Marathon Council is always looking to help residents

Lynn Landry, Mayor of Marathon, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on in the city.

The Celtic Festival is always a good time in the city.

Landry said, “It was absolutely fantastic. The proceeds of that goes to the Hammock House for their after school programs and also helps fund some of their summer programs and camps there as well. So it’s a great, great event. Looked like we had a really good turnout over the two days. Happy to be able to support that event.”

The resolution for ROGO units included changing the evacuation time from 24 to 26 hours.

Landry said, “We stand behind the resolution. We have spoken also to Sheriff Ramsey, and he agrees. Everybody so far to this date has been able to evacuate the Florida Keys when we needed to evacuate for a storm. So he fully supports the 24 to 26 hours as well and the city stands behind the resolution from 24 to 26 hours and the biggest part of that is it’s not like we’re going to build out the Florida Keys tomorrow. If this happens, it’s a minimum of 40 years in our particular resolution to distribute these units. If you use the Department of Commerce numbers, if this moves forward at 3,550 that would be 89 units distributed at 40 years, at 89 units a year throughout the county. So that’s really not that many units, and it’s a good way to slow growth, but also work from both sides, trying to lobby for more money to buy up properties in the Florida Keys so we don’t develop them.”

Two people in Marathon High School won gold medals for weight lifting at the Special Olympics – Alex Chavala and Cindy Augustin.

Landry said, “This is part of the event of the nights that we have meetings when we’re able to recognize people and also do proclamations. It’s something long standing for the city and for these two young athletes, it’s a great event. They represented the city of Marathon well.”

Also at the meeting tonight, Joe Forcine, who is a 20 year firefighter in Marathon was recognized.

Landry said he’s a “great asset to the city and Fire Rescue. He also is a teacher over there as well. He trains paramedics for the city. Also, we’re going to be recognizing Chris Cameron for his 10 years of service. He also is the cadet leader for the city of Marathon with the cadet program at the high school. It’s good to recognize these guys for their service for the city of Marathon and Marathon Fire Rescue.”

A proclamation for Martin Luther King Jr. Day was also made tonight.

There was also discussion on 109th Street.

Landry said, “There was a resident there many, many years ago who actually took part of the city property, and they built a boat ramp there and about a third of the right of way toward the ocean. Very big state of disrepair, actually a big liability for the city as far as risk management was concerned. So what we did was we abandoned it to that house, to the owners of that and there’s still a little bit of land left there, about two thirds of it, and some of the local neighborhood residents had come to us, and they’re asking us to figure out a way to do a kayak or a paddle board launch there. So we looked at it once before, and we never really gave any direction to staff, so I’ve been having conversations with some of those residents, so I added it back to the agenda just to discuss it tonight and to maybe get some clarification from staff, and maybe look at it pushing forward for a little bit better cost analysis on something to do there, so we might be able to help that neighborhood.”

Workforce housing also continues to be a topic.

Landry said, “These two changes in the plan are specific. Governor Scott a few years ago, gave us 1300 units. They had come through the court system. Some appeals, the city of Marathon received 300 of those. We actually were on the forefront of issuing those and then it went back on appeal at the third district, and we lost that appeal there, so we ended up having to work with the county and actually have it written into the Live Local act from the state, and they gave us back the 1300 units. So we’ve been very proactive over the years at building affordable housing in Marathon. These two changes actually allow us that if there’s any of the 1300 floating around the county, or any other municipalities, it will give us the ability, if we have a project that needs to be funded with these allocations, that we would have an ability to ask for those and actually receive those in the city of Marathon. So these two changes are just specifically for those 1300 early evacuation units.”

Marathon Council is always working to make life easier for residents.

Landry said, “The private donations that are coming through United Way were surprising to us, but also very well received in the city, one is for $500,000 to help us fund a splash pad, which we’re incorporating hopefully at the Community Park. We’re doing some redevelopment plans there right now to include a skate park and we also had another donation come through the United Way for $75,000 for the design and build of the skate park as well. So very grateful to those donors for their donations to the city for these projects, and then moving to Sombrero Boulevard project, man, when you talk about the speed of government, I can’t praise staff enough for this one. We gave them the green light to move forward and it’s actually moving faster than the speed of government for this project. Hopefully we might actually see it close to completion by the end of the year. Tonight, we have an item on consent to just award the contract for all the inspection services for that project. Moving forward, we’re still going to be first and foremost on our list is the BPAS and ROGO for the county and trying to figure out what we’re going to do, because we feel in the city that takings is a real issue for us, and we’re having internal meetings and our lobbyists are setting up meetings with our Representative and our Senator and some meetings from Department of Commerce and hopefully moving forward we can talk about that a little bit more in the future.”