Look! No cruise ships.
Depress ctrl and + keys together to increase text size; depress ctrl and – keys together to reduce’
Higgs Beach, when homeless people were allowed to use the kiosks there
A rainy, chilly morning in Key West, rough weather for homeless people, especially if their belongings get soaked.
I spaced out reporting in yesterday’s homeless shelters, insane asylums, 9/11 conspiracies, messages from above and from below – Key West observatory post, that when I addressed the mayor and city commissioners during closing citizen comments Tuesday night about the new homeless shelter they had only just voted to put at the Easter Seals property on Stock Island, I said a friend of mine who hangs out at Higgs Beach told me to tell them, after Cuba opens up all the way, Casa Marina will become a homeless shelter because so few people will be coming to Key West.
Casa Marina
Havana
The Informant said, news of Key West building a $1,000,000 homeless shelter will spread all over America and will cause homeless people elsewhere to think it will be a great place for them to stay and they will flock to Key West. I laughed, said, I knew of a cartoon about that very thing, which had been done by Arnaud Girard, co-publisher of Key West the Newspaper (www.theblue paper.com).
The dream pests last night pointed me toward City Commission Clayton Lopez
having made a deal pursuant to which he would get city commission approval for affordable housing on the 6.6 acres of Truman Waterfront originally set aside for Bahama Village, in exchange for his yes votes on the city moving forward with putting affordable housing at Poinciana and the new homeless shelter at the Easter Seals property. After the votes were taken during last Tuesday’s city commission meeting, I told a couple of citizens in the audience that I knew as soon as I heard Clayton start speaking about the Easter Seals property location that he was going to vote in favor of the new homeless shelter going in there. At the next previous city commission meeting he had voted against the Poinciana affordable housing item, he said, because he wanted assurance that affordable housing also would be approved for the Truman Waterfront land associated with Bahama Village, and that all city land would be considered for affordable housing. The Easter Seals vote was 4-3 in favor, Clayton was the swing vote. Before the vote on the Truman Waterfront 6/6 acres, Commissioner Mark Rossi asked Clayton if he was flexible about increasing the density on the 6.6 acres, so smaller and more affordable housing could be put there, instead of the much larger units once slated to go in there? Clayton paused and seemed in thought, then he said, yes, he could be flexible about it. I wondered then just how flexible? An underlying current in the dream was Clayton did it this way to try to get himself reelected to the city commission next time he runs. Was the Florida Sunshine Law violated? What do you think?
Here’s today’s Citizen article on all of that, my interjected thoughts in bold italics, I inserted pics.
Thursday, February 5, 2015
Workforce housing get city OK
BY GWEN FILOSA Citizen Staff
gfilosa@keysnews.com
With two unanimous votes this week, city commissioners told staff to begin drawing plans for new affordable and workforce housing in New Town and at the Truman Waterfront.
The New Town location is Poinciana Plaza, on land owned by the Housing Authority of Key West; the waterfront spot is part of the 33 acres handed over to the city from the Navy in 2002.
A total of 100 units could be developed between the spots, city leaders have said.
While city leaders have yet to explicitly define who will be allowed to live in these housing complexes, all seven members of the commission acknowledged homes for working families can’t come soon enough.
“It is our major issue that we have to address,” said city commissioner Jimmy Weekley. “If we don’t do it soon, it could damage our economy and we’ll have a bigger problem.”
Key West is one of the 10 costliest places in the United States for renters, according to Apartment Guide, an online website for apartment hunters, which pegged an entry-level apartment’s monthly rent at $1,640 a month.
Key West came in at No. 5, above Boston, New York, Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, but below San Francisco and the most pricey: oil-boom town Williston, N.D.
In Monroe County, where the median income in 2014 was $63,500, fair market rents for fiscal year 2015 start at $1,200 for an efficiency and $1,208 for a one-bedroom apartment, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. A fair rent for a four-bedroom home is $2,185.
The 2014 federal income limits deem a single person making $46,150 a year as a low-income earner. The same person making $28,850 a year is considered very low, while $17,300 a year is extremely low, HUD’s summary of Monroe County states.
Affordable rents are only one part of the problem Key West workers face, commissioner Teri Johnston said.
Teri Johnston
“It is affordable living; that is, paying a living wage,” Johnston said.
