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.
The Marathon City Council was thrilled to be able to recognize our Special Olympics weightlifting champions Alex Chavala and Cindy Augustin from Marathon High School at last night’s meeting. They both won gold medals.
Garrett said, “It’s important to those kids in the high school and the kids around us. So I think that’s pretty cool. We also had both a 20 and a 10 year award of service for Captain Joe Forcine. 20 years and then Chris Cameron, 10 years. Really, both of those guys have been here with this fire service for all of that, pretty much all of those 20 years.”
How about the ongoing BPAS and ROGO discussions?
Garrett said, “The other day I said it to somebody, in fact, it was a conversation with the Secretary of Department of Commerce and the city of Marathon has understood that the issue of the close out of our BPAS or ROGO allocations was imminent well over two years ago. We really tried to get some motion a year ago, and honestly did, but our desire was to see some of it happen, or something happened last year. A little bit did, but not really where we were headed. This year I think we’re closer to that and I think each of the local jurisdictions, including the county, has suggested and requested that some form of a legislative change be made, and it varies a little bit. Islamorada wants another couple hundred units to get them through their potential takings issues. We’ve asked for something similar, but we’ve done it in terms of hours, in terms of hurricane evacuation. The same thing with the county, although that was up to 26 and then Key West is a little bit different, and there’s a reason for it, but basically they said 25 and a half, which the way they did it, equated to the same basic math that we did. So point is, we’re all looking for some legislative changes this year that would assist us through the future. I think the gist of it is 26 hours distributed over 40 years evenly, which amounts to at the current estimated math from the hurricane evacuation modeling, that would be somewhere in the neighborhood of 88 to 90 units per year across the entire Keys, Key West to Key Largo. Right now we’re probably issuing somewhere in the neighborhood of 350 a year, reduced by some of our stretches to be able to get further through time. So I think these issues are in front of us. I mean literally, I spend my most of my days talking to our legislators. I talked to Ana Maria Rodriguez, our Senator here last week. She has taken a relatively flexible approach to this and is willing to talk to us about the 26 hours and a potential bill from her side. We will be talking to Jim Mooney, our state Representative, and then day before yesterday, city staff here and our lobbyists were talking to the Secretary Department of Commerce. So all of these pieces fall in place as we begin to look towards getting bills drafted and into drafting by next Friday, the 24th I believe it is, so that we can begin this session looking at these issues.”
Discussions with Representative Mooney have been informal.
Garrett said, “He and I have specifically, and there’s probably on the city staff and the board have probably chatted with him here and there, but formally, no. We are looking forward to that meeting coming up this week. I think one of the things that we’ve promoted, and I literally said it to the secretary two days ago. Look, this isn’t about any one of us, individually, probably, and our professional relationship to the Keys. It really is about, for me, making sure my successors, as I will one day retire, presumably, they won’t have to deal with this problem five years down the road and with what’s being suggested for numbers, we will be right back in front of our legislators, taking two years to get it accomplished, which is where we are today, and we’ll do this once again. What I would like to see, and I’m going to say, what our city council would like to see, is to get this over with, so that we can begin focusing on the issues that need to be focused on, which are land acquisition, water quality issues, wastewater, stormwater, canal restoration, resiliency, those things will take up a huge amount of our time in the next 20 years, and we would put this one behind us. Who’s in the keys at any one time? Is it the 89 permits a year that I’ve just mentioned, or is it the tourists that are visiting us? We certainly never want to discourage tourists from coming to visit us. But the amount of traffic day to day, not in an evacuation necessarily, is really the result of tourism, not how many people live here.”
What about the potential moratorium on existing ROGOs that the county is considering?
Garrett said, “That’s something that the city of Marathon has taken a neutral position on, because it doesn’t necessarily affect us. At least we hadn’t thought that necessarily. I think to the extent that it may stretch units out in the process of not distributing the units they’ve got, other than within the county, that may begin to affect our ability to get out the 220 that everybody knows is out there. That’s really the only thing. That decision is really up to them. The moratorium affects them, not us.”
The Celtic Festival over the weekend was a great success.
Garrett said, “We’re very proud of that. Of course, that’s not our event, but we hosted it at Community Park, and we’re always very happy to see it. Those are the things that really make our day to day lives wonderful here in the Keys. We have another number of projects ongoing. We’re building a bathroom at the Quay right now. We’ve lit the contracts to build a large event Tiki back behind city hall here. I’m working on four pickleball courts behind city hall, which should happen in the next few months. Really, those are the things that, honestly, on a day to day basis, really make it the reason we’re here and if we’re not doing what you need or what you believe we need to be doing, then my phone numbers are relatively open to the public. Give me a call and let me know your thoughts.”
Progress on Sombrero Boulevard is also continuing.
Garrett said, “We’ve lit the contracts on that, and in fact, today we have a pre con, pre construction meeting about that. I want to do a shout out to the folks that live out in the Sombrero Boulevard, Flamingo Island area, because as much as they’ve been worried about traveling through the puddle that occurs where we are doing this work, they are now going to have to worry about us in our construction activities, limiting lane access. We’re certainly at times, going to have the two lanes on Sombrero Boulevard closed down to probably one, and have traffic control there for a period of time while we build this thing. Of course, at the end of the day, it’s going to be a great accomplishment. It should essentially eliminate their problems, and it’ll be good down the road, but there’s a little bit of discomfort in the process.”
Could Marathon’s airport be looking at an update in the future?
Garrett said, “I don’t find myself in the middle of those discussions too much about the airport, but certainly the private traffic we see coming in on the weekends certainly is all of the reason for the county to be expanding or spacing the runways more favorably for FAA concerns. It’ll allow us to get maybe some personal airlines in here again. I can remember when I used to fly out on American Eagle back in the day. So I think that would be wonderful to see it happen. I think that the airport expansion and improvements that are being slated for the next year or two and on, really can do nothing but help that. I think if you can look at our airport right now on a weekend, especially three day weekends and holidays and whatever, there’s probably more private jets on this runway than even in Key West.”