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First today, the “teaser” to Key West the Newspaper’s (www.thebluepaper.com) article on much the same topic as the The Prince of Darkness Triangle: Key West, Ballast Key, Wisteria Island post yesterday at www.goodmorningkeywest.com. You will have to read the blue paper article to believe it. But then, if you don’t live in Key West, you may never believe such carrying ons are common fare down here in the great pretender paradise.
David Wolkowsky
David Wolkowsky: “God Wasn’t On Duty One Day.”
Last Tuesday the County Commission found itself once again debating development of offshore islands. Local attorney Barton Smith read into the record, a letter from his client David Wolkowsky, who argued that his island, “Ballast Key,” was a man made island and should escape the restrictions imposed on natural islands [for example they are limited to one house per ten acres]. “I envision the creation on the island of a small campus to be operated by the University’s [of Miami] Rosenstiel School.”
Mr. Wolkowsky was not present. The Commission praised his intention to donate the island for scientific research and the usual debate went on about whether all offshore islands should come under the same zoning.
Then something totally unexpected happened: […full article]
COMMENTS ON “DAVID WOLKOWSKY: “GOD WASN’T ON DUTY ONE DAY.””
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Is there no end to the corruption this city and county finds itself in on a weekly basis? Once again, Jim Hendrick, truly a brilliant mind in the land planning business, finds his name in the news. And as is so often the case with Mr. Hendrick, finds himself on the wrong side what’s right and wrong. I sincerely hope Mr. Barton Smith is NOT a Hendrick protege’. It does sound, however, a remedial class in “Who is my client?” would be in order.
How many times does Mr. Bernstein need to be told he cannot move his (current) plans for Wisteria Island forward? And now he has his lackeys misrepresent an issue (perpetrating a fraud?) to Mr. Wolkowsky. They all should go to jail just for that.
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Barton Smith once rented office space in Hugh Morgan’s law firm on Whitehead Street, which was where Jim Hendrick also had his law office, before he was disbarred. Jim kept his consulting firm – Critical Concern, Inc. – in Morgan’s law office for a while after the disbarment, then I think Jim moved his office to his home.
The name of Jim’s consulting firm plays on the Florida Keys once being designated an area of critical concern by the Florida Legislature, due to massive over-development, and septic tanks and cess pits proliferation, and resulting ground and ocean pollution.
Jim, and his wife, Donna Bosold, also represent the Peary Court developer.
I got to know Jim pretty well after he was convicted in federal court. I published a number of reports about that at http://www.goodmorningkeywest.com. The most recent report on Jim, and some of his clients and/or confederates, is yesterday’s (October 9) “The Prince of Darkness Triangle: Key West, Ballast Key, Wisteria Island” post athttp://www.goodmorningkeywest.com.
It is my impression that their area of critical concern is how much money they can make.
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Another never-ending great pretender in paradise feature
is presented into today’s Citizen (www.keysnews.com). Fortunately, the Citizen didn’t just parrot City Hall and the agency it uses to operate the city’s homeless shelter. Fortunately, the city also interviewed someone who has been at this a lot longer - that would be Father Stephen Braddock.
My oft-accused great pretender thoughts in italics.
Friday, October 10, 2014
City’s shelter relocates 76 people this year
BY GWEN FILOSA Citizen Staff
gfilosa@keysnews.com
The nonprofit that runs the city’s homeless shelter says it relocated a record number of 20 people in September and placed eight in transitional or permanent housing.
“This month might be even higher,” said Randi Cohen Brown, the executive director of Southernmost Homeless Assistance League (SHAL). “We’ve already relocated probably eight and it’s only the 9th.”
Relocation is described in SHAL’s monthly reports to the city as a case manager finding a relative or friend to take in someone homeless in Key West and sending that person on a Greyhound bus to that new home.
In September, the number included a man identified only as P.S., who became homeless after losing the job he had for eight years here. “He was relocated to Manchester, (N.H.), to live with his daughter,” SHAL reported.
Also on the list were two couples, including one that “came to Key West to see the sunset,” and found themselves stuck. They were sent off to Miami.
So far this year, the city’s chosen agency for running its sole overnight shelter has relocated 76 people from Key West to states that include Massachusetts, California, Tennessee, Ohio, Colorado, New York and Georgia, according to SHAL’s monthly reports to the city.
