BY DAN HILDEBRAN
Monitor Editor
KEYSTONE HEIGHTS— The city council gave former Senator Rob Bradley a key to the city and declared Sept. 13 as “Rob Bradley Day” during its Sept. 13 meeting.
Mayor Karen Lake said in a proclamation that Bradley championed the City of Keystone Heights by identifying the Black Creek Water Resource Project and lobbying for state funds to finance the pipeline.
“The City of Keystone Heights and its residents are very appreciative of Mr. Bradley’s commitment and determination of solving long-term water shortage in the Lake Region,” she said.
Lake added that in his current role as vice chair of the St. Johns River Water Management District, Bradley has continued his commitment to keeping the project on track.
“You really are our favorite son for the work you’ve done on the lakes,” the mayor said to Bradley.
Lake reminded the audience how long Lake Region residents have worked to restore water levels in the lakes, telling them that former mayors Lyndell Hale, Mary Lou Hildreth and Tony Brown all sought a solution, in addition to County Commissioner Betsy Condon and her predecessors Glenn Lasseter, Chereese Stewart and Gavin Rollins.
“Former representatives Charles Van Zant, his wife Katherine, and current Rep. Bobby Payne,” also worked to raise lake levels in the area, she said.
Lake said community members Rodney Bamford and Chester and Edwina Moody, of the Lake Brooklyn Homeowners’ Association, Dennis Barnhart, Bobby Ludwig and herself with the Lake Region Council Association, and Vivian Katz James of Save Our Lakes worked for decades to organize community members and lobby policy makers for the benefit of the lakes.
Bradley credited the officials and community leaders mentioned by Lake for laying the groundwork for the Black Creek project and focusing the public on declining water levels in the Lake Region.
He added that his personal involvement with the lakes issue began when he was the Keystone Heights City Attorney in the early 2000s, when Lake was the editor of the Lake Region Monitor.
“This community has a very, very special place in my heart (and) my family’s heart,” he said. It’s amazing what this community has had to endure and how it survived and thrived, and now the best is yet to come, because people believe it’s a special area with special people.”
Bradley also thanked Lake Region residents for supporting him, noting that he, in addition to his wife and successor in the Florida Senate: Jennifer Bradley have always polled well in the Keystone Heights area.
“That means a lot,” he said. “That’s when you know you have friends that believe in you. You all believed in me through various times in my professional life. I can’t tell you how much that means.”
