There is a post today at goodmorningfloridakeys.com, which you should be able to reach by clicking on this link: yet another mountain of evidence that the Florida Keys school district administration is terminally bonkers and needs to be taken over by the Florida Board of Education

Meanwhile,

c

Eco cruise ship leaves Key West’s outer mole

From a retired psychiatrist in Key West, who has been chiming in on channel-gouging and related deep concerns of Mother Nature:

Alice in Wonderland
Flying to Chicago my seat companion
was a departmental CEO of Subaru. Her
visit to Key West was highlighted by swim-
ming with the fish off Zach Taylor beach.
She and her co-workers would return just
for that delight. That’s gone as the harbor
including the water off that beach, silted,
has zero visibility. The Cruise Ships load-
ed have a displacement of 30 feet scrape
the bottom stirring up clouds of black silty
debris. Normal sedimentation doesn’t occur
affecting many square miles. It’s too shallow,
giant Cruise Liners, some 1100 feet long are
inappropriate here decimating the natural
environment. John E. Wells, has a financial
interest in Cruise Ships, wrote an article
with so many distortions, outright untruths,
that he should write children’s fantasy
books. He missed his calling. The fact is
Cruise Ships dump indiscriminately. One
Cruise Ship dumps 30,000 gallons of sew-
age daily, oily bilge water, hazardous waste,
sewage sludge and incinerator ash. They
burn bottom-of-the-barrel bunker diesel
with resulting emissions carrying harmful
pollutants, factors in children’s asthma,
autism, cancer and cardiovascular disease.
The gray water discharged close to shore
contains pathogens, viruses, pharmaceuti-
cals, metal, hosts of other sickening materials,
indiscriminate dumping includes organic
garbage and feces. All fish reduced including
Tarpon. In Newsweek May 21, 2012 an article
shows graphically our diabolic losses of fish.
Leeds University London did an assessment
which placed Key West at the bottom of 115
travel sites for the discerning tourists that
once were customers of ” Fast Bucks” vanish-
ed with the Tarpon. National Geographic placed
us on their getting ugly list, the lead story of the
Key West Citizen Feb. 20, 2004. I researched a
16 page 2 month analysis of the ungodly mess
that Cruise Ships excrete referring to major
newspapers including those in Boston, Chicago,
Miami, New York, and Los Angeles, and the Wall
Street Journal, Forbes and Business Week plus 42
books citing the damage Cruise Ships generate,
phenomenal polluters. All references on request.
Ahead a healthy future, insured tourism, versus
disease, environmental devastation linked to eco-
nomic decline?
submitted by Jerrold Weinstock, M.D.
One Bougainvillea ave. Key West, FL.
(305) 294-3094

Outer mole praise report in  The Key West Citizen today – www.keysnews.com - my interjected thoughts in italics. I supplied the pics.

Big thanks for Outer Mole deal

City Manager Bob Vitas has the type of deep, radio-friendly voice that can immediately steer a regular old commission meeting to solemn territory.

Tuesday in his report to commissioners, Vitas reminded everyone that last week’s landing of exclusive negotiations with the Navy for re-leasing the Outer Mole pier was a huge deal.

Huge.

Amen.

“That was approved at the highest levels as you can imagine in Washington, D.C.,” said Vitas. “I think it would be remiss if we don’t say thank you.”

Commissioners Rossi and Yaniz, Mayor Cates, the two assistant city managers and staff, plus U.S. Rep. Joe Garcia and U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, among others, deserve a nod, Vitas said, along with Naval Air Station Key West commander Capt. Pat Lefere.

This is what they deserve.

In November, the Navy’s real estate honchos in Jacksonville had announced they were considering putting the pier out to bid, which rattled the nerves of Cates and others who believe the island’s economy relies on welcoming cruise ships.

Last week, the Navy bagged the idea of seeking a higher bidder, buying the city’s argument that the public benefit of the pier lease on this tourist town’s economy outweighed whatever a private company could pony up.

The Navy bagged the idea after gaining sufficient leverage to get the city to share more of the cruise ship loot with the Navy than the Navy was already getting.

After a campaign by city leaders, a congressional House Committee on Thursday signed off on letting the Navy deal solely with the city of Key West, whose current lease of the pier runs out June 30.

Mark Rossi

Rossi pointed out one more member of the island’s full court press: Ron Demes, chairman of the Military Affairs Committee of Key West, seated in one of the back rows at Old City Hall.

“Ron Demes in the back,” Rossi said. “You deserve it, Ron. You worked hard on this and I want everyone to know.”

Lots of the cruise ship loot goes through Rossi’s sin business on lower Duval Street. One can only wonder if Demes patrons Rossi’s sin businesses?

—————————————

Connie Gilbert of Key West replied to yesterday’s retire to paradise in Key West’s posh Truman Waterfront waterfront “assisted care center” post:

Sloan, John Gish and I were housemates back then, and I was also a supporter of the plan from the start. After living in Bahama Village–walking or triking distance to almost everywhere I ordinarily go except Winn-Dixie–for ten years I’m even more reluctant to live elsewhere, even as close as Stock Island. (And the old Easter Seals building doesn’t really back up on the golf course–it backs up on either FKAA or Mosquito Control, doesn’t it?)

I don’t think Ed Swift wants to live there–these are fairly modest apts, after all. He can afford around the clock care at home if he needs it.

I think the argument was that there was no where else in Old Town to build, and we wanted to be in Old Town. Even Johnny might opt to move when he can no longer drive his car, 20 years from now (I knew his father, Papa John, who lived well into his 90s).

Anyway, I sure have my fingers crossed. I’m only 73, but . . . .

Connie

PS I’m pretty sure Bayshore Manor has a waiting list.

If the old Easter Seals building doesn’t back up the golf course, then why has the golf course and its residential community’s lawyer threatened to sue the city if it opens an assisted living center for homeless people on the Easter Seals property? In fact, that entire part of College Road is next to the golf course. In fact, the Easter Seals property makes far more sense for seniors who need care, because it is near the hospital and its helicopter pad, which is used to take severe medical emergency patients to Miami hospitals. The Easter Seals property is near and has great city bus service to the North Roosevelt shopping centers, grocery and department and drug stores, and doctors offices. Truman Waterfront is on the far west side of Key West, separated from all of he above by narrow, contested roads. Logistically, Truman Waterfront is the least desirable place for a senior living facility. However, it is the most desirable place for an upscale condo development, with a few affordable living unites.

From the same article in The Key West Citizen, especially note “affordability” of units feature at proposed new senior living facility on Truman Waterfront, my interjected thoughts in italics:

Yaniz: Key West assisted living deal needs another ballot vote
BY GWEN FILOSA Citizen Staff
gfilosa@keysnews.com

Come Oct. 1, Key West voters may have a second referendum question on the ballot:

Should the island give up 3.3 acres of prime waterfront land to help a nonprofit build a senior housing complex for a buck-a-year land lease?

City Commissioner Tony Yaniz on Tuesday voiced his opposition to the proposal by a local coalition to build the $31 million 110-unit complex on the Truman Waterfront.

“I am not going to support giving away the most valuable property in Key West for the benefit of a small number of residents,” he said at Tuesday’s City Commission meeting at Old City Hall. “Let’s put it back up for referendum. My constituency will not support it.”

This drew some applause, including from constant critics of local government Margaret Romero and Christine Russell.

When the city commission voted in 2007 to put the senior living facility on Truman Waterfront to referendum, there was lots of applause. Back when that happened, the city commission and everyone involved in or wanting the senior living facility to be on Truman Waterfront understood a long-term lease with a developer would be at a nominal rent, because that was the only way to make the numbers work.

On Monday, the commissioners’ appointed advisory board recommended the senior housing plan go forward by a 6-0 vote.

Assisted living wasn’t on Tuesday’s agenda, but Yaniz went on the record against the proposed land deal, complete with deep discounts, during City Attorney Shawn Smith’s report on Monday’s decision.

Yaniz wasn’t involved in what happened back in 2007. 

The assisted living debate almost overshadowed the night’s most anticipated political argument: The upcoming referendum on whether the city will request an Army Corps of Engineers “feasibility study” on the impacts of widening the main ship channel for bigger cruise ships.

??? The ballot language does not say “bigger” cruise ships. The ballot language says “modern longer” cruise ships. The Key West Chamber of Commerce and Yaniz would not agree to “bigger” or “larger” being in the referendum language. Nor would they agree to “dredging” being in the referendum language. Astonishingly, Last Stand went along with Yaniz and the Chamber’s wording. Naja Girard, co-publisher of Key West the Newspaper – www.thebluepaper.com – is Last Stand’s current president. I can’t say I expect to see The Blue Paper make much noise about the channel-gouging study referendum.

At 9:15 p.m., the commission approved the ballot language 4-2. It was the second reading of the measure, which makes it official. Johnston and Weekley dissented, wanting to replace the word “widening” with “dredging.”

And, what about replacing “modern longer” with “bigger, longer, wider and deeper-hulled”?

Mayor Craig Cates had left the meeting earlier, feeling ill, according to Rossi, who as vice-chairman picked up the gavel in his place.

The entire charade makes me ill, but I have not noticed it ever made Craig sick to his stomach. However, the thought of having to vote in public for the channel-widening study going on the referendum in might have made him sick to his stomach. Not because he didn’t want the channel-widening study, but because he does want it, and he knows many Key West people take that to mean he wants the channel-widened, which is true; otherwise, he would have opposed the study all along, instead of supporting it. Last Stand and Naja Girard and The Blue Paper laid down and spread their legs to Tony Yaniz, the Key West Chamber of Commerce, Mark Rossi, Ed Swift’s conch trains and trolleys, and the cruise ship industry.

The assisted living discussion came after developer Jeff Sharkey’s Monday night presentation and argument that Key West is in dire need of such housing for the elderly, who sometimes get forced to relocate to the mainland.

Thirty-five market rate units — at almost $54,000 a year in costs — would help pay for the affordable units.

Did you catch those exalted rents, Connie Gilbert?

And did you also catch where the seniors would come from to living in those $54,000 a year units? Probably not, because they aren’t saying now, but back in 2007 they were saying there wasn’t enough senior demand in Key West for those expensive units, and those expensive units would be marketed to seniors up the Keys and on the mainland. Why The Key West Citizen does not report that leaves me wondering if that newspaper has been bought off, or if its mainland owners want to move to Key West and live in that posh waterfront senior living facility? Tony Yaniz, if you really want to challenge the developer getting a nominal long-term lease, challenge it on the ground that is not okay for the city and its taxpayers to subsidize a senior living facility which will be built for rich seniors who do not live in Key West, so they can subsidize a few poor Key West seniors living there. If you think I’m fantasying, Tony, ask Ed Swift, the Spottswoods, the Toppinos, and Pritam Singh why they did not come forward and offer to do this deal for seniors in Key West? For one thing, Tony, they did not want to have to deal with the kind of objections you now are making. For another thing, they didn’t see any way to make a lot of money off of it. 

Yaniz joins three other commissioners who have shown reluctance to hand over the waterfront property, part of 33 acres the Navy turned over to Key West in 2002.

But as of Tuesday night, Yaniz was the sole one to outright oppose the project. Commissioners Teri Johnston, Clayton Lopez and Mark Rossi have doubts about the financials, and expectations, of the nonprofit backers.

The city and the Florida Keys Assisted Care Coalition, led by businessman Ed Swift and Armando “Bookie” Henriquez among others, disagree over what voters meant when they passed a 2007 referendum supporting such a complex at the waterfront.

They’re at odds over whether voters were signing off on a buck-a-year lease.

That’s precisely what the voters signed off on, but it was not stated in the referendum what they knew they were signing off on. Likewise, the voters don’t know what they are being asked to sign off on in the channel-widening study referendum. They are being asked to sign off on dredging a one-mile-long, 150-foot wide, probably a 30-feet deep hole in an existing natural seabed. Make no mistake, if the voters approve that referendum, down the road the politicians and palm-greasers (is their a difference?) will say the voters approved the dredging described above. And, by inference, the voters approved dredging the channel deeper. 

The referendum noted a 99-year lease and the location, but no rent figure or definitions, such as for “market rate.”

