George Garrett, City Manager of Marathon, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s been going on in the city.
There are new council members in Marathon after the election.
Garrett said, “We had two positions up on City Council, and one of them was Kenny Matlock. He has been reinstalled and d then we have Lynny Thompson or Lynny Del Gaizo, depending on how you know her last name. I think both are going to be great additions, or the continuing placement of Kenny Matlock. He’s grown a lot in the two three years that he’s been there, really become much more of a focused individual in terms of the bigger issues of the city. I think that’s fantastic. Then Lynny, she’s coming up speed. She’s got a learning curve, but seems to be working hard to overcome that learning curve, and I think council in general, for the past few years has been great, and this is another great council moving forward. So I think good stuff. They were installed last Tuesday at our regular city council meeting.”
There will be a BPAS workshop coming up.
Garrett said, “At the very end of the last year, the county commission kind of jumped in and said, well, we want a year to look at it. They passed a resolution in December. The city council, the city of Marathon, went up and participated in the meeting where that decision was made. The city at that point had made its own decisions, I think, already about what its thoughts were and concerns. We essentially said that with our BPAS situation, BPAS and ROGO being equivalent, we wanted to move forward this year, and we both, the city attorney, and myself expressed that thought. In fact, the city council in January, passed a resolution along those lines. In fact, I had drafted some potential legislation with the thought at that time that we might, in fact, be requesting additional BPAS allocations, not to foresee what may happen on the third, which is a workshop, 5:30 here at City Council, City Hall, and the 10th, which is the actual decision date, on their part, determine whether they want to request additional BPAS allocations or not. So again, key dates, December 3, workshop, 5:30 in City Hall, and December 10, there will be a decision point with city council.”
What does all this mean?
Garrett said, “Obviously the city has looked at its issues related to both takings and vacant lots, and what the potential liabilities are there. We know now how many what we consider buildable vacant lots there are, and that’s 575. That’s going to flex a little bit, but not much. We’ve looked very seriously at the takings issues, and we believe there are significant liabilities there, and honestly, have significant experience in that regard. So I’m guessing that city council will look very seriously at that issue. We’ll see where we go with it. But what happens from them? They pass a resolution on the 10th, it will be immediately provided to the county commission on the 11the and I believe they’ve got a workshop or a special call that day, and then I think they make a decision on the 19th of December. So with that provided to the county, I can’t predict what they are going to do, but at that point, we would be moving forward to the State Department of Commerce, or Florida Commerce, and potentially the legislature. I think the county has sent a very nice timeline for either possibility. We simply request additional units that they are holding right now under the 24 hour evacuation period, or, in fact, seek legislative action to potentially add more to that. So that’s kind of the framework and timeline that we’re working with.”
A lot of this goes back to the 1980s and 90s.
Garrett said, “Part of the Comprehensive Planning Act back in the 80s basically said you have to consider hurricane evacuation. Of course, we have one road in, one road out. So the math was reasonably, at least, intellectually simple, not simple to produce the modeling that produces an outcome. We’ve been working since the late 80s through today, essentially on what for the county is the ROGO situation, for us is BPAS and it all relates to how many cars you can put on the highway. That’s all based on how many houses you’ve got, and how many cars per house you have, etc. Then a look at the bigger picture, and how many mobile homes you have, how many transient units you have in hotels, etc, etc, etc. But it all comes out in a model and says, you either can or can’t get out in a 24 hour period. A 24 hour period is something obviously that’s embodied in the Florida Statutes, as we are an area of critical state concern. So that’s really the issue, do we kind of come to an end of the building permit process with the close out of the most recent BPAS, ROGO decade, or do we seek additional units and move forward? That’s the essential question for us. It’s before the city council again on the 3rd and the 10th, and then before the county commission on the 11th and 19th, and we’ll see where we go.”
Could the recent change in council members change what the city might decide?
