Lynn Landry, Mayor of the city 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 nonprofit grant cycle is open right now.
Landry said, “We have $150,000 in the pot this year to dole out, and the applications can be found online in the city of Marathon website. Deadline for applying, I believe, is April 15. So we’re going to do that, and on the 22nd of this month, we’re having a workshop, we’re going to have a town hall meeting, but we’re also inviting anybody who wants to apply for those grants, or who had received those grants, to come out and talk to us about their organization and what they’ve done with the money and what they do within our community. It was something that we had done in the past, and so previous council, it kind of took a little bit of a hiatus, and when Robyn Still came on council with us, she kind of brought it back up. We all, for the most part, agreed, there was a little bit of a discussion about it. But we started the first year, I think, it was $100,000 and then next year, I proposed and got some support for raising it to $150,000 because of the amount of people that we have apply. There’s just such great, great nonprofits in our community that it’s hard to get them all money, but we try our best to try to get some money to every one of them if we can. Then tonight, we have a very short meeting. The biggest part of the meeting tonight is we’re speaking about Sombrero Boulevard. We’re fixing to start the construction project out there for the flooding. It’s going to impact that community out there. We’re going to be having road closures and one lane of traffic. So we’re going to be having a little bit of an explanation about all that tonight at our city council meeting.”
Once the inconvenience of traffic issues is finished, the flooding on Sombrero Boulevard should be a thing of the past.
Landry said, “I think it’ll be minor, unless we have those really bad torrential rains. I think at this point we might have a little bit of water on the road then, but it’s about as good a fix as we can possibly get out there with what we have to deal with.”
Marathon High School art is hanging in City Hall.
Landry said, “They’re going to be talking a little bit about that tonight as well at the meeting, but you come to City Hall, and our main entryway, there’s art hanging all through there from Marathon High School students.”
Council decided recently to continue the taxing district.
Landry explained, “We had a special call on the 31st to actually discuss it. We had a really good debate on it, lot of local input. So the council decided to continue the taxing district. We’re almost at the 15 million, which is what the deal was for 10 years or 15 million. I think it’s like 750,000 or so left to collect. So we passed a resolution asking the county commission to lower that millage to the lowest amount possible to collect the 750,000 and lower the taxes for people that are in this district. So that’s kind of what we did with that. We’re going to continue to reach the 15 million mark, which is what the original proposal was for from the county. It’s a county deal that we actually opted into, but it’s so close now. We’ve given them close to that money, and we just opted into the district again this year just to get it to the 15 million, which is what the deal was for.”
Has anything happened with ROGO and BPAS?
Landry said, “They’re coming closer and closer. Representative Mooney and Senator Rodriguez, the bills are really, really close now. I think there may be a couple of small changes in verbiage or at least we’re hoping so, because the city of Marathon has issues with affordable housing and the only real way that we can see affordable housing being built is in multiple units, like duplexes, quad plexes. The way the bill is written now, they’re putting one unit per lot, which kind of really, if we don’t have some special appropriation for affordable housing, it’s hard to have it built here in the city of Marathon. So we’re hoping that some of that can get changed in that bill and that legislation, but we’re not sure how that’s good to go, but as far as far as developments go in this community, when you have a development agreement and you’re wanting four or five market rates, we’re not giving those in the city of Marathon. You have to get into the BPAS system like everyone else and possibly vie for that. But for the most part, the bigger developments are either buying them or they own those allocations before they come in for the development agreements.”
What about discussions of doing away with property taxes and/or sales taxes?
Landry said, “I don’t know how the county governments and the municipalities would survive without property taxes. That is pretty much the way we do business and the way we provide most of our services in the community. So property taxes, for sure, would be a big one that we would not want to see off the table. But sales tax also. I mean, we do drive a lot of sales tax revenue back into the city, so I’m not sure how it’s going to play out. I hope that they have good solutions before they do away with either one. That’s a big deal.”
Town hall meetings also are going to begin in Marathon.
Landry said, “It’s something that’s been kind of near and dear to me since I’ve been elected on to council, and we haven’t really been able to accomplish it. So we’ve pushed, as a council to do a town hall meeting on the 22nd. We’re going to have the nonprofit grants there as well at the first part of the meeting, and then we’re just going to kind of open it up to discuss. It’s just an open discussion with people in the community about issues or problems or hopefully some praises of some things that we’re doing well in the city. But one thing I’d really like to highlight is while we want you to bring problems to us, think about the solutions. We want to have a really good conversation on, well, if there’s really a problem, how do we fix it? What avenue do we go down to actually fix a problem if we can? That’s really what I want to have, is just a great open discussion about that.”