Hopefuls in the 2024 Marathon City Council race took turns at the plate in Monday night’s Keys Weekly and Marathon Chamber of Commerce political forum, fielding questions on the city’s most pressing issues along with a fair share of curveballs about controversial aspects of their campaign. The Weekly encourages our readers to watch the forum in its entirety. Printed here are answers to questions that elicited the greatest breadth of responses from candidates, lightly edited for length and clarity.
Marathon has a strong manager/weak council form of government where the city manager serves as the de facto CEO of Marathon. The current manager’s contract was renewed this year for three years with very little discussion or a formal review process. Candidates have expressed strong opinions about the performance of the city manager. If elected, what is your plan of action to address these concerns?
Ray Wood: I think George has done a very good job. He was faced with a lot of problems this year, and I believe he’s come through most of them smelling like a rose. I don’t know that there’s a problem that I need to face, but if there is, the first thing I plan on doing is going and talking with each of the member of the city council and talking with the manager, the staff and the office personnel, and finding exactly what they think about what’s going on.
Mark Senmartin: We have a city manager that has a lot of experience. He’s actually written most of the laws that govern our city. The recent budget has funding to provide an assistant city manager. In the last 25 years, the town has grown exponentially in every way except our upper management. Having someone with the institutional knowledge that George has is fantastic. Having him get bogged down in day-to-day personnel matters is a waste of his expertise and our money. So the idea of having an assistant city manager is to free him up to do some of the stuff that he does best, which is dealing with Tallahassee, environmental issues as well as planning and growth management. I think that’s a smart move on the council’s part.
Kenny Matlock: I agree we need an assistant city manager. It’s no secret in this town that I have some ethical issues with George, and I think the assistant city manager should answer the council, just like the city manager does. I don’t run the city, and I’ve got to get my colleagues to vote with me, so as far as details of how that would look, that would have to play out in a vote, but I would like to see a lot more decisions made with an assistant city manager.
Dustin Huff: I strongly believe that George needs help. George has entirely too much power, in my opinion, and not everything that happens in Marathon comes before council. Lots of things happen just by George’s choice, and I think that the city council should be responsible for hiring an assistant city manager. I don’t think George should be tasked with hiring an assistant city manager.
Lynny Thompson: I think that George should welcome an assistant, and I believe that the city council should make sure that there is an assistant for him. I think we need, as a city council, to be more in touch and in tune with what’s going on now. They’re doing a great job, but with the way the growth of Marathon is going, we need help, and I think the city and staff would welcome an assistant.
What actions are you willing to take to keep Marathon from slipping further from a residential community and into a resort town?
Kenny Matlock: I think vacation rentals need to pay their fair share. I’ve tried to increase the vacation rental license fee multiple times and got no support. I think the market’s changing. We’re getting some of our dry lots back. As far as the resorts, I think the city spends a lot of time going in and trying to change LDRs. Staff presents it to us as a standard policy change, and it’s not. Staff needs to stop catering to developers and start remembering that they are here to represent locals and taxpayers.
Dustin Huff: I know that we can’t necessarily touch vacation rentals, but I would be all in favor of raising licensing fees for vacation rentals. I just feel that it’s strange that vacation rentals are essentially businesses run out of a neighborhood, and I can’t pick up a client at a neighborhood dock. I also believe that the city of Marathon needs to stop facilitating what seems like more development from within.
Lynny Thompson: I worked on the resort side as well, and I’ve also been a homeowner. I do see change a little bit with what’s going on. We do have a lot of weekly rentals, but that has brought in a lot of business as well. I think we got a little oversaturated, and it’s taken away from our workforce. What we need to do is have more code enforcement to make sure that our vacation rentals are falling in line. We need the people here to work all the resorts as well and live here. I think the balance is the most important. We need to stop and think where we need to continue forward to get more permission to build more properties, and I think more homeownership is most important.
