Johnston/Romero face off in last Hometown! election debate

BY PRU SOWERS

KONK LIFE STAFF WRITER

A vigorous debate between the two mayoral candidates in Key West gave an audience clear indication of how Margaret Romero and Teri Johnston will oversee the city if elected.

At the final debate of the campaign season sponsored by Hometown!, the local non-partisan resource for candidate and election information, the candidates answered questions put to them by a panel of local journalists and community activists. Twice dodging questions designed to pit the two women against each other by asking them to criticize their competitor, Johnston and Romero cleanly outlined their priorities if elected. Their answers also showed their differences.

For example, when asked about complaints from some residents that tourism is negatively impacting the quality of life for year-rounders, Johnston said there was “valid” tourism fatigue. Her solution was to use more of the dollars generated from tourists on projects that would directly benefit residents.

“Let’s improve the streets on some of our tourism dollars. Let’s clean our beaches on some of our tourism dollars. Let’s take care of our infrastructure based on some of our tourism dollars,” she said. “Then you bridge that gap and you get the residents who are feeling somewhat ignored right now to understand how important tourism is to our island and our economy.”

Johnston said she would also institute a three-month pilot program on Duval Street, removing traffic from a three-block section to experiment with ways to entice locals back downtown, including bringing art, music and seating into the pilot area to make it more enjoyable.

Romero said that tourism-generated dollars are already helping pay for improvements to Key West’s infrastructure through taxes on sales, gas and local lodging. She seemed to indicate that the dollars allocated from the various tourist taxes are enough.

“We do see tourist dollars contribute to our economy. We just have to realize how they are prioritized, perhaps a little differently, and make sure we communicate, which I think has not always been a stellar quality of our commissions,” Romero said.

Romero twice targeted short-term, transient housing rentals as having more of a negative impact on quality of life than other tourist-based services. When asked if it is the city’s responsibility to provide affordable housing for workers – as opposed to employers’ responsibility – she pushed for short-term transient rentals to convert to year-round workforce housing by giving tax or other financial incentives to landlords. And she said that the figure of 3,000 new units of needed affordable housing that has been bandied about City Hall has never been proven to her.

“I never saw the justification of those 3,000 units. Our population has been declining,” Romero said.

Johnston has a different idea. While saying it is not the government’s “primary responsibility” to provide affordable housing, the city also should not be a deterrent to development projects aimed at keeping the local workforce affordably in place. The city is the second-largest landowner in Key West behind the U.S. Navy, which operates several facilities within the city limits, Johnston pointed out, saying the city should “streamline” the often-onerous process of getting a building permit and actively seek partnerships with private developers using city-owned land as an incentive.

“I’m certainly thinking we can do some public-private partnerships where the city holds on to the land, in a 99-year lease, so it still stays under government control,” she said.

The city’s ongoing effort to find a new location for its overnight homeless shelter also came up in the questions. Romero said past city commissions had “kicked the can down the road” for many years, stalling while under a court order to find a new place for the shelter, currently next to the Sunset Marina on Stock Island. Romero said she hoped the shelter could be relocated across the street to the former Easter Seals property – where the city is planning to build an affordable workforce housing development – or on an acre of city-owned land near the Steam Plant condominiums on Trumbo Road.

“A lot of people don’t want to see it go there [Trumbo Road]. But if that is one of the spots where it meets the major criteria that were defined by a city planning director years ago, we need to look at all the facts,” Romero said.

Johnston pushed for keeping the shelter at its current location, which is also next to the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office. Sheriff Rick Ramsey has repeatedly said he wants the shelter to move so he can use that land to build housing for his staff. But Johnston said since the city is planning to build a 140-unit housing development on the Easter Seals property, a specific number of those units could be allocated to sheriff’s department employees in return for keeping the shelter where it is. Johnston did not address how the city would get around the court order forcing the shelter to move.

“I think there’s a lot of ways we can negotiate here,” she said.

Parking and traffic congestion were other topics where the two candidates differed. Romero said the first thing she would do is build a multi-story, 120-space parking garage on the surface parking lot next to the fire station on Simonton Street. Residents would be allowed to park in the garage free for four hours each day and nearby guesthouse customers could also park their cars there, although not for free she said.

“It would be so practical to put that 120-space garage there. It’s on the Duval [bus] Loop. We would be able to have employees park in it, take the Loop to their destinations downtown. It would preclude the tourist and the locals from driving around and around,” Romero said.

Johnston’s solution was to reduce traffic on the road.

“What do you do to get less cars on the road? You provide alternative forms to get around the city. Those alternative forms to get around the city are by bicycle; to have safe, dedicated bicycle lanes and to have safe sidewalks,” she said.

The general election is on Tuesday, Nov. 6.

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