George Garrett, City Manager of Marathon, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s been going on in the city.
There’s a growing field for people who are interested in running for city council in Marathon.
Garrett said, “I think right now, we have six candidates. I have heard rumors that there might be a seventh, not sure who that is. I think the city of Marathon is in good shape financially, we have gone through two years and probably a third where we can meet roll back as far as our budget goes in terms of ad valorem taxes. We’ve got a lot of projects in place and in the works, but there’s still differences philosophically and where candidates come down, and probably the biggest issue in general, and I may not be hitting them all, one vacation rentals, and there’s not a whole lot we can do about those. We do manage it through our own ordinances, which is unique. Not everybody gets that option. The other side is the amount of growth that’s occurred, not just in the city of Marathon, but in the Keys in general. I think what’s happening there is the people that have lived here for a long time and have been able to remain and they’re the locals are beginning to go, enough is enough. I think most of the people running would all agree with those issues philosophically, but may split enough that really is the reason for six candidates instead of just the three incumbents.”
With the budget being signed recently by the governor, there are a number of items coming down the pike.
Garrett said, “There was a $20 million appropriation through Stewardship, I think technically, stewardship may be done statutorily, although the statute still exists, that still refers to stewardship. But there was originally a cap of $200 million on stewardship funding, and we’ve exceeded that. Having said that, we continue to get money as if it were Stewardship Act money. That’s been the last three or four years, about $20 million and that does get split between each of the municipalities, and in part, two of the utilities, Key Largo Wastewater and the Aqueduct Authority. We’re kind of struggling with how we’re going to split it now, because we’re in process of developing a new interlocal agreement as a means for splitting it easily. So we’re going to have to kind of arm wrestle that a little bit. We passed an interlocal agreement last night dealing with that. I know that the Aqueduct has, Key Largo wastewater will soon, and I know that Key Colony Beach and Layton will too. The bigger issue is, frankly, the county and the city of Key West really have the majority of the population, and based on that, I mean, I think there’s a concern on their part, they should, I guess, whether we all agree with that or not, get a bigger percentage. So we’re going to have to fight that out a little bit and we’re all friends, and we all still work together, so we’ll do that, but what it’s going to amount to for the city of Marathon, is that those funds are going to go into serving our new construction of the deep well project. Whatever we get this year and whatever we get in the future years will go towards that after effort, I think, until we get it done. It’s supposed to be done at the end of December ’28. We’re moving forward. We’ve taken out loans, we’ve gotten permitting done, we’ve done engineering. So literally, if you’ve been paying attention to what the aqueduct is doing, and maybe didn’t even know that it was the aqueduct, and you see all the pipe down at the Seven Mile Bridge end of the city, that’s the aqueduct replacing their pipes. We’re going to be competing with them very shortly to do the same thing for our wastewater project, and that will be essentially an effort to connect all of our sewer plants so that we can then bring that to what will ultimately be a constructed deep well. That has not started yet, but middle of August, we’re going to start laying pipe to connect the plants.”
What about Sombrero Boulevard?
Garrett said, “That project is well underway. We’ve got phase three done actually, so we’re going to go back to phase one, bottom line is, we’re looking to have that project with Sombrero Boulevard done, probably by the end of the year, roughly, and of course, that was a big issue when the golf course, required by its permits, put up a storm water berm, and it intercepted all the water coming across the street from the other side and that shouldn’t be happening, but it’s old construction on the other side, and we needed to go fix the problem, and that’s what we’re doing with the Sombrero Boulevard project. It’s probably, I think, we’re about three months into it now, and we probably have another six months plus now to getting that project finished. Then, honestly, I think Sombrero Boulevard and for the folks that live beyond that project area, they simply won’t have any problems in the future. So we’re very happy to have that going.”
There’s another project on Grassy Key.
Garrett said, “It’s grant funded. The city will not pay a dime for it, but we are managing it. It will expand the distant capacity, the outer reaches capacity of our area seven plant. The plant itself can handle the flow without any trouble at all. It’s the size of the pipe getting it there. Of course, Valhalla, the project we know as Valhalla, is going to get underway, and they’ve been fits and starts, but they’ve been working on that project for a while, and we expect that it’s going to start actual construction sometime this fall. So we’re working on the improvements to the wastewater system.”
There’s also the Seven Mile Marina area.
Garrett said, “We’ve got that additional construction going on there, potentially. We haven’t bid it yet, but the building construction or redevelopment is going to happen soon, and then we can actually put people in the building that’s associated with the Seven Mile Marina docks that we’re talking about. Pigeon Key will be a tenant there, and then we’ll find somebody else and all the docks, we anticipate going back to some of the local flats guides and offshore guides with boats that aren’t huge, because that’s not a big boat base in there, but kind of the local guys, individual captains and so on. They’ll have space in the back of the building to be able to store their equipment and stuff. So that’s one project. Community Park, got a number of things going on. We were finishing up some of the replacement of some of the exercise equipment that was destroyed in Irma. We’re working on putting four pickleball courts at Ocean Front Park here at City Hall. There’s a lot of things going on and it’s very active right now.”
The budget discussion for the city of Marathon will be July 22 at 5:30.
Garrett said, “I know we have to potential to meet roll back this year. It’s really going to depend on how the council plays it. Also where we want our reserves to end up, but we’re hovering between last year’s millage and roll back millage, and those are two different numbers, we’re hovering between maybe four or five days above 12 month reserves and maybe four or five days below, depending. We’ll see where council wants to be. But I think we’re in very good shape financially. So another year where, frankly, we get to do what it is we need to do for the city without a whole lot of pain in terms of staffing and projects. We’ll see what the future says to us, but right now I think we’re okay.”