Yesterday afternoon I ran into Monroe County School Board Member John Dick in Key West. He told me to keep writing, the Keys need me. Hard to imagine any school kids tuning to what I’ve been writing, but perhaps I’m underestimating school kids, comparing them to the slug I was when I was a school kid, about as interested in government and politics as I was interested in going to school and working for my father’s company during the summers. Back in those days, the only thing I wrote was what I was made to write in school, which I enjoyed about as much as I liked going to school and working for my father’s company in the summer.
I told John that I’m scheduled to speak next January 10, 1 p.m., at Kirk of the Keys Presbyterian Church, for that week’s Marathon Library Coffee and Books gathering. “Keys Politics” is the topic. I’ll be promoted as the author of GoodMorningKeyWest.com, and introduced at the meeting by County Commissioner George Neugent. Poor George, the company he keeps, what a reputation he’s developing. What do I know, maybe he’ll end up being my campaign manager when I run for dog catcher. Maybe that won’t bother Bicycle Joanie Nelson too much. I don’t remember her ever saying she wanted the job.
Meanwhile, back in Weirdville, I early-voted yesterday at the Elections Office in the government building kiddie-corner to the Green Parrot on Whitehead Street. Took me about two minutes to fill out the information form and then write “Sloan Bashinsky for Mayor” over Jimmy Weekley’s and Morgan McPeherson’s names on the ballot, and black out the ovals for Ty Symroski for Utility Board and Bahama Conch Community Land Trust’s referendum, and the oval for the City of Key West needing voter approval for any land it annexes or buys in the future.
That’s when I realized I’d made a mistake in yesterday’s posting, in which I said the retirement community referendum was on the Nobember 6 ballot. Nope. It was on October 2 ballot. Passed by about 2-1. Didn’t change how I feel about it, though, and I remain hopeful that the Key West City Commission will come to its senses and let that referendum sit on its duff until it just fades away. We need a place for elder Key West citizens to move when they no longer can live where they are, but this particular pork pie is not the solution.
It dawned on me this morning that maybe some or a lot of the resistance in Mayor McPherson and the Key West City Commission and other folks to Bahama Conch Community Land Trust’s referendum has to do with the fact that BCCLT actually is doing something good for Bahama Village and thus Key West. BCCLT actually is putting Key West first and moving forward. Must be pretty embarrassing for folks who can’t have the same things said about them. Reminds me of how some of my and other employees’ bright ideas were received when I worked for my father’s company after graduating from law school and clerking for a federal judge. Like having ice water poured on us. Don’t pour ice water on BCCLT. Vote YES for its referendum.
And vote YES for the City needing voter approval to annex or purchase any more land. Yes, that’s going to make life difficult for the City Commission when it wants to annex or purchase any more land. Alas, the City Commission has demonstrated very little ability to put Key West first in its long history of running the City. The City Commission has demonstrated a great deal of ability in putting developers first. The City Commission consisting of the six commissioners and the mayor. It’s high time control of the City is returned to the citizenry. The very last thing we need is for, say, the City to purchase or annex Wisteria Island, without the City Commission first being roped and hawg-tied and told by the citizenry precisely what the City Commission is going to do with Wisteria Island after they get their paws on it. The very last thing we need is another Truman Annex, aka TAMPOA, aka Tiny Kingdom. Or another Sunset Key. What the citizenry needs on Wisteria Island is a nature park no developer will ever put one stick of cut wood or concrete block on — ever.
As for Ty Symroski, he’s the one seriously earth-oriented candidate for the Utility Board. By that, he is the only candidate with really strong environmental leanings. He also is the most experienced candidate in local government, having served stints in both the City of Key West and Monroe County governments. When I attended a Monroe County Workforce Taskforce Housing meeting at Key Colony Beach next to Marathon last year during the county commission race, Ty was the only member of the Taskforce who stood toe-to-toe with local developer and tycoon Ed Swift, who took over and ran the meeting, attempting to push every last one of his own agendas onto the Taskforce for it to adopt as its own agendas. I came away from that meeting telling anyone who would listen, and everyone who wouldn’t, that Monroe County ought to abolish that committee because it was under the dominion of Ed Swift and other developers, and they had hijacked the term “affordable housing” to make their own development plans sexy to the general public. Actually, nothing they were planning to build for sale could County Commissioner Dixie Spehar even afford. Dixie was present at that meeting, as the County Commission’s liaison with the Taskforce.
The other day, I received a batch of identical anguished emails from Hometown PAC saying the copy Hometown had sent into Key West Citizen giving Hometown’s endorsement to Ty Symroski, which the Citizen had published, was a clerical mistake. Actually, the identical anguished emails said, Hometown PAC was endorsing Ty’s opponent, Charles Lee, who had made it into the run-off via a coin-toss with former Key West City Commissioner and now Key West Vice Mayor Emeritus Harry Bethel, who then threw his unqualified support, in a letter to the editor in the Citizen, to the “radical” Ty Symroski. Radical by establishment standards perhaps. Aw shucks, I’m just going to cut to the chase. All of that was arranged by the angels Melchizedek, including the copy Hometown PAC originally sent to the Citizen, giving its endorsement to Ty. That’s right, the first endorsement Hometown PAC sent to the Citizen was its real endorsement. The soul endorsement. The “Freudian slip,” so to speak.
Several months ago, I talked with Florida Keys Community College about teaching pro bono a creative writing course in its community college curriculum. Perhaps it’s turning out that GoodMorningKewWest.com is that course. That, and GoodMorningFloridaKeys.com, which came into being later and perhaps might be having some stuff to offer as time passes and we move toward the county-wide pig races next year.
Meanwhile, back in Weirdville, I just opened another email from Jimmy Weekley saying yesterday’s posting, ”Where the Buck Stops,” was full of historical inaccuracies and I need do better research to get my facts straight. Jimmy did not say what the innacuracies were. One wonders if maybe he protests too much. One also wonders if maybe he has forgotten that the “bait” for Truman Annex getting the go-ahead to begin with was all the “affordable housing condominiums” Pritam Singh promised to build on the south side of Southard Street, which ended up costing too much for regular folks to buy and were bought by investors and ended up being rented out as transient rentals. Looks to me that Jimmy Weekley and the City Commission and Mayor all took that bait, a trick without any treat that pretty much set the stage for the great bait n’ switch of the century – the great Key West City Commission give-a-way.