Robyn Still, Marathon City Council member, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s been going on in the city.
Still is a board member on the Tourist Development Council and recently two bills in the state house, House Bill 7033, House Bill 1221, could potentially disband all TDCs in Florida by the end of this year.
She said, “At our last Tourist Development Council meeting, which is open to the public, by the way, and I think you could probably go back and view the recorded version, if not, I can certainly give you a link, there was a study done, and we had a presentation based on that study, and it was done by an outside agency. One thing stuck out in my mind from that study, and I couldn’t tell you any other numbers, but this was so impactful. If we lost that money that we get from our visitors, that would impact personal taxpayers. That would be me. That would be anybody who owned property in Monroe County, our tax bill could go up $11,500 from losing that. That is the impact on a lot of people. It’s hard for me to understand some of those bills there. They can be very confusing. But that is one thing that stood out in my mind, is that tourist tax, or visitor tax, is what I like to call it is helping reduce some of the burden on property owners in Monroe County. That number stuck out, just hit me, and I was like, oh my goodness. At that point, I was just so blown away by that number, I have to go back and watch that presentation again, but that is what hit me hard.”
The argument from the legislators is that the money would then be used as basically a credit against property tax, ad valorem taxes.
Still said, “Also, our visitors, if they pack our city, they pack our towns, they pack the roads, they’re in the grocery stores, and it can be a huge inconvenience. But what we need to take a step back is, if you’re fortunate that your living is not based on visitors, that’s wonderful and there are a lot of people that that is the case. But if you go up and down US 1 and you start looking at the local businesses, and you even go to the schools, and you look at the families, start thinking about the families. How many of those families, their livelihood is based on visitors to our community? It’s going to be the overwhelming majority is based on visitors.”
The House bills could also do away with the tourist development taxes that are generated from the tourists.
Still said, “I just tell people, take a step back. Take the word tourist out of it. Look down your street. Look in your neighborhood. How many of your neighbors, how many of your friends, if you took away the visitors, what is their income? How are they paying their bills? Where’s the majority of their income coming from? Another way to look at this also is the Tourist Development Council does grants for amazing things in our community. There are organizations that are getting grants from them. There are scholarships for kids. The one event that’s happening this week in the sailfish tournament, that is an amazing organization, that is an amazing tournament, and they give back to the community. They gave, and I might have the number wrong, I want to say it was $25,000 to Special Olympics last year. They get grant money from TDC. It’s not just the evil tourist dollar that is taking from the community. That dollar is giving back to the community also.”
Where does the TDC generate its money?
Still said, “It’s primarily those bed taxes. So the bed taxes that hotels are paying, your vacation rental owners that are that are complying with our ordinances, that’s where that money is coming from. You’ll have the people who come here year after year, but then there are going to be people who have no idea what the Keys are. I mean, how many times have you talked to somebody and they think Miami is the end of Florida? There’s no further. They don’t understand that without seeing what we have to offer. It is inconveniencing. I mean, we’re all local. We understand that we all have to go to the grocery store. We all have to drive on the road, and it is inconveniencing. But at the end of the day, that does support a lot of our families.”
The Sombrero Boulevard project in Marathon is continuing.
Still said, “Everything seems to be going well. The Sombrero Boulevard project was slated to start April 14, so what 10 days ago? Things must be going well. I’ve not gotten phone calls or any emails. I didn’t see any this morning, and I haven’t had any so far. So I’m hoping that’s going along smoothly, and we’re excited. This is one of the fastest projects that have gotten going, and will be at some point, completed. Usually it takes a long time. This has been a long time problem with the flooding, and it’s going to be inconveniencing for people who need to travel Sombrero Boulevard or live there, but I’m just asking they bear with us. That is a problem that we’ve had for a long time with the flooding and now we have the company who is coming in, they’re going to be fixing that problem, or at least fixing it as best you can. I mean, you can’t really fight Mother Nature and rain sometimes and we’re below sea level, and we have problems with that, but it looks like that’s going to resolve a majority of the problem. So that’s underway. There are phases of that that was covered at our last actual city council meeting and if anybody wants to know what those stages and phases are, they can go back and watch, or they can reach out to any of your council members, and we could give them the handout that we got as well that will kind of detail those phases and estimated completion time. Other than that, things are going really, really good. Leadership Monroe is having a graduation fest. It’s called a nautical fest. That’s at community park, that’s going to be next Saturday, not this upcoming Saturday, but a week from now, that’s from 11 to 6 on May 3. Is a free event. There will be vendors there, nonprofits there. There’ll be food, fun games for the kids and come out and learn about Leadership Monroe and watch the folks who went through this class graduate. I was in class 30. It’s a wonderful program, but it’ll be a good community event that’s free and it’s fun and it’s getting outdoors.”
The nonprofit grant program has returned to Marathon.
Still said, “A couple years ago, I asked that city council and the city of Marathon bring back their nonprofit grant program. It had been something that had been done years ago, and thankfully, other council members agreed and voted that we would bring that program back. Basically what that is, is we have budgeted $150,000 that we will award to non profits who are doing services in Marathon, not just Monroe County, but has to be in the city of Marathon. There was an application process. Tuesday night was the opportunity for the nonprofits to come before city council, come before the public, talk about their organization, talk about if they’d gotten the money in the past, what they did with it, what they plan to do with grant funds if they get it this time and just a great opportunity for us to kind of get to know some of these nonprofits that we might not know a lot about. We might see the names, but have no idea what services they provide. So we had a room full of people who came and talked about their organization. So now what’s going to happen is we will, as city council members, get the actual grant applications. We will individually go through those. We’ll individually score them, and then our planning director, puts a different hat on instead of planning director, and he will compile those scores, and then we will get back the list of the rankings of those nonprofits and the grants that they will be awarded. So we’ll award grants in the next month or so, and then those nonprofits can go about doing the good work that they already do. Thanks to my fellow council members, because it took them also. I just suggested it. It took them to vote to agree to do it. City staff, they do not need to go unrecognized, because they have worked hard to help make this a reality. We’ve had in the past, there have been some people who have not agreed with us doing it. My argument to that is these nonprofits, they have the connections to be able to help the people who need the help the most. We might hear about it, but we don’t have those programs in place that these nonprofits do. We can be a friend to them by giving them funds to be able to implement those programs. That’s just a wonderful thing. This touches children, it touches adults, I know that one of the organizations does summer camps, and they asked for money for scholarships for campers who might not be able to afford to go to summer camp. I mean, these are our children who won’t have to be at home alone and they’re doing enrichment. They’re learning about our community, learning about the environment and being in a safe location during the summer while mom and dad have to work.”