Teri said that after I had said during citizen comments, the meaning of affordable housing is a moving target, and if a deckhand on a boat can’t afford it, then it’s not affordable. If a waitress or a housekeeper can’t afford it, then it’s not affordable. If a garbage worker cannot afford it, then it’s not affordable. If the people who pick up the garbage have no place to live, they leave the area, and everyone else leaves. I was not happy with Teri’s comment, because it avoided entirely the game that is played with “affordable”, which she and everyone on the dais know is routinely played in Key West and in the Florida Keys. Teri has to know there is nothing the city can do to require a living wage be paid by any employer in the city, other than to city employees, which concept the city commission has paid lip service, while it is more important to the city to build a $1,000, 000 free homeless shelter on the Easter Seals property, which will cost $1,000, 000 a year to operate, and a $20,000,000 free park on Truman Waterfront, which will require substantial annual maintenance and will generate little, if any, income for city coffers. A lot more affordable rental housing could have been put on Truman Waterfront than will go on the 6.6 acres. I think the only way to enforce a living wage in Key West, is for the Florida Legislature to enforce a living wage state-wide.
Both proposals were approved 7-0 Tuesday night, before commissioners voted 4-3 to relocate the city’s homeless shelter from the sheriff’s office property on College Road to the old Easter Seals site down the street.
A proposal to develop affordable housing plans for the city-owned land, once home to Easter Seals and also housing Mosquito Control, failed by the same split.
So far, the city’s approximate one acre of vacant land next to Ed Swift’s millionaires Steam Plant condominium development has been silently off limits on the dais to affordable housing or a homeless shelter. It is no secret that the city has hopes to make a bundle off that land via a mega-bucks private development after the school district vacates its large tract of adjacent land.
Commissioners Mark Rossi, Billy Wardlow and Tony Yaniz opposed the homeless shelter move to Easter Seals, while voting in favor of reserving the land for affordable housing.
Key West needs to start protecting its existing affordable housing, including trailer parks, Johnston said Wednesday.
Developers of new construction must, by city law, also build affordable units. But “redevelopment” doesn’t require any.
A loophole the city commission should have closed when it required new construction to provide affordable units.
Also, Johnston endorsed hiring a full-time workforce housing director.
Don Craig, the former city planner, advised commissioners last year not to ask the planning department to take on the development of workforce housing. The job is far too demanding, Craig said.
In Key West, where available properties are scarce, the Truman Waterfront site is perfect for affordable housing, said commissioner Clayton Lopez.
“At the last commission meeting, the reason I had a problem with the way the vote went was because I simply wanted to add [sites],” Lopez said. “The bottom line is so we can move forward on affordable, workforce housing.”
Commissioner Billy Wardlow said, “It’s time to get the city manager to start on this property first.”
Weekley said it’s not about ranking sites or starting one before another. “It’s just way too important to the community,” Weekley said.
The stark truth is, Key West right now needs 3,000 affordable rental units, and I don’t see how that’s going to be solved, unless Cuba opening up turns Key West into a ghost town. Or a monster hurricane does.
gfilosa@keysnes.com
Moving laterally to another gold coast act, Mother Nature lover/activist Jerry Weinstock, M.D., Psychiatry, “retired”, replied to day before yesterday’s This is serious! To kill a mocking bird, poetry slams, res gestae, and other Key West culture vulture features post at goodmorningkeywest.com:
Sloan: We just conversed about this [mockingbirds] yesterday and Harper Lee [author of To Kill a Mockingbird] announced she is coming out with
a second book after all these years -see anything can happen-(as if you didn’t know ).
Hang in -life is unpredictable-((-as you and I know))—the poem is really fascinating -diverse
but I can just scan it and will scrutinize it -in the wee hours —looking forward to it -packed schedule again.
for me —these golden years are getting like lead -not a good analogy as I just had 138 custom lures
finished —-lead makes them work even in 1000 feet of ocean.—will check with Donna right now.-
as she is leaving on her busy schedule—-a more secure place for you to live would help !!
BEST WISHES !! Jerry
I replied:
Thanks, Jerry, you and Donna trying to help my living situation.
Am interested in seeing Harper Lee’s new book, among other reasons, some think Truman Capote wrote To Kill a Mockingbird to help Lee, his good friend, and her 2nd book might indicate whether or not she is a writer, which the author of To Kill A Mockingbird was.
