the devil himselfKeynoter reporter Sean Kinney called me yesterday to say Key West Mayor Craig Cates had told him I had told Craig I was going to run against him again this year. I said I did not tell Craig, or anyone, I am going to run for mayor this year. I wrote that I will be surprised if I am not told to run, but I have not conceded it, because I don’t want to run again. I said when Todd German recently told me it looked like Craig and I might be the only two mayor candidates this year, I said I didn’t want to run again and did not want to be Craig’s campaign manager again, and if I did run again, my opening remarks at Hometown! PAC’s first call to candidates would be memorable. Sean said what I pulled off at the Hometown! PAC call to candidates in 2009 would be really hard to top. I agreed, then wondered out loud what my saying my opening remarks would be memorable meant? How could 2009 be topped?”
I told Sean I didn’t think it was time for him to do a piece on me. He asked, what if he just quoted what I said, without making it look like I had declared? He would tell me what he was going to say about me, to make sure it was right. I said, okay, send me the article and I will read it. Sean said he could not do that, but wanted to read what he had written down. I said that won’t stop Larry Kahn [Editor of the Keynoter] from writing over it. Sean said he would stay on top of it. I said, okay, read it. He said it would be something like, “Bashinsky said if he was told to run, he would run, but he does not know what’s going to happen.” I said it needed to say, “told by angels to run,” or readers who do not know me will wonder who would to tell me to run? Craig Cates? An enemy of Craig? The Mafia? See the problem? I said the angel talk will cause people who do not know me to write me off immediately, which is what I want them to do because I don’t want the job. Sean added in the angels and read it again, and I said okay.
Now we will see whether or not violating my own solemn oath last year, that I never again would be interviewed by a Keynoter or Citizen journalist, was idiotic. Sean said his article will be in Saturday’s Keynoter, so we will see what we will see.
God only knows what will happen at the first Hometown! PAC call to candidates in early August, if I am told by the angels to be there. Very few people ever believed I did not arrange for Aphrodite to burst topless into Hometown! PAC’s first call to candidates in 2009 and shout, “Nude beaches for Key West! Sloan for Mayor!,” just as a shy and nervous Craig Cates made his first public remarks ever as a candidate for office. I had no clue Aphrodite was going to do that and was as shocked and delighted as just about everyone else at Salute. I told Sean Aphrodite is living in Key West right now and she still doesn’t want to be my girlfriend. Hard to blame her, my daughters are a good bit older than she is and there probably isn’t enough digitalis to keep my heart beating. Ironically, I have not met another woman so tuned in to the spirit energies as Aphrodite is. I cannot imagine what it is like for her to be with people in her thirty-age generation, who have no clue what she experiences every moment of her life. Well, maybe I can imagine it, since the same thing happens to me.
Later yesterday, I called Todd German to tell him Sean had interviewed me and how it had gone. Todd is Chairman of Hometown! PAC. He said people asked him lately why he talks to me after I threw him under a bus? I said he threw himself under the bus by putting me to deal with what he had told me to stay out of because he would deal with being told by a PTA mom that City Commissioner Teri Johnston was at public meetings where the Hoace O’Bryant plans were present. I said the people who sided with him over what I wrote about that were still shitting in their diapers and needed to grow up. I asked why would I want to get elected and preside over a nursery? Todd agreed, it often is a nursery.
I said I still had not heard from former School Board member Pat Labrada, who put on an old Conch blog that there were many public meetings where the Horace O’Bryant plans were present. Todd said maybe Pat didn’t know what happened at those meetings. I agreed, said maybe that is why he didn’t call me back. I did not say maybe you can’t necessarily trust everything old Conchs say. Later, it occurred to me to use this again.
Todd said Horace O’Bryant is getting too much air time, there are far more important things that need attention. I said Sean Kinney said he really liked what I was writing about Horace O’Bryant; I was making really good points – Sean is on my email hit list. I said my writing so much about Horace O’Bryant tells me just how important the angels think it is compared to other things. Todd said Horace O’Bryant would work for my advantage in a campaign against Craig Cates. I said I had said that a month ago, that it and Glynn Archer would be the hottest issue in this years city races, and still I didn’t want to run.
Later, I wondered if Todd said Horace O’Bryant was getting too much air time because yesterday morning a Citizen article put his good friend Ed Swift in bright lights, as standing to make a bundle developing the School District’s land at Trumbo Point after Horace O’Bryant is built and the Glynn Archer Elementary students move there and the School Board moves its administrative offices from Trumbo Point to Glynn Archer.
BY TIMOTHY O’HARA Citizen Staff
tohara@keysnews.com
Due to a legal technicality, the owners of Wisteria Island will get another crack at convincing Monroe County to let them build a resort and marina on the offshore island.
The owners — the Bernstein family, under the name F.E.B. Corp. — have proposed building 75 residential units on the island, as well as a marina, restaurant and shops.
F.E.B. pointed out it was notified as the “landowner” prior to a special County Commission meeting scheduled in March to discuss the island’s land use category, but it was not properly notified as “a surrounding property owner.” F.E.B. attorney Tim Koenig successfully argued that his client also should have been sent a notice as the owner of surrounding property because F.E.B. owns submerged land adjacent to the island.
F.E.B.’s notification as an “owner” also was delivered 25 days prior to the County Commission meeting, but that was insufficient by five days, said Assistant County Attorney Susan Grimsley, adding that county code is unclear on that point.
The March special commission meeting was cancelled due to the technical notification error, but Grimsley subsequently determined that the same notification error had occurred prior to a Nov. 3 Planning Commission meeting. Thus, the proposal must go back to that board for a second vote.
At the November meeting, planning commissioners voted 3-2 to limit development on the 21-acre island, despite objections from Roger Bernstein, the point man for the F.E.B. proposal, and his planning team. Commissioners Jim Cameron and Jeb Hale supported Bernstein’s position, saying the man-made island is neither environmentally sensitive nor home to protected plants and animals.
They said the residential conservation land use designation is too restrictive, and the owners should be allowed a designation that allows for commercial and residential uses.
However, Commissioners Liz Lustberg and Denise Werling and board Chairman Randy Wall disagreed. But Wall said he was on the fence on the issue.
“I fear I’m not going to vote my heart,” he said, and then voted for limiting development on the island
The Planning Commission, which will make a recommendation to the County Commission, is scheduled to discuss F.E.B.’s proposal at its May 25 meeting at the Marathon Government Center.
Were I Key West’s mayor, after reading that, I would pick up the phone and call Roger Bernstein and say, “Over my dead body will Key West help you develop Wisteria Island with its assets.” Then, I would call the county commissioners and tell them the same thing and give them bloody hell for the County entertaining the Wisteria application and wasting the taxpayers’ money without having Key West on board, when the whole deal hinges on having Key West on board. Todd German is a big proponent of Key West giving Bernstein everything he wants. Todd can’t help it. A banker, he wants Roger’s business. Not a banker, I would tell Roger to comply with the County’s comprehensive plan and land development regulations, and build a few posh self-contained green homes on Wisteria, sell them to rich green people, and be done with the environmental nightmare he keeps telling us Wisteria Island is.