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For those living in Key West who did not yet early vote, that still can be done today and tomorrow at the Supervisor of Elections Office on the corner of Whitehead and Southard Streets. Please take the time to vote, if only on the local items on the ballot: Peary Court and extension of the 1/2 mill the School District tax, both of which I voted against earlier this week.
On the should the city buy Peary Court referendum, in today’s every Friday issue of online Key West the Newspaper:
WORKFORCE HOUSING CRISIS PART III — PEARY COURT
And this in today’s blue paper:
Commissioner Romero Shares More Information about Peary Court Property
by City Commissioner Margaret Romero……. This note is to update you on recent information I obtained after meetings with Management teams at Keys Energy and Florida Keys Aqueduct Authority regarding Peary Court and the City’s possible exposures and unknown costs. KEYS ENERGY Easement for transmission poles along Palm Ave which sit inside the Peary Court [read more…]
Email blast from Harry Powell, a former Key West City Commission, who strapped dynamite to himself and chained himself to a tree in the old Peary Court park the Navy had let the citizens use for many years, to protest the park being replaced with the existing Peary Court housing now on the ballot for the city to purchase, or not:
It’s just another development
It’s just another development for Pete’s sake, so nothing special or what we really need. It’s not a “good deal. ” Commissioner Romero is correct.The resolution earmarking “profits to an affordable housing trust fund ” is clearly is a marketing ploy to convince the voters that “this is a good deal”. Some City officials are asking us to worship this sacred cow of Peary Court” in the name of affordable housing”. It’s not what we need to buy.
There is likely going to be no profit from Peary Court, nor should there be. The idea is to keep the rents low but they are not as proposed. Or will be rents charged be higher to subsidize other projects thus defeating the whole intent? It reminds me of a Ponzi scheme.They are already poised to remain close to market rate, so we simply wind up with an expensive “moderate ” class enclave - for 55 million dollars, and we don’t even control the whole property since White Street Partners will retain some unknown portion ( at least until they find some other naif to foist it off to.) What effect does having their 48 units ( in the middle or scattered about ) have on the rest of the property if the City buys in? I see disputes, tension and lawsuits ahead with this. It’s the poison pill that should kill this deal.
I MIGHT support buying PC , but I want it ALL, and not at that price, from these people, so that it is honestly affordable housing.
Then again , the way the commission got hornswoggled and wiggled into letting rents go to such unacceptable levels Citywide by ordinance , and now suggesting lowering the remaining ROGO requirements for AFFORDABLE housing makes me wonder ? Saving those ROGOS for the well heeled maybe? And so now after 25 years of whining we’re not winning anything new, just blowing 55 million on something that we don’t need (a surplus of moderate, market rate units which we have now. ) Its just another big development , it’s nothing more. And it’s already there and it IS housing - just not affordable to most Key Westers .We also probably lose a million ? in property taxes if its developed in some other acceptable way which may never happen. The present owners are collecting rents on a price almost half the 67 million they asked of the City. That’s a cash cow for them, let it stay there. YOU guys OWN IT , not us, thank you very much. We can’t afford it.
Wonder what Balfour got from the sale versus the Navy’s take of the deal. The Navy should never have sold it in the first place BTW. Did the Navy get anything? The Navy could have excessed the LAND to the City or the City buying ONLY the buildings from Balfour with the Land Authority money and maybe Balfour continuing their housing lease as is until those 20 year old buildings aren’t worthwhile . They were already renting to civilians. . Easy and beneficial to all parties . But NOooo..! Easy neighborly and creative solutions could have been found, but it was all so secret, eh? Our biggest problem was Ignored by the people who should have been prepared and told this was in the works for a few years, but never discussed - as most any commissioner will admit. WTF? The City Manager was told in an” Ethics Advisory ” that he could only talk about it in a “behind the scenes manner” . What kind of ethics, transparency, is this? Serving two masters I mean.That sounds unethical to me.
How can there be any profit unless the rents are close to market rate, given that there will be a 45 million mortgage and ongoing maintenance and administrate costs on buildings that will probably not survive a 30 year mortgage?
As to maintenance and administrate costs, the ones propagandised in the City proposal are absurdly lower than other Housing Authority properties, so one may expect a few unpleasant surprises to eat into the purported “profit” when the City has to further tax it’s citizens. Who pays for replacing the three burned units? Other surprises?
