Robyn Still, Marathon City Council Member, joined Good Morning Keys on Keys Talk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on in the city.
Still was recently re-elected.
She said, “I’m honored to have earned the trust of the voters, and I don’t plan on betraying that trust. I just look forward to if you didn’t support me, I look forward to making you wish you had voted for me and serving you as well, and I appreciate the fact that you got out and voted.”
There were a lot of accomplishments in Marathon recently.
Still said, “The last term, the council as a whole, accomplished a lot of great things, and I’m looking forward to moving forward, and we obviously have one new member on council, and I’m just excited to see where we’re going to go from here and moving forward to provide level of service and things that are best for our residents and our visitors. We can’t forget our visitors.”
The state is continuing to talk about the potential of reducing property taxes.
Still said, “That’s a scary thing. I don’t think people realize that your property tax, a huge portion of that go to your public safety, that’s your fire department, that’s your law enforcement. We don’t want to cut service from where it is now. We have a great level of service, and we have enough struggles with keeping employees here in the Keys. Our sheriff’s office has excellent personnel. So does our fire department, and I’m afraid of what would happen if we lose property tax, which does a majority of funding for that. That’s just a scary thing. I just don’t see how we fund that otherwise.”
There is a city council meeting in Marathon tonight.
Still said, “There’s not a lot on the agenda that’s a really hot topic. One thing that’s interesting is we’re setting our legislative priorities for the upcoming year. So that report is in there. So you can go to the city of Marathon’s website, and you can pull up that agenda. You can read that to see what our legislative priorities are. They’re, for the most part, pretty consistent with what they’ve been in the past. We have the same issues. Addressing home rule with vacation rentals, getting Stewardship money for projects, a lot of that kind of stuff, and obviously the property tax issue. But George Garrett, our city manager, did a several page document that you can go in and read to kind of see what those legislative priorities are. It’s pretty interesting. It’s not boring reading. I think it’s interesting because it does kind of tell you what we are trying to work for in the upcoming legislative session.”
Some workshops that were scheduled for November 25 and December 23 have been canceled.
Still said, “They will because the holidays. It’s hard to cancel them. The current council brought workshops back, and we were committed to having those at least once a month. But with the holidays, people travel. It’s a busy time. I know our store is busy, and I know a lot of other people are busy as well, and they’re out of town, and we want to have the meetings where people are in town and able to attend.”
The holidays are a busy time.
Still said, “There are a lot of awesome events that are coming up. One I think people are going to accuse me of getting paid to advertise for it, but Marathon Community Theater doing Wizard of Oz, Chris and I went opening night last week. It was such an amazing performance. I am telling you, you will regret it if you do not go. It was wonderful. It’s long, but it is worth it. It started at eight o’clock Thursday night, and it ended at 10:45. I didn’t realize it was that late until we were standing up getting ready to leave. The time went by that fast because it was wonderful. We have so many talented adults and kids. There are kids in this production. Just don’t miss it.”
The public can attend tonight’s meeting either in person or virtually.
Still said, “Our new public information officer, he’s been with us by about five months, almost six months. He does videos on Facebook and all the other social media outlets that tell what’s going on. He goes over the agenda, he’ll have a video afterwards that will be posted. They’ll kind of tell what happened at the meeting. And there’s a newsletter as well. If you don’t do social media, you can go to the city’s website, go under community, and there’ll be a tab that says, sign up for the the email newsletter, and you can get a newsletter once a week in your email that lets you know what’s going on in the city. Business Professional Women is having sip and shop Saturday night at Ferra Blanco. The Marathon Garden Club is having a holiday bazaar on the 29th and on the 20th they’re bringing the little ice skating rink back. So these are free events and movies at the park every Saturday night at 6:30. And happy holidays. Happy Thanksgiving early.”
For more information, click here: https://www.ci.marathon.fl.us