Marathon Mayor Lynn Landry joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s been going on in the city.
Florida Keys Days is right around the corner in Tallahassee.
Landry said, “We’re flying out a little bit later today with a pretty strong contingent from Marathon, a little bit more than normally go, but we have a new council member who’s taking the trip with us this year. Our lobbyists have been working hard trying to set up meetings for us. We do have some of our legislative priorities we’re really trying to push. First and foremost is BPAS for us and units for the city of Marathon and the Florida Keys that we can continue to grow very slowly. The rhetoric out there is it that we want to grow the Florida Keys faster than we have been and then reality is the city of Marathon especially wrote a resolution that supported the 26 hour evacuation time up to 3,550 units, but over a minimum of 40 years, which is very slow growth. We did address workforce and affordable housing, which is still a huge deficit in the Florida Keys that we desperately need more of, and so we address that as well in our resolution. So we’re going to Tallahassee and hopefully meet with our state rep and our senator to hopefully discuss this a little further and see if we can get some movement on that.”
Could the county and city go back in future years to ask for more ROGO and BPAS units?
Landry said, “Well, for us, we have a few of what’s called administrative relief, which could essentially be about anything we would like, from affordable to market rates, and we think we’ve got a way to stretch those out through the next year. But essentially we are out. If it happens to die this year, we can go next year, and hopefully we can stretch them to that point, but we are probably in the worst situation in the Florida Keys with Marathon. We’ve stretched ours as far as we possibly can, and we will be running out. We had an appeal on the Shands case, which is a case that the city of Marathon has been fighting for about 20 plus years, and the third district court, all nine justices heard it and ruled against us again. So takings for us is a real thing. It is a public record the Shands ruling, but that’s about all I can really say about it, because it is an ongoing litigation.”
Do legislators realize the seriousness of the takings cases?
Landry said, “I believe that they do, however, we’ve been kind of told in no uncertain terms that takings are not going to drive this legislation, which I agree with, but we are very hopeful that we can get some legislation passed. We’ve been kicking the can down the road for years and years and years, but the city of Marathon wanted to take a stand and try to get this taken care of for a minimum of 40 years. I believe that we have some responsibility and I believe the state may have some responsibility if this actually comes to fruition, that if takings happens, we’re going to need some help, because a little city of Marathon could potentially be sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars of takings, eventually. They may not all come at once, but I’m not sure that this little city can handle that.”
Are there any concerns for funding?
Landry said, “On the federal level, we’re still talking about FKWQIP, which is the Florida Keys Water Quality Improvement Act, which has been great for the Florida Keys, which we are desperate need of since we are trying to build a deep well in the city of Marathon for our wastewater. There are concerns about funding. I’m not so sure that it’s as great as it is in the state, as it is in the federal government. But we have pre lobby firms that work for us in the state that continue to lobby for us for funding, especially for the Stewardship Act money as well. It is definitely a concern, but we’re going to continue to fight for that money.”
Could DOGE come to local governments?
Landry said, “We’ve had some brief discussions internally about that, and we are actually looking kind of in house, but they’ve targeted the counties and the municipal governments with this. So we’re kind of concerned about how that’s going to play out, and how they’re going to actually implement that. There is concern there.”
Marathon is looking for funding to purchase properties.
Landry said, “I know the county gets funded through the land acquisition trust fund. So we’ve been able to buy five properties over the last couple of years and turn those into little pocket parks. But we would like to have a two prong approach. If we get units, still continue to lobby for money to buy properties, so we can work at it from two different directions to continue to grow slowly and buy properties and take them off the market so they can’t be developed in the future. Another thing is our vacation rental legislation. We always, always seem to have to fight every year for preemption and try, if we could push maybe a local carve out for the area of critical state concern that we might be able to regulate our vacation rentals a little bit better, because right now, with the way the statutes are written, if you apply and you get approved with all the right stuff on your property to be approved, you can be a vacation rental, and we have no control over limiting that at all. That’s kind of where the growth has happened in the city of Marathon, I believe we have close to 1200 vacation rentals in the city. That’s up from 750 pre COVID, which really is an impact in our community. The other thing we’re really focusing on is workforce housing. With the Live Local Act, there’s some options in there for the possibility for the city to use in that bill. So we’re going to continue to look at workforce housing in ways that we can improve that here in the city.”