Don Horton, vice mayor of the Village of Islamorada, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on in the Village.
The comp plan is moving along quite nicely.
Horton said, “Our planning director is doing a wonderful job at steering this thing in the right direction. We’ve already had several meetings with the comp planners and their entire team, and going up and down through the Village. I’m told that each council member has met with them in some fashion or another, and staff is meeting with them, and they’re doing all of their due diligence. I hope we have a lot of people from Islamorada going in when we have our public meeting so that we can put this thing in the right track and make sure that everybody is part of this comp plan. We end up developing our new land development regulations as well, or some changes that are needed. I think that’s pretty exciting news. We’ve needed to do this for several years now. When we had our first comp plan, and we went through all of our hearings on that, and all of the council approvals, I was the building official in Islamorada, so certainly got to be part of that, and part of our land development regulations, especially as it related to building and construction.”
Anna Richards is a new council member.
Horton said, “That’s the struggle when you have a four a four member council is you’re going to oftentimes have split votes, which is great. Diversity is good on there. What we had was we had a tie between Greg Dully and Anna Richards. Ultimately, after a while of thought and really being a uniter, not a divider, Greg saw that there was just pretty much a stalemate, and he decided to step back and he said that he’s going to run in the next election, which is exciting. He’s a good guy. We certainly congratulate Anna for being on our new council, and looking forward to her knowledge and her experience on the board with us.”
How is the search going for a new village manager?
Horton said, “We didn’t hire a search team, so to speak, this time. We’ve put it out with the Florida League of Cities, and the Association for City Managers. I think we at this point, have close to 20 applicants, and it looks like about six or seven of those actually have a Florida connection, which I feel that’s fairly important. Florida is unique in their laws and in their regulations, and so I’m looking forward to those discussions with our council members and see where it heads as to who our new city manager is going to be, and hopefully we can pick somebody that’s going to be with us for quite some time.”
What other qualities is the council looking for in a village manager?
Horton said, “I think that Florida is unique. And absolutely the Keys are very unique. So I’d like to see somebody get on board that certainly understands Florida, understands Florida law, understands the property rights portion of Florida law that are just ingrained in all of our regulations. I want to see somebody that certainly can manage staff well. We have a great staff, and I think that they need to be protected, and I think they need to continue to foster good relations with the citizens of Islamorada and continue to do the good work. I want to see somebody that is knowledgeable when it comes to our codes and maybe not have to play catch up on being an area of state critical concern and our environment and the importance of our environment to all of us. So it’s going to be a tough choice. It’s going to have to be vetting. I think, I think we have six or seven that already have a connection in some form to Florida and I think that’s going to be important this time.”
The next regular Village Council meeting will be at Founders Park Community Center on March 18.
Horton said, “It’s a little bit early for them to staff to bring out the full agenda. But our meetings are always exciting. I’m sure that we’ll have some discussion from the public about our traffic backups that we had last week. That was painful here in Islamorada. We’ve got a 50 year old pipeline. We’re going to have some disruption. But I think that the contractors, the aqueduct, and certainly our great Sheriff, they’re all sitting down with DOT and working out a good MOT so that we don’t have the backups and the disruption that we had with our students going to school and our folks trying to get their kids to school and people to work. Once Sheriff Ramsey, gets involved, he’ll be able to take control of this thing, and him and his crew will certainly help them work out a good plan so that we don’t have as bad of a traffic disruption. I tell you, that guy is amazing when it comes to knowing every inch of every mile of our Keys and how to help control those kind of things. So they’ll work it out, and it’ll all work out and it’ll all be good. It’s a good thing that the aqueduct’s doing. I can remember when they were putting in the pipeline that they’re replacing now. So I’m looking forward to us having a brand new pipeline, and after 50 years, it’s time to replace it.”