Marathon Mayor Robyn Still joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s been going on in the city.
Luau Night is coming up in Community Park on Friday in Marathon.
Still said, “I’m looking forward to that. I hope it doesn’t have to be postponed. Pay attention to the city’s Park and Rec’s Facebook page. They do an awesome job of getting that word out if something had to be has to be changed or rescheduled or just things that they schedule. They do a lot of stuff over there, a lot more than I ever realized.”
The Marathon City Council will meet tomorrow at 5:30 p.m. at City Hall.
Still said, “The agenda looks fairly light. As of Friday, right before for the weekend, there were no additions that I knew of. The agenda was as posted and it looks like a lot of stuff’s on consent and just normal order of business. Nothing as far as I could tell, that’s going to need a whole lot of discussion. That’s pretty standard in the summertime unless something has happened and thankfully right now, we’re pretty much business as usual. We’re working on moving forward with the plans for the flooding, that we’ve been having, especially on Sombrero Boulevard. There is a timeline that the city manager has posted that kind of kind of lets people know what the timeline is for working on those improvements. But we were going to have a meeting Friday night, we ended up canceling that meeting. We’re going to workshop that. We just have to decide when the best time to workshop it is. I’d like to hear from the public because I’m concerned about workshopping it during the summer in case people are on vacation, but also want to workshop it because we need to start talking to the residents and let them know what the city’s doing. Because there are things that are happening behind the scenes that the citizens and residents may not know that are actually happening. So they may think nothing is happening. I just think it is very important that we have that workshop. So if I have folks who are listening who are interested in attending a workshop, please reach out to us let us know. I don’t want to wait until late fall because we are in hurricane season and rainy season. So we need to be letting people know we are working on this. But I also want to make sure people are in town, too. If you want to attend.”
This is the 10th day of hurricane season and people need to be prepared.
Still said, “It does look like we have quite a bit of a rain event coming. Hopefully it’s not going to be as much as what I’ve seen. We know how our weather can change around here. That being said we are in hurricane season. So you need to start having a plan. If you’ve never lived here during the hurricane season, there are some amazing resources. The Keys Weekly puts out a hurricane guide. You could pick that up just about anywhere. The Keys Weekly has been distributed, it’s free. It tells you what you need to do to get yourself prepared, your home prepared, your pets prepared. Also the state if you go to floridadisaster.org, they have a pretty comprehensive hurricane guide is well. I just urge everybody to start making those plans. I’ve actually started ordering stuff for my hurricane kit. I’m ashamed to say I have a few items that are still sitting in my living room floor. They’ve not migrated to the storage tote that I usually put that in. But they need to get hidden before somebody in my family looks and says I might want to eat that. You leave those crackers and Velveeta cheese and peanut butter until after hurricane season’s over. Then we’ll have the party.”
The Marathon Rotary Fourth of July event is on the agenda for tomorrow.
Still said, “I don’t foresee any problems with it. I’m obviously a yes vote. I’m a member of Rotary also. But also the money raised there goes to scholarships to our high school graduating seniors. I’ve never known it to not be approved. It’s already June 1, almost the middle of June. Where’s the time going? And yeah, blink, and it’ll be Fourth of July.”
Public comment is always welcome at the meeting.
Still said, “Absolutely. If you hear what, not just me, but my fellow council members, when we do Council comments at the end, we are all very thankful that people choose to attend. We want people there, even if you might not agree with what’s happening on a particular subject, even if you’re upset about something, we need to hear that. Without hearing it, we don’t know. So we welcome that. That makes it possible for us to work towards making our community even better than it already is. I do try to keep this as close to 6:30 for general public comment. If people want to comment on an item that’s being heard, say a resolution or an ordinance, they can sign up to comment during that period on that particular subject. They’re going to be limited to comments on that particular subject. However, at the 6:30, or the open public comment, that is whatever you want to talk about. I try to make people aware that in a city council meeting, we don’t answer questions, as the Council, staff generally doesn’t answer questions. We listen. We don’t have exchanges like that in city council meetings. However, at a workshop, that’s when we can have a dialogue back and forth. That’s why workshops are extremely important. We can answer questions, we do answer questions, we do ask questions, and staff does as well in the workshops. I urge people to attend these. If you can’t attend, these are livestreamed or they’re recorded to be able to watch later.”
Summertime is upon us.
Still said, “Happy summertime, parents enjoy your kids being out. There are amazing summer camps that are being held in our community. I think I had heard that some of them still do have openings. So if you had a family vacation, and then you hadn’t made plans for your children over the summer, and you thought maybe they’d stay home with you, but all of a sudden that doesn’t seem to be working out so well and they need something to do, there are amazing camps that I think still have openings. I wish I was a kid because there are lots of camps they’d be hard to choose from.”