Garrett said, “There was a resolution that they passed, in fact, we wanted to move forward this year, as opposed to going through the course of the year and potentially doing it this coming year legislative session. So they did pass a resolution. It was a resolution very, very much like the county commission’s, except that it highlighted the need to do it now, not a year from now. Of course, we’ve now looked backwards, the year has almost passed and at the time, and I believe in present, again, not foreseeing what may happen on the 3rd or the 10th, I think the city council had expressed an interest in requesting additional allocations, and in fact, through conversations with that council then, minus one different person, they had expressed as an interest in covering all of our vacant lots, which, at the time, and the way the legislation’s written, would have requested as many as 8,000 county wide. I think that number has been whittled down to buildable lots of maybe 2,200 or something like that. The 8,000 is still relevant in terms of an actual number of vacant lots, but the 2,200 probably more reflects what is actually buildable throughout the county. Again, as I said a few minutes ago, the city of Marathon itself has about 575 vacant buildable lots.”
Once an official request is made to the state, will any more be able to be requested at a later date?
Garrett said, “The real issue here is, if you decide that you’re going to request additional allocations, and again, that’s going to pass through the county, how long a period of time do we look at to allocate those units? I think the legislative draft I did last year, or just under a year ago, would have said 30 years. At 30 years, even with the number we had then for the city of Marathon, it would have cut the number of allocations we typically didn’t have. With the reduced number of 575 now, if you put that out over 30 years, it would be more like a quarter to a third. I haven’t run that math, so significant reduction in where we have been in the past 10 years. But, I think that states it – a significant reduction in the past 10 years, with the thought that there wouldn’t be any given year that you saw a bunch of them come forward, except maybe in the case of affordable housing projects.”
The Tourist Development Council has some funding reallocated towards affordable housing.
Garrett said, “this was an item on last Tuesday’s city council meeting, and the county had asked the cities, each of the jurisdictions, what their interest might be in obtaining a piece of what is in excess, or a bank account of $35 million. This last legislative session, the county got a special proviso to allow the use of this additional money and frankly, it’s come about because we’ve had such a great few years in terms of tourism, but we’ve got $35 million to work with and the suggestion that the county had made was, would you be willing or interested in accepting what would be the typical proportion of that $35 million, as the DACs would normally get, to allocate money during the course of a normal year. For us of $35 million I believe that comes out at about $6.2 million and change if we agree to accept it. Of course, in a three two vote, the city council agreed that that was an appropriate way to do it. So we would accept the money, and we would accept it in the proportion that the DACs have been either producing revenues to tax revenues and then receiving DAC dollars again, about $6.2 million, so the City Council has definitely said, we want some of that money. How we use it would be up to us, and would be up to the potential of future projects, etc. I would say, though, that the dollars need to be spent for affordable housing that supports the hospitality industry.”
There are a few project underway in Marathon, including rebuilding the docks at the Seven Mile Marina.
Garrett said, “I think there’s 14 dock slips there, and we’ll look to supporting some of the local guides in the rental of those dock spaces. We also have some money this year to begin the renovation of the building at Seven Mile Marina. The other thing that’s going on right now is we have, again, TDC dollars, supporting the construction of a bathroom facility at the Quade property, and that’s been sitting there for quite a while, and we’ve been trying to get it all put together and put the money together, but it’s finally coming to fruition. So if you go out there right now, you’ll see that project underway, and then finally, at the last city council meeting, again, TDC dollars, we approved a contract to begin building a Tiki hut behind city hall here on Oceanfront Park. It is a large Tiki hut with the idea that that facility properly supported pavers, electric fans, etc, will be able to support things like weddings and other events back in Oceanfront Park. The Tiki itself is about 4,000 square feet, so those are pretty cool.”
A position in Parks and Rec has opened up.
Garrett said, “We had a bit of a kind of disruption of services in our Parks and Rec department or the people that are there, we’ve had let one person go. The people that are there, are continuing to fill in, and we are seeking an additional position to fill the individual that has left us. So there’s a little bit of confusion right now, but staff is doing its best to make sure that all the programs are continuing as they have been, and as little disruption to services and particularly kids programs, etc. So just, we’re working on it, we’ll get it done.”