The relocation numbers for each month were: Seven in January, five in February, three in March, seven in April, 12 in May, five in June, four in July, and 13 in August.
For now, while city leaders remain undecided despite a legal deadline looming closer as the year winds down, the homeless shelter remains on county property next door to the Sheriff’s Office and jail with no exit strategy.
Recently the city planted signs instructing the homeless to wait at a grassy spot along College Road that is across from the old Easter Seals lot, between 5 and 7 p.m. “KOTS Staging Area,” the signs read, using the acronym for Keys Overnight Temporary Shelter (KOTS).
Digging in
Brown and her bare-bones staff have stepped up relocation and health-care services at the shelter during the past couple of years.
KOTS will soon have a nurse providing wound care two evenings a week, Brown said Thursday.
Brown and two case workers, Elicia Kim and Amy Yancish, comprise the KOTS staff handling relocation and finding housing for the homeless who land at the shelter.
“I have two dynamic case managers,” Brown said. “One works 60 hours a week, the other works 30 to 40. I work 12 hours a day.”
City Commissioner Teri Johnston praised SHAL’s team at Old City Hall on Tuesday night, during a 2-hour debate about where Key West’s overnight shelter will end up permanently.
But the relocation number doesn’t begin to describe the work SHAL has invested in.
Case workers work out of the cramped trailer that serves as the office at KOTS, but also hit the streets during the week, stopping at St. Mary’s soup kitchen on Flagler Avenue, the public library on Fleming Street and Mallory Square to offer help to the homeless.
Recently, Brown got the necessary approvals for a case manager to go into the jail to meet with inmates who are approaching release without a housing plan.
Also last month, SHAL, which has operated the shelter on College Road since late 2011, signed an agreement with Monroe County to purchase up to $5,000 worth of bus tickets for the relocation program.
Brown, an attorney for nearly 30 years and a former prosecutor and defense attorney, has also enlisted the support of Key West police officers. She showed up to roll calls, which are at 6 a.m. and 6 p.m., to meet officers assigned to the “Quality of Life” patrols, which essentially look for public nuisance crimes.
Bus tickets a popular idea
Buying bus tickets for the homeless and making arrangements with their families or treatment centers to take them in has been a Key West tradition among nonprofits.
“It’s certainly nothing new,” said the Rev. Steve Braddock, CEO of Florida Keys Outreach Coalition (FKOC), the original KOTS operators. “There are communities across the country that are doing it and it’s being done to us.”
As long as it’s done ethically, meaning a city or agency doesn’t just ship a homeless man off to a different city with no one waiting to pick him up, Braddock said, relocation can work.
Baton Rouge’s city leaders spent $5,000 in 2013 on bus tickets for its homeless, dubbing the program, “Clean Sweep,” which Braddock calls offensive and short-sighted.
“Just rounding up homeless people and shipping them from one jurisdiction to the other is bad policy, and I would argue immoral,” Braddock said.
Braddock said communities have put homeless people on a bus heading to Key West, and FKOC fields plenty of inquires from people with few resources interested in making the island their new home.
“People write to us from prison,” Braddock said. “We always respond: Don’t come here. It’s a place with very limited resources and a high cost of living.”
Before SHAL started managing KOTS for the city, before there even was a KOTS, Key West, the sheriff and local churches were buying homeless people one-way bus tickets to anywhere they wanted to go in the continental U.S. Oft as not, those homeless people ended up homeless elsewhere. Some of them drifted back to Key West. There always is a steady dream of homeless people drifting down to Key West, more so leading into and during the colder months. Like the tides coming in and going out each day, twice a day, homeless people are coming into and leaving Key West. It’s an optical illusion sending some of homeless people away on Greyhound, if that’s used to measure there being less homeless people in Key West. It’s a good thing to send homeless people somewhere they are wanted, can be inside, have a chance to get turned around. Do not ignore, however, the relapse rate for addicts. Old timers in AA and NA have have told me 95 percent of people who come into those rooms end up going back to their habit. When I lived on the street in Key West, 90 percent of the street people were addicts. If you go up to the staging area across College Road from the Easter Seals property around 5 p.m. any day, and just hang out there, talking with the homeless people waiting to be allowed to head on into the KOTS on the sheriff’s land, you will see 90 percent still is a good percentage for how many of them are addicts. On top of that, a good percentage of them are mentally ill, but there is no way to treat that, if they are still using their drug of choice, which down here typically is booze. I applaud SHAL’s efforts. Any kindness and help given to homeless people is a good deed, which should not be punished. However, for reasons stated above, I do not view relocating homeless people as proof of success in Key West’s homeless policy and programs. I look at what the relocated homeless people do, how it goes for them after they are relocated. I wonder if SHAL is keeping up with those statistics? Not just for 3 or 6 or even 12 months. But for several years.
