Good Morning Florida Keys

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There is a post today at goodmorningkeywest.com, which you should be able to reach by clicking on this link: Key West dangling participles and other loose ends

Meanwhile, to kick off today’s blackboard jungle production, three higher education test questions and answers, compliments Key Largo’s county commissioner Sylvia Murphy:

The day finally arrived. Forrest Gump dies and goes to Heaven.

He is at the Pearly Gates, met by St. Peter himself.
However, the gates are closed, and Forrest approaches the gatekeeper.
St. Peter said, “Well, Forrest, it is certainly good to see you.
We have heard a lot about youI must tell you, though, that the place is filling up fast, and we have been administering an entrance examination for everyone.
The test is short, but you have to pass it before you can get into Heaven.”
Forrest responds, “It sure is good to be here, St. Peter, sir.
But nobody ever told me about any entrance exam.
I sure hope that the test ain’t too hard.
Life was a big enough testas it was.”

St. Peter continued, “Yes, I know Forrest, but the test is only three questions.
First:What two days of the week begin with the letter T? Second:How many seconds are there in a year? Third:What is God’s first name?” Forrest leaves to think the questions over. He returns the next day and sees St. Peter, who waves him up, and says, “Now that you have had a chance to think the questions over, give me your answers”
Forrest replied, “Well, the first one — which two days in the week begins with the letter “T”?

Shucks, that one is easy.
That would be Today and Tomorrow.”
The Saint’s eyes opened wide and he exclaimed, “Forrest, that is not what I was thinking, but you do have a point, and I guess I did not specify, so I will give you creditfor that answer.
How about the next one?” asked St. Peter..
“How many seconds in a year?
Now that one is harder,” replied Forrest, but I thunk and thunk about that, and I guess the only answer can be twelve.”
Astounded, St. Peter said, “Twelve Forrest, how in Heaven’s name could you come up with twelve seconds in a year?”

Forrest replied, “Shucks, there’s got to be twelve:

January 2nd, February 2nd, March 2nd.. ”
“Hold it,” interrupts St. Peter.
“I see where you are going with this, and I see your point, though that was not quite what I had in mind…..
but I will have to give you credit for that one, too.
Let us go on with the thirdand final question.
Can you tell me God’s first name”?
“Sure,” Forrest replied,
“it’s Andy.”
“Andy?” exclaimed an exasperated and frustrated St Peter.

“Ok, I can understand how you came up with your answers to my first two questions, but just how in the world did you come up with the name Andy as the first name of God?”

“Shucks, that was the easiest one of all,” Forrest replied.
“I learnt it from the song,

“ANDY WALKS WITH ME,
ANDY TALKS WITH ME,
ANDY TELLS ME I AM HIS OWN.”
St.Peter opened the Pearly Gates,and said: “Run Forrest, run.”

Give me a sense of humor, Lord.
Give me the ability to understand a clean joke, To get some humor out of life,
And pass it on to other folks.

Back down in The Asteroid Belt, according to The Key West Citizen today, it’s official. Subject to school board approval, schools superintendent Mark Porter has offered Naval Air Station Key West retiring commander Patrick A. Le Fevre the position of executive director of Operations and Planning. Quoting The Citizen: “Lefere’s job description will include management of the Information Technology, Food Service and Transportation departments, as well as maintenance of facilities, according to Porter.” That position came open when Michael Kinneer turned in his resignation after being told by Porter than his contract with the school district would not be renewed. It does not appear that Le Fever has any prior experience in teaching or schools.

Meanwhile, here’s something I sat on a few days because I wanted it to be able to breathe when I published it, and lately there has been very little air to breathe in the school district circus.

Larry Murray 5/20/13
To: Sloan Bashinsky

Sloan:

Sometime in mid to late April, the District advertised on its website for candidates to fill three vacancies: Chief Operating Officer, Finance Director and Director of Human Resources. Interviews are underway for the COO position and appointments are being made for the HR opening. Sean Kinney has reported in the Keynoter on the 6 candidates for COO.