“A constant refrain is that the lease agreement was to be for a dollar a year for 99 years,” Smith said, “despite the fact that language was never contained within the referendum question posed to the voters.”

Smith was the city attorney when that referendum’s wording, with his blessing, was approved and put on the ballot by the city commission. Smith knew that refrain, and he left it out of the referendum wording.

Yaniz, the panel’s newest member in his first term, said the voters should get another crack, deciding specifically on whether the project deserves a $1-a-year type of lease.

What really needs to happen is, the city commissioners and weak-stomached mayor need to explain to their constituents that what the voters unknowingly approved in 2007 was the city making a deal with a mainland developer to build an upscale senior living facility on Truman Waterfront, which the developer would fill mostly with rich seniors from the mainland, and thereby make provision for rich and not rich Key West seniors to live there, too. It never was to be a senior living facility just for Key West seniors. It always was to be another commercial condo development, with a new wrinkle: assisted living care would be provided for senior residents who needed it. For that reason, I agree with Yaniz; the developer should pay market rate rent for the term of the lease.

However, Sharkey’s updated proposal Monday night included an upfront $500,000 payment to the city as rent for the first several years.

Attorney Smith said there was time to put a new referendum on the Oct. 1 ballot and that he could come up with the wording before the panel’s next meeting, set for 6 p.m. June 4.

It takes two commissioners to sponsor that type of resolution, Mayor Cates said.

Rossi spoke up.

“I’ll let you know,” said Rossi. “I’m mulling this decision very seriously. It’s a far-reaching and long-lasting decision.”

You got that right, Mark. And as is now seen, it was not thought out in 2007.

———————————————–

On another Connie Gilbert matter,

email back and forth recently with Tim Gratz, of Key West. Tim and Connie are, I think, the main moving forces behind and in Keys Coalition, whose mission is to stopping child sex trafficking in the Florida Keys.

Tim sent to me:

FROM MIAMI BEWS STATION— see the bolded enries

Pictures of Connie Rose as a teenager in the 1970s should bring her a smile.

The statuesque brunette looks like a model in the photos, but Rose, a 56-year-old Tampa resident, says the suggestive poses of that teenage girl hide a horrifying tale of abuse.

“I am a survivor of almost 14 years of incest, about three, almost four years, of sex trafficking and I’m also the daughter of a sex offender and my pimp was my dad,” Rose said.

Rose says her father Zenon Anastassiou began sexually molesting her when she was a toddler. She says he told her it was a cultural thing and it gradually escalated into rape by the time she was 13. Anastassiou pleaded guilty to engaging in sexual activity with another child and assault against that child in 1987. Though Rose never brought charges against her father, she says her childhood was plagued by abuse and emotional extortion.

She says his message was clear: “You want to live in this house? You like the clothes that you get to wear? … Well, if you tell or you stop having sex with me that’s all just going to go away.”

Just short of 16, Rose says she mustered up the courage to hold a knife to her father and tell him to stop.

“He laughed. He literally laughed in my face and he said I’ve been waiting for this day.”

That’s when he allegedly began selling her to other men, using provocative and naked pictures he took of her. The torture allegedly lasted until she was 19 when she got married. Decades later, stories like hers continue to repeat themselves in Florida, a state that’s become a hub for child sex trafficking.

Noel Thomas, the anti-human trafficking coordinator for the Department of Children and Families, says: “Florida is number three in the United States based on call volume for human trafficking.”

Thomas says children fall into sex trafficking through force, fraud or coercion.

That was the alleged case of a Miami-Dade teenager that NBC 6 interviewed last year. Her identity was not revealed because she is a minor. That teenager showed NBC 6 hotels where she had sold her body.

Police say Eugene Sneed and an accomplice befriended her in the least likely of places.

In a Miami-Dade courtroom a prosecutor said Sneed “… coerced a child of 13 years of age who they met in middle school and then put her on Biscayne Boulevard to prostitute herself to men.” Sneed pleaded not guilty to the sex trafficking charge.

Experts say children are also targeted at malls where they hang out with friends and on social media. Pimps profile kids and after learning what makes them tick, they swoop in using fake identities online or good-looking teens, known as runners, as bait.

Thomas says: “So when they actually get a connection and have someone meet them in person they oftentimes rape and abuse them and victimize them, all with photographs and video, using it as blackmail which just further pushes them into the life of human trafficking.”

Rose described an approach human traffickers take this way: “…if you don’t want your parents to see what you did and you don’t want everybody at school to see what you did, you need to meet me next weekend at this place and then before you know it, this girl is then going to be sold.”

Jorge Veitia runs SolMedia, an organization that tries to combat human trafficking by educating South Florida businesses.

Veitia showed NBC 6 spots in Miami Beach where sex traffickers target children, such as bus stops.

“This is an area where a guy will pull in, pick up a girl and go,” he said of one.

With the help of volunteers, Veitia shows pictures of missing children who may have become sex trafficking victims after being kidnapped or running away from home or foster care.

“Statistics are showing that one in three of these kids end up being exploited within 48 hours,” Veitia says.

He explains that once pimps have their victims, they market them using tools like online classified sites.

“Somehow like any good predator, pimps know where to find these children and present them with an opportunity to get a dinner or a safe place to sleep or to actually become their boyfriend,” Veitia says.

Kim Butler is one of the volunteers that hit the streets of South Beach looking for missing children in hotels and other businesses.

Butler, who is also the pastor at Miami Dream Center and Miami Beach House of Prayer, said, “We started in January and every month we have had someone identified as being seen … sometimes they’re a little bit nervous so they’ll just point to the picture.”

Volunteers then report those sightings to the police but rescuing them is not easy because many times the victims develop love bonds with the trafficker.

Thomas said, “… So when they’re removed from that environment, they’ll oftentimes, without a chance to be deprogrammed and given rehabilitation, they’ll run right back to the traffickers.”

To aid in the recovery, Florida recently approved the Safe Harbor Law that allows minors rescued from prostitution to receive help instead of being sent to jail. But advocates say that’s not enough, and that people need to be on the lookout for signs of child abuse and exploitation.

Butler said, “Somebody has to look for these girls and I feel like that’s the attitude we need to take. If we were all too afraid to go out, then what about the girls that are missing?

Currently there are more than 50 South Florida children missing – girls and boys who could be in danger of falling into the hands of traffickers who are behind this “modern day slavery.”

I wrote back to Tim:

Jorge is the fellow you had me drive up to Marathon and listen to him in a church sell his budding business in which he hoped to make money speaking and counseling and working with child sex-trafficking issues and victims?

Tim replied:

Yes and I fully understand why you had a bad impression of him, Sloan, so it is no criticism of you.
But I have come to conclude that he is doing great things in the Miami area.
First impressions are not always right and again I fault you not for you original ”take” on him but I wanted to show you what he us doing.  I will also forward a recent e-mail from him.
Best
Tim

I wrote back:

My first impression was accurate; Jorge was soliciting business for his own $ gain, not educating as public service. I told him it is forbidden to try to make money off of something so terrible. That, too, was accurate. Are you trying to make money off of your efforts to stop child-sex trafficking? Is Connie trying to make money? Is Keys Coalition trying to make money? Is Keys Coalition shaping up to be another “not-for-profit” business? I truly hope not.

——————————

In a nap after I wrote that to Tim, I asked him, in so many words, if he really wanted me to be involved in this; then, I started sort of giggling, like, if I got involved, he wasn’t going to like it. On waking, I thought maybe I would get around to publishing the above, but other stuff kept coming in for me to write into and publish.

Some days later, Tim sent this:

Subject: Street Outreaches on May 18th, A Night of Sharing One Love on May 19th.
From: jorgeveitia@solmedia.net
To: keyscoalition@live.com
Date: Thu, 16 May 2013 20:46:24 +0000

This weekend you have the opportunity to give Human Trafficking a one-two punch! View this email in your browser Share Tweet Forward to Friend On May 19th We Gather to Worship to End Human Trafficking. Although the preferred seats have sold-out, there are still plenty of excellent seats available for purchase  at the Night of SoL website.Don’t miss an opportunity to join together and worship, together we can be the light that pushes out the darkness that keeps South Florida in the top three areas for Human Trafficking.Hope to see you there!- Jorge Veitia Get out this Saturday morning and help spread awareness about the vulnerability of our runaway youth to Human Trafficking. 1 in 3 children become victims of commercial sexual exploitation within 48 hours. Today we have more than 50 children currently missing in South Florida. These children are modern day slaves and they deserve our help. This weekend we’ll be hosting 4 simultaneous Street Outreaches, pick one and sign-up today! Fortunately there’s a safe and effective way to bring awareness to our community and increase the opportunity these children will be identified and rescued. Sharing One Love equips Street Outreach Teams to visit local businesses and share the facts about Human Trafficking in the United States. Volunteers teach business owners how to identify and report suspected Human Trafficking and also survey their communities for commercial sex operations and other forms of Human Trafficking. There are  four street outreach teams conducting surveys in Miami Beach, Overtown and Biscayne Blvd,Hialeah and this month we welcome our newest team from Delray Beach. You can alsocheck our calendar of events for new groups that are forming. It is Free to Volunteer We make it easy for you to be a hero! It is important to spread awareness in communities where Human Trafficking exists, participating in an outreach will inform you of the dangers in our community and expose you to how it operates in your neighborhood. So become a volunteer today. Select a Street Outreach from our Calendar. Sign-up to join a Street Outreach Team for Free Commit to conduct a Monthly Street Outreach in your neighborhood. Contact us at  info@sharingonelove.org if you’d like to start your own outreach team(s). Facebook Twitter SOL. Media LoF Center Copyright © 2013 SOL.Media Network & Resources, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you opted in at an event or on our website. We only use this list to keep you up to date on SOL.Media and Jorge Veitia. You can opt-out of this list at anytime using the links provided. My apologies if there’s any misunderstanding.Our mailing address is: SOL.Media Network & Resources POB 414373 Miami Beach, FL 33141 Add us to your address book unsubscribe from this list    update subscription preferences

I wrote back to Tim:

Is this out of the goodness of Jorge’s heart, or is there a subtext, Jorge is trying to get business for
Media, Network and Resources, Inc., which will make him money?

Tim replied:

Of course I cannot say 4 sure but what he is doing is a good thing of course.

I wrote back:

What Jorge did at that church in Marathon was not a good thing.

depress Ctrl and + keys at same time to increase zoom (font size), depress Ctrl and – keys at same time to reduce zoom

There is a post today at goodmorningkeywest.com, which you should be able to reach by clicking on this link: Florida Keys school board member Ed Davidson, retired decorated Vietnam Marine aircraft carrier fighter pilot, on photo credits, imperviousness, clean hands, bank robbers, finger-pointing, dodging simple questions, selling out, etc., etc.

Meanwhile, a letter to the editor in The Key West Citizen today – www.keysnews.com, followed by article on same subject. My interjected thoughts in italics.

Assisted care center a long time coming

Shortly after the turn of the century when I was 64, a group of friends and I began talking about realistic retirement plans within the decade.

Speed forward. By May 2004, our City Commission set aside some land for an assisted living and independent living community. Next month, my friends founded the 20-member Florida Keys Assisted Care Coalition, a nonprofit group, for a feasibility study.

After lots of negotiations — not to mention Hurricane Wilma, which left me virtually homeless — Key West citizens by a 66.7 percent majority approved the Oct. 2, 2007, referendum to have the city lease the property.

I am 70. I have been homeless in Key West, nothing virtual or virtuous about it. That referendum was passed when I ran for KW mayor the second time. I was the only candidate in the mayor and city commission races, who opposed the referendum. Keep reading.

What is now under consideration is 60 units for assisted living — 25 affordable and 35 at market rate — plus 50 units for independent living — all affordable. Yet it seems to me nothing substantial has been allowed to move forward by city staff.

Nothing substantial moved forward for a long time, because (a) nobody in Key West wanted to fork out the money to build the senior living facility, and (b) the Coalition did not have a mainland developer lined up to build it, and (c) the developer who finally was found turned out to have a big skeleton in his scam closet he had not told the Coalition or the city about; they found it out almost too late.  Upon being found out, the developer boogied.

June 28 is the deadline set by the city for having a lease approved by the City Commission. It’s taken a dozen years to finally accomplish this vision. Wow.