If it’s such a good deal then why form a PAC which doesn’t really have all the information that any intelligent voter would require? And why don’t we have that info? It’s pie in the sky . Do you trust PACs. Hope not. The last one didn’t do too well with widening the channel and didn’t have the truth or facts on their side either.
Hmmm, Ask yourself “What would Trump do”? Laugh at us I think. It’s not a ” good deal”.
Sincerely,and good luck.
Harry Powell
I replied to ALL:
Amen, Harry.
Pritam Singh, er, The Donald would split his sides laughing if he owned Peary Court and sold it to the city in this way.
The former Aspen, Colorado city manager, who spoke at the local Democratic Party’s workfarce housing forum, told the audience the only way Key West can solve its truly acute workforce housing crisis. Do the same thing Aspen did. Or, rather, do what Aspen’s wealthy residents did. They created an affordable housing fund out of their own pockets, which was used to build the affordable workforce housing Aspen needed.
Did anybody but me ever publish what that messenger from Above told Key West that night?
Sloan
My other most recent published sentiments on Peary Court:
Re Peary Court, what financing?
It’s a farce to say Peary Court is affordable housing, when 90 percent, or more, of the city’s workers cannot afford to live there. The real backers of this referendum, the Key West lodging industry, developers, Realtors, the Chamber of Commerce, the Tourist Development Council, want the city to buy and furnish housing for middle class workers, instead of paying their employees a living wage. Isn’t that communism?
Shameful, these two referendums.
Shameful the stories told about how Jimmy Weekley and City Manager Jim Scholl and Housing Authority Director Manuel Costillo “negotiated” the $55 million price tag. The developers told the city’s crack negotiating team that they wanted $67 million for all of Peary Court: $12 million for the FREE “affordable housng” building rights the city had GIVEN the developers, and $55 million for the rest of Peary Court. Castillo told the developers the city could not earn rents on building rights, so the developers said, okay, we’ll sell you the existing 157 units and the three units that burned down for $55 million, and we will build the 48 new “affordable” units on land we retain at Peary Court, which was said to be where the old credit union was located, 2-plus acres, but actually was more land than that spreading through Peary Court, and everyone knew the 48 new units would be effectively market rate rentals, called affordable.
Had the city really negotiated, instead of agreeing to the developers’ asking price, the city should at the very least gotten ALL of Peary Court for $55 million, including the FREE 48 building rights the city had GIVEN the developers.
Better, the city should have gotten ALL of Peary Court for $45 million, which would have reduced the purchase money mortgage by about $10 million, producing something close to actually affordable rental housing for perhaps 50 percent, or more, of the city’s workers. Costillo said at that meeting, the biggest concern he had was all the appliances at Peary Court might have to be replaced: stoves, refrigerators, dishwashers, air-conditioning units, etc.
I wish you could have been at the city commission meeting last year, when I asked Jimmy Weekley what was the developers’ starting asking price?, and he said he did not remember. It was at Jimmy’s later public meeting in the ferry terminal that Costillo explained the “negotiations”, which I reported above. It was at that meeting, where a couple living in Peary Court, the husband said he had been a home builder, told of the many problems in just their unit.
At the recent public meeting hosted by Jimmy Weekey’s PAC in the Senior Citizen cafeteria, a Peary Court tenant told of the huge mold problem in her unit, determined by a mold inspector. Michael Miller, a local architect, who sat on the city’s Historical Architectural Review Commission, as its chairman, when HARC was denying the developers’ plans for Pear Court, lived in a Peary Court unit. He told me the developers were not maintaining the units and they were full of mold.
Over 200 lenders denied the city’s financing request for proposal, nearly all by not even bothering to make a reply to it. One lender made a counter-financing proposal, which would put the city’s treasury on the line for repayment of the mortgage, which the referendum wording does not allow.
The referendum is like spaghetti thrown against a wall, hoping some of it will stick, but it isn’t spaghetti – it’s crap, and it never should have been voted by the mayor and city commissioners to go to referendum. Only commissioner Margaret Romero voted against it going to referendum.
My previously published sentiments on renewing the school district tax:
When I ran for school board in 2012, I repeatedly said not passing this tax that year would be Armageddon for the school district.
I also repeatedly said the school board and school district administration is terminally dysfunctionally insane, and the only possible cures are either the state of Florida takes over the school district, or each school votes itself to be a charter school, and thus has its own individual school board, which does not answer to the county school board, while the county school board has to continue, by state law, funding said new charter schools.