Ray Wood: Limiting building permits to workforce housing, affordable housing and owner-occupied housing will go a long way towards keeping resorts out of the way. We’re not going to get rid of vacation rentals, but we should enforce the codes we have now. I would work with the city council, city manager and building department about issues with these.
Mark Senmartin: Vacation rentals have become a part of the economic engine that runs Marathon, but too much of a good thing can ruin things. We talk about enforcement and we talk about what can’t be done because of the very strict state rules that govern them. I’d like to focus on what we can do. I have been investigating using our zoning ordinances to help manage and get control of the current situation. It’s a topic I’ve spoken with city staff about. It’ll take vetting, but they’re optimistic about my approach.
Lynny Thompson: When you last ran for council in 2021, during this forum, you asked for clarification and background on a number of issues and topics that were brought up. What have you done over the last two years to better prepare yourself to effectively direct policy for the city of Marathon?
I paid attention more, and I’ve grown up. I came in a little blindsided, but thought I could be a city councilman due to how much I love this community and the passion I have for living here and the people who live here. But that’s not enough – you actually have to know what’s going on. Thankfully, the city council, staff at the city and people who live here, even our sheriff, have schooled me well on what’s going on. I’ve been having conversations with people, studying and reading the Weekly to be up on what I need to know to move forward. I’m a quick study, I love this community, and I think I would be a great city councilman this time around.
Ray Wood: A news article from Texas (KHOU 11) has recently surfaced alleging your family’s involvement in a drug distribution ring in 2014. According to the article, police found cocaine, morphine and several guns, including a sawed-off shotgun, within your residence. Can you please address these allegations?
That started with my son. He was 16 at the time. He was smoking marijuana and dealing marijuana, and got in with some bad kids. When they busted him, it was at the house. My (other) son, who was a United States Marine and did three tours in Iraq, was deceased. When he died, I took everything he had and kept it in my house. When they came in and busted my son, they looked for everything else. My wife was surviving cancer, and so was my daughter. They neglected to say that most of the drugs were prescribed medicine for cancer patients, because they wanted to make it sensationalized. My son’s guns I took, and I would not throw away and get rid of them. So when they busted my 16-year-old, they were also going to hang an illegal weapon on him. The only thing that was illegal was a sawed-off shotgun. It was all sensationalized.
Mark Senmartin: During your time as a Marathon city councilman and shortly after, you developed multiple properties within city limits that became vacation rentals. How do you reconcile these actions with statements that the city council is to serve the residents of Marathon and that BPAS allocations should be given to locals living and working here?
Did I build some houses that were vacation rentals? Yes. I sold everything I had, emptied savings accounts, did everything we could do to partner with a friend of mine, and that’s how we built the first one. We had it as a vacation rental for one year in 2018, we sold it, and we were able to build the second one. I never owned a vacation rental after that. My partner and I built a few houses, and then we sold them. We got the very first BPAS allocation through the BPAS system. After that, the properties that we bought came with rights, except for one, which we bought a right for. That’s the way it works in this town. That’s the system that we have in place. As far as being able to reconcile the BPAS with the affordables, I do believe it should be owner-occupied. We have a two-year owner occupied requirement, and after one year you can start renting it. So that needs to change. I want to help the locals increase their homeownership, but we need to tweak some of those laws too.
Kenny Matlock: You have appeared in public and in campaign materials wearing clothing that is affiliated with political groups that are considered extreme or anti-government, with logos seen prominently at the Jan. 6 U.S. capitol insurrection. Can you please address your affiliation or allegiance to these organizations?
When I was a young guy, one of our local police officers and I went to get our concealed permit together, and we learned about something called 3% Nation. This was 20 years ago, and what it stood for back then was that 3% of the colonists took up arms against the British, and it was that simple. For me, that meant that if 3% of people would stand up, they could make a massive difference. So I never looked back into it, but I have a hat with it. I’m not officially affiliated with any group, but I’ve heard (the Three Percenters) is an official group. Since then, a police officer buddy of mine showed me and said, “Hey, have you seen what this group has become?” I said, “No. I didn’t look into it.” Now, some do consider it an extreme thing, but to me, it just means the 3% of the colonists. I have no affiliation with any official groups of any kind, so the militia rumors are kind of funny to me.