Wow? Why didn’t the Coalition get the senior living facility built by a Key West developer, such as Ed Swift, who is a member of the Coalition and has been a loud proponent of it?

I hope concerned citizens will pack that meeting and keep their ears to the ground. This has not been the most speedy negotiation and has far exceeded standards for due diligence or transparency.

I am 76 years old now — a dozen years later from my initial planning. I now happily reside at Bayshore Manor, the county’s 16-bed assisted care facility on College Road. I’m lucky.

I wonder if Bayside Manor is at full capacity?

The public’s concern should be: Where are the boomers and other seniors going to go in these financially uncertain times? How many residents are already in need of assistance, and yet nothing is available?

All I ever heard was there was not enough seniors demand within Key West to fill the senior living facility. All I ever heard was seniors from up the Keys and on the mainland and beyond would be needed to fill the facility. That’s why I was against the referendum; I did not feel the city’s land should be given to a mainland developer to subsidize a senior living facility on high-end Truman Waterfront.

Let’s hope the city will proceed to honor its aging citizens to “age in place” and continue to be productively involved with our community.

John N. Gish Jr.

Key West

I’m all for Key West citizens being able to age in place, but I am not all for the city subsidizing a senior living facility for seniors who are not proven full-time residents of Key West. Meaning, they live in Key West. They sleep in Key West at night. I don’t believe Ed Swift, for example, fits into that category, as he lives in Key Haven, just beyond the Key West city limits.

Waterfront board OK’s assisted-living project
Support unanimous from advisory board; revamped senior housing proposal now heads to commission
BY GWEN FILOSA Citizen Staff
gfilosa@keysnews.com

An advisory board to the City Commission on Monday unanimously approved a revamped proposal to build a 110-unit senior housing complex on the Truman Waterfront.

The vote came 10 years after the same board approved an original plan, which was reworked a year ago after the first developer backed out, and six years after voters passed a referendum in favor of such a project on 3.3 acres of the valuable waterfront property handed over to the city from the Navy in 2002.

“This is a fantastic project,” said attorney Robert Cintron, chairman of the Truman Waterfront Advisory Board, after the 6-0 vote. “I don’t think it’s our business to question the location since the electorate did that years ago.”

Actually, years ago, the electorate, and the city commissioners and mayor, were told by Coalition members, including Peter Batty, which I heard, that there was only one place in Key West city limits to build the senior living facility, and that was on Truman Waterfront. In fact, there was a place on the city’s part of Stock Island, where the senior living center could have been built – the Easter Seals property, which backs up to the golf course and is very near the city’s beautiful tropical forest and botanical garden. Which also is on the road traveled by the areas’s people, as they go to and leave Keys Overnight Temporary Shelter (KOTS) each day. Which also is near the local hospital and the helicopter evacuation pad, used to take very sick or injured to Miami hospitals. Which is on a well-serviced city transit bus route, which buses connect that area to the North Roosevelt Boulevard shopping centers and area doctors offices. Truman Waterfront is clear across Key West from all of that, through horrible traffic. Today, the city intends to build a big assisted living facility for homeless people on the Easter Seals property.

The $31 million proposal by Wendover Housing Partners and backed by a local coalition whose members include businessman Ed Swift and nurse Joan Higgs, received a warm welcome by the appointed board.

Although the plan has changed and the years ticked away to the point where the coalition has until June 28 to sign a deal with the city, its backers have kept an unwavering commitment to see it through.

Members of the nonprofit Florida Keys Assisted Care Coalition comprised most of the 20 people in attendance at Old City Hall.

“I know it’s going to happen,” said Armando “Bookie” Henriquez, the coalition’s co-chairman after the meeting. “The need is too great for it not to.”

The meeting aimed to get everyone on the same page and to approve a plan unveiled Monday that calls for 60 assisted living units, of which 35 would go for a market rate cost of $54,000 a year per resident.

Those rents would help fund the “affordable” units planned.

While Wendover Housing hammers out a lease with city staff, the board’s recommendation heads to City Commissioners, where three members have recently questioned whether Key West will get short-changed by a project relying on deep discounts in rent.

“If there was some expectation you want a fair market rent, this would never work,” said developer Jeff Sharkey, of Tallahassee. “We recognize this is a prime piece of property, however, the community felt this was the right place for something like this. There’s no other place to go. I hear from everybody, there’s just no services available here. This is a stretch to make this work.”

The voters and the city commissioners and mayor understood in 2007 that the referendum was for a senior living facility the city would subsidize by virtually giving the land a developer under a nominal 99-year lease.

Sharkey’s team has offered an up-front land payment of $500,000 which would take care of the annual rent until the 11th year of a requested 53-year lease. At that point, the city would be paid an annual rent.

Monday’s vote is essentially an endorsement of the project to the City Commission, which has final say on the project and the lease.

No major sticking points remain as far as finances, city staff said Monday, and the negotiations are smooth compared to ones with the original developer, who was at odds with the city on a number of items.

“The referendum called for a mixed-income assisted and independent living facility, but did not name a developer,” said City Attorney Shawn Smith. “I don’t think the current project varies in a significant way from the broad language utilized in the referendum.”

Sharkey, who came on board the project a year ago, did almost all of the talking at the 1.5 hour meeting at Old City Hall.

City staff said the major project has required a thorough review.

“It’s a 90-year potential lease, we get one shot at it,” Assistant. City Manager Mark Finigan said. “The last thing we want to find out five years from now is that we left a lot on the table.”

Board members Al Sullivan and Sandra McMannis suggested tacking on a requirement to deliver a “market analysis” report that supports the senior housing complex before it could win city approval. But that was eventually shrugged off by the majority.

They have not even yet done a market analysis? Bizarre. How do they know there is enough senior demand in Key West to make it work? They know there are not enough senior demand in Key West to make it work. They know this is going to be yet another “condo development”, which the developer will try to sell to anyone from anywhere.

Sullivan questioned whether the complex could attract those needed 35 market-rate residents.

“We’ve spent a lot of time making sure at the end of the day, it’s going to work,” said Sharkey.

See market analysis in italics next above. That’s how they are going to make it work.

Board member Jim Gilleran said he wouldn’t support any conditions put on the board’s recommendation.

“They’ve done their homework to get to this point,” said Gilleran, a Duval Street bar owner. “You don’t risk $20 million and not have done your homework.”

Gilleran took note of the senior housing proposal’s age.

“I was a spry 41-year-old when this concept came up,” Gilleran said. “I recently got my AARP card. But seriously, this has been a long process with a deadline here. We have now a developer who has expertise in affordable housing.”

Board member Pat Labrada agreed.

“Let’s move forward,” said Labrada. “Let Dr. Sharkey and the city put it together; let them do their work. I hate for everything to have to keep coming back to this board. We’ve already made a decision of what we want.”

gfilosa@keysnews.com

I agree it’s time to bring this to a head. I just wish the city officials and the Coalition members would tell the newspapers and the public where the developer is going to look for seniors to fill a city taxpayer-subsidized senior living facility.

Sloan Bashinsky

keysmyhome@hotmail.com

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There is a post today at goodmorningfloridakeys.com, which you should be able to reach by clicking on this link: high explosives – Florida Keys school district

Meanwhile, today’s post at this website begins with a letter to the editor in The Key West Citizen today. I know the author somewhat, and see his letters to the editor from time to time. My interjected thoughts in italics.

Healthy democracy requires healthy press

I enjoy putting my thoughts down on paper because it helps me clarify the jumbled mess that is the data disseminated on a daily basis through print and monitor — an onslaught of information of various points of view mixed with snippets of journalistic factual information.

For example, we know four Americans died in a terror attack on our embassy in Benghazi, Libya. Depending on whom you listen to or read, you draw your conclusions according to your preconceptions and political leanings.

Not a recipe for enlightenment.

My conclusions from reading and watching TV news were easy to reach: Obama and his confederates ain’t telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth; and the Republicans are trying to use a mole hill, Bengazi, to make Americans forget the hundreds of thousands of Americans and other folks George W. Bush and his confederates needlessly and stupidly killed, maimed and battleshocked in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to forget, while running the national debt beyond any hope of repayment during the rest of forever. On that mountainous   topic, I received this yesterday from Ginger of Jupiter Beach, Florida:

Sloan,

I don’t see how anyone who is involved in ground combat can come out of military action in Vietnam, Kraq, Afghanistan, etc; without mental problems, depression, nightmares, etc.. These wars are damaging our country’s young men. We have thousands of soldiers returning mentally damaged, physically damaged, trained in warfare, guns…and it is amazing we don’t have more problems of violence. WARS destroy both the winners and the losers. Our country is going broke, masses of refugees and we don’t know who is good or bad, and thousands of young men with their lives and future destroyed.

Ginger

News in the golden age was reported by journalists of integrity such as Walter Cronkite and John Chancellor. They would stick to the factual aspects as best they were able to — because of said integrity — and opinion was left to other seasoned professionals. In those days opinion was called editorial comment and used sparingly, so as not to cloud the actual news.

Today we pretty much have the opposite “news” formula. We can tune in to any variation of opined information that validates what we already “know” as “fact.” (Sorry about all the quotation marks.) The cable news explosion has done nothing to improve the news, in fact quite the opposite.

I report what is given to me to report, and I provide my opinions on what I report, because my opinions usually are different from mainstream right and mainstream left opinions, and because my “editorial board” tells me to do it that way, in keeping with their indications of what I am to cover and the tone I am to use. They told me in dreams before dawn today that I would use Ginger’s email today, and I would be down in Key West working today. Nobody has to read a word I write. I figure if people read what I write, they want to read it.

Another disturbing trend in our current media is intimidation of investigative journalists. Our government is consistently making it more difficult to report on misdeeds done by government, industry and corporate powers. Every day we come closer to criminalizing journalism of the most important kind. The whistle-blowers are on a government hit list. To expose unconstitutional or illegal behavior will ruin careers, cost thousands of dollars in legal fees and possible prison time.

I sometimes get gripes from local government officials for what I write about them, or their local government. If I did not get gripes, I would wonder what I was doing wrong? So far, though, I have experienced no government pressure or infringment about what I write and post to my websites, much of which is quite volatile. Maybe the day will come when I have to deal with that; certainly, it would be fodder for my “editorial board” to have fun with, even if not fun for me. I told someone  yesterday, the Keys are notorious for disappearing people who rock the conch boat too much. I said, I have let it be known that I hope somebody gets so mad at me over what I write, that I get bumped off. I said, that takes all the fun out of it for people who prefer using that method to shut people up.

So much for transparency in government.

Actually, every day I shine the bright sunshine on our local and/or national government. And on our local news media. I give them kudos when they earn them, and I bonk them when they earn being bonked.

The infringement on our civil liberties started by W. is being expanded and enhanced by Obama in the form of new and more stringent laws to shut down and black out information that is embarrassing to Washington, D.C., or potentially damaging to corporate profits.

Until they shut down the Internet, they will have to deal with their critics in the bright sunshine. The Internet changed everything. Long live the free Internet!

In order for a healthy democracy to thrive, its citizenry must remain vigilant, engaged and informed and not be afraid to hear what is wrong in order to right it.

Alex Symington

Key West

It’s been my experience, Alex, that the citizenry generally are not vigilant, engaged and informed, and they do not want to hear what is wrong, and they do not want to right it. It is my opinion, Alex, that America is in her sunset years, and there is nothing to change that. Maybe I will not see the end, maybe you, who are a good bit younger than I won’t see the end; but the end is coming.

Meanwhile, on local journalism, from today’s barn-burner high explosives – Florida Keys school district post at goodmorningfloridakeys.com:

County Commissioner Sylvia Murphy (photo) recently asked me what did I think of the new online Key West the Newspaper? (www.thebluepaper.com) I said I thought it is doing great, except it has sold out to School Board member Andy Griffiths, and is presently useless for reporting on school district woes. I said The Blue Papers’s owners, Naja and Arnaud Girard, have children at Key West High School, which is notorious for retaliation and bullying. And, Andy Griffiths is advertising his school board position on the front page of Key West the Newspaper, and when Andy puts up something on Facebook about him, the school board and district, Naja clicks that she likes it. 