Subsequent to the initial advertisement for a Finance Director, the District quietly terminated the search and began looking for an Executive Director of Finance. (Emphasis added.) I say “quietly” as no official announcement was made of the cancellation and subsequent substitution. Further, candidates for the Finance Director were not notified of the change. In fact, some had their candidacy closed as they did not qualify for the executive position.

How, you might ask, is it possible to be qualified to apply to be Finance Director but not qualified to apply for the Executive position? It is simple. Read the job description.

The position description for Finance Director is pretty generic, about what you would expect. The District was looking for an experienced finance person with a CPA preferred but not required.

However, when it comes to Executive Director of Finance, the qualifications required are considerably different. In addition to a background in financial operations, candidates must have:

Masters Degree
Valid Certification in Educational Leadership
or School Principal by the State of Florida
Minimum of 10 years of Creditable Experience
in Public Education…Experience as a School
Principal preferred

You might ask what do these educational requirements have to do with a finance directorship. I have no idea and can give no answer.

What I do know is that by adding these educational requirements, the District will severely limit the applicant pool. It is the rare bird who has credentials in both finance and education. In fact, there is a high probability that no one will qualify.

In this week’s “Staff Notes”, Porter laments the “relatively small number of applicants”. No shit! He goes on to say that if the applicant pool does not improve, he may have to hire a consultant to do the job–something he should have done in the first place. In the MCSD, we all have to learn the hard way. We do not know how to conduct a search for an upper management position. If we did, would Mark Porter be superintendent?

You may recall that when Michael Kinneer’s contract as Chief Operating Officer was extended last November, there was a similar education requirement in the position description that Kinneer did not meet. Nevertheless, Superintendent Mark Porter proceeded with the extension using the catchall of substituting other “relevant experience and education”.

I questioned the extension, at the time, referring to the substitution clause as a “Get Out Of Jail Free” that enables the superintendent to hire anyone he damn well pleases regardless of credentials or qualifications. Porter did the same thing with his very first appointment, Director of Instructional Technology, and I questioned at that time the use of the substitution clause as a means for putting a round peg in a square hole.

Bear in mind, there are no criteria for when and how the substitution clause can be used. There are no guidelines to establish equivalency. It all boils down to one person’s opinion, that of Mark Porter. This process is easy to execute when you have an unqualified rookie running the HR Department. It is even easier when that rookie is beholden to you for that job and the overinflated salary that goes with it. In short, there is no one to stop Porter from prostituting the system.

Superintendent Porter has gone through several revisions of position descriptions for upper management positions during the last year. I do not understand why if these position descriptions, including qualifications, are going to be routinely ignored. Cut out the charade.

My expectation is that the new Executive Director of Finance will be appointed using a “Get Out Of Jail Free” card. The pickings are likely to be so slim that there will be little choice. Porter will have his man/woman. There has been a rumor since he arrived that Porter wanted to bring in his “own” HR person from Minnesota. What better way to insure that result than trump everyone else with a “Get Out Of Jail Free” card?

I expect the Monroe County School District will soon become known as a place where the hiring process is rigged, not that it has not been done before. We all know of the “Conch Employment Agency” for lower and middle level positions run out of the Henriquez Building. It appears that Porter wishes to extend that type of hiring preference to upper management as well. You might as well hang out a sign “If you aren’t a Conch, don’t apply.”

There is more to be said about the glaring deficiencies in the current hiring procedures for the three top administrative positions but we will talk about that another day.

Larry

Dr. Larry Murray
Fiscal Watchdog and Citizen Advocate

Patrick Le Fever is not a Conch. One of his predecessors in command, Jim Scholl, not a Conch, was hired by Key West to be its city manager. After Scholl was hired, it came out that he had an agreement with the Navy that he could not represent the city on any matters that were related to anything he had done in his job as based commander. That led to another assistant city manager being hired, because Key West had had a lot of dealings with the Navy when Scholl was base commander. I imagine Le Fever signed a similar agreement with the Navy. I have heard maybe 800 children of Naval Air Station Key West families attend school in the Key West area. I hope Le Fever will not be hindered in performing his duties for the school district, like Scholl was hindered in performing his duties for Key West.

