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snapshots of Peary Court apartment development
Below is the Key West Citizen’s report on last night’s city commission meeting. My interjected thoughts in bold italics, I added any pics.
Thursday, February 18, 2016
Romero questions Weekley’s housing PAC post
BY MANDY MILES Citizen Staff
mmiles@keysnews.com
Concerns about a commissioner heading a political action committee that supports a city-sponsored referendum emerged during Wednesday evening’s Key West City Commission meeting. But the elected official whose role was being questioned was absent from the meeting.
the elected official, City Commissioner Jimmy Weekley
Below this article is a l-o-n-g interactive Facebook discussion started by the PAC Jimmy Weekley created. That discussion is far more educational and generally more forthright and greatly more enteraining than anything said by the mayor, city commissioners, city staff, or anyone representing them at city commission meetings with regard to the city purchasing Peary Court. Meanwhile …
The discussion concerned Commissioner Jimmy Weekley’s involvement with the Housing First PAC, which he helped form in support of the city’s purchase of Peary Court. The purchase question will be put to Key West voters on the March 15 ballot.
Margaret Romero
Weekley was not at the meeting Wednesday when Commissioner Margaret Romero asked the city attorney, “If a person is leading a PAC, when is there a conflict? And when is a commissioner not a commissioner?”
City Attorney Shawn Smith told the commissioners they are always commissioners when it comes to the Sunshine Law and private discussions of city matters with other officials.
Shawn Smith also told the elected officials that he was not comfortable with them attending non-city-sponsored public meetings as panelists, nor even speaking at those meetings as citizens, if there were two or more city elected officials there, because that implicated the Sunshine Law, which prevents elected officials on the same government body discussing away from a duly advertised public meeting of that government body anything that might come before that government body for consideration and determination. Smith’s answer to Romero was not entirely responsive to her question. Romero was concerned about a city commissioner, Jimmy Weekley, voting to put the purchase of Peary Court out to a voter referendum, then Weekley started a PAC designed to get the referendum passed, then, at another city commissioner’s (Richard Payne’s) town hall meeting, Weekely said he was not there as a city commissioner. I was told by a fellow sitting behind me in last night’s commission meeting, that he had attended Payne’s community meeting, and former city commissioner Tony Yaniz was there, and he gave Weekley hell, and then Yaniz and Weekley got into a loud back and forth, while Payne was trying to calm them down. During closing citizen comments, I told Payne, if he and Weekely got to discussing the Peary Court referendum at his community meeting, then that violated the Sunshine Law. It wasn’t bad intent, and I wasn’t worried about it, but that was what Shawn Smith had said bothered him. However, I was really bothered by a city commissioner voting to put Peary Court out to referendum, and then he started a PAC to try to get the voters to pass the referendum. It might be legal, but it stinks.
Before the discussion continued more specifically, Commissioner Sam Kaufman suggested it be postponed until all commissioners and the mayor were present. Mayor Craig Cates was also absent Wednesday. Vice Mayor Clayton Lopez led the meeting.
With the Peary Court referendum fast approaching, the time to talk about it was right after it happened, at the next city commissioner meeting, which Weekley did not attend.
Romero referred to the matter again, following the city manager’s report, when she said that the housing PAC used the city ferry terminal as a meeting place without paying the city a usage fee. She asked City Manager Jim Scholl to ensure that the organization is charged a usage fee for the facility.
“If one PAC gets to use a city facility, it opens the door for others,” Romero said. “We need a policy if we’re going to rent out city facilities for non-city groups.”
Romero also said she had paid for her own community meeting, several hundred dollars, at a private facility, and she’d be okay with Weekly paying the same amount for his town hall meeting at the city’s ferry terminal.
Scholl emphasized that was not the city’s intention, and said, “It was a reservation request from a staff member and it wasn’t clear on the specific reason for its use.”
After they moved to the next item, Jim Scholl walked past me and I smiled at him and amicably said he knew darn well what Weekley wanted to use the ferry terminal for. Jim, smiled, said, no, he did not even know of it, someone under him had handled it. I said, well that person darn well knew and you need to get onto that person. Tomorrow, Scholl said. Good, I said. It was amicable.
When contacted by text message Wednesday evening, Weekley said he was unaware of such concerns, and had spoken with the city attorney first “to make sure it was OK.”
The city attorney, Shawn Smith, said nothing about that during his and Romero’s long off and on dialogue last night.
The topic will likely be raised again at the March 1 meeting.