Sylvia is a straight-shooter. I agree with her most of the time on county issues. She seemed taken aback by what I told her about Key West the Newspaper and Andy Griffiths. Sylvia said maybe something will happen, and The Blue Paper will go after school issues the way it goes after other hot Keys issues. Meanwhile, she said I am giving the school district good coverage. I said, yes, but I do not have the readership Naja and Arnaud have. Sylvia said my writing is known throughout the Keys. What do I know, maybe it gets around better than I know. The great thing about publishing news and commentary online, it is easy for other people to open and read, and, if they like it, it is easy for them to copy the link, or an entire daily post, and drop it into an email to someone else, or eleses. Nothing I publish to my websites is copyrighted; it goes into the public domain every day. All I ask is that it not be altered or used out of context. I treat written feedback and contributions the same way.

I told Sandy Downs yesterday evening, what I do is I try to get down to the bottom of whatever I am given by my “editorial board” to cover in posts to my websites. I try to take the side of the facts, the truth, and if I don’t know if what people say is true, I simply publish what they say, or write, and comment on that, and leave it open for other people to write to me about it, which I also publish. Today’s high explosives – Florida Keys school district at goodmorningfloridakeys.com is a good example of all of that. Telling it like I see it saves me from later wishing I had told it like I see it. It also saves me from being bonked by my “editorial board”.

The fellow I told yesterday about my wishing someone would bump me off is the first person I have met in a years who knows he was shanghaied and is being led by God. We talked a long time after I told him the story of how I got into politics. He said he had never heard from anyone what I was telling him. He was open, ready. I said I hope God goes easier on him than God has gone on me. It was clear, though, the fellow is being put to the test and his pace is increasing.

Here’s what I told him about how I got into politics.

I was penniless on Maui. I heard on waking one morning, “Go to Big Pine Key.” Three days later, I was on an airliner, en route to Los Angeles. A few days later, I was on a Greyhound bus, en route to the Florida Keys. As the bus entered the outskirts of Tallahassee, the state capitol, I fell asleep. In a dream, the US District Judge, for whom I had clerked after I got out of law school, came to me and said he was thinking about getting into politics. I told him I didn’t think that was a good idea, but knowing him, he was going to do it. I awoke in shock. When he was alive, he had run the Democratic Party in Alabama. No Alabama Democrat ran for state or federal office, without seeking his blessing. I knew I was going to get into politics. The rest, a they say, is history. History recorded in over 3,000 different posts at this website, goodmorningkeywest.com, and its somewhat younger sister website, goodmorningfloridakeys.com, and at their much younger brother website, goodmorningbirmingham.com.

I told the shanghaied fellow, religion is every bit as much politics as is government.

He is a Christian recovering alcoholic. I shared how God had applied the 12 Steps to me. Even though I was not an alcoholic, I had to attend 12 Step meetings when I lived in Florida Keys Outreach Coalition shelters. I said it was horrible, and, in that way, the angels proved to me that the 12 Steps are for real. The recovering alcoholic told me how God had gotten him off of booze, and then had applied the 12 Steps to him. He agreed, God is a recovering alcoholic’s sponsor. He said, AA has lost its way. AA started with Bill having a white light experience, and AA is not today what Bill experienced and shared with other people. I said, I thought that was because AA had taken God out of the 12 Steps and had replaced God with Higher Power because so many people didn’t like God being in the 12 Steps.

We agreed, the first three steps are the launch:

1. I am insane.

2. There is nothing I can do about it.

3. If God doesn’t fix it, I’m a gonner.

My words. The shanghaied fellow and I have similar views about being saved by Jesus: living what he taught in the Gospels.

On a different addiction front, an email yesterday from Jerry Weinstock, M.D., retired psychiatrist, of key West,, who, worked most of his career for the school district, and is an avid and accomplished flats fisherman and an environmentalist.

Hi Sloan: the problem with deepening the channel
is that it must be dramatically deepened
the entire route from the outer reef into the
harbor—then maintained. Then after that
you may look around and the little environment
that was left before the deep dredged is totally
destroyed. The real issue is that Key West
was totally inappropriate for the huge Cruise ships to
begin with—it would annihilate the corals and biological
food chain of all organisms including fish crabs and lobster.
The real issue was the wondrous natural environment or
commerce–Cruise ships —now that we are addicted there
is little or no thought to the environment by those in charge.
In my opinion we made a very very bad choice. Even
economically the real money in Key West and Florida
comes from sport fishing —8 billion dollars dwarfs
all other revenue in this state.

I replied, not entirely in jest:

Agreed, although I imagine liquor drinking in Key West and the Keys is a big revenue producer.

Jerry replied:

Sloan: in Key West alone flats fishing
can generate over 400 million dollars,
Restaurants – hotels guest houses, tackle.
cameras,cloths , guides —on and on—I must have
$ thousands in tackle in my house plus endless
boat repair –constant — marina fees –job creation,
fuel , and new engines and boats.–Healthier and
more creative than drinking. (I have had my say for the
moment.) [ Key West was way to shallow for the cruise
ships and the shallows supported Conchs and Crabs and
was a treasure, shallow clean, clear light infused water-- is
the ultimate in in fertility. Eco-tourists are the wave now--and
for the future.] we have dropped the ball in my judgement.
Thanks Sloan!! ———— Jerry

Some discussion today in today’s high explosives – Florida Keys school district post at goodmorningkeywest.com, about Naval Air Station Key West jets seeding the atmosphere with aluminum compound to try to control the weather, and Naval Air Station Key West fighter jets jettisoning most of their fuel before landing, to reduce of huge explosion on crash-landings. In my line of work, military might is an addiction. In my line of work, addictions pervade humanity. I would be nice if “eco-addiction” took over Key West and the Keys.

In The Citizen today – www.keysnews.com – is a big guest column on the editorial page about widespread teen drinking in the Keys. A sobering excerpt.

Monroe County has the highest rate of drunk driving cases of all 67 counties in Florida. Our rate for DUIs is more than 246 per capita compared to the state average of 94, and we have held the record for at least 10 years.

Alarming for parents of teens, youth alcohol consumptio in the Keys is also consistently above the state average, with 27 percent of Keys’ high school students reporting binge drinking (five or mor drinks in a row) in the last month. According to Monroe County Sheriff’s Office data underage DUIs increased by 278 percent from 2001-2008.

Booze is the narcotic of choice down here. Key West is said, per capita, to have more bars, and more churches, than any other city in the world. Not in jest, I sometimes wonder if there is a correlation.

I asked the shanghaied fellow yesterday, when is he not ever in church? He said he is always in church. I said, me, too. No walls, no bricks, no mortar. On that subject, I suggested he rent the movie, “Stigmata”. He did not know what the Stigmata is, so I told him it is the spontaneous appearance of the wounds of Christ on a person’s body. He had mentioned St. Francis of Assisi earlier in our conversation, so I said Francis was the first person in Christendom recognized by the Rome church to have experienced the  Stigmata, just before he died. I also suggested the movie, “Brother Sun Sister Moon”, which is about St. Francis being shanghaied and ending with the Pope kissing Francis’ bare dirty feet – the evolution of Francis’ work for God, years before he received the Stigmata.

I also told the shanghaied fellow about the Letter to the Hebrews, and his initiation into the Priesthood Melchizedek, where he clearly is headed, if his course holds.

Sloan Bashinsky

keysmyhome@hotmail.com

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There is a post today at goodmorningfloridakeys.com, which you should be able to reach by clicking on this link: Capt. Eco Ed charm offensive – Florida Keys (grab your best hold)

Letters to the editor in The Key West Citizen today – www.keynews.com. My interjected thoughts in italics.  I provided photo.

Key West

Only a deeper channel will solve our problem

Any study done on the main ship channel that does not include deepening it will be a decision we will all regret. Of course it will be more expensive, but it is the only reasonable solution to the real problem, which is the never-ending silt plumes that have and continue to choke our marine life.

Well, a way to put an end to the never-ending silt plumes, as well as put an end to widening the channel, would be to ban all cruise ships from calling on Key West.

In the 1970s at Port Everglades, the tarpon fishing was actually good behind incoming freighters where the depth was 60 feet. Here the ships have 26- to 28-foot draft in a 32-foot deep channel. The silt is awful.

The fight over cruise ships needed to be fought in 1996. I was very anti-cruise ships then, but the damage has been done, so now we have an opportunity to mitigate the damage. As a radio host back then, I interviewed a person who was involved with state-of-the-art technology — I believe it was called cyclone technologies. After deepening the channel, this system — actually a giant suction with a cage and camera on the end of it so as to not endanger sea life — could be used to restore places like the three giant coral heads known at one time as the Eastern Triangle. These heads are now under 2 feet of silt, but could be a great base for coral restoration.

I let Billy Causey know about this technology before the last dredging of the channel and that the cost was one-third the cost of a hopper barge, but my pleas fell on deaf ears as usual.

Widen, don’t widen, but if we do not deepen the channel we will always be divided, as a community, over business versus environment. This is a solution; while not perfect, it can accommodate both user groups.

The Key West Chamber of Commerce and their “growing greener ever day (US greenbacks)” confederates don’t give a hoot about deepening the channel; they want to widen it, because that will allow bigger cruise ships to call on Key West. Widening also will allow the “small” cruise ships (photo above) already calling on Key West to get into port on days those ships cannot now make port because the channel is not wide enough for them crab against the wind into the channel.

Capt. Ken Harris

Key West

Christine Russell

The referendum ballot needs accurate wording

Living in Key West, I have seen enough deals drag on over many years. The mega-yacht marina comes to mind. The contract was awarded, but as nothing happened over time, we all realized there had been no time constraints put on the project in any way. The city, for some time, had no idea how not to offend the marina developer yet get out of the deal and move on with the park plans. None of us caught that omission initially.

One of us caught that omission, but nobody was listening to me back then. I was offending the marina developer and the city ongoing. Maybe that’s why nobody was listening to me. I’m still offending them. Maybe that’s why nobody listens to me now. 

So now I keep thinking about the channel-dredging referendum — let’s call it what it is. What have we not considered?

Amen, Sister

The Chamber of Commerce has vowed to gather the $750,000 that is the city’s portion of the study — this is not free. So, is there a time limit for them to get this money? Let’s face it, the chamber will drag this out forever if they are not given a strict time period to raise the $750,000.

Amen, Sister

Though just a study, if no one is interested in dredging through the National Marine Sanctuary, with a $36 million price tag (the city is responsible for 30 percent), then why would we waste taxpayer money and people’s time on a study? We need to get all the facts out there for the public to make an informed decision.

LOL, Sister, them getting all the facts out there for the public to make an informed decision.

Why is everyone so afraid to put the truth in the referendum and say, “determine the environmental, economic and social impacts of dredging the Key West Main Ship Channel through the National Marine Sanctuary …”

Come on, Sister. You know why. They have zero concern for the facts. They only have concern for bringing more and bigger crui$e $hip$ into Key West. You have lived in Key We$t a long time. You know them. You know what i$ important to them. I$n’t that why you finally through up your hands not all that long ago and decided to $ell your home and move away from Key We$t.

The referendum is only 55 words — 75 are allowed. As I said at the last City Commission meeting, it is not what you say in a referendum but what you don’t say that is dangerous.

Actually, Sister, they agree with you; what they do not say is dangerous, to them. That’s why they don’t say it.

Why is the chamber so fearful of the truth and the facts? The citizens have a right to the facts and as much information as possible in this referendum.

You know why, sister. They want to win; the truth and the facts are in their way.

Don’t you want as much information as possible?

You are making fun of the Chamber, right? Or, do you really believe the voters want as much information as possible? That’s never been my experience, and I’ve run for mayor of Key West three times, the county commission three times, and the school board once.

Please call or email the mayor and commissioners. Fact is, it is about dredging, and in the National Marine Sanctuary, and that should be in the referendum.

Amen, sister, but that ain’t gonna be in the referendum, because the mayor and your city commissioners don’t want it in the referendum, simple as that.

Christine Russell

Key West

Nothing changed in Key West while you were down in Panama enjoying life. Nothing’s gonna change in Key We$t, unless Mother Nature decides to weigh in. 

Keep reading.

Article in The Key West Citizen today – www.keynews.com:

Assisted living plan has deadline
BY GWEN FILOSA Citizen Staff
gfilosa@keysnews.com

The city of Key West continues to grapple with an almost decade-old proposal from a local group bent on placing an assisted living complex on the Truman Waterfront — at a deeply discounted lease rate.

