The Key West City Commission meets tomorrow

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 City Commission will meet tomorrow, where the mayor will present her State of the City address.

Henriquez said, “I’m very excited about it. So only being in office for five months, I will be presenting a video for the State of the City instead of a PowerPoint presentation. I was working all weekend with the videographer and fine tuning some things. I’ll be giving an update on all of the progress that we’re doing here at City Hall and all that is still to come. So I’m looking forward to presenting it tomorrow. I’ve only been in office five months, so I haven’t had a full year, so hopefully it’s what everybody is expecting.”

The water quality issue seems to be making some progress.

Henriquez said, “It is back on our agenda for tomorrow. There will be probably, I’m assuming, lots of discussion, and the Commission will either direct staff to either pursue an RFP for the water quality testing or execute an inter-local agreement renewal with the College of the Florida Keys. I know that the college had reached out to our city manager, and he’s ready and willing to continue to work with the city of Key West for the water quality monitoring. So we sent a draft of the proposal to them, so we’ll see how the commission votes tomorrow.”

Truman Annex has been in the news a bit. The transient license is about to come to an end.

Henriquez said, “Last week, I did participate in the homeowners association meeting, which they have yearly, and there’s probably close to 100 members there. They wanted me to give an update on what’s going on in the city. Of course, when I asked them, do you all have any questions? The first question they asked me, they were like, are you in support of renewing that 20 year lease? Since I’ve been in office since August 26, my stance has always been that I am not supporting renewing the lease. They knew that they had a beginning date and an end date of 20 years of doing something that the rest of the city is not able to do. So I’m not in support of it, but I did tell them that there are six other commissioners that they can speak to, and we’ll take a vote at that time.”

The mayor is also involved with the Tourist Development Council, which is charged with promoting tourism to our area.

Henriquez said, “I am a board member as the mayor for the city of Key West on the TDC board. We do have a meeting Wednesday at 10am and it’s going to be in Marathon, and you’re able to go online and watch it as well. There are some things that we will be voting on, the contracts for marketing, the website design. There’s a lot of things going on. A lot of moving parts going on in the TDC right now, but I do believe the TDC board and their organization is moving forward with all of the stuff that they had going on in the past.”

The Bahama Village Redevelopment Advisory Committee will have a special meeting on Wednesday at 5:30 in City Hall.

Henriquez said, “They’re going to elect a chairperson and a vice chair, because our Commissioner Castillo was a chairperson for the BVRAC. They’ll also go over the loss update, Frederick Douglas Community Center project update. So they’re just going to have a special meeting, but I think the main reason was to elect a chairperson and a vice chair.”

What else will be on the city commission agenda?

Henriquez said, “The Mallory Square sunset celebration, reducing their rent again for another three months, going from the $7,638 back down to 500, so that will be voted on tomorrow. We’re going to vote on the resolution for requesting that the United States Navy grant a long term sole source lease to the city of Key West for those 18 acres out there in Sigsbee, so that will be voted on. We’re going to have a presentation for our strategic plan, and an update on the 2024, strategic plan. I know there was a workshop back in May, which included the previous mayor and the previous three commissioners. So the new commissioners will be able to get an update on that. So we’re looking forward to a very busy meeting tomorrow.”

The meeting will be at 9 a.m. and again at 5 p.m.

Henriquez said, “Usually from nine to around noon, and then we break and then come back at five.”