Can’t wait to watch Jimmy Weekly and Shawn Smith discuss Smith told Weekley it was okay for him to use the ferry terminal for his PAC meeting, for free. Can’t wait to watch that, live, at the next city commission meeting. Maybe Romero should make that discussion an item on the next commission meeting’s printed agenda.
Also on Wednesday, commissioners postponed their approval of a new litter law banning the disposal of cigarette butts on city property after deciding to lower the fines for violators from $100 to $10.
Commissioner Richard Payne suggested the reduction, saying the city would be more likely to actually collect on some of the fines if they were significantly lower.
Romero also questioned the enforcement plans for the law.
“How effectively are we going to be able to enforce it?” Romero said, asking for more specifics when the proposal returns to them at the March 1 meeting.
Key West resident Sloan Bashinsky also questioned the enforcement and asked whether the police would use it selectively against the homeless?
Commissioner Sam Kaufman said it was not intended to target anyone other than smokers, and would be applied consistently.
When pigs fly, Sam. When pigs fly. None of your fellow commissioners said the new ordinance would be applied consistently, even though I had asked during my citizen comments that each of them say whether or not the new ordinance would be applied across the board and not just against homeless people. The city attorney and the city manager did not say the new ordinance would be applied consistently. Below is a link to the video of last night’s city commission meeting. Open the link, click on the arrow to start the video, slide the button rightward to the 01:32:44 mark, and watch and hear my citizen comments on the cigarette butt ordinance, followed by the city commissioners’ comments.
http://keywestcity.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=1&clip_id=435
In other activity, commissioners approved a redevelopment for the Banana Bay Resort on North Roosevelt Boulevard. The plan calls for the replacement of 75 transient units with 75 units, configured in a different arrangement of buildings.
• Commissioners approved an ordinance governing the use of drones, ruling that recreational users must follow FAA guidelines and regulations.
• City Manager Jim Scholl told the commission he plans to hire at least one additional code officer to investigate and identify illegal transient rentals. Resident Tom Milone later suggested that the city consider adding a criminal violation to the law.
“Fines don’t mean anything to these people,” Milone said.
The commission will meet again March 1 at Old City Hall, 510 Greene St.
Gosh, no mention of item #13 on the consent agenda, for which I signed up to speak, which took the item off the consent agenda and led, after I had my say, to a most interesting and revealing pearyng into a crystal ball on the dais, aided by a jolting reality check from Assistant City Manager Mark Finnegin, which I can’t imagine Jimmy Weekley and his PAC ever wanted to ever see and hear the ever-loving light of day.
13 *Rejecting the proposal received from Centennial Bank in response to Request for Proposal #16-004 for Peary Court Financing, pursuant to Section 2-834 (3) of the Code of Ordinances. Sponsors: City Manager Scholl
Below is a link to the video of the city commission meeting. Open the link, click on the arrow to start the video, slide the button rightward to the 00:37:10 mark, where I speak to agenda item #13, and kick start the great fun show that otherwise would have sailed quietly into the night.
http://keywestcity.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=1&clip_id=435
Jimmy Weekley’s Peary Court PAC Facebook discussion group:
We are the only political action committee in Monroe County founded with the sole objective of addressing and advancing housing for our workers.
If you support efforts to advance workforce housing in the Florida Keys please like and share our page today!
Also yesterday, my friend Todd German replied to the Lyme disease part of yesterday’s post at goodmorningkeywest.com:
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2/17, 3:12pTodd German
New Cause for Lyme Disease Complicates Already Murky DiagnosisScientists claim a novel bacterium causes some different symptoms, adding to the body of research showing the complexity of the diseasehttp://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-cause-for-lyme-disease-complicates-already-murky-diagnosis1/ -
2/17, 3:43pmSloan Bashinsky
Given his “star wars” diagnostic and treatment technology, I imagine my old friend Senneca Anderson (Longevity Health Center, Roswell, Georgia) can diagnose Lyme’s in person in, hmmm, ten seconds, if that’s what he’s looking to rule in our out, without doing an lab work whatsoever. I personally have sat beside him in his clinic, watching him diagnose one patient after another, quickly, by running them through and array of rapid screens his technology can do, then he uses the same technology to find the remedy, if there is one, or the remedies. A homeopathic remedy cannot be assayed in a lab, it would only be found to have brandy or seawater in it, depending on which medium was used to receive the homeopathic vibration. There is no place in modern science for homeopathic medicine, because it is a vibration treatment, which cannot be measured or detected by any scientific instrument used by modern science. In the old days, before the technology Senneca uses, homeopathy was as much intuition as it was science. The reputed father of homeopathy … https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Hahnemann
Samuel Hahnemann - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaChristian Friedrich Samuel Hahnemann (German: [?ha?n?man]; 10 April 1755[1] – 2 July 1843) was a German physician, best known for creating a system of alternative medicine called homeopathy.en.wikipedia.org -
2/17, 3:47pm
Sloan Bashinsky
The Scientific American article seems to be off on a tangent from main event, which is the horror Lyme disease either quickly or progressively becomes, and how something like that could actually develop naturally - I mean, to read the SA article, Lyme’s is a moving target, has various unpredictable symptoms. The fellow who brought this to me is right about Lyme’s being pervasive and either deliberately or ignorantly disregarded. I scolded him today for not up front telling me Lyme’s might well be a human manufactured biological agent.