In spite of plans and meetings and public argument over location and size, the proposal hasn’t budged a muscle in the direction of construction and is now on its second choice for a builder, Wendover Housing, of Altamonte Springs, Fla., and talking 110 units rather than 140.

And a new deadline looms:

City commissioners have given the Florida Keys Assisted Care Coalition Inc., the nonprofit group backing the project, until June 28 to agree to a lease.

Haven’t we heard this deadline before? Is this really a deadline? Not holding my breath.

All of this has prompted a special meeting of the Truman Waterfront Advisory Committee, 5:30 p.m. Monday at Old City Hall, 510 Greene St.

The committee’s chairman, attorney Robert Cintron, confirmed the meeting time and place, but said Friday he hasn’t seen an agenda.

But Cintron and others closely watching the assisted living project stop, start and stick in neutral said that the only agenda item is to set some records straight.

Doesn’t look to me like Cintron thinks there is a deadline. Keep reading.

Any beliefs that the assisted care coalition has thrown in the towel are sorely mistaken, said Sandy Higgs, coordinator for the coalition’s board of directors.

“What is not understood about what we are trying to do is the desperate need,” said Higgs, who went into grave detail describing what a single elderly person trying to live on her own could look forward to without anyone checking on her daily.

Such a Key West resident may find herself in a desperate state.

“You lay on the floor until somebody comes and maybe finds you,” Higgs said.

Me, personally, if I ever have that happen, I hope when somebody does come and find me, I’m died and gone to the hereafter. But that’s me.

The emotional argument isn’t needed when proposing assisted living homes for senior citizens, said City Commissioner Teri Johnston.

“It’s certainly a needed facility in Key West,” said Johnston. “There is not one person in Key West who doesn’t agree with that.”

At issue, she said, is the city possibly handing over valuable waterfront property for a song, when other spots in Key West, perhaps in New Town or Stock Island, could come open.

Teri, when you ran for city commission the first time, 2007, I ran for mayor. It was known to everyone who was listening that the valuable waterfront land would be given for 99 years to any developer who would build and operate the facility. It was known that was the only way a developer could build and operate the facility for a profit. The talk now about the builder paying a “fair” rent to the city is a total switcheroo.

The combinations for the proposed housing complex — the number of units that are market-rate versus the number of “affordable” ones — have changed several times since 2007.

Johnston said the commission is charged with exacting due diligence “before turning over a piece of the taxpayers’ land.”

Turning over the taxpayers’ land for a song to a developer was precisely what the voters authorized in 2007. What the voters were not told, though, by the city commissioners and mayor, who were told it by the assisted living coalition committee members, was there was not enough demand in Key West to fill the facility, and units would have to be filled by seniors living up the Keys, seniors living on the mainland, seniors living overseas, who wanted to move to paradise and live in a senior living facility subsidized by the free land. Has that demographic changed? Is there now sufficient demand in Key West to fill such a facility with seniors living in the city? I ask, because I still do not think it’s right for the city to give the people of Key West’s land to a developer, so he/she can build and operate a senior living facility for seniors living up the Keys, on the mainland and overseas. 

Join the club

The city’s aging endeavor to create a waterfront park out of the 33 acres the Navy handed over some 15 years ago hasn’t exactly moved much either.

Those valuable acres sit nearly empty, acting as a parking lot for events and an open-air float hangar for Fantasy Fest.

That’s because the various incarnations of mayors and city commissioners were not willing to make the tough decisions; but, instead, they created committees to talk to death the free land given by the Navy to the city; free land the present incarnation of city commissioners and mayor want a market rate rent for from a senior living facility developer.

Only last week did the Navy’s real estate officer for the Southwest announce that the city can have an exclusive shot at hammering out a new lease for the Outer Mole Pier, owned by the Navy and leased out to the city for welcoming cruise ships.

In February, the local Navy commander ordered Truman Harbor closed to local traffic, including big blue “Duck” sightseeing vehicles and the boats the city planned to pack in at a private marina to be built on the waterfront.

The potential marina, and its promise of revenue for the park, is gone.

What promise of revenue? Didn’t the developer, the Key West Spottswoods, and somebody they brought in, wanted the city to give them the waterfront to make a mega-yacht marina work? Didn’t Spottswoods, etc. not want to be personally liable on the financing? Like what had happened at upscale Beachside at the top of Key West, where Spottswoods, etc. walked away and left others to pay the financing, didn’t Spottswoods, etc. want to be able to walk away if the mega-yacht marina did not work out, and leave the city operating and paying for the mega yacht marina? Might be the Navy saved Key West a heap of grief by nixing the mega-yacht marina.

In similar rocky fashion, the assisted living coalition has hit its share of walls.

Designs and details have changed, from an original proposal of 140 small apartments split between independent living and assisted living, to the latest plan of 60 units of assisted living, 35 at market rate and the rest with reduced rents according to income.

Fifty apartments, all “affordable housing,” are to join the planned 60 assisted living units on the 3.3 acres along the waterfront that voters in 2007 agreed to reserve for a senior residential complex.

Actually, and despite the wording of the referendum below, the senior living complex was promoted to the voters as an “assisted living” facility for Key West seniors. It was not promoted to the voters as a  retirement facility for seniors who could take care of themselves. And, it was not promoted to the voters as being for seniors who don’t live in Key West, or even in the Keys. 

This was the question that won voter approval:

“To encourage housing for senior citizens, shall the Naval Properties Local Redevelopment Authority of the City of Key West be authorized to lease real property of approximately four acres located on the Truman Waterfront, to a qualified operator or management company, that has not yet been selected, for a period of 99 years for exclusive use as a mixed-income senior citizens assisted living and independent living facility?”

Age in Paradise

The Florida Keys Assisted Care Coalition’s mission statement and “guiding principles” are on its website, www.fkacc.org., where its home page slogan is, “You deserve to age in place in ‘Paradise.”

This coalition has its share of Conch power.

Founded by Key West politicos Ed Swift and Peter Batty Sr., and including co-chair Armando “Bookie” Henriquez, the group was blindsided in early 2012 when the developer, Rick Dover, who had been negotiating with the city for over a year on construction, backed out.

Dover couldn’t come to a lease agreement with city officials, who discovered and aired out his 30-year-old conviction for making false statements to a savings and loan in Texas.

City staff said Dover should have offered up that fact and not left it for them to discover. Dover bowed out, sending the coalition back to square one.

The coalition this month released a four-page letter titled “Assisted Living Update,” and signed by group members Joan Higgs and Sandy Higgs.

Agreed. After he was found out, Dover, who, as I recall, had made heaps of nose about his and his company’s good character and virtues, made up a lame excuse to pull out of the negotiations. Good riddance.

The letter outlines the history of the project, noting the October 2007 referendum in which 67 percent of voters agreed the city should lease the Truman Waterfront property for assisted living homes.

That vote is a sticking point between city leaders and the coalition, among others in Key West.

City leaders say the referendum never meant to shell out the waterfront property for $1 a year for 99 years, while the coalition’s update says “even the vocal minority that opposed the project” understood the 99-year lease would come “at virtually no cost.”

Not true, said City Attorney Shawn Smith.

“City staff has been vigilant in ensuring that a fair lease is developed,” Smith said in a prepared response to the group’s letter. “This includes making sure that a piece of taxpayer property is not given away for little or no value so that a private party can make a substantial profit.”

Yada, yada, yada. At virtually no cost land is precisely what the voters understood they were approving, for the senior living facility to have any chance of working out.

The half-million beef

The coalition letter twice mentions that the city has asked for a half-million dollar payment “upfront” from the builder.

“The city would be well advised to eliminate its request for a $500,000 upfront payment and reinvest that sum into the operating costs of the project to help more lower income residents,” the letter said.

The city never asked for a half-million upfront, attorney Smith said, the new developers did.

A 12-page project summary sent to City Manager Bob Vitas from Wendover Housing Partners, dated Sept. 25, 2012, sketches out the Truman Village Senior Residential Community as 100 units, split between assisted and independent living.

The developers suggest that Truman Village pay the city $500,000 “for the property at closing of financing and start of construction, and strike a 50-year lease in which the annual rent kicks up to $15,000 per year in the 11th year of operations.”

The same summary, signed by Jonathan Wolf of Wendover, and Jeffrey Sharkey of Coral Sky Development in Tallahassee, says that rents for the 50 independent living senior homes will range from $308 to $950 per month for affordable units and $1,100 per month for the market rate ones.

That’s seriously cheap rent for Key West. I lived in a one-room efficiency in Key West from 2007-2010, which was classified as affordable housing by the city and under my lease. I payed $1,150 a month, which included utilities and one parking space in the parking lot.

The real problem seems to still remain; the city has yet to require from any developer applicant a commitment/requirement that only seniors, who already live in Key West, will be allowed to apply to live in the senior living facility, if it ever is built and operating. In the beginning, Ed Swift, Peter Batty, and the rest of the Coalition knew there was not enough demand in Key West to fill such a facility. I know they knew, because I heard Peter Batty say they knew at a pubic meeting in Key West. If that demographic has not changed, will the public now be told by the city commissioners and mayor and city attorney and city manager, that this was never and still is not to be a facility just for Key West seniors – it will be made available to seniors living anywhere?

Not holding my breath.

Sloan Bashinsky

keysmyhome@hotmail.com

The pen is mightier than the sword, thus the sword defends the pen - given to me by my “editorial board” in the spring of 2001

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There is a post today at www.goodmorningfloridakeys.com, which you should be able to reach by clicking on this link: terminally dysfunctionally insane – Florida Keys school administration

Yesterday morning, from Naja Girard, co-publisher of Key West the Newspaper (www.thebluepaper.com), published every Friday online, and current president of Last Stand:

Have I been excommunicated? No email from you this morning…

Naja

About two weeks ago in a post, I accused Naja and her husband Arnaud of weening out on writing about Horace O’Bryant K-8 School’s construction record keeping woes. Later, when the occassion arose, I spoke well of Naja and Arnaud’s work in other areas of critical concern in Key West and the Keys. Perhaps Naja had not seen those later posts. In any event, I wrote back to her:

Not hardly, am running slow today with emailings; but, you can see today’s post at www.goodmorningkeywest.com; in part of it, strong tout for your and Arnaud’s N. Roosevelt Blvd. boondoggle article and cartoon in today’s KWTN issue. You guys do great work, but it looks to me you don’t want to get into/go after HOB or the school district. I probably will have something more on HOB tomorrow, based on something from Sandy Downs today, which expanded, and I sent it all to Larry Murray to ponder and hold forth on. Part of why I’m running slow with emailings today. I did not realize this time last year that I basically would be publishing nearly a daily newspaper online.

Naja replied:

We’ve got a lot of irons in the fire as they say. I am awaiting some public records that I requested from the School District to see if I can come up with anything that would shed more light (or at least help me get a little more detail on the situation). I’m seeing the HOB issue is getting pretty good coverage in the other papers. We’re such a small operation (could certainly use a few investigative writers willing to work for free right about now )

We’re trying to focus on stuff that the other papers aren’t covering well or at all. I am curious about the whole contractor “savings” issue and have asked for some follow-up on that, but generally am getting the impression that with Capt Ed, Pimbramsky, Kessler, Murray and you on the HOB issue, its being looked after pretty well without Arnaud and I sticking our two cents in. So, we may do a piece soon – depending on what comes our way this week from the School District files.

Yeah, this online news thing sure is a lot of work (we’ve been scratching our heads wondering how we got ourselves into this predicament). Can’t deny it’s interesting work… but I was literally up all night! How long have you been doing this??

Naja

I replied:

First, I dream to you this morning, but you were younger, maybe 30, as I said in the dream you looked about 30. You also were luscious, as in, turning me on. There were other women in different parts of the dream, but only you turned me on. Now, you can take that as a compliment, not a proposition. However, I have dreams like that from time to time, the person’s and the angels’ way of letting me know just how important that person, representational, also actual in our current waking life interaction is for me at that time, if not also long term. So, when I received your reminder and link for The Blue Paper this week, I opened it right up and saw that beauty demolishing job you guys did on Billy Wardlow and his confederates on the city commission, and on DOT. I knew I needed to tell my readers today that they really ought to see it.

