The field has grown to five for the 2025 Marathon City Council race, as current Mayor Lynn Landry filed for re-election.
Landry will launch his second campaign after finishing with the highest vote total (1,671) in the nine-candidate 2022 election, before which he served as the chair of the city’s planning commission.
“There are a lot of long-term capital projects that we’ve started to move on, and I’d like to see them finished,” he told the Weekly, referencing updates to Marathon Community Park’s skate park and splash pad as well as a two-boat-ramp redesign for the Quay park.
He said he took pride in new revenue streams created through boat ramp and beach parking fees for visitors, helping Marathon to keep its taxes at the rollback rate the last two years.
“I’ve learned so much on city council,” he said. “I sat on planning for nine years and thought I had a really good grasp, but you learn so much when you’re actually serving. … I just want to keep moving forward.”
A nine-year veteran of the city’s planning commission, Landry also said he’s eager to address upcoming challenges to development throughout the city, presented through brand-new legislation limiting new building rights to one per vacant lot and mounting resident scrutiny over new developments.
“When you sit on planning, you’re in a box, and every time you try to venture out of the box, council usually says, ‘hey, you stay in (there),’” he said. “When you’re on council, you have to think outside the box to condition things so it’s better for the community.
“We’re going to have to look at land development regulations in the comprehensive plan, especially with the new BPAS (units) coming,” he added. “We need to focus on affordable housing – if we can make it work to do duplexes, triplexes, things like that, but we have to have the units to do it. You’re not going to build a one-off affordable (housing unit), and we need to try to work on our regulations to make someone who wants to owner-occupy their dwelling a priority on our list.”
There are three open seats on the council in the 2025 race, as positions held by Landry, Vice Mayor Jeff Smith and councilwoman Robyn Still are all up for re-election. All three incumbents have filed to run this fall, along with newcomers Debbie Struyf and Gerrit Hale. For features on the other four candidates, see keysweekly.com.