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2/17, 3:59pm
Sloan Bashinsky
This article cuts close to the bone … http://www.cassingram.com/bioweapon-lyme-disease/ There is plenty more about Rockefeller, for example, the Flexner Report, which can be googled.
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2/17, 4:45pm
Todd German
I tend to have more faith in the veracity of Scientific American than those other sources.
You can pretty much replace Lyme with any number of other diseases and the conspiracy theories are the same.
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2/17, 5:34pm
Sloan Bashinsky
The SA article is on a tiny offshoot, was my point, not on the rotting carcass. I put far more credence in that the Spirit says, when something is murky, which the SA article itself admits Lyme’s is - murky.
As happenstance had it, Brenda called after i last wrote to you, to tell me of yet new awful physical crud going in her body, requiring yet another kind of antibiotic she cannot afford, so she’ll have to find someone up there to spring for it.
I told her I was going to say something to her, and to settle herself and get ready to receive it. She said okay, she was ready. I said, “Lyme disease”. She said pure Evil was in her head. i said Lyme’s is the cause of many medical problems and is not being diagnosed or treated. She said the Evil was gone. I said, if Lyme disease was made by Mother Nature, pure Evil would not have come into her head when I said “Lyme disease”. So, Lyme’s was not made by Mother Nature, and she should tell her doctors to check her out for it, because that could explain her many awful troubles for which she has been getting treatment, thanks to a church-sponsored medical program up there in north Georgia. Lyme’s also could explain her mental fluctuations.
My old friend Senneca Anderson uses very high tech electronic acupuncture technology to both “dowse” his patients for what’s wrong with them, and also to learn if there is a homeopathic and/or another or other nautropathic remedies for their dis-ease. I many times have used Brenda, as described above, to dowse situations in which I am gotten involved. Like here I am minding my own business, and this fellow contacts me from out of the blue about a legal matter, and he starts talking about Lyme disease being the cause of the legal matter, because it rendered someone mentally incompetent to take care of his own affairs …
But, incredibly, even though he well knew of the suspicions of Lyme’s being man-made, or man-tampered into the horror it now is, he did not tell me about that, but that was no sweat for the angels, they found me someone I knew in KW, a vicious van dweller criminal amigo, who knew all about that, just after 14 man o’ war birds winged by me. I’m describing sciences, of which the Scientific American and the fellow who wrote to me about Lyme’s know nothing.
Nelson Rockefeller sponsored the Flexner survey of then existing medical societies, and the ensuing Flexner report, which doomed all of those medical societies continued viability in America except for the society using manufactured pharmaceutical drugs, in which Rockefeller was investing heavily.
That’s no conspiracy theory. Rockefeller is the father of America’s chemical medicine industry. And, apparently, he was involved in Plum Island.
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2/17, 5:38pm
Sloan Bashinsky
http://www.cassingram.com/bioweapon-lyme-disease/
Is the House of Rockefeller Responsible for the Lyme Pandemic? - CassIngramIt makes no sense that Lyme disease is a naturally occurring infection, at least not in the United States. Moreover, it would certainly not have been the kind of condition that could result in a pandemic, at least not on its own: not as an act of nature. It just wasn’t an issue. Nevcassingram.com -
2/17, 5:41pm
Sloan Bashinsky
I have yet another scientific instrument in use as I grope through this muck, which is my own physical body. The way it is responding to this muck tells me there is a great Evil in it, and that means human beings are involved. I suppose only a shaman could actually get to the bottom of something like Lyme’s disease, since modern science is so bound up in its own belief systems.
sloanbashinsky@outlook.com
