I’ve 
been away, so to speak, the last couple of days on other business. This sometimes happens. Below is the Dade County Police Benevolent Association, Inc.’s questionnaire to candidates and my responses. They are interviewing all the candidates today, in Key West. I’m going in my pirate get-up — green bandana over my head (a greening pirate), “Dead men tell no tales” pirate T-shirt, black patch over my right eye, under my glasses, and maybe a little pirate attitude. I’ll tell them about my piratization plan for Key West, and recommend they go to goodmorningkeywest.com and read my answers to Key West Citizen’s candidate questionnaire, which can be entered in the menu on the right side of the homepage.
Candidate: Sloan Bashinsky
Position: Mayor
Address: 623 Josephine Parker St. #102, Key West 33040
Contact Number (s): 305-409-4285 (cell)
Date of birth: 10-7-42
Signature: _________________________________________________
1. Background: The PBA places great value in the relationships it builds with elected officials. Therefore maintaining open lines of communication is of the utmost importance.
Question: Would you contact the PBA before speaking publicly for or against any issue of important to the Association? Please explain your views:
Answer: No, but I would call PBA if there was something it might have that I need to know on a topic I am called to speak about, which I feel PBA might have. For example, I requested from your office a copy of the Florida Statute curtailing (according to you below) review/investigation ability of Citizen/Civilian Review Boards, which state law is the basis of your question # 4 below. Normally, I would contact Police Chief Bill Mauldin when I need to know something that the police might know and I don’t.
2. Background: Public safety is a top concern in Key West residents and visitors.
Question: What changes, if any, do you think are needed within the police department?
Answer: I’d put more officers on the ground and on bicycles.
3. Background: It’s a documented fact that police departments are facing a hiring crisis. When it comes to recruiting and retaining police officer, departments realize they must offer competitive salary and benefit packages. One benefit, which is not viewed as an industry standard, is a take-home vehicle program.
Question: Do you support a take-home vehicle program to attract and retain qualified officers for the Key West Police Department?
Answer: That’s a lot of police cars. The real problem here is housing costs. We need to provide more affordable housing, rentals in most cases, for police officers, fire fighters, school teachers, med-techs, hospice workers and lower income “infrastructure workers.” I’m making concrete suggestions about how the city can do that at Truman Waterfront, which the city owns, which makes building affordable housing there doable, by partnering with Habitat for Humanity, Bahama Land Trust and other land trusts, which are not for profit.
4. Background: The Florida Legislature recently passed legislation eliminating the ability of Civilian Review Boards to investigate. Key West has a review board.
Question: How do you propose to resolve the conflicting situation and make sure that the City Complies with State Law?
Answer: I called your office in Miami and asked to be emailed a copy of the law mentioned above, and have yet to receive a reply. I would need to see the law in question to answer this question, so I can put on my lawyer hat and study it. Meanwhile, my recollection is that our local CRB lacks enforcement power and only acts in an advisory capacity to the City Commission. It’s enabling act gives it investigative authority, which it has chosen to exercise rarely, and only then after Internal Affairs has completed its investigation and published its findings.
5. Background: The starting pay at the Key West Police Department is low, which makes it difficult to hire officers and for officers to afford housing in the Keys.
Question: (a) Are you willing to raise the starting pay in order to attract and retain quality officers?
Answer: Just about everyone except the very wealthy and people who have lived here a long time and own their own homes has trouble making ends meet. It’s part of the cost of living in “paradise.’ Just as having to live with mosquitoes and occasional hurricanes and not always delightful tourists is the cost of living in “paradise.” I’m proposing concrete ways for the City to increase affordable housing and help its businesses increase revenues, through attracting considerably more tourists to Key West. As businesses make more money, they can pay their employees more, and city revenues will increase and city employees can be paid more.
(b) “Are you willing to implement a dedicated bed tax and/or entertainment district tax for police services in order to provide additional pay and benefits for Key West police officers?
Answer: No. We have fire fighters, school teachers and many city employees in the same economic boat with our police officers. Again, the City needs to create affordable housing and to attract an increase in tourists with the resulting increases in business and personal income, which will pass through to the city through sales and lodging and so forth taxes, fees, etc.
6. Background: To maintain a safe environment during special events that may being in more than the usual amount of visitors to Key West, the department has always arranged extra officer to work in an overtime capacity.
Question: (a) do you support the continuation of this practice?
Answer: Yes
(b) Do you support double time and a half pay (2 ½) for the officers covering these events?
Answer: Do any city employees now receive double and one half pay (2 ½) for overtime work? If so, for what kind of work? My recollection is that hazardous work sometimes earns “battle pay wages,” but I do not see this sort of work as hazardous.
7. Background: Currently the police and fire department have a combined pension system.
Question: (a) If the majority of the members of the police department desire to separate their pension plan from that of the fire department, would you support that separation?
Answer: Probably not. Fire-fighters would need a say in it. Beyond that, I’d have to put on my lawyer hat and study up on the City’s pension plans and see how such a severance would affect all city employees and what, if any, additional costs and risks are involved.
(b) The police pension plan currently lacks many basic benefits. Will you support an increase to the pension benefits for members of the police department?
Answer: All city employees have much the same needs and concerns as police officers. We are facing budget cut-backs. Any increase in pension benefits should be made across the board, for all city employees, as city revenues and expenses permit.
If you wish to learn about my “economic recovery” plan for Key West, go to goodmorningkeywest.com and open the Key West Citizen questionnaire page on the menu to the right and start reading. There’s a photo of me on the homepage. Or, if you wish, you can used the pirate photo I brought with me, which I had made at Walgreens on Duval Street a couple of hours before the interview.
