(City Commissioner Clayton Lopez)
When I ran for Mayor of Key West earlier this year, I was not asked at any candidate forum about Bahama Conch Community Land Trust (BCCLT). Other candidates were asked, but not me. I asked the angels if I was supposed to get involved, speak out, and then came a dream in which I was shown BCCLT being “remodeled” as I watched on. So I stayed out of it, other than to attend one BCCLT Board of Trustees meeting, where I told them that I felt BCCLT was dead in the water until it repaid the City the $102,000 it had double-billed.
I was glad to stay out of it, because I was friends with BCCLT’s Director Norma Jean Sawyer, her son, Adrian, BCCLT Board of Trustees Bob Kelly and Cecil Bain, BCCLT’s former Board President, Jim Marquardt, and BCCLT’s special advisor Jim Hendrick, who was advising BCCLT as part of his community service requirement. Maybe the angels figured it was too close to home for me to get involved back then. Maybe I just didn’t know enough to get involved. However, in a dream just before dawn, Jim Hendrick told me that I should have ”foreclosed” this case yesterday, so . . .
It looks like I now understand what the BCCLT being remodeled dream was about. I see the State Attorney’s Office looking at this. I see the City Commission and Mayor Cates plenty upset about the forensic audit results, and the continued efforts by BCCLT Board members, Bob Kelly especially, to whitewash what happened and to get the City to let BCCLT move forward with its vision for Bahama Village. I see the City Commission and Mayor Cates looking around for other people to take over BCCLT, ousting the current management and its board members. All of which I’m happy to see.
I also see the City Commission and Mayor Cates trying very hard to make sure the City doesn’t get blamed for any of this. I see them trying to blame Southern Homeless Assistance League (SHAL), through which BCCLT acquired funds for housing for homeless people, for not demanding an audit of BCCLT. SHAL had no reason to suspect BCCLT, the recent forensic audit revealed, was billing the City for the same work it was billing SHAL. The finger-pointing at SHAL makes me very unhappy.
If the City wants to point the finger somewhere beside BCCLT’s Director Norma Jean Sawyer, her son, Adrian and the BCCLT Board, point at the the old city commission, which didn’t act on Mayor Morgan McPherson’s consistent criticism of BCCLT and Norma Jean Sawyer. Point at the city finance department, which didn’t catch the $102,000 double billing. Point at the City’s point man, City Commissioner Clayton Lopez, in whose voting district BCCLT lies. Clayton was the “designated” commissioner liaison with BCCLT; it was his horse to ride herd on.
I told Clayton in a City Commission meeting about a year and a half ago that I didn’t care to be reading Mayor McPherson’s steady criticisms of BCCLT in Key West Citizen, when BCCLT was his, Clayton’s, responsibility to look after for the City. Unsaid, I was tired of watching Clayton let Morgan take the heat from Norma Jean Sawyer, who is black, and the BCCLT Board. Letting Morgan take the lead and the heat spared Clayton getting into it with Norma Jean again (they had already had their falling out), and being called an “Uncle Tom” (Clayton has African ancestors), and losing political capital in Bahama Village, mostly an African-decent neighborhood. If Clayton and the other commissioners called for a forensic audit back then, instead of silently enduring Norma Jean’s outbursts and allegations of racism and bringing in the ACLU, maybe it would not have gotten nearly this bad.
If he has not already done so, Mayor Cates should ask State Attorney Dennis Ward to launch a full investigation. So many irregularities and apparent instances of outright thievery were reported by the forensic auditor, that there is no way, as BCCLT Board member Bob Kelly keeps maintaining, this is a case of innocent mistakes and sloppy bookkeeping and management. Few will forget Bob consistently chastizing the City Commission and Mayor McPherson in city commission meetings, for not giving BCCLT a lease for the part of the land at Truman Waterfront that Key West voters said in a non-binding referendum two years ago could be used by BCCLT as part of its vision to rejuvenate Bahama Village.
It won’t surprise me if BCCLT soon files bankruptcy, not because it’s bankrupt, it’s been that quite a while; but to use the bankruptcy court as a shield to ward off a criminal investigation, and to stay alive so it can keep trying to persuade the City to continue doing business with BCCLT, including it development of the Truman Waterfront land. Although I still feel BCCLT’s vision is beautiful, I don’t think the City should have any further dealings with it while any of its old Board members are still there. BCCLT’s old management is too close to this to be objective; it needs entirely new management.
Maybe the City Housing Authority, as I recently read in Key West Citizen has offered to do, will take over BCCLT’s rental properties.
Maybe Habit for Humanity will build affordable housing on the BCCLT-designated part of Truman Waterfront, after all the toxic waste issues in that land are cleared up.
Maybe former Mayor Morgan McPherson will be hired as a special advisor and put in charge of developing Truman Waterfront, which he always wanted to see done in a way that truly benefits Key West.
And maybe the current City Commission and Mayor Cates will rethink the City’s decision to allow the eviction of tenants of BCCLT housing, who are totally innocent in all of this. What were the commissioners and mayor thinking when they let that happen? Where was their righteous indignation? Where was it?
Sloan Bashinsky