As for how I do it? Well, you probably can’t do it this way, but, then, I don’t have a husband and young children to take up my time. I only have what happens, which leads to me writing about it on my websites, which is being arranged by the “editorial board”, that would be the angels. As they want me to get into something, they bring it to me in some way. I never go looking. It just shows up, either in a newspaper, in an email, at a city our county commission or utility board public meeting the angels tell me to attend. Or, in a movie I take in. Or in a dream. Or in a phone call. I never know where the material is coming from; only, it is coming, and there is no end to it in sight. I usually take two naps a day; sometimes only one nap, sometimes three naps, sometimes four naps. That’s how tiring/rough the incoming material can be on me physically and psychically. I never stay up all night, though. Each day is a deadline, like a daily newspaper. I’m more like a printing press and sewerage treatment plant, the angles are feeding the garbage and words through me. I’ve explained all of that in various ways before.

You and Arnaud are in a different mode, but even so, I believe you are being fed what to cover; I am certain you were fed to cover school district stuff. I also am certain, the angles did all they could to used me to persuade Larry Murray to write a weekly school district column for you, which would have left you and Arnaud free to cover topics more familiar to you. I also tried to get Larry to write regularly into the Coconut Telegraph blog at www.bigpinekey.com, which has a much bigger readership than my websites. So far, he seems content to write to me, for me to publish it. Alas, I don’t have the readership numbers the Coconut Telegraph and The Blue Paper have. Alas, Larry does not type and does not know how to use a computer or the Internet. His lovely wife does all of that for him, as he tells it to her. That may be why he does not write regularly into the Coconut Telegraph and The Blue Paper; it would be too much strain for his wife, given the other stuff he has her type for him and send out.

I am so very glad my father convinced me to take typing my sophomore year in high school. He said it would always come in handy later. He had taken typing at some point in time. He had no clue just how handy it would come in. I wonder, often, what he thinks where he now is of his oldest son? Even though, he was already getting glimpses when I was winding down my law practice and writing consumer-oriented insider tells all the secrets books, based on my experiences practicing law.

Well, I don’t suppose any of that helps you not have to stay up all night. I still am interested in writing a weekly column for The Blue Paper, on top off all the other little skirmishes I get involved in, but I think were I to do that, it would be on topics that originate from wherever, not particularly geared to what you and Arnaud might have brewing openly, or out of sight. It would be a surprise each week. If the angels are okay with that. Maybe I should have taken their counsel before writing that above, but there is no doubt I could write stuff about the school district, for example, the likes of which your readers never will see in The Citizen or the Keynoter. Tomorrow’s post will be an example, as things are going so far today. You might have to be willing, at times, to put up with my letting other people have their say, and I make my response. That’s not standard journalism, it’s interactive journalism; it’s different, it’s in the moment; it’s poignant.

There are many facets to just HOB. Personally, I feel the public is more interested in seeing the dynamics, than reading through something which might mostly only interest an accountant, that would be Steve Pribramsky, or a former IRS auditor trainer, that would be Larry Murray. Dynamics give readers a feel for the players, the prospects, or lack thereof; the people who got voted into office, the people who got hired to do a job, the people who stuck with the school district issues even though they didn’t get voted into office, or hired, or appointed to a committee.

Feel free to use as a letter to the editor my tout of your take no prisoners N. Roosevelt article today. I imagine Billy Wardlow will be thrilled to read it.

Sloan

The tout:

Also down Key West way, this week’s edition of online Key West the Newspaper is available – www.thebluepaper.com.
Here is the teaser for the feature article, which makes city commissioner Billy Wardlow out to be an idiot, a lying idiot, in fact; the city government out to be about the same; the Florida Department of Transportation out to be in league with the Devil, which would be the contractor doing the job. The cartoon is from an earlier blue paper edition; in the article today is a new cartoon. You need to open the link above to see Arnaud Girard’s latest artistic mischief.

————————————-

I started this website in mid-2006. Now there are over 2,100 separate posts in the Archives, maybe half again as many different posts in the www.goodmorningfloridakeys.com Archives, and over 300 different posts in the much newer www.goodmorningbirmingham.com archives. Before the websites, I was publishing daily to my email contacts list, going back at least to the fall of 2002, when I became involved in a referendum for a Citizen (Police) Review Board going on the ballot in Key West. Dennis Reeves Cooper, founder and publisher of Key West the Newspaper was heavily involved in that referendum going on the ballot, much to the dismay of the then city commissioners and then mayor, Jimmy Weekley. Some of my daily missives back then about Dennis and me were well-received in city hall, and, I suppose, that is what launched my publishing career in Key West. That, and when I gave Dennis a soul drawing with “The pen is mightier than the sword, thus the sword defends the pen” on it, he gave the drawing back to me. As Naja wrote in The Blue Paper this week, “It may be unpleasant, but somebody’s got to do it.”

Meanwhile,

last night, Larry Murray told me that his wife had seen an Andy Griffiths school board member ad in this week’s issue of The Blue Paper, and he wondered if that is why Naja has posted likes to Andy’s school board Facebook page? Larry wondered if Naja wants to keep Andy’s ad in The Blue Paper? I said, I wonder if that’s why Naja hasn’t published anything about the school district? I opened www.thebluepaper.com and on the home page, on the right side where the ads are, is an Andy Griffiths school board member ad. Clever of Andy; that might make it difficult for Naja and Arnaud to cover the school district with the same vigor they cover other subjects of critical concern in the Keys. As might Naja and Arnaud having children in Key West public schools. I don’t have children in Keys schools, and I don’t take ads, and I don’t worry about how other people might take what I write about them, or about what is dear to them. I worry about doing what the “editorial board” tells me to write, in the way they want to me to write it.

In that regard is a new blackboard jungle praise report today at goodmorningfloridakeys.com, which you should be able to reach by clicking on this link: terminally dysfunctionally insane – Florida Keys school administration

Sloan Bashinsky

keysmyhome@hotmail.com

wild queen conch

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Jerry Weinstock (weinstock@bellsouth.net)

 

8:31 PM

To: sloanbashinsky@hotmail.com

Diesel fumes —near roadways because
cities do not have Cruise ships sitting in the middle of the city.!!!

One Cruise ship in one day emits the
equivalent of 13 million cars————–Jerry

—– Forwarded Message —-
From: ”Dominique Browning, Moms Clean Air Force” <dominique@momscleanairforce.org>
To: weinstock@bellsouth.net
Sent: Thu, May 16, 2013 8:20:14 PM
Subject: Air pollution & asthma

I, Sloan, am unable to get these pics to say in view, so scroll down past the blank spaces, read the text, and keep on scrolling down to other features in this happy meal.

Dear jerry and Donna, Click here to read the e-book Moms Clean Air Force is sending you a free e-book calledASTHMA TRIGGERS: A Guide for Parents, Teachers, Doctors, and Nurses. Asthma is a national epidemic. Nearly 26 million Americans live with asthma — including 7 million children. While we can control some of theasthma triggers in our homes, we can only protect ourselves from air pollution triggers by supporting strong regulations to clean our air. The Environmental Protection Agency has recently proposed a very important regulation, with the support of the automobile industry: the Tier 3 Standards. The rule will clean up our gasoline and tailpipe emissions. Send a message to the EPA telling them you support their new Tier 3 standards. The air near major roadways is a notoriously noxious mix of diesel exhaust, oxides of nitrogen, sulfur dioxide, coarse particles, smaller particles (or soot), as well as the ground level ozone (or smog) that results from these emissions. These pollutants, alone and in combination, damage our children’s lungs: they trigger asthma attacks, they impede normal lung development in children, and they may actually cause the underlying disease of asthma to develop in children without asthma. The Tier 3 Standards will reduce levels of dangerous traffic pollution across the nation.  Remember, we share the air. That’s why Moms Clean Air Force is uniting to protect strong clean air standards – the promise of the Clean Air Act signed into law more than forty years ago by Democrats AND Republicans. We hope you will find this e-book helpful — and that you will use it in good health. Sincerely, Dominique Browning Co-Founder and Senior Director, Moms Clean Air Force PS: Join Moms Clean Air Force for a Twitter chat with experts from the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America. Click for more information.

Also down Key West way, this week’s edition of online Key West the Newspaper is available – www.thebluepaper.com.

Here is the teaser for the feature article, which makes city commissioner Billy Wardlow out to be an idiot, a lying idiot, in fact; the city government out to be about the same; the Florida Department of Transportation out to be in league with the Devil, which would be the contractor doing the job. The cartoon is from an earlier blue paper edition; in the article today is a new cartoon. You need to open the link  above to see Arnaud Girard’s latest artistic mischief.

Roosevelt Boulevard Watch: Things Are Not All That Swell On The Boulevard

BY ARNAUD AND NAJA GIRARD

The infamous green fence that hid the Boulevard worksite blew away last week in an unexpected gust of wind.  It revealed the same moonlike landscape, unmanned machinery, and lack of progress and has renewed the perplexity of passersby jammed in traffic.According to local mainstream press, some Key West politicians, and FDOT everything is swell on the Boulevard.  One might think business was thriving.   The Key West Citizen even reported last week that new businesses are opening up and Commissioner Billy Wardlow, in whose district the project lies, declared himself proud of the achievement.  It really looked as though no one has bothered asking those business people on the Boulevard about their side of the story.

So here it comes. It may be unpleasant work but someone’s got to do it: [...full article]

 

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There is a post today at goodmorningfloridakeys.com, which you should be able to see by clicking on this link: death throes of America, living off the land, and other not well-advertized related ponderables

Meanwhile, corrections to yesterday’s stars fell on Key West, and on Ponte Vedra post.

Pritam Singh, master salesman

I make a mistake in yesterday’s stars fell on Key West, and on Ponte Vedra post, when I wrote that Pritam Singh has two hotel developments underway in Key West. The two are one and the same. Otherwise, what I wrote in yesterday’s post stands. To it, I now add, I was at a city commission meeting when commissioner Mark Rossi went off on Pritam because there was nothing in Pritam’s development proposal showing where his hotel’s employees would park. Mark said no way would he vote to approve the hotel until Pritam proved he had off-site, off-street, parking for the hotel’s employees. Pritam did not argue that his employees were entitled to park on city streets where there already is a shortage of free residential parking spaces. Pritam said employees who came to work in cars would park under the hotel. Other employees would walk, ride bicycles or come to work by bus. Pritam said most of the hotel’s guests would not have vehicles. Mark did not buy it, insisted Pritam have proof of off-site parking for his employees. Pritam said that would be taken care of, parking would be rented somewhere for his hotel’s employees. Perphaps at the city’s parking deck on Caroline Street, perhaps somewhere else. Pritam took high offense that Mark insinuated Pritam was trying to pull a fast one. Pritam lost it, to be blunt. First time I ever saw, or even heard, of Pritamn losing it.

Mark Rossi, city commissioner, whose sin businesses on lower Duval Street are said to do quite well off of cruise ship passengers and other tourists and lower Keys and Key West residents

There was nothing in yesterday’s article in The Key West Citizen, reported in full in yesterday’s post, indicating where Pritam’s employees will park when the hotel opens. According to The Citizen article, there will be 96 rooms in the “swank” resort, and 97 underground parking places. I learned later yesterday, that means 97 parking places at ground level, beneath the two story hotel on stilts. Not 97 parking places underground, as was reported in The Citizen yesterday.

Several years ago, Pritam’s good friend Jim Hendrick told me that Pritam was the best salesman Jim had ever met; Pritam was a master at getting people to see what he wanted them to see, and to not see what he didn’t want them to see. I told Jim, that’s how Lucifer sells. I’m being redundant, again.

Moving laterally,

received this cheery chain of emails yesterday from Jerry Weinstock, M.D., of Key West.

