Key West Mayor Dee Dee Henriquez joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on in the city.
The Key West Police Department had to say goodbye to Jigsaw, their beloved K9 officer, who passed away due to medical complications last week.
Henriquez said, “That was a very, very sad day on Friday, when I had spoken to the chief, and he had informed me about him passing. So our condolences go out to the police department.”
An advisory screening committee meeting for the new city attorney will be at 3 p.m. today in city hall.
Henriquez said, “Then tomorrow starts our first meeting for our budget workshop, and that’s going to start at 9 am and that will run all day. Then at five o’clock we have the HARC meeting at City Hall on Tuesday, so that’ll be right after our budget workshop, and then on Wednesday, we’ll continue with our budget workshop meeting, and that will start at 9 am again at City Hall. Then at five o’clock is the special commission meeting in reference to the water quality testing. The commission will be able to interview the two perspective entities. It’s RES, LLC and Mote Marine. So we’ll see how that meeting goes. I’m sure we’ll have lots of questions for both of them.”
On Thursday, another budget workshop is planned if it’s needed.
Henriquez said, “We have allowed an extra day in the event we still need some more time, and then starting at 5 pm will be the Parks and Rec Advisory Board meeting on Thursday. Friday, again, we have the early bird cleanup, which is at Whitehead and Olivia Street, which that starts at 8 am and we’ll meet across the street from the Hemingway House on Whitehead Street, because they’re the host, and that’s going to kick off the Hemingway Days. Then also we have something called Corsa Rally Special Event. I just wanted to let everybody know between 6 pm and 8 pm on Friday that there will be a rolling street closure, beginning and ending at the Casa Marina. The Key West Police Department will escort exotic cars throughout the streets of Key West, so there will be rolling street closures through that process. Then Saturday, just for information, is the look alikes, Running of the Bulls special event that’s from 9 am to 11 pm. Then they also are going to have the Hemingway Days street fair. So Duval will be closed 10 am to 9pm and now they’ll be on Duval. It’s from the 400 block of Duval Street down all the way to the 100 block. So that’s going to be very exciting on Saturday, with a lot of Hemingway look alikes.”
When is the deadline for the city’s budget?
Henriquez said, “It’s in September. We’ll have other meetings until we give the final millage rate. But we will have to come up with a tentative millage rate either Wednesday or Thursday, depending on how far we go, as far as the budget process. So we’ll have a tentative budget millage rate, and then, depending on what the will of the commission is, I’m sure we’ll tweak it a little bit more, but I will say that we are going in 4% over where last year, when we started, we were going at 8% over, so we’re already starting way below than we did last year. So we’re really streamlining this budget, and I’m sure we’re going to cut it even more during this process. We have made a few reductions tentatively right now, like I said, it will be what the will of the commission is, but what will be presented to us, there has been some cutbacks in some of the nonprofits, not significant like the county has, but there has been some cutbacks.”
What’s happening with the rainbow crosswalk?
Henriquez explained, “The rainbow crosswalk is on Duval and Petronia Street. It was first installed in 2015 to show support for the LGBTQ plus community. It was temporarily removed during 2020 due to some road work, and then it was reinstalled. Now the new state law may require the city to remove it, and I do not believe that the crosswalks pose any safety risk at all. We were just notified of this late Friday afternoon, I believe we received the email around 4:20, so it’s still premature to know exactly how it will unfold, but I have asked our interim city attorney to explore our options, whether to challenge the law or seek permission from the state to keep the crosswalks in place, and if we can show that we don’t compromise any public safety. The reason why I say that is because in this letter that we received on Friday, at the last paragraph, it says, in accordance with section 316.074 Florida statue, failure to remove non compliant traffic control devices or pavement markings shall be caused for withholding of state funds. But then the next sentence, it says permission to allow non compliant traffic control devices or pavement markings to remain may be granted, which I was excited to see that, may be granted at the department’s discretion, if the public agency is able to demonstrate good cause for doing so. I will be and I’m sure a lot of us will be reaching out to our interim city attorney to be able to gather all of this information, I’m going to be reaching out to FDOT’s representative here in Key West, because I think we do need to demonstrate a great cause for us to be able to keep those rainbow crosswalks in place.”