Dustin Huff: You have criticized the over-development of Marathon, as well as opponents of yours who have built and sold properties that eventually became vacation rentals. This month the city council is set to consider a 20-home development with a restaurant on a property you have part ownership of and are preparing to sell. How do you reconcile this sale with your philosophy?
I had opportunities to develop that property myself. I didn’t feel good about doing it. I know it’ll change the landscape of Marathon. I’m not looking forward to that, but it’s inevitable that it’s going to happen. I just didn’t want to be the one to do it. Could I have made a lot more money by doing that? Yes, but I care too much about Marathon to do that. That property is due to close on December 12. From what I learned at the planning commission meeting, it’s not going to be vacation rentals, but that will remain to be seen. I have no control at this point.
Per our city attorney’s legal advice, it appears to be too risky to change our current vacation rental ordinance, and the city council has never voted to engage in such actions. What are your thoughts on the current vacation rental ordinance, management and enforcement thereof and what, if any, changes would you propose if elected?
Kenny Matlock: A simple request to change can strip us of our grandfathered agreement. As far as implementing a new change, one thing we can do is continue to increase the vacation rental license fee so they can pay their burden. We have two people cleaning up the streets now in extra code enforcement. Those positions could have 100% been put on the vacation rental license fee, and they decided not to. As far as our enforcement, we have stepped it up, and our code enforcement has been doing a great job with vacation rentals. Start making (rentals) pay for the damages to our town.
Dustin Huff: Vacation rentals are clearly part of this for years to come, and at every turn I’ve been told the same thing: There’s no amending anything that has to do with vacation rentals in fear of the state taking control. I don’t think raising the licensing fee would discourage much. It may discourage a few of the dry lot rentals that we need for affordable rentals around here, but that’s the only thing that I’ve come to the conclusion that we can do.
Lynny Thompson: As the president of the real estate board this year, this comes up a lot. I know when I ran before I was the drill sergeant about the garbage up and down Sombrero Beach Road. So we brought more code enforcement in. Also, the managers get 20% to manage these rental properties, and I feel that by enhancing some of the rules more and making sure they take care of those properties, we won’t have complaints about how they’re run. I don’t know if I’m (in favor of) raising the price, but I’m not against that either. I just really think the code enforcement has played a big role in being positive.
Ray Wood: We can’t really do much about changing the vacation rental ordinance or it falls back to the state, but our code enforcement is doing a fantastic job of enforcing what they’re doing now. They can always do better, and we can always give them more help. I am in favor of increasing vacation rental fees for new ones. You can’t pick and choose who it is, but for new vacation rentals, I would be in favor so we don’t turn more of our private housing into vacation rentals. We can try to stay where we are at this time.
Mark Senmartin: Having spent eight years on the city council and the last three on the planning commission, I’ve got a lot of experience with vacation rentals, and the question of raising the fees always comes up. Do you really think raising the fees on a house that’s turning over $7,000 or $8,000 a week and cranking them up by $1,000 a year is going to make a difference? It doesn’t make any difference at all. They’re just going to pass that on to the customers and continue business as usual. What I am proposing in my zoning overlay is to create an area where vacation rentals are not allowed. It’s not taking away anyone’s vacation rentals. It’s not taking away their rights. But if you took an area, for example, the “fish bowl” off of Harbor Drive, you could put a zoning overlay over it. If you have a dry lot vacation rental, you’re grandfathered in, but if you don’t, you can’t start one there. This is going to preserve neighborhoods and keep them more family-friendly, and it doesn’t violate the vacation rental law