Sloan–this to the school board–Jerry

—– Forwarded Message —-
From: Jerry Weinstock <weinstock@bellsouth.net>
To: “andy@fishandy.com” <andy@fishandy.com>
Sent: Mon, May 13, 2013 12:31:26 PM
Subject: Re: Fw: to Tom Tuell: Letter to the Editor

Andy: thanks for responding: I will try to make this as brief
and to the point as possible: Original article:
Volk HE, Lurman F, et al.
Traffic related air pollution, ambient
particulate matter, Nirogen Dioxide
and autism. JAMA Psychiary 2013;70
(January 1): 71-77.
Explanatory: OEHHA ( Office of Enironmental Health Hazard
Assessment) air Toxicology and Epidemiology:
“Diesel exhaust and gasses suspended in the air:—–
as we breathe the toxic gasses and small particles are
drawn into the lungs–microscopic particles in diesel
exhaust are less than one-fifth the thickness of a human hair–
penetrate deep into the lungs—absorbed- and contribute
to a range of health risks—-including ABSORPTION of nitrogen dioxide—”
“EXPOSURE TO DIESEL EXHAUST PARTICLES POSES
THE HIGHEST CANCER RISK OF ANY TOXIC AIR
CONTAMINANT EVALUATED BY OEHHA.
the amount of total pollution in one day emitted by
one Cruise ship is apprx. equal to carbon exhaust of 13 million cars.
ANDY : they go on to name all the carcinogenic substances in
detail —-too long to go into at this time.
from the original bulletin: Autism risk—strongly
associated —(substances named) and to NITROGEN DIOXIDE
in gestational period (pregnancy) and infancy.
Andy—-I wasn’t looking to write this –but felt
obligated and responsible—-we are one of the
few cities that takes the Cruise Ships directly into the middle of
the city.—–to add to what we already have would be
a suspension of judgement. I have more —-this is just a
summary —you are welcome–as you know— to contact
me any time night or day—- Sincerely—-Jerry
From: “andy@fishandy.com” <andy@fishandy.com>
To: Jerry Weinstock <weinstock@bellsouth.net>
Sent: Mon, May 13, 2013 8:57:38 AM
Subject: Re: Fw: to Tom Tuell: Letter to the Editor

Thanks for sending. Roger also sent this to me last week. Do you know of any published studies specific to cruise ship exhaust and Autism? I understand the JAMA report about the connection with nitrogen dioxide but not sure of the extent of exposure through breathing exhaust fumes perhaps comparable to second hand smoke?
Andy
On 5/13/2013 6:52 AM, Jerry Weinstock wrote:
Hi Andy: at your discretion I would think it may be
irresponsible for the school board not to be aware
of this that affects so many children –school age-
and prompts so much grief. Best wishes:
Jerry Weinstock, M.D.

—– Forwarded Message —-
From: Jerry Weinstock <weinstock@bellsouth.net>
To: editor@keysnews.com
Sent: Sat, May 4, 2013 8:00:34 PM
Subject: to Tom Tuell: Letter to the Editor
Autism and Cruise Ships

Autism risk is strongly associated with exposure
in pregnancy and infancy to a certain type of air
pollution that contains nitrogen dioxide and
ambient particulate matter. Low grade diesel fuel
when burned emits both of these such as showers
us and we breathe in the fine graded black soot
we are familiar with emitted from the stacks of Cruise
Ships parked in the middle overlooking Key West.
This result from a long term study reported in JAMA,
The Journal of the American Medical Association.
Just this year, in addition, as a physician, I just received
a bulletin associated with my CME, Mandatory
Continuing Education, strongly connecting nitrogen
dioxide as a definite risk factor to the development
of Autism. In addition, the OEHHA, Office of Health
Hazard Assessment, lists specifically diesel exhaust
to include cancer causing substances as benzene,
arsenic and formaldehyde these spew over us and
saturates our skin and lungs from Cruise Stacks.
These cause cell mutation precursors to deadly cancer.
Elizabeth Becker, respected NY Times journalist
published Overbooked, a 448 page book about tourism.
where she details Costa Rica and France as gaining
tourists due to their strong environmental regulations.
Costa Rica will not admit American developers instead
creating nature preserves, both countries protecting their
coasts, forests, wetlands, and cottage industries.
Becker unleashes a diatribe of researched criticism
against such names as Carnival registering in countries
with non-existant dumping laws, turning ports into
crowded bazaars of churning havoc and tacky merchandize
leaving their garbage behind on land and waters degrading
what they contact. I have 50 references substantiating this
plus other abuses that Cruise Ships perpetuate.
Key West has mostly functioned as an undemocratic,
autocratic quasi-dictatorship, self interested people
denying the devastation of our corals,the ships crushing
our harbor, decimating Tarpon fishing and migration
with their blend of toxic stirred up sediment, silt, debris
and petrochemicals from bilge emptying, not to mention
dirtying our once clear sweet waters with raw excrement
and sewage, creating other health hazards for us.
Wonderful, beautiful Key West was ours to use but not
to lose !
Submitted by Jerrold J. Weinstock, M.D.
305-294-3094 : One Bougainvillea ave.
Key West, Florida.

What you wanna bet Mark Rossi, the Key West Chamber of Commerce and the other pro-channel-widening study proponents do all they can to make voters see what they want the voters to see, and to make voters not see what they don’t want voters to see? Dr. Weinstock’s letter to the editor is what City Clerk Cheri Smith told me in two emails she would not read into the record at the last city commission meeting, because the letter had nothing to do with the channel-widening study referendum, which was what was on the city commission meeting agenda that night. I’m being redundant, again.

Quoting Dr. Weinstock from two days ago, reproduced in yesterday’s post:

Sloan —I appreciate your links—and you thinking of me.
Jerry
the people of Key West have been bamboozled repeatedly!
The corps of Civil Engineers are pro-construction and they
ALWAYS need EPA —oversight –their past is littered with
environmental disasters. Who in their right mind wants
degradation of the environment–air and water–( I knew
Pat Hemingway —in Montana –fished near his home.
and had breakfast everyday with the artist that rented his
barn—ALSO— close friends with Charles Thompson Jr.
son of Hemingway’s best friend—-far different picture of
the real Hemingway—fished his favorite rivers in the
UP of Michigan –the most remote and people empty
places on the planet. no one there) my wife is from there–
Would he be here with Cruise ships ?? a LAUGH –
many good writers left as Tom McGuane and Jim Harrision
too crowded !! they ran) Key West is on the way
to becoming an open sewer–once beautiful. —-Jerry

basically —are the key West Commissioners idiots or
just slimy !!?? Rossi has alway been for Rossi.

———————————————–

Key West’s elected officials are a by-product of the people who voted them into office; the coconut don’t fall far from the tree. I’m being redundant, again.

I wrote back to Jerry:

Your specialty is … psychiatry?

I replied:

In a “past life”, I was in love with fishing the flats, mostly around Islamorada. My father bought a nice place on the Atlantic side of Lower Matecumbe in 1963, which he kept until 2001. I became very good friends with flats guide Rick Ruoff, who was very active environmentally. He attended U of Miami, majored in marine biology. Started fishing weekends in the Keys while still at Miami. Decided to become a flats guide after graduating. He trout fished and guided in Wyoming and Montana, too. Still has a place in Montana.

Back in the day, I heard many times, some flats guides did very well running drugs in at night from the mother ships. They knew the way, the markers, the channels. I heard, eventually, the DEA had to hire flats guides to catch flats guides running drugs at night.

Your medical specialty hits my funny bone. I hear many people in the Keys are convinced I am psychotic. Jim Hendrick told me a few years back that a well known and respected psychologist in the Keys said I displayed classical symptoms of schizophrenia. I tell you about that, just in case you didn’t know you are getting a “reputation” perhaps different from what you have enjoyed by having this dialogue with me .

Ciao

P.S.

In late December 1987, Rick Ruoff and I trailered his flats skiff up to Key Largo and fished the flats near the Ocean Reef Club. Probably the same flats I had fished with a guide decades before, when my family stayed at the Ocean Reef Club during spring break. [When I fell in to love with the Keys and flats fishing.] A very, very different place back then. Anyway, as we crossed the creek which runs into the Ocean Reef Club, Rick told me of when a federal judge had fined Ocean Reef Club $60,000 a day, until it stopped dumping its raw sewerage into that creek on outgoing tides. I was astounded that people so rich would do something like that. Later, as I recall, Capt. Ed Davidson told me he was involved in that lawsuit. Now he’s giving the school district and school board what for.

The article in The Citizen today about the county government making a token effort, at most so far, to do something about the widespread pollution in the 502, more or less, polluted canals in the Keys. Back in the day, there were few canals, because the waterline coming down from the mainland was small and nobody could tie new construction into it. I remember when they dug canals on Lower Matecumbe, anticipating the new waterline coming down. After the waterline came down, canals and development exploded.

Surely, even back then, they had to know that 20-30-foot-deep canals would become polluted. They had to know the tides could not flush out those canals, especially the closed-ended ones which ran in a long way from the ocean. The article talks of trying to fix 5 selected canals, and needed $300 million to fix them all. About what was needed to sewer the Keys, if you include Key West and Marathon. Compliments the Developer God.

When I ran against George Neugent in 2006 and was mantra-ing, “No more new development in the Keys, period, the end; the Keys already are way over-developed,” George told a candidate forum audience that he was afraid I would bankrupt the county government if I was elected. Now, while the county commissioners talk about a token clean up of 5 polluted canals they don’t have the money to clean up, they are talking about buying Rowells Marina on Key Largo, isn’t it? Oh, did I forget to mention the Hickory House marina they bought on Stock Island a few years back?

That day fishing the flats off Key Largo with Rick was the last time I went bonefishing. I told Rick that day I had lost interest in fishing the flats and was only doing it that day because it was the only way I could spend a lot of time with him. Sometimes Rick comes to me in dreams with messages from the angels about where the fishing is good, where it’s not good, and what I can do to make it better, or stop doing to make it better.

Yesterday, from a former Little Torch Key resident:

Hi Sloan

Please remove me from your e-mail sending addemnum as I no longer live in the keys as of this past JAN.

The main reason why I left the keys after 35 + years was that the crime & politics ( which was 1 in the same ) was on an scale that has reached an all time high that only ranks up there with WASHINGTON D.C.  itself !

I still read the COCONUT TELE everyday for laughs that I get from listening to the complaints from the old timers like myself that wants the keys to return to the old days & we know that will never happen.

Leaving the keys was painful to me & at the same time was a blessing that I now enjoy everyday that I am up in the middle of the state and
enjoying everyday.

keep up the targeting that you do to try to keep people aware of what is really happening to them down there !

Ken barbi D

I replied:

Well, dang, Ken! Sorry you left, glad to hear you like it better where you now are. I suppose even a Category 5 hurricane sweeping the Keys would not return them to the old days; I imagine a frenzy to rebuild, maybe even bigger more, would ensue, probably with plenty of help from US taxpayers via FEMA.

Looking like I will keep on targeting, after dreaming before dawn this a.m. of being before a committee of men and women, a woman seemed to be their spokesperson, discussing my writings and my general delight about being on this planet. I didn’t recognize them from my waking life. The woman said I would be here a good while. I was thrilled to hear that.

Ciao -

Sloan

Maybe two years ago, Ken told me that he had contacts in the US Bureau of Land Management, who had told him on the side that there was no way the Bureau was going to get involved in the Wisteria Island title controversy Naja Girard, now co-publisher of Key West the Newspaper – www.thebluepaper.com – had stirred up, mostly with her husband Arnaud’s help, but also with some prodding by the angels through me. Today, it looks to me like Key West’s Roger Bernstein and his family are facing a US District Judge who does not, so far, seem particularly sympathetic to their chain of title. All thanks to what Naja and Arnaud mostly stirred up. Although man-made, Wisteria Island now is grown over with vegetation, has a pretty little beach along much of its shore, is a wildlife habitat, and is, except for the little remaining wetland near the Key West airport, is the only real estate Key West hasn’t paved over yet. It’s probably fair to say Mother Nature’s adopted Wisteria Island is Her last stand in Key West.

I read the Coconut Telegraph at www.bigpinekey.com from time to time. It’s pretty informative. It has a big readership. I used to advertise the daily posts on my websites there. I created some friends there and some enemies, enhanced by putting my name on everything I wrote. Anyone can write anything to the Coconut Telegraph, no matter how kind or mean it is, knowing contributors names will not be published. I give credit where it is due on my websites, and, unlike the Coconut Telegraph, I publish submissions verbatim, regardless of content or length. Sometimes I correct spelling and obvious grammar mistakes. I don’t recall reading much on the Coconut Telegraph about angels and demons, other than what I had published there, and what some Coconut Telegraph readers accused me of.

