George Garrett, city manager for Marathon, joined Good Morning Keys on Keys Talk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on in the city.
New council members will be sworn in at the next meeting.
Garrett said, “Congratulations to all of them, and particularly the new council woman, Debbie Struyf. She won handily. I think everybody said she just worked hard and the results showed and paid off. So congratulations to the other two, Robyn Still and Lynn Landry. We have sent a few things out to Debbie as our new candidate. There’s a lot of stuff that gets said and a lot of things that people understand, quote, unquote, in the course of an election process, and then you really get down to educating your new council people. Obviously, the things that the new council people want to achieve, we will do everything we can to try to do that for them, whether it’s something we can do individually or that requires a vote of the council, but our biggest job right now is, frankly, to educate our new council person about what the rules and regulations are about running a city. I sent some stuff out to Debbie Monday, actually, and we’ll try to get together with her to go over just the legalities, Sunshine Law, things like that, a little bit of what it takes to run a city in an area of critical state concern, and what it takes to run a city period.”
The council meeting will be held on November 18.
Garrett said, “We will at that point be certifying the election results, finally, and of course, inducting the new and continuing council members. We are not quite done with the election, actually, we don’t expect anything to change, but we still have a manual recount of one precinct, and we will be doing that on Thursday. It’s just a legally required component of an election. So we do that every time we are acting as the canvassing board. So to finalize it, that’ll happen on Thursday, and then, of course, we’d expect no changes. Everything will be status quo. I mean, the numbers in the selection were clear for second, third was no question, the number of votes between third and fourth were sufficient enough that it wouldn’t amount to a recount of any sort. So again, manual recount will be done with the selection, and we’ll move on.”
The legislative session is coming up in January.
Garrett said, “Probably the two biggies that we’ve got are certainly the need to clarify the issues of getting the 900 allocations out of the middle of Senate Bill 180 that’s been challenged on other grounds. So we need the allocations. People are challenging 180 for other reasons, as said, and we want to separate ourselves from that challenge and see if we can move forward with the city’s need, frankly, amongst all the other jurisdictions, to get additional allocations. Delegation meeting actually, is this Thursday, so that will be officially the start of the legislative season, I think, when we meet with them, and that’ll be all jurisdictions here. I think it’s 10 o’clock, publicly announced meetings. So if you want to listen in, you can.”
Veterans Day yesterday saw a parade in the city.
Garrett said, “Our PIO also did something that I thought was really nice. He picked out a number of our veterans, got pictures of them in uniform, and the city’s acknowledgement that we’ve got veterans that work for us here in the city of Marathon and and also to recognize all the other veterans that have served. I happened to be out yesterday evening and who did I run into but a whole bunch of wounded warriors. Of course, normally, the city of Marathon sponsors the Wounded Warriors event that it typically happens in January, where they do the bike tour of the Keys. This was a different group of wounded warriors. There was probably about 20 of them and I asked them what they were doing, and the kind of downside, or the reality check of recognizing our veterans is that so many of our veterans unfortunately commit suicide because of the things they faced while in country and the difficulties of coming back and just sort of getting back into the groove of a normal life, and they said that they were here hiking 17 miles for the 17 suicides that occur amongst veterans daily, and so it’s a pretty dramatic issue. But of course, something that I think Wounded Warriors is appropriate to deal with and address.”
The Wahoo tournament also took place in the city.
Garrett said, “I understand there was 130 anglers, and it was just an absolutely spectacular event, well developed by the folks in the Benevolent Association that put it together. I want to thank those guys for sure, but I think generally it’s just, first of all, it’s going to allow the benevolent to purchase an additional fire hose, fire pump for the boat that we’ve got coming to us, fire boat. We hope to see that in about a year. That’s how long it takes you to get anything anymore. We ordered it six months ago. We certainly appreciate the fact that they’ve done it. It just, it shows, really, I think, amongst everything else, it shows the commitment of, well, first of all, the benevolent and, second of all, simply the city citizens to the city of Marathon.”
There has also been a number of businesses coming into Marathon.
Garrett said, “My job as city manager certainly is to act on behalf of the council, but I think one of the things the council in general, but I think when you look at the fact that we’ve been able to do roll back for the last three years, and we’ve maintained our staff while doing it, and have, in fact, even increased a few members of our staff, it speaks to the fact that change is change, and people don’t always like that. But I think within the limits of particularly the corridor along US 1, we just see a lot of enhancement, refreshing construction. So I think the city looks all the much better because of it. It’s development or redevelopment like that that allows us to hold our taxes down because we are redeveloping and growing slightly.”
Work on the skate park is continuing.
Garrett said, “They probably have another three, four months of work to do. Then, not only will that be a skate park, which will be much better than the old one. It will be a concrete skate park and should last for years. Then there will be a concessions building there that’s thanks to TDC dollars, and there will be a bathroom, and I think, a storage room there, so that we can operate in that area from that area, rather than having to bring bring materials and whatever from the other buildings we have on the other side of the park. So really, that becomes a pretty neat area all on its own once we get it completed. Of course, what’s happening there is there all will also be a splash pad there, and that will be integral to the the skate park. That’s the entrance to the Seafood Festival every year. And in fact, the road that used to come in on that side will be recreated in a slightly different configuration, but it will be there, and we are going to do everything we can to have all of that area ready so that we are not impacting the operations of the Seafood Festival. We started on Seven Mile Marina redevelopment. If you go by there on your way to Key West, the last thing you see on the right hand side or the bay side as you leave Marathon is in fact, Seven Mile Marina and we’re redeveloping 14 slips there, which we hope to ultimately lease out to local, typically small flats guides and such, and some of the smaller offshore guys, locals, typically, we want to support what was there in the past. We should also be starting on the redevelopment of that building, part of which will support the folks that ultimately end up on the dock slips. There’ll be back area of that building that’ll support them. Pigeon Key will move into that building, and then we’ll have some space under some additional maybe retailers or whatever. We don’t know who that’s going to be yet. Also the Quay is going out. So we should be working on the Quay redevelopment, and we’ll start to see that happen here this year. We’ve been talking about building pickleball courts. The plans are done, the bids were out and in, and we are about ready to select a contractor for the development of the pickleball courts. And there’ll be four pickleball courts immediately behind city hall, kind of behind the fence and to the south. It will have a water fountain. It will have a couple of small Tiki huts, just while you’re waiting for the next game or something. You can be in the shade, and I think we’re going to have a water fountain, and it’ll be lit, and it’ll have a timer that shuts it off at a reasonable hour, so the neighborhood won’t be affected, but there will be down lit lighting so that it doesn’t affect the neighborhood, but you can continue to play after dusk. That’ll be a pretty cool thing. We believe that’ll happen pretty fast, so that should be started and finished this year.”