Lead is not quite as heavy as gold, which ought to make super fine deep-depth fishing lures :-), although I’d rather sell the gold and buy lead for the lures, and use the rest otherwise :-).
Mayor Craig Cates had laryngitis last night,
unable to deliver his long state of the city address therefore. Just naturally, I’m thinking what he planned to say did not clear the angels’ the truth, the whole truth, and nuttin’ but de truf polygraffy.
Maybe Craig needs to fill in a few inconvenient details in his address. And maybe he needs to apologize as mayor, on behalf of the city, to Charles Eimers family, for what his police did to Charles, before something more strenuous than laryngitis sets in.
Pesky as hell sometimes, mockingbirds.
Sloan
Jerry wrote:
SLOAN:[ we will keep looking-for you-]—-we will see in this second book.-Harper…..
apologies to Eimer’s family in order for sure.
Lead is sure helping my lures —-new regulations in California maybe make lead hard to get.
Gold would do you good .—great way to smuggle gold in a jig lure.
cross our fingers for just about everything..-Jerry
I replied:
Yes, gold would be very welcome in my coin purse (imagine a LARGE BULGING coin purse).
Interesting parallels …
lead into gold, what it is said the old alchemists sought to achieve
Golden Flake, the name of my father’s potato chip/snack foods company
in spirit alchemy, a person seeks to turn from lead (so to speak) into gold (so to speak)
maybe some of them heavy jigs I dropped on my father’s widow and his lawyer and business associates in Birmingham will snatch up and smuggle out some gold, then I, you and Donna, and others can go back to worrying about other things than my lodging situation 
I hope Harper Lee’s new book blows minds.
Jerry wrote:
That’s right I remember you telling me Golden Flake.
for me lead is a variety of Gold as it makes these custom Jigs effective.
one never knows something may turn up for you—-the whole staff of Solares Hill
has been in your situation.
luck and fate —-who knows —Jerry
Excerpted, related parts of comments with Wankajm to Naja and Arnaud Girard’s City’s Insurers Agree To Pay Charles Eimers’ Family $900,000 to Settle Excessive Force Case article in last Friday’s weekly edition of Key West the Newspaper (thebluepaper.com):
Sloan Bashinsky
February 1, 2015 at 5:18 p.m.
I have written in comments to blue paper articles and at goodmorningkeywest.com that I am not holding my breath the feds will do a criminal investigation/prosecution in the Eimers case.
,,, my sense is you do not understand, or believe, a criminal prosecution already is in full swing in a court the mayor and city commissioners and cops learned about in Sunday school and church, and that is what I am involved in, and that is why I will be there Tuesday night to speak. The civil settlement in federal court is independent of that prosecution.
I imagine someone has advised Mayor Cates and Commissioner Yaniz, if they run for mayor next year, they will hear plenty about them being accomplices to the murder of Charles Eimers, before the fact, by egging their police to make homeless people’s lives miserable, and after the fact, by backing those cops and their police chief and their perjuries and cover ups and evidence tamperings and destroyings all the way. I also imagine Cates and Yaniz paid that advice no heed. It is not in them to admit their city could do something so heinous.
And, I don’t imagine, it is in the voters of Key West to admit it, either. Including people who don’t like what happened to Eimers. So, right, they are being prosecuted, too, in that court they don’t want to think has anything to do with them.
What I’m saying, Wankajm, the case ain’t over, the fat lady hasn’t come close to singing yet. I’m talking about the prosecution and sentencing and time served in that other court and prison, not the civil case that got settled in federal court.
wankajm
February 1, 2015 at 9:11 pm
sloan … in reading your 5:18 pm reply it seems you are talking of the religious domain as to a criminal trial etc. and I tend to now understand your intent.
Sloan Bashinsky
February 2, 2015 at 10:16 pm
The prosecution I am taking about in the Eimers case is not in the religious domain, although I can appreciate you using that term. The religious domain is churches and religions. The domain in which that prosecution is taking place is God’s domain, which religions and churches have tried to hijack as their domain, which might could be likened to a molecule trying to hijack, hmmm, the Milky Way? Naw, that’s too generous. It can be likened to a molecule trying to hijack the Universe, including the parts of which humans know nothing. What humans know is the molecule, or maybe a few electrons, protons and neutrons of the molecule
Sloan Bashinsky
February 4, 2015 at 12:20 pm
wankajm, Naja and Arnaud, others …
Todd German, the first Chairman of Key West Citizen’s (Police) Review Board, told me before last night’s commission meeting, if the settlement was approved by the city commission, what went on in the closed session with the city attorney could be obtained by a public record’s request. Perhaps, though, not until after the US District Court signs off on the settlement.