Easter Seals a ‘no’
One of the commission’s toughest critics of the island’s homeless population said Thursday that Brown’s team should be recognized for its relocation numbers.
“It’s commendable they were able to take 28 people off our streets,” said Commissioner Tony Yaniz. “The goal is to always give people a fresh start or a fresh location.”
My impression of Tony Yaniz, above, is his goal is to rid Key West of as many homeless people as possible, in any way that can be done. In my opinion, that also is the goal of his fellow city commissioners and the city mayor, and of 90 percent of people living in Key West. Certainly, most people hope homeless people are turned around, get better, stay better, but Key West’s first priority is moving as many homeless people to the mainland possible. For a chuckle, Hawaii initiated a program to fly homeless people to the mainland, using one-way tickets; even as mainland cities, counties and states were flying homeless people to Hawaii, using one-way tickets. Mainland cities are sending homeless people to Key West, using one-way tickets.
On Tuesday, the commission voted 3-3 on a proposal to relocate KOTS to the old Easter Seals lot, which is on the other side of College Road but closer to U.S. 1.
A tie vote means a motion fails. Commissioner Mark Rossi was absent.
Yaniz voted against the move, along with Commissioners Billy Wardlow and Clayton Lopez, ending a long-running proposal endorsed by Mayor Craig Cates that the Easter Seals spot is the best place in Key West for a homeless shelter.
Cates and Commissioners Teri Johnston and Jimmy Weekley voted for the Easter Seals location.
“The commission clearly voted no on Easter Seals,” Yaniz said Thursday. “As far as I’m concerned, we are done considering Easter Seals for now.”
Actually, the city commission did not clearly vote no on Easter Seals. It was a tie vote, and one commissioner was out of the country. The city attorney told them they could bring Easter Seals back up for another vote at a later time.
KOTS must move from its present location, where it was built in 2004, in order to settle a lawsuit filed by Sunset Marina condo owners who accuse the city of ignoring its own permitting rules in placing the shelter one door down from the gated community.
The lawsuit was filed by Barton Smith. He also represents the golf course and the residential community next to it, which has promised to sue the city if it tries to put the new homeless shelter on the Easter Seals property.
A proposal by Yaniz and Commissioner Billy Wardlow to place the shelter at the city’s Palm Avenue building that houses the transportation department and a part of community services was withdrawn from the agenda Tuesday.
See Father Stephen Braddock and Sam Kaufman’s email to the mayor and commissioners, on the Palm Avenue location, below this article.
If Yaniz could decide the next KOTS location it would be near the city’s transfer station on Rockland Key, he said Thursday.
Yaniz has asked the city attorney to obtain a detailed response to the homeless shelter pitch from the Navy.
“Nobody’s come to me and said, ‘Absolutely not,’ ” Yaniz said.
Yaniz’s own chief of police said at the Monroe County-Key West “homeless summit” last spring, that homeless people will not use a homeless shelter on Rockland Key, it is too far away, they will not go up there.
A city bus could run a few times every evening to take the homeless to Rockland Key, Yaniz said, when asked how they would get to the shelter.
“I don’t know if it’s our burden to bring you back,” Yaniz said. “If we have to, we have to.”
gfilosa@keysnews.com
If you make them go up there in the evening, Tony, under threat of being put in jail if they don’t go up there,
Columbia, South Caroline homeless internment camp, before it was dismantled after howls of protest from people who still had a conscience
I imagine you are required to provide them a way to come back in the morning. As I said above, Yaniz’ real goal, revealed here, is to rid Key West of as many homeless people as possible. That is how 90 percent of the people in Key West feel. Proving, for a fact, that Key West is the great pretender of
October 6th, 2014
City of Key West Commission
RE: Commission Meeting- 10/07/2014
Item # 10
Dear Mr. Mayor and Commissioners:
We strongly encourage the commission to thoughtfully consider the resolution being introduced by Commissioners Yaniz and Wardlow to relocate the Keys Overnight Temporary Shelter to the City owned property on Palm Avenue.