Yesterday, from the school district’s attorney, Dirk Smits, clarifying that the school district sued the HOB architect, and not the other way around:

Dirk Smits 11:48 AM
To: sloan bashinsky

Dec action was filed in response to Architect’s demands for additional money.

I wrote back:

sloan bashinsky 2:20 PM
To: dsmits@florida-law.com
Cc: sloan bashinsky, Larry Murray, Stuart Kessler, Sandy Riddle

Thanks, Dirk.

When Sandy Downs recently told me a high level Coastal employee had told her that the school district had sued the HOB architect, I said I didn’t believe it. She said she was sure the Coastal employee was right. I said I was almost certain he was wrong.

I called Larry Murray, and he said he had not heard of a lawsuit between the school district and the HOB architect.

I wrote about that in a post Ed Davidson received and responded to, not kindly to Sandy, and Ed did not say I was wrong, Sandy was right, the school district had sued the HOB architect.

I wrote to Shawn Smith and to you, asking if either of you knew of Key West or the school district suing or being sued by the HOB architect. You wrote back that the architect had sued the school district.

I wrote about that in a post, to which Ed responded, also not kindly to Sandy. In that post was an email in which asked Ed if he would tell me what the settlement was with the architect? I said it was a public records request, as per Florida law. Ed told me I would have to make the request to the school district.

Ed did not tell me the school district had sued the HOB architect, that Sandy was right and I was wrong. He knew Sandy was right, because he was on the school board when it approved the settlement agreement with the HOB architect last November, as I recall the month. [It was last December.]

Then, I learn from you yesterday that the school district filed a declaratory judgment action against the HOB architect, which left me wondering if it was a counter suit to the lawsuit the architect had filed against the school district?

I called Sandy this morning and told her all of that, and that Shawn had now replied to my inquiry with no litigation between Key West and the HOB architect.

Sandy said my experiences with Ed Davidson and with you over the lawsuit the school district had filed against the HOB architect was even more proof, that what the Coastal employee had told her about the different ways the school district was all screwed up and didn’t know what was going on in its own house, was true. I said I agreed.

I found myself thinking this morning, [Ed Davidson] made a lot of noise about change orders and Coastal needing to back up its bills. A big sit down happened, according to Ed at a school board meeting, and some of his questions were resolved, and other questions were still pending. Ed did not say he had prevailed on any of his questions. He did not say he had saved the school district money. He only said questions were resolved, which I took to mean Coastal had backed up its work and billing. That seemed to me to be separate and apart from the issue of Coastal getting cost saving bonuses.

I also found myself thinking this morning, in the end, it probably doesn’t matter whether or not Coastal followed the procedures required in the HOB contract with Coastal. It probably all boils down to the work Coastal did, was it okay, and how much did it cost? That seemed to be Stuart Kessler’s basic take when I spoke recently with him.

However, Dirk, if you did not yet read my  yet another mountain of evidence that the Florida Keys school district administration is terminally bonkers and needs to be taken over by the Florida Board of Education today at goodmorningfloridakeys.com, you might wish to read it. Especially Larry Murray’s email toward the end about zumBrunnen being replaced by a local contractor last name Sprague, who, as Larry described that situation, sure looked to me like a Coastal plant. ie. part of a scheme to get rid of zumBrunnen, which apparently was looking out for the school district very well. Too well, Larry suggested in his email to me.

I may have more thoughts later.

Sloan

In the Wednesday Keynoter – www.keysnet.com:

True cost of rebuilt middle school hard to peg own

By SEAN KINNEY
skinney@keynoter.com
Posted – Wednesday, May 22, 2013 09:11 AM EDT

With the project going through a third-party financial review, the seemingly reasonable question — how much has the reconstruction of Horace O’Bryant Middle School in Key West really cost? — is very much a point of debate.

The vast majority of the project cost, $36 million, is financed through a federal stimulus loan supported by bond financing.

But from there, the numbers get a little harder to pin down due to repeated changes to the school’s design and more than 80 change orders to the construction contract. School Board Ed Davidson has relentlessly questioned those since his November election.