I also repeatedly said the school district is teaching to standardized tests, and not what students need to learn; the school district views college prep curriculum as all that’s important, even though most keys high school students don’t enter college, and a large majority of those who do enter college drop out, and most of whose who do graduate from college can’t find work that pays them a living wage even on the mainland.
I repeatedly said the school district should put most emphasis on vocational training in high school, that all students should be able to touch type by the time they leave grammar school, that all students should be bilingual in English and Spanish by the time they leave grammar school; and I repeatedly said the school district is using the cookie cutter approach, trying to cram each student into the same mold, although no two students are alike, although no two students have the same aptitude, although each student has his/her own abilities which need to be met by the curriculum.
I repeatedly said the school district needs to centrally locate its administration in Marathon High School, which was way over-built under pressure from Marathon parents who wanted a high school as big as Key West High School. Centralized administration would be more efficient and economic.
I repeatedly said the School Board should sell off its Key West real estate, and the white elephant nursing home next to Marathon High School, which it bought with grandeur of making a killing in real estate. I flat opposed the school board giving the City of Key West Glenn Archer school. I flat opposed adding a grammar school to the new Horace O’Bryant school. I flat opposed busing Bahama Village grammar school students (predominantly black) around two grammar schools in Key West (predominantly white), to the grammar school on stock island.
I loudly and longly called for a full, in broad daylight investigation of the hazing of Key West High School student Matthew Gelleran, because he was gay, which led to his shooting himself to death with his father’s pistol, which one school board member, Robin Smith-Martin, blamed on his father having a pistol in the home, while all school board members, including Ed Davidson, as I recall, did nothing about the tragedy.
I saw the school district continue to stonewall Kathy Reitzel, who had blown the whistle on the Acevedos, and for that and for being the State Attorney’s star witness against the Acevedos, Reitzel was told by the school board to resign, or be fired, because she had waited too long to blow the whistle, school board member Andy Griffiths told me, guaranteeing there would be no future whistle-blowing in the school district, which is how the school board and the school district like it.
I watched the school board, in the wake of the Acevedo scandal, create its own appointed volunteer Audit & Finance Committee to make it look like the board was serious about changing school district money oversight; then I watched the school board ignore the Audit & Finance committee’s many efforts and recommendations to improve the school district’s financial operations.
I watched the school district repeatedly ignore requests for public records made by Dr. Larry Murray, who had been an outspoken member on the Audit & Finance Committee, until he was fired by the school board member who had appointed him, by not renewing the appointment. Then Larry ran for that now retired school board member’s seat on the board, and did not even make it into the runoff, even as he continued dogging the school district and the school board, and he continued not getting his public records requests honored, although state law requires such requests to be honored, and if a court has to force it, the requester’s attorney fees and court costs have to be paid by the school district. Ed Davidson won that school board seat in 2012, after moving from one part of Marathon to another, solely to be able to run for that school board seat.
The school board still does not let citizens who attend school board meetings speak to action items, but only allows citizens to speak once, for 3 minutes, during a school board meeting. I attended many school board meetings in 2011 and 2012, and spoke for 3 minutes, and it was obvious the board appreciated no citizen input.
After the Acevedo scandal, I watched the school board choose a new superintendent of schools, Mark Porter, who was clearly inferior to another candidate, Dr. Ed Shine. Porter had been fired by his school district in Minnesota. He was out of a job. Shine had served with distinction as superintendent of schools, and was loved by students, in two different New York state school districts. Dr. Shine made our school board members look like rank amateurs in education, and illiterate, and immature as adults during the public part of his vetting by the school board members at Marathon High School.
I have seen nothing change for the better in our school district since 2012. Most of our students would be better served by being home schooled, or by going to work in some trade and being taught how to make a living wage somewhere, if not in the Florida Keys.
So, guess what? I voted NO yesterday on extending the school board ad valorem tax for operations.
As for the Turkey Creek nuclear leak into Biscayne Bay:
Sloan Bashinsky
And this:
Durf Durfee shared Mike Freas‘s post.
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if it’s NUCLEAR; it’s really UNCLEAR!
Mike Freas
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Something to put on your radar Florida Keys
Are we having fun yet?
sloanbashinsky@outlook.com