While this proposed option requires further study and public input, there are some very clear and significant benefits over the alternative site being proposed on College Road.
- The Palm Avenue property is considerably larger than the property known as the Easter Seals site. We believe the Easter Seals location is too small to effectively and safely accommodate the population.
- The Palm Avenue property has several existing structures and infrastructure upon which to create a permanent and secure homeless facility and will be a much better investment of tax dollars.
- The existing buildings at the Palm Avenue location can and should be climate controlled for the purposes of health and safety. Chronically homeless street people are often very dehydrated and immune compromised and hot humid conditions will surely result in medical emergencies increasing the burden on EMS and the hospital. Hot and humid conditions will also result in people, many who are already mentally unstable, becoming agitated and aggressive thereby resulting in additional burdens on Key West Police and the Monroe County Detention Center.
- The inclusion of shelter beds for families and children at the Easter Seals site would be irresponsible and should not even be considered. We believe Palm Avenue location may be conducive to providing for very short term family accommodations so long as there is adequate distance and segregation from the general adult population and very tight security.
Cognizant of the difficulties and seriousness related to addressing this issue, we are hopeful the commission will reach a consensus that is best for the chronically homeless and the community at large.
Respectfully,
Rev. Stephen E. Braddock, Ph.D. Samuel J. Kaufman, Esq.
President & CEO Board Chairman
Kaufman and Braddock
I still say a new homeless shelter on the Palm Avenue city property will make a terrific welcome center for the new Peary Court development just across street. That will give the developer, and his good citizen award winner hired gun Jim Hendrick, the exquisite opportunity to prove they reject the city’s pretentious one human family philosophy, by building a pedestrian bridge from the new Peary Court over Palm Avenue to the city’s new homeless club med.
Hendrick, and his good buddies David Wolkowsky (Ballast Key), the Bernsteins (Wisteria Island), and Barton Smith get top billings in the blue paper article, which kicks off this post today. Hendrick was the central character in yesterday’s The Prince of Darkness Triangle: Key West, Ballast Key, Wisteria Island post at this website.
Sloan Bashinsky
keysmyhome@hotmail.com
Bad boys. Apparently attorney Smith lied to the County Commission and perhaps to Mr Wolkowsky as maybe Mr Hendricks did also. Unless Mr Wolkowsky is lying, then both of these guys should face sanctions or lose their law licenses for trying to pull this fast one on us all. Of course Hendricks has no license anymore , but maybe we could maroon him on Wisteria “naked and afraid ” for a couple weeks as punishment – and no swimming over to his friends at Sunset Key.
Holy mackerel! How many smell tests does this fishy tale not pass? I don’t know if I can count them all. Barton Smith must be thrilled. David Wolkowsky, bless his old heart, seems to know more than he was willing to tell Naja and Arnaud. Jim Hendrick should get a good citizen award for something, but right now I’m having a bit of difficulty wondering how it should be worded to commemorate the huge service he has provided to his community. I’m glad to see Sylvia Murphy has her radar turned on full blast; just knowing Jim Hendrick is involved in something turns my radar on full blast.
As if something was in the wind, independently of what Naja and Arnaud were cooking up, I wrote a bit about all of this yesterday, October 9, at http://www.goodmorningkeywest.com. I made some mention of Jim Hendrick’s and David Wolkowsky’s relationship, and of Jim Hendrick’s and the Bernsetins and Walshes’ relationship re Wisteria Island, and of Wolkowsky having some history with the Bernsteins and my wondering if he maybe took a piece of the action in the Bernsteins’ dogged attempts to develop Wisteria, in exchange for Wolkowsky maybe cooperating with their, through Jim Hendrick, attempt to use Ballast Key as a vehicle to gain them the zoning and comprehensive plan changes they want, so they can develop Wisteria Island -assuming they win the federal lawsuit, which will decide who owns Wisteria Island, the Feds, or the Bernsteins.
We have Naja Girard to thank for digging up the title history, which caused the US Department of the Interior to believe the U.S., not the Bernsteins, own Wisteria Island. Naja finally had a bit of help from some angels, who told me to tell her to keep digging into that title history. I think David Wolkowsky might wish to reconsider. It looks to me God was there that day, and other days. Otherwise, this fishy tale might have headed an entirely different direction. The Devil’s direction. I suppose the ruckus ain’t over yet, but this blue paper article is one dang good ass-kicking start.