Davidson and others in the School District agree that architect Rick Smith’s redesign of Phase II construction to comply with city height limits cost around $1.5 million.

A second change to deal with an apparently undocumented crawl space beneath the building cost another $400,000. Then there was $300,000 to remove “unsuitable soils” from a foundation site.

Davidson said roughly $2.8 million has been drawn from an account containing the proceeds of the Harris School sale.

That’s a total of $41 million.

“Nobody knows the real cost,” Davidson said, something he attributes to incomplete and inconsistent financial recording and reporting from Miami-based contractor Coastal Construction.

On that paragraph in the article, I wrote to our new school district sniffer dog yesterday:

“I continue to have grave difficulty with Ed Davidson blaming his and the school district’s not knowing what the “real cost” of HOB is on Coastal, when the school district should have kept up with the “real costs” all along, and the school board should have satisfied themselves all along that the school district was keeping up with the “real costs”. Especially so, in the face of the Armageddon penalty, having to pay the waived $20 million +- interest, if the school was not completed on time. For sure, if litigation comes, Coastal will try to lay the blame for the school district not knowing the “real costs” on the school district. As I wrote yesterday, Ed Davidson has led the charge in proving that the school district did not keep up with the “real costs”. Yet, all of that seems irrelevant. What seems relevant is what the school actually cost, was the work by Coastal satisfactory, and what Coastal, under the construction contract, is supposed to be paid. If the school district doesn’t know what HOB cost, then it falls on Coastal to provide that information. I suppose the most sane (sane being relative) way to watch and comment on this unfolding comedy is to try to enjoy it.”

Last week, Superintendent Mark Porter, under mounting pressure from the board and public, hired accountant Steve Pribramsky, a fraud investigator and former District 1 School Board member, to undertake what’s called “attestation services.”

For a cost estimated between $15,000 and $18,000, Pribramsky will essentially go over all of the HOB books and documentation from the contractor.

During a May 14 session in Key West, the School Board discussed the issue and expressed confidence in Pribramsky’s ability to get the job done.

“We’ve been failed in a lot of ways on this thing,” board member John Dick said. Referencing past nebulous construction costs, Dick vowed that “we’ll know exactly how much this one cost in the end.”

————————————————–

I am informed by our new school district sniffer dog that he soon might have some interesting points to make re that article. So stay tuned on that.

Also from Larry Murray yesterday:

Larry Murray 1:08 PM
To: Mark Porter
Cc: amber.bosco@keysschools.com, Andy Griffiths2
Subject: Atheletic funding

Superintendent Porter:

According to statements attributed to KWHS football coach Johnny Hughes in today’s Citizen, the Conch football team must raise money in order for the kids to play, which means uniforms, transportation and meals on away trips.

“I would also like to add that since we are ‘self-funded’, we rely on community support to keep the program running…” or so said Mr. Hughes.

The conclusion I draw from these statements is that the School District does not provide any financing for interscholastic sports, at least the KWHS football team. That surprises me. Can you confirm or refute the accuracy of Mr. Hughes’ statements that his football program is wholly dependent financially on the generosity of the community?

Larry Murray

Dr. Larry Murray
Fiscal Watchdog and Citizen Advocate

I replied:

sloan bashinsky 2:44 PM
To: Larry Murray, Mark Porter
Cc: amber.bosco@keysschools.com, Andy Griffiths
Subject: Athletic funding

To ALL:

I will be more than surprised to learn the KWHS football team does not receive considerable, most of, its $$ funding from the school district.

I would like to know how much the school district spent during the last school district fiscal year (2011-2012), and during this fiscal year (2012-2013) so far, on the KWHS football team.

By spent, I mean, actual school dollars directly used by the KWHS football team for itself, in Key West and away, and for visiting football teams; and indirect school district dollars, such as coaches and other support staff salaries, etc.

I also would like to see the same financial “data” for the last school district fiscal year (2012-2013) and this fiscal year (2012-2013) so far, for each of the other sports teams at KWHS, and for the KWHS cheerleading squad.

