A new-look Marathon City Council stopped short of a final request for building allocations at its Nov. 12 session, delaying the decision to December to allow for more resident input in a city-sponsored workshop.
New council installed
Tuesday evening opened with a salute to departing councilman Luis Gonzalez, who stepped off the dais after two three-year terms.
“You’ve been a true model of service to this community, not just in your tenure here on the council, but for as long as I’ve known you,” said councilman Jeff Smith. “This community has been well served by you and your family … and I know, without even having to ask, that you will continue to be involved.”
In his final address as a councilman, Gonzalez thanked his family and city staff members before reflecting on six years of challenges faced during his tenure, from Marathon’s financial recovery following Hurricane Irma and weathering the COVID-19 pandemic to increasing code compliance in a town booming with vacation rentals, preserving city-owned waterfront properties, and installing affordable housing developments.
“Six years ago in November 2018 you trusted me to serve this incredible community, and it’s been the honor of my lifetime,” he said. “I may no longer be on the council, but I will always be here for Marathon, ready to serve in whatever way I possibly can.”
Re-elected councilman Kenny Matlock and newcomer Jody “Lynny” Del Gaizo were sworn in, and a unanimous vote confirmed Lynn Landry and Smith as Marathon’s new mayor and vice mayor, respectively.
Building rights request delayed
A special city workshop on Tuesday, Dec. 3 at 5:30 p.m. will inform the council’s final request at its Dec. 10 session for additional building rights in Marathon, as the group unanimously elected to table Resolution 2024-121.
Facing liability from takings cases if property owners of otherwise buildable lots are denied the ability to construct a home, Monroe County is already set to request an additional 220 building rights from the state to replenish a nearly-expired stock of allocations throughout the island chain. A request for rights beyond this number would likely require modifications to state statutes governing the Florida Keys as an Area of Critical State Concern with a mandatory hurricane clearance time of 24 hours for permanent residents.
A county commission meeting is set for Thursday, Dec. 19 to weigh input from municipalities and decide on a final number of building allocations, if any, beyond 220 to request and work toward during the 2025 Florida state legislative session. Input from jurisdictions like Marathon will be incorporated into a final singular request from Monroe County to state leaders.
“Unless you radically change how the statute reads today, you really have to do this collectively, because the 24-hour evacuation time applies to all of us without distinguishing each of us individually,” City Manager George Garrett reminded the council.
Marathon currently has roughly 575 vacant lots, about 123 of which are likely unbuildable due to sensitive habitat conditions, according to Planning Director Brian Shea. However, considering lots with density and zoning to accommodate more than one unit creates a gray area in settling on a number of units that should block takings cases completely. Traffic, infrastructure, environmental and quality-of-life concerns, frequently brought forward by the public in previous county-sponsored workshops and surveys, will also heavily factor into the decision – even as county governments continually seek to acquire land to stave off future construction.
“In the event the city has no more permits to give out, you’re in a situation where you’re going to give someone a unit or you’re going to give them a check,” said City Attorney Steve Williams. He estimated Marathon’s legal exposure in takings cases could reach a “lowball estimate” of “hundreds of millions of dollars” if development stopped entirely.
County workshops have floated the idea of allowing non-residential uses of buildable lots to ward off takings cases, an idea Williams said he thought may lessen, but likely not eliminate, liability on those lots.
Marathon resident Bob Williams, a vocal critic of land clearing for development purposes within the city, asked the council for greater consideration of environmental concerns as they weighed their final request.
“It seems rather arbitrary that the principal thing we look at in determining whether our city benefits … (is) with only consideration to evacuation time, or only consideration to takings costs,” he said. “A lot of us live here for … the second-largest marine sanctuary, and we aren’t doing anything to discuss or consider all the data available from the federal, state and local sanctuary management concerning the loss of water quality in this area around Marathon. I would suggest that if takings are a concern, getting responsible with our wastewater and our runoff is going to be very expensive as well.”
Smith said that while the cost of “writing the check” for takings cases could be nearly impossible to determine, he viewed limited residential development as a small concern compared to skyrocketing tourism.
“We’re looking at an 8% growth (in residential units) over 30 years,” he said, stressing that the city should seek the necessary units and instead focus on its rate of distribution.
“(Those new units) are not what our problem is for our infrastructure or environment; let’s call it the truth. I have 3.6 million trips coming through here, and it’s the visitors that are really causing the issue.”
Matlock said he would favor asking for one unit per vacant lot within the city, but spread distribution of these rights over 40 or more years. He asked Williams whether distributing one right per year would be enough to prevent takings cases, to which Williams replied that one would likely not suffice.
“It’s arguable,” Williams said. “Three or four? Sure.”
Councilwoman Robyn Still urged resident input at December’s workshop.
“If you care about it, if your friends, your family, your neighbors care, you need to talk to them, because they need to make time to come here and come talk to us,” she said. “We’re going to make the decision, but we want to make the decision hearing from our residents.”
Affordable housing funds request narrowly approved
In a 3-2 decision, with Matlock and Del Gaizo voting against, Resolution 2024-123 approved a request to the Monroe County Tourist Development Council (TDC) for the city to receive a portion of $35 million in available affordable housing funds.
Made possible by a TDC surplus after booming Keys tourism from 2020 to 2022, the $35 million was approved by the Florida Legislature to be used to build affordable housing for workers in tourism-related industries.
The money, proposed to be split among the county’s five District Advisory Committees (DACs) in rough proportion to each DAC’s tourism revenue, could potentially send roughly $6 million to $7 million to Marathon, Garrett said.
The funds could be used to buy and renovate existing residences as deed-restricted workforce housing, buy vacant land and develop workforce housing, or partner with upcoming housing projects already approved by the city as a requirement for larger resort developments, according to Tuesday’s resolution. However, as Garrett told the council, having shovel-ready projects is crucial in securing TDC approval, as unwanted or unused funds could be transferred to other DACs.
Still, Landry and Smith spoke in favor of what Still called a “one-time chance to get this money coming from tourists, and use that money to pay back and get some of our residents in homes.”
Matlock said he was wary of giving funding to already-required projects to be installed by corporate resort developers, and renewed his push against large-scale multifamily housing.
“At what point do we have too many units? At what point do we just stop building in the name of affordable housing?” he said. “All these projects are in the works that we don’t know the impacts of. … I think we need to really, really be sensitive of what we’re approving, as far as over-development.”
Smith said he agreed funds shouldn’t be given to already-required projects, but that otherwise, the move was “a resounding, ‘Absolutely, I’ll take that money.’”
“And if Islamorada doesn’t want theirs, I’ll take it. I’ll take $10 million, because I can do a lot of things,” he added. “Everything in our code incentivizes a conversion of our housing stock to a vacation rental. … Let’s use this money, (even) if we have to get off and move well beyond the speed of government to get something together and say, ‘Hey, let’s acquire property.’ … I think we should want to be able to acquire and preserve property in our community to service those tourism-related industries.”
In other news:
- After reported concerns of speeding in neighborhoods behind the Marathon Airport, the city will look to install permanent speed-limit signs, along with a mobile electronic sign to address this and other areas of concern identified in a future workshop meeting.
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