George Garrett, former manager for the city of Marathon, joined Good Morning Keys on Keys Talk 96.9/102.5FM this morning.
In late February, Garrett was terminated from his position by the Marathon City Council. There were two dissenting votes, Robyn Still and Lynn Landry.
Garrett said, “I spent 16 years for the city, 12 of it basically as the planning director, in which I think we did some really great things. As much as people would say that we’ve grown too much, or there’s frankly, most of what has happened in the past 16 years is not growth so much as redevelopment and it is not to say the growth hasn’t happened, but mostly there has been a conversion of what was here and what we’ve got now, so small Mom and Pop hotels to larger chain motels. We’ve certainly added some homes because we did have allocations to give out. And we gave them out. We gave them out in accordance with the law, and the provisions that we have under ROGO, BPAS and then you saw just some pure redevelopment of things like some run down pieces of property that have now been renovated and then renewed. Or if you look at Old Town, which is in the west end of town, lots of things have happened. And frankly, I’m very proud of those sort of things as we’ve had them. And then, as I became the city manager, we saw a lot of projects happen. The Quay property was purchased by my predecessor, through the council, and that’s now, frankly, it’s gone out to bid. We’ve got a contractor, and we’re talking about actual construction there. We’ve got things going on behind city hall. We bought the Seven Mile Marina that’s being renovated. We’re seeing all of these things happen, which I think, just simply freshen and improve the city. So I’m very proud, both as a planning director and a city manager, for what we’ve done over the past years.”
What happened in the past two or three weeks?
Garrett said, “It’s been a strange road for me in the past two or three weeks. How I came to understand, not that I haven’t heard rumors about what might happen in terms of the possibility that I would be let go, but it became obvious that it was going to happen. I had something come to me through my wife, actually, that it’s a done deal. You have a choice, resign or be fire. Well, actually our contracts, not just mine, but the city attorney, we can be fired with or without cause at any time, and for any reason or no reason. The council individually, but voting as a group, could wake up one day and say, we just don’t like the guy, and that individual would be gone tomorrow. I think the thing that really frustrates you, or gives you a bad day is there were a lot of rumors out there, which I think were kind of leading to this whole thing that happened. I was supposedly guilty of accepting fill on my property for free, and I go back and I find all my invoices for everything that’s happened on this property and in fact, the person that gave us the fill or the company that gave us the fill and were part of that construction process has the same invoices. So that’s just, how should I say it politely? BS. The FBI was supposedly after me because of things like that. No. The state attorney said so, and the FBI said so. So a lot of this stuff was rumor milling, which is either just rumor milling, or had a purpose to defame me. And that’s unfortunate, and I’m sorry that that’s the way people tend to operate. There’s also a rumor that I was the guilty party effectively in the FOLKS lawsuit that leads us to the deep well. No, we probably spent a quarter of a million dollars in legal fees, another half a million dollars in technical engineering costs to prove that we were not and now I’m not going to get too technical here, but I’ll just say it, the functional equivalent of a direct discharge, which was the charge in the folks lawsuit. We fought that, and we fought it hard, and it probably cost the city about three quarters of a million dollars to prove it. And I think we actually did prove that we weren’t the functional equivalent, and we could have continued to fight that battle. And we were told by a federal attorney that we had under contract, that you had a 50/50 chance of winning, even with all of the work we’ve done to prove that we shouldn’t have been sued or that we were okay. It was the city council, their choice, their responsibility that determined that they should settle the case and move on. And of course, here we are watching traffic jams in Marathon, so we get to be with Islamorada for a little while, while they start doing the directional drill projects to put in the deep well and and I’m going to say one more thing here, but I am very proud of the fact that that is happening now too as much as I chose and pushed to fight that lawsuit, the utilities director, did as well. We all did, but I’m actually very proud that we’ve taken the direction we have. Because I think in the long run, putting our wastewater effluent down the deep well takes out the things that wastewater processes don’t usually do, and that is things like PFAS, the forever chemicals and the things like pharmaceuticals, because putting it down a deep well, 3,500 feet will make those chemicals go away for ever, effectively. So those are the things that just I am where I am. I’m very proud of my past and the city’s past, and my participation with the city, and then I’m looking forward. I don’t know exactly what we’re going to do. Have a few months to consider it and work on it.”
