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First today, the editorial in today’s Key West Citizen (keysnews.com), my interjected thoughts in bold italics:
EDITORIAL BOARD: PAUL A. CLARIN/PUBLISHER KAY HARRIS/ EDITOR ROBERT CINTRON JR. KEN DOMANSKI TODD GERMAN JENNIFER HULSE W. ANN REYNOLDS
Military should provide for its own
As an extremely attractive tourist destination, and an apparent hub for snowbirds with abundant disposable incomes to purchase homes that sit vacant for much of the year, our supply of so-called “affordable” housing (however it may be defined) has certainly dwindled. Many hard-working members of our community struggle to meet their financial needs on a daily basis due to the high cost of housing. These realities create a complex problem that can only be solved when all interested parties come together to discuss, evaluate and implement creative solutions that respond to the changing dynamics of our local economy. While we have been generally supportive of the City’s decision to pursue a Peary Court purchase - You folks should be leading the charge to defeat the referendum, if for no other reason, there were no negotiations; the city’s crack negotiating team agreed to pay the developers exactly what they were asking: $55,000,000 for the 157 units, and for the developers to retain 2+ acres of the land on which to build 48 “affordable” units using building rights the city had given to the developer for nothing, which rights the developers valued during the “negotiations” at $12,000,000- and while we believe that local government has a role to play in tackling this issue, it cannot make significant progress without all stakeholders coming to the table to devise a long-term plan to alleviate this burden on our community. We have previously implored the City to take the initiative of bringing the interested stakeholders together to develop a comprehensive affordable housing action plan, but no such plan has been forthcoming - Er, since when did the City ever tell the U.S. Navy what to do? - One of the key players in the discussion that needs to take place is the U.S. military, one the largest employers on the island, both with its enlisted personnel and with the plethora of military contractors providing services to the DOD, JIATF and other organizations. The Navy says that it does not have ample housing for its enlisted men and women, with current waiting periods of 2-6 months. Further, the military is unable to provide sufficient housing for its military contractors who experience one-year waiting periods for on-base housing. Additionally, 29 of Peary Court’s units are occupied by active duty military members live who off base rather than in military-provided housing. In fact, 45 percent of active duty military personnel live in private housing, creating a tremendous strain on our housing supply. -Well, that can be solved very easily by the City ordering the 800 pound gorilla to leave Key West and never come back. -Military personnel receive a housing allowance, in addition to their regular income, in the range of $1,773-$3,426, which is adjusted annually based on the local cost of housing. -And, they are paying less for rent than the allowance and pocking the difference income tax free. -Military personnel are attractive tenants for local landlords, and the generous housing allowance helps to set the high market value of longterm rental properties. - You betcha. Give all of the Navy people and their civilian contractors one-way bus tickets to their mainland place of choice, problem solved. - The Navy currently owns 166 housing units at Sigsbee Park that are unoccupied and not in use, awaiting a report from the Navy’s Facilities and Engineering Command concerning their condition before recommendations on their future use can be formulated. These used to be unmarried service men’s apartments. As frustrated as the current base commander may be over the years of waiting on the assessment, the community is at a critical tipping point over a situation the military played a large role in creating.- Uh, how about the huge slice of the local economy the Navy has always created in Key West? -The federal government seems perfectly content over the lack of housing that has forced its military personnel to compete in the already sparse private housing market in Key West. It seems like the classic case of the government creating a problem that only it can solve, and then failing to do so.- Er, didn’t the government improve the Key West economy by having its Navy base here? -The inconvenient truth is that they have the money and the land to build housing for their personnel, but roadblocks of bureaucracy and lack of incentives appear to be holding them back. Er, the City didn’t have nothing to do with the housing crisis?- The city didn’t have nothing to do with letting developers gobble up affordable housing and raze it and build upscale housing, much of which became expensive transient rental housing? The city didn’t have nothing to do with deciding to build a park on the 33 acres of land the Navy gave the city at Truman Waterfront, instead of building affordable rental housing there, owned and managed by the Key West Housing Authority? - Before voters decide to invest millions of dollars in purchasing property for use as affordable housing,- Get real, and stop lying that $2,400 per month rent (Peary Court) is affordable housing. You Esylium folks need to be replaced by an Editorial Board consisting of people who live in the reel world - the public deserves to understand how the military intends to deal with its own housing shortage without straining our local housing supply. The military knows what its future staffing needs will be and is overdue in long term planning for housing needs. The taxpayers of this community should not be paying for the military’s needs. We already do. Further, the taxpayers of this community should not be forced into a situation where the only way to preserve an adequate island workforce is to buy or build additional affordable housing, when there might be enough existing already to meet our needs if military members and support personnel lived on base. Forced? The City welcomes the Navy with open arms and wants the local base to be brought back up to its once much larger strength and numbers— The Citizen
While I was tinkering with that,
my lady Kari called to tell me about something sort of related in today’s Citizen, which I already had seen and was mulling over, which I bet the Citizen Editorial Board welcomes with open arms, as well as the military industrial complex- driven wars which caused this actually very sad and grim event to take place in Key West today, and elsewhere in America past, present and future - I added the photos to indicate one of the elephants in the living room.
