Council outlines joint meeting with school board, flags insurance and contract issues for proposed ball field

Council members spent an extended portion of the meeting preparing for a joint workshop with the school board to resolve outstanding language and financial questions in a proposed license agreement for a multimillion-dollar baseball field.

Village staff said the plan is to hold a publicly noticed workshop on July 21 at Marathon High School where both bodies would review a written proposal and seek concurrence. Manager Ron Saunders asked council members to provide questions in advance; he said staff would gather answers on insurance, budget and other matters before the workshop.

Council members repeatedly raised insurance concerns. Council member Sue Miller and others asked why the contract language allowed casualty insurance deductibles up to $25,000 and whether that exposure could leave the village facing high premiums. "If the current value... is $4,000,000 and the deductible is $25,000 ... that is way below normal 2% or 5% or 10% deductible," one council member said, urging staff to get specific premium estimates and to clarify whether maintenance and operating expenses would come from capital or operating funds.

Members also noted that the villages previously approved version of the license contained protections the council considered important for taxpayers; some members urged careful line-by-line review of the school boards version and the villages previously approved 5-0 version, and asked staff to highlight any substantive differences for negotiation points.

Council discussed logistics for meeting outside village boundaries and agreed as a legal matter they could meet offsite for a joint workshop; staff recommended that any final formal vote be taken in the village at a special called meeting after the joint workshop so the village acts within its jurisdiction. The council asked staff to coordinate schedules; if both bodies reach agreement in the workshop, councilors said they would aim to hold a special call meeting (noted as July 27 in discussion) to finalize and vote the license here in Islamorada.

Several council members emphasized the need for clarity about who will pay maintenance and whether work will be charged to operating budgets or capital-improvement funds. Staff committed to returning with answers and to try to secure a school-board vote at the July 21 meeting if the school board is prepared.

The council did not take a final vote on the license agreement; members said they wanted the joint workshop to resolve outstanding items and to avoid back-and-forth changes after one bodys action.