The field of candidates has grown to four in the 2025 Marathon City Council race with the official filing of current Vice Mayor Jeff Smith and newcomer Gerrit Hale.
Jeff Smith
Smith told the Weekly his second campaign was a case of “unfinished business” that began in 2022, when he was elected with the third-most votes in a nine-candidate field.
“When we ran three years ago, there were three major issues: One was the Boatworks issue, the other was the FOLKs lawsuit over our sewer system, and the other was BPAS (the Building Permit Allocation System),” he said. “I think we’ve done a good job as a council addressing all of those. BPAS will still go on, and we’re addressing our infrastructure needs by putting in the deep well.”
Smith said he was eager to see critical capital projects including the Quay, Seven Mile Marina and Marathon Community Park skate park through to completion – several of which have been ongoing since before even his first campaign.
And while Marathon’s control of vacation rental issues faces heavy opposition from statutory restrictions and lobbying by rental companies at the state level, he said he’s been pleased with the progress made locally through code enforcement and rental tracking software.
“We did what was in our wheelhouse,” he said. “Every year we try and get some traction (at the state level), and I don’t think we’re having much success with the lobbying efforts of AirBNB and VRBO, but that doesn’t mean you give up the fight.”
With new building permits awaiting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ signature, Smith said in addition to navigating the new construction, his focus would remain on stemming the conversion of Marathon’s affordable housing stock.
“That’s probably more important than whether you’re going to get 80 permits a year for the next 10 years,” he said. “That’s a very small piece, but if you continue to convert your existing housing stock to an alternate use, there’s a lot of work that needs to be done there.”
Gerrit Hale
Hale is a retired stock broker, real estate developer, government consultant and real estate appraiser who has been visiting the Keys since he purchased his home in 2021, eventually becoming a full-time resident in 2023. He’s a current member of the Rotary Club of Marathon and a new volunteer at the Marathon Community Theatre.
“The thing about this community is that it reminds me, to a degree, of where I grew up,” he said. “It was a small, coastal beach town where everybody knows your name, and that’s the feeling you get here.”
After earning a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Maryland and a master’s in international business and strategic planning from Johns Hopkins, Hale said, he first stepped in the political ring in Nevada, running for the county assessor position. Later, he served on a nonprofit board in the D.C. area, tasked with managing a public-private partnership to revamp a dilapidated Glen Echo amusement park.
“We had a $20 million government investment to revitalize the park and bring it back around, and we did a really nice job,” he said. “It’s a great place for families and kids, and it felt good that I was able to be a part of that – and secure the surrounding communities when people show up, because when they have events there, it’s 30,000 people.
“Sitting on that board were pretty high-level people – the superintendent of technology for the school district, the head of the water department. I learned a lot from being around those people – when to talk and when to listen.”
While he said it was too early in the campaign to zero in on specific key goals, Hale said he wants to take a closer look at beautifying Marathon’s U.S. 1 corridor and smoothing out the city’s permitting issues.
“If I were elected, if that’s not moving in a positive direction, I’d try to move it into a positive and cooperative area,” he told the Weekly. “If you’re a public servant, you’re serving the people that put you there, and you have to look at them and treat them like customers.”
The 2025 city council field so far includes incumbents Smith and Robyn Still, Hale and Debbie Struyf. The council could see up to three new faces in November, as seats currently held by Still, Smith and Mayor Lynn Landry are up for re-election. Though he has yet to officially file paperwork, Landry privately confirmed his intent to run to the Weekly.