Garrett is the president of Crane Point Hammock.
He said, “I am the president of Leadership Monroe County. I’m on the board of the Rotary Club of Marathon. So, I mean, right now, today, I’ve got to work on the eagle permit for Crane Point Hammock. We’ve got to renew that permit. I will be at the Seafood Festival, working with Rotary and Leadership Monroe County comes up soon with the education government section. So all of those things are going to continue. And then I’m going to seem to take some time to work on my house and do a little bit of cleanup here that I don’t always get to do, and we’ll see. I’m looking forward, and I think there are options. And I guess probably the big question is, what’s the long term? I don’t honestly know. We’re thinking about our options, my wife and I, and right now we have no intent of going anywhere. We’re going to be here, we’re going to enjoy maybe a little bit more time to just do what we would like to do personally, go to the theater, see Key West. I haven’t been in Key West the way I used to be in Key West for a couple of years, so we’ll have to go down there.”
Michael Stapleford of Keys Talk 96.9/102.5FM said, “I also want to say that you have obviously made a lot of contributions that are lasting contributions to the city of Marathon. It speaks to your character, given the fact that you have not just thrown up your hands and walked away from the city and other obligations that you have just mentioned that you continue to remain dedicated to. So that speaks a lot to who you are.”
Garrett said, “I’ve also said to my staff, and I had a going away party yesterday, there’s 135 staff members within the city of Marathon, and I think 75 of them were there yesterday in the council chambers. It was an amazing thing. I wouldn’t have expected it, and frankly, didn’t think about it. But an individual that we have working for us, and he happens to be Hispanic, he came up to me, he goes, I am so happy to have been able to be working for the city of Marathon. Thank you for that opportunity. And then frankly, he said, you’ve always been a person that really looked at your staff and didn’t consider whether they were black, brown or white, you just treated everybody fairly. And as I’m saying this to you I’m choking up now, I wouldn’t expect that, because I don’t think in those terms, but it was an amazing thing for somebody to come up and tell me. So I’m very proud. Also, the opportunities I had with our staff we have, I’ve told everybody at the city that if they have questions that I have knowledge about, still and will for probably the foreseeable month or two, as people figure it out and understand what I did and I was involved in a lot of things, other than just administration of the city, water quality protection program, the sanctuary Advisory Council and all these other things, who knows where they’ll go at this point, I’m going to continue with them. They’re going to be questions, and I’ve said my phone’s on, and I will answer any questions you have, so we’ll figure it out, and the city will figure it out and move on. The one thing I would say is, and again, it’s part of the reason I don’t want to look back now, and I’m not looking back, though, certainly things run through my head at times, the easiest way to look at all of this is that, simply, the council has the right, it’s in our contract to release either Steve, our attorney, or me, or whoever may be the attorney or city manager, for no reason. And at that point I can question, the city can question what the reasons were. I don’t know that they’ll ever be known. But you just have to look forward. Because I have to look forward because of those very facts and then if there was something, if I go back to the issue of whether this had something to do with my involvement in the FOLKS lawsuit from the city side, I now believe that the deep well should happen, and if there’s any effort probably to derail that, I will be in front of city council or deal with it in whatever way might need to be dealt with, because I think it’s the right thing to do at this point. So that’s my commitment to the city as we move forward, is to see these things through to the extent that I can as a citizen.”
Was there a performance review?