However, the Eimers case was not on last night’s city commission meeting agenda. It was announced that the commission will meet with the city attorney about the case in closed session just before the next city commission meeting. I ass-u-me the vote then will be taken in plain view in the commission meeting, and citizens will be able to comment before the vote is taken? Or perhaps, the vote will be put off to the next following city commission meeting? And perhaps it will be a consent agenda item, for which a citizen will have to sign up to speak to get it off the consent agenda where it could sail quietly into the night?
I had thought all day yesterday that I would tell Mayor Cates and the city commissioners last night, now that their own liability insurance carrier had decided their police had killed Charles Eimers and, for that reason, had settled the case to avoid spending even more money defending the city in a case that could not be won, would the mayor and commissioners now apologize to the Charles Eimers children for what their city police did to Charles Eimers? Alas, there never seemed a good time to say that last night, with all the various hot homeless shelter and affordable housing items on agenda.. Maybe I should have said it anyway, but there were other important matters, in which I had been involved for a lot longer than I had been involved in the Charles Eimers case.
Mayor Cates did not deliver his annual state of the city address/report last night, which was scheduled on the city agenda. He looked like he was sick. After the meeting, someone told me Mayor Cates has laryngitis and that’s why he did not make the state of the city report. It was billed as long, 17 pages I think I heard. This morning, it occurred to me that maybe Mayor Cates needs to rewrite his address to reflect the true state of the city. Maybe laryngitis is a preview of coming attractions, if he does not do that. And if he does not apologize to the Eimers family, as mayor, on behalf of the entire city.
Out of the blue email yesterday from unknown reader:
Hi,
I donated to your cause because I do so much enjoy reading your daily thoughts.
Despite being poor I feel what you bring out is worth much more than the $25 I was able to send.
Please do not mention my name in your column though because I work for the school district and know many people here who read you daily. Don’t want to get in trouble because I really need this job.
Thank you and carry on. Your contribution is much needed, even if people don’t realize it.
I replied:
Thanks, I burst into tears after reading your email. I know sickness and having trouble making ends meet all too well. I hope it gets easier for you.
The angels schooled me early on, and kept providing refresher courses, in my engaging what was given to me to engage, and when and what to write about it, and to not worry how other people received it. A lot easier to say, than to do, of course. I did get over worrying what other people thought about me, but what writer does not wish for his/her writings to have an audience, the bigger the better, and the more money from it, the better? These angels seem not to fret in that way. When, from time to time, I am asked how many people read what I publish daily?, I say I haven’t a clue, and it doesn’t matter, because I have to publish it anyway.
A friend once told me Andy Griffiths [one of the five school board members] reads my daily posts, I bet he likes the ones not about the school district better. Schools could teach so much more that is important and will help students later in life, but that’s not how “modern” education goes about it. Governments prefer robots for citizens, and schools and religions are governments’ robot makers. I suppose you could let governments and religions switch places in that sentence. It would make a difference, if schools taught religions and governments as history, sans the propaganda. But the Orwellian approach is preferred - 1984 was too kind, perhaps :-).
I don’t suppose I should apply for a teaching position at, say, hmmm, Sugarloaf, Poinciana or Horace O’Bryant, in which the younger school kids have not yet been totally programmed? Say, apply for teaching literature, or religion, or history, or poetry, or writing, or, hmmm, angels :-). I can see Andy Griffiths getting wind of my application and whipping out his cell phone and dialing Homeland Security. I feel awful for school teachers today, the good ones and the not so good ones. The school teachers I knew growing up would have quit before they would have taught the way lower, middle and high school teachers are required to teach today. I hated school back then. Imagine me being a student today; I might do something crazy to prevent me going crazy.
Sloan
Out of the blue replied:
Thank you for your concern, my situation will work out, not without some hurdles though.
I am not a teacher, I work in the dreaded admin building, please don’t judge me from that, I’m just a lowly worker bee and don’t know any of the good stuff, not sure what path brought me to where I am but I assure you it was not intentional.