Saturday, January 9, 2016
Ride with Pride
Wounded warriors cruise through the Keys
BY TIMOTHY O’HARA Citizen Staff
tohara@keysnews.com
An annual wounded combat veteran bicycle ride through the Florida Keys started Friday and will end Sunday with the fleet of bikes rolling into Key West and taking part in a series of events in the southernmost military town.
Participants in the Wounded Warrior Soldier Ride cruised through the Upper and Middle Keys on Friday. They traveled from the Veterans of Foreign Wars Hall in Key Largo to Islamorada on Friday. They were then bused to the Marathon Fire Station, where they rode through Marathon and over the Seven Mile Bridge to Veterans Park.
The Wounded Warrior ride departs at 10:30 a.m. Sunday from Naval Air Station Boca Chica and ends at noon at the Truman Waterfront with a welcome ceremony that will feature the commanding officers of the various military bases in town and the mayor of Key West.
Following the ceremony, there will be a community ride with members of the public starting at 12:45 p.m. The community ride will traverse areas of Key West and pass by the USS Maine Memorial in Key West cemetery and the Vietnam (War) Living Memorial in Bayview Park.
Organizers encourage the community to line the roads along the route and wave flags and show support for the 35 Wounded Warriors as they ride past, said Jerry Hughes, Military Affairs Committee Soldier Ride chair.
“Soldier rides allow them to get out of their own heads and back into society,” Hughes said.
For how long do they get back into society? How many American war veterans are homeless due to post traumatic stress and other combat injuries? How are they being treated in Key West and elsewhere? How many of them would have been better off if they had been killed in action instead? Why isn’t the Citizen Editorial Board hollering about that? Why isn’t the Citizen Editorial Board telling the Navy to go on strike and not fight any more stupid rich white men’s wars for profit?
Moving into another war zone …
I had a number of firsthand experiences in the past two days, which left me thinking yet again that homeless and mainstream drunks would be better off dead, instead of continuing as drunks. I could fill in the details here today, but I’m not in a good mood and the details are filling in themselves every day and night all over Key West, most densely on Duval Street, which itself could be Marchman Act’d, but there aren’t enough city police to do it and the sheriff’s jail ain’t near big enough to accommodate it.
The latter part of yesterday’s further bubba justice adventures in Key West post at goodmorningkeywest.com
contained a summary of the Robert Krutko affair and the announcement of his being interviewed on radio last night where he lives, Columbus, Ohio. He emailed me later yesterday and asked if I would call into the radio station during the interview, which ended up happening and I was on the air for about 1/4th of the one-hour show, which was livestreamed online - an internet only radio program. The host was a lawyer, who said when he was talking with me, that he had sometimes came down to Key West, he liked the city. Robert told me after the show was over, the host had told him, after hearing what I had said during the interview about what Key West did to Robert, he will never come to Key West again, and he is going to tell everyone he knows not to come to Key West. I said, too bad he did not say that on the air.
Robert said the host promised to have the interview available for hearing online, and he would send me a link when it was available. I said I would publish the link for any of my readers who want to hear the interview, in which I learned the Monroe County Detention Center on Stock Island is Elyisum compared to the county jail in Columbus, Ohio, which apparently is famous for torturing inmates, which Robert learned in spades after Key West Circuit Judge David Audlin, aided and abetted by State Attorney Dennis Ward and Assistant State Attorney Mark Wilson, extradited Robert to Key West, after Audlin held Robert in criminal contempt in a civil libel suit. The lawyer host of the radio show said that freaked him out to learn: a defendant in a civil lawsuit being turned into a criminal by a judge. I said it freaked this ex-layer out too, but then, Key West is not part of the United States - it’s a banana republic.
Robert sent a link to an article about the Columbus jail: http://www.rule62media.com/blog/welcome-to-the-workhouse/
As for the United States wannabe presidents race, a bit of Facebook frolic yesterday:
John W. Gilmer via Republican Family Values
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Cool! The loons are beginning to eat their own.
When my homeless lady Kari called me this morning, she said I need to get involved in the real world. I doubt there is any better way to do that in America than be shot up in a stupid war, homeless, in jail, or in prison.
Kari and me, below, at the local soup kitchen.
sloanbashinsky@outlook.com