August 12 – There’s a lot going on in the Village of Islamorada and Pete Bacheler, Mayor of Islamorada, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to give listeners an idea of the goings on in the village.
The new village manager, Ted Yates, has come to the Keys from Twinsburg Ohio and is working out extremely well in Islamorada.
Bacheler said, “Ted of course brings a lot to the table. He’s got an unbelievable amount of background experience. The Village is only going to benefit from his being the village manager.”
Islamorada Village Council hasn’t seen an increase in compensation for many years.
Salary of the village council will go up for referendum on the ballot in a few weeks. At the moment the salary is $1,000 per month. The referendum would bring it up to $2,000 a month.
Bacheler said, “Do they deserve a little bit more money? Yeah, I think they do. Especially with the amount of time that we now put into what’s going on. There’s homework you have to do. There’s people you have to talk to. There’s a consensus you have to try and build and of course you have to try and improve what our village is all about. That’s very, very important to the residents because they come first. You don’t come to it by osmosis. You just don’t wake up one day and say, oh I’m going to be a great councilmember. That’s not necessarily true. There’s a lot of stuff you have to pick up on.”
The term of a councilmember in Islamorada is two years.
Bacheler said, “Many things, many ideas, many good ideas, many things that need to be worked on inside our little village take more than two years, which is why I’m in favor of extending our terms. Either to three years or four years. You just need more time to get things done. It takes time to be a good councilmember. The only way to do that is to serve time. Can you get it all done? Can you learn what you need to learn? Can you know what need to know at the end of just two years? Just at the end of a year you’re just getting warmed up. In my mind it takes more time, which is why I would like to see the terms extended.”
The first reading of the newly amended ordinance to work with the cost of housing and addressing written fair notice of termination of monthly residential tenancy happened recently. The bottom line is a 30-day notice will be required from landlords for changes in rent and occupancy.
Bacheler said, “That was a very, very important ordinance to change, ordinance to write and to get approved. It’s important because many property owners, over 60%, maybe 65% of our properties are absentee owners. That is to say the owners live out of town and they rent their units out. So the great, wonderful raise in value that everybody was getting, the people who rent their places out decided they should get more rent money and in some instances they were telling their tenants that they had to leave or raising their rent and they weren’t giving them time to acquire new places.”
It can be quite difficult to find a place to rent in Islamorada.
Bacheler explained, “We suffer from our own great success and we have become very much like the ski resorts out west where the people who work in our restaurants and stores have to drive into town. They can’t live here because they can’t afford to live here and there aren’t any places for them to live. That’s another reason that we need affordable housing units. We need affordable housing units like there’s no tomorrow.”
Housing units Islamorada was hoping to get were denied from the state of Florida. The village is looking into if and how that might be changed.
There will be three meetings held on Monday, August 15, in Islamorada to talk about building permits and affordable housing.
Bacheler said, “We work very well. The kind of council we have works extremely well as a brotherhood. We do get things accomplished. We rarely if ever disagree with one another. Squabbles are very, very rare. It’s very, very important that we move forward and it’s very, very important that we make our village the greatest little village to live in and that’s exactly what we’ve accomplished and that’s exactly why, as I said, we’re a product of our own great work.”
In terms of the fills in Islamorada, plans have been drawn up for FDOT.
Bacheler said, “We’ve listened to the people very, very carefully. When we got those drawings, we had to take things off of them that the public did not want and reduced it to something that’s manageable, number one, and number two, more in tune with what the public is after.”
The next step is to sit down with FDOT, show them the corrections and ask the organization what the final drawing package should look like.
Bacheler said, “Everything that goes on at the fills requires FDOT’s approval.”
For more information on council meetings in Islamorada, click here: https://www.islamorada.fl.us/departments/communications/live_meetings_2.php