically issues or renders to the state of Florida, and of course, under area of critical state concern, legally, we have to render 100% of our development orders or building permits. Typically under an MOU we’ve agreed that we don’t want to render them all, don’t need to render a fence, don’t need to render a sidewalk, that sort of thing.”
There was a modification to the MOU as part of a legal action from the state.
Garrett said, “The state took (the action) with us on a development agreement some five years ago now, and it’s hamstrung, I think us and them, frankly, a little bit, because some of the things are still in that MOU really don’t make sense. I can point to a specific, we issued a permit recently for the city’s pickleball court behind city hall. No issues at all there, and yet, we had to render that permit, and we will probably wait virtually 60 days before we can start actual construction of that project. So we want to kind of rectify some of these things and a very positive response out of the state, both at the Department of Commerce and at the governor’s office. So that was one of our big issues. And of course, we literally, I think let’s say Wednesday morning we’re meeting with people, we’re in the Capitol Building and down in the cafeteria and watched Representative Mooney get the Stewardship Act through one of its first committee meetings, and it passed with a 100% vote, unanimous vote, to extend the Stewardship act out another 10 years, that’s fantastic. We wouldn’t have to go back and, I’m going to say, beg for its continuance. It doesn’t mean that we would be appropriated money every year. It does mean we would have to go and beg for money, and I mean that in the best way, but we would have to make our case that there’s still issues in the Keys that need to be funded under stewardship. So that was fantastic, and we’ve done very, very well in stewardship for the last two or three years, 20 million a year, split between the jurisdictions for at least the last three and that’s fantastic. We expect the same this year, at least we believe that’s coming forward. Ultimately, (it has to make it to) the budget, yes, so that’ll be in the session.”
A number of people asked if Keys’ officials “came back with money?”
Garrett said, “No. But the other side of that is we argued hard for it, and the realities of begging, asking for money and making our argument that it’s needed, whether it’s us or whether it’s the other jurisdictions, is we have to make a good argument. And then ultimately that ends up in the budget, and the budget doesn’t get approved until the House approves it, Senate endorses it, and then the governor’s office further endorses it and ultimately signs it. So that’s at the end of the process. And so going up there for Florida Keys Day, basically two weeks into session only comes back with good tidings, I think. We, I believe, had good tidings. Everybody was supportive, everybody was responsive, that we met with, and I think we’re going to fare well this year, but until the end of session, we don’t have any guarantees.”
How many years have officials been going to Tallahassee in this process?
Garrett said, “I’m going to go in and find out when Holly first did this, and it’s been at least 15 years that I’ve been involved, and I’ve been at city for just about that long. One of the things too, I mean, Stewardship does well. As I said, I think we’ve done well in arguing our case to modify the MOU and then the third thing I would point to in our ventures to Tallahassee is that we have a special appropriations request in this year, and that special appropriations would help us fund specifically our deep well project. We asked for that specifically as a set aside for us, the city of Marathon, as opposed to our piece of the Stewardship Act. And of course, we hope we get funded in both, but it’s just one of those things. The deep well is costly. Anything we can do to minimize the actual impact on our rate payers is critical. We’re also looking at the federal government, so we’ll see where we go. But I would say the first meeting we had was with the appropriations chair for the House, and then, just out of coincidence, the Senate president ran into me and said, George, and I turned around to see him standing there, and I was able to make a plea to him to help us out with this project, and he was supportive. So I think we did a lot in that regard to move ourselves forward this year.”
How much more additional funding is needed for the deep well project in Marathon?
Garrett said, “On advice of our lobbyists who understand the process, I think the easy answer is, ask for everything you want, and then the hard answer is, yeah, but you’re not going to get it. And the way to best do that with our legislators is ask for a reasonable amount. So we definitely outlined what we need, and we asked for 5 million this year and indicated that we would be back in the next two or three years. And there is when you fill these forms out, is this a one year request, or is this a multi year request? And of course, we said it would be ultimately a multi year request.”
Sometimes it seems like after Florida Keys Day it’s a wait and see process.
Garrett said, “We walk away from Florida Keys day, we fly away, but it doesn’t stop there. I was texting with our lobbyists yesterday and said, we can’t forget this. We met with Cody Farrell and the governor’s office, his chief of staff, and please remind him that he was going to help us get our MOU, our memorandum of understanding with the Department of Commerce changed. And the response from one of our lobbyists was, happened to run into him in the rotunda in the Capitol, and I reminded them today, and that was, of course, yesterday, but it is an ongoing process. It doesn’t stop because we were there last week. It will continue until session is over. Last year, I believe it was Senate Bill 180 which, of course, was the bill that got all of us the 900 units, and I literally was on the phone with one of our lobbyists until less than five minutes before the gavel sounded for the end of session. So it doesn’t end and we’ve got a few more weeks of that.”