Local business owner Debbie Struyf is officially the second to declare her candidacy for the Marathon City Council’s 2025 race.
Struyf, 63, told the Weekly she was ready to enter the race herself after working on multiple campaigns since Marathon’s incorporation in 1999. Her first, she said, was with founding Marathon councilman Frank Greenman, who later appointed her to the city’s Parks and Recreation Board to develop the initial designs for Marathon’s city parks.
“The kids are where my heart is,” the former Marathon Youth Club board member and national little league commissioner told the Weekly. Together with her husband Kerry, she raised four children in Marathon, and six of her 12 grandkids still call the Middle Keys home.
“I’d like to see our children raised in a semblance of how I was raised down here. We’re never going to get back to the way we were, but I’d like to see us slow down a little bit.”
Struyf’s volunteer involvement over the years included numerous coaching stints as well as the Marathon Jaycees, Marathon Seafood Festival and other clubs, but said she “always gravitate(s) back to the youth.”
The 44-year resident of Marathon is the full-time owner of Paradise Towing and Salvage along with Debbie’s Cleaning and Maintenance, a service company for vacation rentals and private homes.
“I love when people say ‘you can’t be on both sides of (the vacation rental situation).’ Yes, I can – I can see both sides of that,” she said. “You cannot tell somebody what to do with their property. But you do not have to make all kinds of special allowances for developers and anyone else.”
A regular attendee at city council meetings, Struyf said she’s taken exception to recent votes, including continuation of a taxing district supporting Fishermen’s Community Hospital and an in-progress development on 106th Street.
“I watched promises that are made and not kept, and I see that (the council’s) hands are tied on some issues,” she said. “But other issues where their hands aren’t tied, they still don’t always vote the way that the constituents who elected them put them in office to do.”
The 2025 city council field so far includes Struyf, incumbent Robyn Still and newly-filed candidate Gerrit Hale, who will be featured in an upcoming edition of the Weekly. The council could see up to three new faces in November, as seats currently held by Still, Vice Mayor Jeff Smith and Mayor Lynn Landry are up for re-election. Though they have yet to officially file paperwork, both Landry and Smith have privately confirmed their intent to run to the Weekly.