Garrett said, “One out of five, yes, and it’s public record, but I think it was interesting because the performance evaluation is based on 10 questions. It’s a one to five ranking amongst, I think, three of the 10 in this particular evaluation, and we had no verbal conversation. It’s just written and I got it and there was no conversation after that. There were zeros, which can’t be and the reasons were, he lies. He doesn’t follow through. He’s slow on things. And I think one more, which was he has personal motivations and that’s not quite the way it was, but it was close. I’m like, none of those are true. But what am I going to do? I mean, and I could have argued it, I could have answered it. I chose not to, because, frankly, this happened rather quickly, honestly, so at that point, I’m not going to go back and answer it now. So there was no evaluation overall. The item that led to this was added on at city council meeting. I did not know that was going to happen until probably 3:30 that afternoon. I’ll just leave it at that.”
Other council members who were asked to vote on this also were allegedly unaware of this agenda item being added until very late in the day.
Garrett said, “I tend not to be snarky, but karma, and then we’ll see. I’ve had a number of people come up to me and said, I would have walked out on that. No, I have nothing to walk out about. I am who I am. I’ve done a good job for the city of Marathon. There are lots of people that think I’ve done a good job for the city of Marathon. You always have detractors. My job was to continue to be the manager I have been until I’m not the manager, which, of course, I’m not at this point. So again, looking forward.”
Stapleford said, “We always welcome all points of view and perspectives on this station and this program. And we will continue to invite anybody who has other perspectives on this that they want to be made known. We always wish you the best. Thoughts and prayers are with you.”
Garrett said, “Thank you. Look, the reason I agreed to talk honestly is because of some of the questions that people have out there, and frankly, simply to clear the air on a few things, like some of the rumor milling and whatever. It’s funny. One of the things that really is a double edged sword, social media is fantastic. But I think one of the things that I personally feel about social media, as opposed to say, World War II media, and it isn’t that media hasn’t been used for good and bad forever, but I think the responsibilities of those people that were professional media folks has always been to have integrity, to speak truth as best they could determine it, and then provide that to the public. So the public was informed, but social media has become a rumor milling function. So as much as I absolutely support the fact that the city had a PIO because that person through me at the time, the city as it moves forward, can speak truth, can provide facts, can help inform the public that it serves, which, of course, for our PIO, city of Marathon is to inform the city of of Marathon, its constituents, its visitors. So most of the time, I honestly didn’t look at the social media otherwise. And there was a lot of just very negative or positive sometimes things out there. My play is to look, the city of Marathon should always promise to provide truth and fact, fact and truth. Sometimes there’s interpretations to be made, but fact and truth and then, frankly, for my own purposes, I’m very disappointed and disheartened by people’s choices in using social media for negative, especially when, frankly, they know what they’re saying is not true and not factual. There’s a responsibility to use media properly, and it’s unfortunate it doesn’t happen very often now. So frankly, what happened a lot of the time is I had my staff who does kind of keep track of this stuff, whispering in my ear about what got put into social media someplace, and at least I was informed at that point, could address things that might need to be addressed. But frankly, I just didn’t want to read it, because a lot of it is just not good, not responsible, and so I just implore the public to use social media properly and speak truth and fact. I really see you as a traditional media source, but frankly, the relationship we’ve had and the discussions we’ve had, and what has gone out on the air, through Keys Talk, I think you’ve always done a great job, I think, in understanding what it was that the city was doing, and it wasn’t just me saying something, it was the you and I having a dialog, because you had actually looked at what was going on within the city and could ask smart, intelligent questions. It honestly gave me, as the city manager at the time, a forum to be able to speak some of these truths, as opposed to just using my PIO. So I’ve been very appreciative of the relationship we’ve had. And frankly, if that’s a closing for me here and on this program, frankly, the people that are listening to you now or to us now, I think should appreciate that as well.”
Stapleford said, “Thank you for that. That does mean a lot. I’m getting older, but I was raised at a time, and I went to broadcast school at university, and journalism, etc., idolizing people like Walter Cronkite, who just reported the news and let the viewers and listeners form their own opinion. We always want to provide a fair forum, and I hope we have done that, and I admire and appreciate your dedication and your professionalism, even today, when it would be tempting to lash out, you have not done so.”
Garrett said, “Thank you very much and thanks for the time we’ve had together. I greatly appreciate it.”