Lynn Landry, mayor of Marathon, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on in the city.
The Marathon Council will meet tonight.
Landry said, “We have a PIO (Public Information Officer) position and agenda tonight. We’ve been working on that for a little while. We’re moving toward a full time full time PIO. We’re going to do a short term, six month contract to try to adjust on it, to make sure what we want what we don’t want and that was kind of part of the bid package was to make adjustments on the fly for this six months with options to renew. The best responsive bidder was Carlos Garcia, who’s going to come in as a full time PIO for us. So we’re looking forward to that. Hopefully that’ll pass tonight. That’s on the agenda. One thing we did do last meeting was we awarded our nonprofit grant awards, 35 of those got some funding in some form or fashion, and from that, we pulled FIRM out. FIRM is an independent, nonprofit lobbying company. They lobby for insurance rates in Monroe County, which affects the city of Marathon. So tonight, we’re hopefully going to approve an appropriation that hopefully will become an annual thing for them of $15,000, so we’re looking forward to that hopefully going through tonight as well.”
The leglistature didn’t seem to want to tackle insurance.
Landry said, “No, they didn’t. When we were in Tallahassee this year, going through our meetings and talking to people, it was a different cycle this year, legislatively, and I know probably three quarters of the way through the session, I think they’d only approved like 15 bills compared to, like 250 overall last year they did. So it was definitely different with the budget cycle and everybody’s trying to cut back a little bit on spending and from the federal government, with all the DOGE and now Florida doing it, I think everybody’s just trying to be a little bit more cautious in their their legislating these days.”
Has there been anything coming out of Tallahassee that would be a concern for Marathon?
Landry said, “As far as I know, we pretty much have gotten our funding that we thought we were going to get. So far, I know it isn’t all finalized yet, but so far the Florida Keys have done pretty well. The City of Marathon is going to do pretty well, I hope. But you never know until it’s done. But so far, no real red flags for us as far as some of the funding that we were hoping to get through this year and continual funding that’s coming through. So yeah, I think that’s going to be good.””
Transportation has been a topic, too.
Landry said, “I know in Marathon especially, there’s a couple of things, we’ve been looking at traffic flow and DOT, they’ve got a study that they want to do to alleviate a U-turn at Sombrero Beach Road, and US 1 that causes a little bit of an issue there. So they want to study that. We’re actually asking them to move the 35 mile an hour speed limit in front of the Community Park up to the north a little bit more, because it goes from 35 to 45 right in the middle of the park. So it makes it a little bit more difficult, depending on what entrance you’re in. So we’re hoping to get them to move that a little bit further north, so it’s 35 all the way past our Community Park, so people will be driving a little bit slower, make it a little bit safer to enter and exit that park there. One thing that I thought was interesting is they’re looking at an intelligent traffic signal program all the way through the Florida Keys that would hopefully help traffic flow better throughout the entire Florida Keys on an overall view. So I think that sounds really good. The one thing that we’re working on, too, is safer streets for all. It’s a grant that we have to help look at the city of Marathon and help alleviate pedestrian and auto accidents with pedestrians and auto accidents in general. So they’re doing that study for us right now, and I know that they’re looking at the Keys wide bicycle and pedestrian plan as well.”
What’s about the projects in parks?
Landry said, “We awarded the bid for the skate park last meeting, and they’re starting to move and break ground on that. We’re moving pretty fast on the splash pad. I know we’ve had some interactions with Key West and their splash pad, their smaller splash pad, and we’ve gotten a lot of information on what worked and what didn’t. So we’re adjusting ours to try to do the best of what they had and learn from their mistakes and make ours a little bit better. But that should be coming as well, man, hopefully by the end of this year, first of next year, that’s going to go in right beside the skate park. And we’re hoping to have that skate park done by the end of this year as well. They’re going to move pretty fast on it as we understand. One little bit of a disappointment is we put bids out to resod our soccer fields. We had a couple of bidders reply. One was non responsive, according to our process, so we’ve decided to let that go until after March, after the Seafood Festival next year, rebid it and see if we can’t get a few more bids in on that one.”
Flooding relief is still coming.
Landry said, “Sombrero Boulevard is underway. We have an item on the agenda tonight for a change over. It’s about $100,000. We ran into some issues with our our vacuum and our force main on the sewer. They knew it was probably going to be a problem, but we weren’t sure how to address it until we physically got out there and test dug it and so there’s a little bit of a movement going to happen there, because we had as built plans, but the depths on those as builts weren’t really there and come to find out, the drainage elevation and the piping elevation are exactly the same. So something has to move. So I think our process, if we approve this tonight, they’re going to reroute that pipe, temporarily, put the drainage in, and then have the appropriate spacing, and then put that pipe in right back on top of it, which is going to be the most financially feasible way to do that for us. But they’re moving forward. They’re actually putting some curbing in and part three of that development. So they’re moving forward still, as we’re trying to get all this worked out, but looking forward to that getting done. There’s a pumping system out there that they’re using to de-water, which is helping us with our other pumping system. So we’re able to alleviate the flooding out there a little bit quicker than we have been in the past, because we have two full pumps working on it now during the rains.”
A special call meeting coming up.
Landry said, “There’s a couple things that didn’t make this agenda that we need to do. I believe it’s for our wastewater utilities. But the workshop we’re doing on the 24th is a hurricane preparedness workshop. It’s going to be really, I think great. John Rizzo is coming out. Our fire chief, our planning direct and the sheriff’s department, they’re all going to be talking to us on the 24th and talk about hurricane preparedness. If you have a neighbor or a friend who’s never experienced a hurricane in the Florida Keys, talk to them, help them get hurricane prepared. Because knowledge is power, and if we can get everybody aware and have them prepared with a plan, it’s the most important is know what you’re going to do in the event of a hurricane. So we’re pushing that out there right now to just help your neighbor and your friends get prepared for hurricane season.”