Key West Mayor Dee Dee Henriquez joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on in the city.
The airshow was incredible yesterday and more than 10,000 people were watching.
Henriquez said, “Unfortunately, I was not able to make it yesterday. My store called for me. I was there from 8am until 5pm yesterday, but I understand there was over 10,000 people there yesterday watching that spectacular event. So it’s great when the city and the county and the military, we work together and put on a spectacular, spectacular event.”
The Eaton Street paving project is proceeding.
Henriquez said, ‘Much needed progress has been done, and now I believe they’ll just have to do the striping and so forth. So it is just about complete.”
A workshop for the city live aboard issue is coming up tonight.
Henriquez said, “That meeting is tonight at City Hall, starting at 5pm and the staff is going to give a presentation and then open it up to all of the constituents that will be here. I am expecting a lot of people this evening, and we should have some really great discussions, and we’re going to listen to all of their concerns. This is another one of those projects that we need to check the box. So this is finally coming to a closure. We’ll see what happens. We’re going to give a presentation, and something has to change. I mean, we have to increase our fees. How much we don’t know, so that will go before the Board of Commissioners tomorrow. They’re talking about CPI, and so there was a market study done so that all will be presented tonight. Like I said, I’m expecting a lot of people here tonight that have a lot of concerns, and there’ll be a lot of great discussions.”
The city commission will meet tomorrow night.
Henriquez said, “There’s a lot going on between tonight and tomorrow’s meeting. So Tuesday, we’ll start tomorrow at 9am here at City Hall, in the commission chambers, we will have the 42nd Key West Ambassadors Academy. They will be graduating, and they will join close to 700 citizens who have actually gone through this class. So congratulations will go out to them. Item number 35 will be approving the adjusted dockage rates for the Garrison Bight Marina. Then in the evening session, I believe we’ll have a lot of participation in this as well, where we will be voting on the request for the Park Hotels and Resorts, which is the Casa Marina to zone the 3.36 acreage adjacent to the Casa Marina Hotel, the 811 and 715 Seminole Street, changing that from residential to commercial. So there’s two items, the official zoning map amendment of the land development regulation, and also the official future land use map amendment of the comprehensive plan, so that’s going to create a lot of discussion and conversations and we’ll see how all that goes.”
There’s also the possibility of amending the rules for procedure for City Commission meetings.
Henriquez said, “I know Commissioner Haskell would also like to have commission comments in the evening as well. I know we have commissioner comments in the morning, but I know she would like to add them in the evening, I guess in case there’s any other things that they would like to talk about before we adjourn the meeting.”
A town hall meeting will be this Wednesday.
Henriquez said, “I’m very excited about that. I will be hosting my first town hall meeting Wednesday, from six to eight at the Douglas Community Center. Stop by. We’ll have food and refreshments and lots of information that I’d like to discuss and see and listen to all their concerns. I’m going to do one every quarter, so I’ll have four throughout the year, and this is my first town hall meeting, so hopefully everybody can stop by and listen. I like to hear their discussions and what their concerns are as well. So I’m looking forward to that, and very excited about that. Then on Friday, we have the early bird cleanup that’s going to be at the Key West Cemetery, starting at 8am and ending at 9. Then Saturday is the first Saturday of the month. It’s the household hazardous waste drop off from 8am to noon at the indigenous park. So there’s a lot of things going on. Wednesday morning, also, I will be walking and joining Senator Lauren Book, the Lauren’s Kids team and the community at 7:30 in the morning. The awareness is called walk in my shoes. Senator Book will walk a combined total of 1,500 miles, and she’s starting from Key West. She’ll end in Tallahassee, and she will be bringing awareness, education, hope and healing, to fight to prevent child sexual abuse and help survivors heal. So there will be some partial street closures as we are walking through the streets. So I will be participating with her on Wednesday at 7:30 in the morning.”
When will the mayor next present her State of the City address?
Henriquez said, “I probably will start on my town hall meeting with the state of the city, that way, it’ll give everybody an update on what’s going on with all of the different projects going on throughout our city. There’s just a lot going on this week. I’ll be preparing for the meeting tonight, preparing for the meetings tomorrow and then getting ready for the rest of the week.”