George Garrett, City Manager in Marathon, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s been going on in the city.
A decision was made on BPAS and ROGOs in Marathon last night, but a special commemoration was made first.
Garrett said, “First of all, one of the first things on last night’s agenda was a commemoration of the passing of Frank Greenman, who is such an asset, a figure of importance within the city of Marathon, whether it was long term as a teacher or as an attorney or simply, as is one of our founding council members. So he passed away about two weeks ago, just before Thanksgiving. Last night, I have to commend our city council took on a tough issue. The resolution before them did have to do with BPAS and ROGO. The city’s focus on how to go about that question was to indicate that we should change the evacuation time from 24 to 26 hours, and then adopted some language that they would want to see put in place along with that change, which would direct how that occurred over the next now, I think 40 years. So if you kind of run down a list of things that would that would be a part of that proposed change in the area of critical state concern legislation would be that it happen over a 40 year period, minimum, that it would happen evenly, that it would focus on owner occupied and affordable, or workforce housing, not so much the bigger, single units, that it would still have to abide by level of service issues. So if we ran into one of those, we’d have to fix those first. Of course, all the things that we’ve known for now 40 years, protection of habitat, buying land, etc., would be a part of what the proposed changes would involve. So the city council, first of all, had a workshop last Tuesday. They took a lot of public comment then. Last night, they heard some additional public comment and deliberated for quite a while, discussed the pros and cons. But ultimately, I have to say that I think the real issue was an acknowledgement of constitutional property rights, and that’s an essential. It’s something that I think now I’m speaking a little bit for them, but I think it’s one of those things where it’s simply not a debate. You can’t do a risk assessment as to what your impacts are to property rights. It’s a constitutional right, and I think they acknowledged that last night. If this follows through, and the state takes it on, then I think what we are looking at is the ability to put takings cases in the rearview mirror and look forward to the things we need to be dealing with, like land acquisition, habitat protection, protection of the marine environment, resiliency issues, raising our roads, etc.”
What was the maximum number of allocations that the Marathon City Council could have asked for and considered in all of this?
Garrett said, “The area of critical state concern legislation speaks of an evacuation time for the entire Keys, so you really have to think of it in those terms and the answer to your question is, if you go from 24 to 26 hours, then essentially that equates to roughly, because I think they’re going to have to run the models again, but when we saw this about a year ago, December last year, the indication of the state was that, in their model runs, 26 hours gave you roughly 3,550 additional allocations, which would be distributed over time and that would happen over a 40 year period the way we proposed it. Now what we take really is just a matter of how many vacant lots we have, and we’d certainly argue to be able to protect ourselves.”
There are 575 vacant lots.
Garrett said, “We have a potential takings liability because of lots that could take more than one unit of I think it’s 724 and these are still approximates, but they’re very close at this point. Then, of course, we know that there’s going to be an additional need for affordable housing, so we threw some numbers in for that, but the absolute numbers, we’ve got 575 vacant lots.”
The vote for the number of allocations was a 5-0 vote.
Garrett said, “There were probably two or three of the council members that were resolute, but that said, there is probably two of them that really said, this is a balancing act and regardless of, we don’t have time to get into the nuances of why it is that people are concerned about growth right now, other than those things that have historically been there, but the bottom line is, for one of the council members who I think probably articulated it best, it’s like a balance. I’m concerned about more growth. I don’t like more growth, but I have a very strong opinion about the takings questions, and we have to think about that probably first and I believe that’s probably what ultimately decided his vote. Islamorada had a very similar discussion last night. They thought about it in terms of actual numbers of units or lots, whereas we thought more about it or more about evacuation times. But Islamorada did pass a resolution last night, which bumped their number up, I believe, from roughly 125 to 200 in their request. I know Key West will be considering something very similar to the city’s resolution this evening at their council meeting. Then, of course, we’ve got the county today in what amounts to a workshop item. It’s not a workshop, but it’s more of a discussion issue and then I think their final vote will be on the 19th.”
Marathon Council also passed the contract to begin construction on Sombrero Boulevard.
Garrett said, “Theoretically, if I were in the office today, would be signing it today to begin the construction on the storm water improvements there, and we also approved a contract to begin the design and engineering for our deep well, so two big items in front of us that happened last night.”
A threat to both Marathon High School and Middle School caused a lock down to both schools – it didn’t appear to be a credible threat, though, but precautions were certainly taken to keep everyone safe.
Garrett said, “I was in contact with the sheriff’s department during that event. Frequently these things happen when somebody doesn’t want to take a test that day, but these things are dead serious. They happen in the Keys as well. I got at least a rundown on what the threat was. They’ve got to take them seriously. They’ve got to pursue the potential threat. Multiple law enforcement agencies were present. They did lock down the school, and I think dealt with it appropriately, did a sweep of the school, and I think ultimately found nothing. But frankly, safety first is really what we all have to think about.”