Very definitely, the ending of that last sentence was something up with which my college and law school professors would not put.

Sloan Bashinsky

keysmyhome@hotmail.com

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Some years ago, I realized the angels who run me were using the daily horoscope in The Key West Citizen to give me heads ups, which is why I included my horosocope in yesterday’s and the day before’s posts. Here is today’s forecast.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 23) –
If you’re swimming in unfamiliar
waters, make sure you have
a firm grasp of what’s what.
Someone could be trying to
take advantage of you.

My dreams in naps yesterday and last night were rough and hard to unravel, and left me feeling the very rough Mother’s Day posts I put up yesterday, especially the one at goodmorningbirmingham.com on Hemingway’s ghost, had irked the angels. However, just before dawn two dreams came which left me convinced the posts where just fine and I needed to look elsewhere for the reasons for the distemper dreams.

One unfamiliar sea was something that came to me on Facebook yesterday, to which I responded genuinely, even though I knew it would not be appreciated. I had thought I would include that in today’s post, but after the pounding I received in dreams and in my body, I will leave it lay. The initiator of the Facebook post got my drift, even if his many followers did not. He can explain it to them, or not.

Another unfamiliar sea has to be this article in The Key West Citizen today, which was news to me, so I called a Key West friend in the know, to get my ignorance elucidated. My interjected thoughts in italics. I supplied pic.

Pritam Singh, American who became a Sikh, then a Buddhist

Harbor House condos coming down
After Tuesday demolition, hotel construction will begin at Key West Bight
BY TIMOTHY O’HARA Citizen Staff
tohara@keysnews.com

After sitting vacant for more than five years, two large townhomes in the Key West Bight will finally be torn down on Tuesday.

The homes were models for the ill-fated Harbor House development that went into foreclosure in 2008, once located at the site of Jabour’s Motor Court.

The trailer park, Veterans of Foreign Wars post and a small office building were purchased in parcels between 2004 and 2007 for about $23 million by a company called Caroline Street Partners. The development company originally planned a large complex called Watermark, but downsized to the smaller Harbor House in the face of residents’ objections and a drawn out lawsuit.

Unsaid, the trailer park provided affordable housing, the tenants were made to leave. I have heard of the new developer, Pritam Singh, described further along, litigating to stop another development, so he could end up buying it cheap and developing it.

By the time the group changed its plans and reduced the scale of the project, the market tanked and the development went into foreclosure.

The buildings are being removed Tuesday to clear the way for a swanky, new 96-room resort, tentatively called Seaport Hotel. The hotel is being developed by Florida Keys millionaire developer Pritam Singh, whose projects include Parrot Key, Truman Annex and the Golf Club in Key West, Tranquility Bay in Marathon and developments in New England.

I was told by Jim Hendrick a few years ago, who is tight with Pritam, that Pritam was not developing his land in New England. I also was told by Jim a few years ago, that Pritam was the best salesman Jim had ever met; Pritam was a master at getting people to see what he wanted them to see, and to not see what he didn’t want them to see. I told Jim that was how Lucifer sells.

Singh, who is purchasing the property from the bank, expects the demolition to take a week and the “major construction” of the hotel will begin after that. Singh estimated construction to take roughly 14 months, and the hotel to open in August 2014.

The two-floor hotel will have three pools and a bar/restaurant, Singh said. Parking will be contained in an underground garage with 97 spaces.

My recollection, and my noggin’, tell me underground garages become underground lakes when it rains hard, like it did a couple of weeks ago and lower Duval Street was maybe 2-3 feet deep in rainwater. Then, there are hurricanes, such as Wilma, whose trailing high tide put 3 1/2 feet of sea water on lower Duval Street and the low areas of Key West. This new hotel will be across the street from the docks, which went underwater during Wilma’s high tide.

Pritam already is building a new hotel next to Coffee Plantation on Caroline Street. Key West needs a new hotel like it needs a new dirty T-shirt shop, or a new bar, on Duval Street. Don’t take my word for it; ask any hotel, motel, lodge or guesthouse owner or manager in Key West.

“We are excited about getting started,” Singh said. “It’s a great location. We think it will really be an asset to the city. The property has sat vacant too long.”

Caroline Street will be undergoing two major projects, as the construction of the new 13,500 square-foot West Marine store on the corner of Grinnell Street started last month.

And the construction of Pritam’s other new hotel next to  Coffee Plantation on Caroline Street.

Singh did not expect construction of his hotel to create major traffic jams or force crews to detour traffic, which has been the case with the West Marine construction project. He said that road closings would be “rare.”

“I am working closely with the city to make sure there is minimum inconvenience to the neighborhood,” Singh said.

My friend in the know said Pritam has worked very closely with the neighborhood, went house to house, unlike how other developers go about it. Pritam’s developments all tend to do okay, however he tends to build them and sell them to someone else. It remains to be seen if he will run the two new Caroline Street hotels himself.

When I asked my friend in the know if Pritam had secured off-street parking for the employees at his new hotel next to Coffee Plantation?, my friend in the know said he thought Pritam might be renting space in the city’s parking deck on Caroline Street. My friend in the know said he thought that parking deck didn’t get used much. And, in fact, he thought other companies had rented space in the deck, too, for their employees and customers. And, in fact, more spaces might have been rented than there were spaces. I said, well, if the city knows how it is going for that parking deck, why is there talk of building other city parking decks? My friend in the know said that was a good question.

In a familiar sea, I saw this letter to the editor in The Citizen, which I had missed in yesterday’s edition. My interjected thoughts in italics, and supplied the pic.

Collaboration has led to a credible discussion

On Oct. 1, Key West voters will decide if they want the City Commission to request the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to conduct a feasibility study to evaluate the possible widening of the Main Ship Channel. The Corps’ independent study would explore the effects on our economy, environment and quality of life. The study would also explore navigational safety.

At its meeting Tuesday night, the City Commission unanimously approved the first reading of the referendum’s language. The second reading will be May 21.

One of the remarkable moments during Tuesday’s public discussion was the willingness of people with differing points of view to agree that education, information and collaboration are crucial to the choices Key West will make to sustain its environment, economy and quality of life.

The only thing this writer, who is leading the charge at the Chamber of Commerce, wants is to dredge out a one-mile-long, 150-feet-wide swath of native sea bottom, to make it easier for cruise ships already calling on Key West, and the larger and much larger cruise ships not yet calling on Key West, to call on Key West.

That willingness to collaborate — to coexist successfully — was forged this winter when City Commissioner Tony Yaniz brought representatives of the Chamber of Commerce, Last Stand and the city together to craft the referendum language. I was part of that group. I know that none of us won each of our points. I also know that in the face of disagreement — and with a maximum of 75 words — we kept one thing in mind: How can we do the right thing for Key West?

Last Stand sold out, traded with the enemy. I look forward to Key West the Newspaper – www.thebluepaper.com – calling Last Stand out. It’s co-publisher, Naja Girard, is Last Stand’s current president. Mark Songer is past president, replaced by Naja.

That significant cooperation to do the right thing, coupled with a commitment to sustain our environment, our economy and our quality of life, bodes well for Key West’s future. Commissioner Yaniz, Last Stand’s Mark Songer and City Attorney Shawn Smith have helped create the collaborative model.

Those efforts have shown us a clear path to an honest, clear, credible discussion of our future choices.

Jennifer L. Hulse

Key West

Jennifer was quoted recently in The Citizen as saying the channel widening study referendum is not about widening the channel, but is only about a study. Jennifer heads up the PAC the Chamber created because it, as a non-profit organization, is not suppose to take positions on ballot issues. All of which subtext The Citizen should have included in an editorial heads-up for its readers.

Jerry Weinstock, M.D., of Key West, responded to yesterday’s posts at my websites – you can click back one post and see yesterday’s, which includes links to yesterday’s other two posts:

Sloan —I appreciate your links—and you thinking of me.
Jerry
the people of Key West have been bamboozled repeatedly!
The corps of Civil Engineers are pro-construction and they
ALWAYS need EPA —oversight –their past is littered with
environmental disasters. Who in their right mind wants
degradation of the environment–air and water–( I knew
Pat Hemingway —in Montana –fished near his home.
and had breakfast everyday with the artist that rented his
barn—ALSO— close friends with Charles Thompson Jr.
son of Hemingway’s best friend—-far different picture of
the real Hemingway—fished his favorite rivers in the
UP of Michigan –the most remote and people empty
places on the planet. no one there) my wife is from there–
Would he be here with Cruise ships ?? a LAUGH –
many good writers left as Tom McGuane and Jim Harrision
too crowded !! they ran) Key West is on the way
to becoming an open sewer–once beautiful. —-Jerry

basically —are the key West Commissioners idiots or
just slimy !!?? Rossi has alway been for Rossi.

——————————————–

Maybe I will let that not sleeping nor quiet dog speak for his own self.

Another unfamiliar, although not really unfamiliar sea, has to be …

I watched a truly interesting drama unfold at The Players golf tournament in Ponte Vedra, near St. Augustine, Florida.

The drama started on the second hole of Saturday’s/third round. Tiger Woods (bottom photo), in the trees standing on pine straw way across the fairway from Sergio (top photo), who was farther from the hole and was to hit first, pulled his 5-wood out of his bag. The massive crowd around Tiger, which blocked his view of Sergio, cheered loudly, because it appeared Tiger would go for the green with the 5-wood, instead of play safe. The crowd cheered loudly on Sergio’s backswing, and he sliced one off deep into the trees near the green and took a bogey, or maybe a double bogey. After the round, Sergio went after Tiger on TV. Tiger said he was told by a golf marshall that Sergio had already hit his shot, before he, Tiger, pulled his 5-wood out of his golf bag. Tiger had no clue the crowd would cheer. Sergio got more and more wound up in later interviews, Tiger kept his cool. I saw the replay of Tiger pulling his 5-wood out of his bag. I saw no contrivance. You see tour pros on greens practicing their putting strokes while their opponent nearby is standing over his ball, getting ready to put it. The sportscasters ran it back over and over. Along with plenty of past friction between Sergio and Tiger, who apparently had come out on top in maybe a dozen prior professional golf tournament duels with Sergio.

Move to stage two.

On hole 15, I as I recall, of the last round, Tiger, playing in the group ahead of Sergio, who was in the final group, had a 3-stroke lead over Sergio, and a 2-stroke lead over a couple of other players. Tiger hooked his T-shot wildly left into a lake. He took a double bogey, fell into a 3-way tie. Sergio then birdied the same hole, took a one-shot lead. Tiger birdied 16, pulled even with Sergio. Tiger parred the super scary lake surrounded 3-par 17, the most photographed hole in golfdom. Sergio, behind Tiger, then dumped two 9 irons, or maybe wedges, into the lake surrounding the super scary 3-par. Tiger parred 18, after hitting a super drive and a super approach shot to a hole location just a few feet from a lake. Sergio, behind Tiger, dumped his T-shot on 18 into the lake, took another double bogey. Tiger won by 2 shots.

Tiger, who had not lost his cool after Sergio went after him on TV. Even so, I bet Tiger won’t pull a club out of his bag again before he knows for sure it’s his turn to play.

Tiger has to consider his adoring fans, what they might do in response to his every move.

Tiger’s fans cheered when Sergio dumped his shots into the lakes. Tiger needs to publicly tell his fans that was not okay.

Who knows how that tournament might have ended, if Tiger’s fans had not cheered during round 3 on hole 2 at the top of Sergio’s backswing?

Who knows how that tournament might have ended, if Sergio had walked over to Tiger and told him what had happened, instead of waiting to tell Tiger through the TV sportscasters?

Maybe I should have written privately to the fellow on Facebook, instead of publicly.

Maybe I should not have written publicly about Pritam Singh’s new hotel, or about Pritam.

Maybe I should not have written publicly about Tiger and Sergio.

Maybe I should not have written publicly about Jennifer Hulse, again.

Maybe I just should have published Dr. Weinstock’s email and taken the rest of the day off.

I’ll find out in dream time.

Meanwhile, Nashville J had this to say about Ponte Vedra:

Sloan Bashinsky

keysmyhome@hotmail.com