You would be surprised at how many and who reads goodmorningkeywest. But, you already know that.
You would also be surprised, or maybe not, by how many people have an understanding of what you are experiencing. Maybe not people specifically in Key West, for a seemingly progressive place, people are very closed minded. But, I know people all around this country who have a connection to the larger consciousness of not just humanity but all living things and abhor the negativity that seems to seeping into every nook and cranny, perhaps the angels names are different or the forms are different but the concept is similar. Physical illness occurs when one is not taking the path they are supposed to. I have felt this myself but have not identified where it’s coming from and if something is trying to guide me I don’t know who or what it is as that has not been revealed to me.
I don’t live in Key West proper, can’t afford that so I was not able to vote for you for mayor, would have if I could have though. The same old same old is not getting this little spec anywhere.
If I can someday, I will throw more $ your way, I think what you do is very important and Key West is lucky to have you. What’s with all these rich friends and acquaintances and people who claim to read you? Hoping they see their way to sharing a little with you in your cause to point out the obvious and so you can continue to be there when the rest of us can’t.
Best to you.
I replied:
The dreaded admin building, probably as good a name for it as any :-).
I didn’t know if you were a teacher, or worked in administration. No judgment there. Maybe less stress not being a teacher?
I really have no idea how many people might be following my mumblings, but you, however, are the third person who has told me it’s a lot more people than I can imagine. The first person to tell me that was Todd German, and the second was Jolly Benson, and that I would be surprised to know who some of them are and don’t want it known that they read me. Maybe they are worried the angels will find them, as if the angels don’ t have them lit up with red dots already :-).
I have indeed found Key West closed minded, which is puzzling given how wide open it is in the bawdy sense, and given it sits on top of the base of a really powerful earth vortex. There were heaps of folks in Santa Fe and Boulder, who were into woo woo stuff, as I came to call it, but most of them I came to know fairly well viewed me as something else entirely. And it came to seem that way to me, too.
I mean, when the first thing I heard during the first encounter with angels was, “This will push you to your limits, but you asked for it and we are going to give it to you,” and then I was stuck, and jolted physically, with three successive bolts of lightning, that did not incline me to think I was going to be having a lot of fun. Little did I know how literal what I had been told would prove to be, and no way I could have imagined how my limits could and would be pushed, or that I even had such limits.
I learned “out west”, and I also encountered it in Birmingham to some degree, among Christians and non-Christians, and elsewhere, that lots of people were having experiences which could not be classified as “normal” by, say, psychiatrists :-). Or by, hmmm, my relatives. Or by, hmmm, most of my friends. Or by, hmmm, some of the women I was with for a spell. Unlike many people, I never had any reservation about talking and writing about what I was experiencing.
Some fellows and I got to talking on Higgs Beach this evening, a couple of them are not “normal” in the mainstream sense. But I loved talking with them. They are tired of talking with people who view them as nut cases. I said I sometimes say to people who get onto me about what I say I experience, as in, I’m a nut case, maybe what they should be doing instead of diagnosing me as crazy is asking why they aren’t having similar experiences? What is wrong, that they are not?
Before that today, at the soup kitchen, I bumped into the fellow I wrote about before, who I came to call The Informer because he knew to tell me that a fellow there, who had gone to acting like a 2-year-old babbling lunatic, actually was in the midst of a spice high. That fellow, also known as the Martian, I would learn, was sitting at the next table over. The Informer said, yeah, a spaceship dumped the Martian and abandoned him. I said, dang, the same thing happened to me, but I came from a lot farther away than Mars. The Informer looked at me like, huh, you’re joking, right? I looked at him, said, no, I’m not joking. He said, that could not be. I asked, was he willing to bet his life and his soul on that? He said, no, he was not willing to bet that. Smart move.
Meanwhile, I’m stuck here :-), feeling all too human, and all too something else, all at the same time, all the time. I bet lots of people feel that way, don’t they? :-). Yeah, something is trying to guide you, you can bet the conch farm on that. And I might be willing to bet it’s the same something that is working me to death, but it has a different agenda for you, right now anyway. It is on The Informer, too, and that’s a different agenda, too. It was with two of the men at Higgs Beach tonight. They definitely are not from this planet, but are stuck here presently.
Meanwhile, my favorite Higgs Beach scene. Venusians? Pleaideans? Angels?
sloanbashinsky@outlook.com