Please treat this as an official Public Information/Records request under Florida law, made to the school district through you, Superintendent Porter.

If school district and KWHS IT accounting is in order, the requested financial “data” should be easy to quickly retrieve and send to me by email.

If that is not the case, please explain to me by email why that is not the case. That, too, is an official Public Records/Information request under Florida law.

Thank you,

Sloan Bashinsky

Mark Porter replied:

Mark Porter5:47 PM
To: sloan bashinsky, Larry Murray
Cc: Amber Bosco, Andy Griffiths

Mr. Bashinsky,
As noted previously in response to Dr. Murray’s request regarding this same topic, I am disappointed to say that Coach Hughes comments as to reliance on community support for the football (and other athletic/activity programs) is an unfortunate reality. I will seek to provide the budget details you have requested, but in general I can summarize the Monroe County Schools support of the football program as follows;

· Coaches stipends for varsity and junior varsity coaches (reduced by 5% in 2012-13)
· Field maintenance – mowing, fertilizer and watering
· Principal’s discretionary budget (may be used, but is very small to begin with)
· Athletic Director and other administrative support

As you can see, no actual budget allocation is provided for supplies/equipment or transportation services. These, and other necessary expenses, are provided through a great deal of community fund-raising activities. This is true not only for the football program, but every other student activity program. Such an arrangement certainly does not comport with my philosophy on the importance of student involvement in activities beyond the classroom, but is unfortunately a reflection of our on-going financial challenges in the MCSD.

Thank you.

Mark T. Porter
Superintendent of Schools

I wrote back:

sloan bashinsky 6:09 PM
To: Mark Porter, Larry Murray
Cc: Amber Bosco, Andy Griffiths, sloan bashinsky

Hi, Mark – thanks for your very prompt reply. I did not receive your response to Larry.

Sorry to hear the grim news, but tight money is a reality in the school district, as the teachers and other employees certainly know.

I hope to see actual spending numbers, not allocations.

I, too, am a proponent of extracurricular student interest and activities. When I was in grade school, the after school sports programs, for boys, nothing for girls back then, were run by the YMCA and were important to me. I did not do school sports after grade school, nor any extracurricular activity. High school sports, also for boys, not for girls back then, were funded by the school district and booster clubs.

Looking back today, I view my lack of extracurricular involvement as tragic. Most tragic, I never learned music or to play an musical instrument. I did learn how to type my second year in high school. Another boy and me, sorry, another boy and I in a class with a lot of girls. Who knows how it would have gone, had I learned to pay [play] a trumpet, or a guitar, instead of type?

Sloan

Mark replied:

Mark Porter 6:13 PM
To: sloan bashinsky

Mr. Bashinsky,
I too missed the boat with regard to music (the early years of piano and trombone just didn’t stick with me) but was able to be more encouraging of my sons with regard to their music participation (i.e. required) . Typing on the other hand I still consider to be one of the most valuable courses I took in high school. I was one of the fortunate ones who had an electric typewriter, not a manual.
Still working on the actual expenditure data. Thank you.
Mark T. Porter
Superintendent of Schools
Monroe County School District

Larry forwarded this:

From: Mark Porter <Mark.Porter@KeysSchools.com>
To: Lawrence Murray <citizenlarry007@yahoo.com>
Cc: Amber Bosco <Amber.Bosco@KeysSchools.com>; Andy Griffiths (MCSB) <andy@fishandy.com>
Sent: Wednesday, May 22, 2013 1:44 PM
Subject: RE: Athletic Funding

Dr. Murray,
It is regrettable that Coach Hughes statements are in essence accurate. Currently the Monroe County Schools only provides financial support for athletics and activities with regard to coaches salaries (low to begin with and reduced by 5% in 2012-13) and facility/field maintenance. Virtually all other costs are paid for through participation fees and community solicited support.

As a strong proponent for the value of activities beyond the classroom I am disappointed by our current lack of financial support for these programs, but again they are the victim of past financial challenges.

Thank you.

Mark T. Porter
Superintendent of Schools
Monroe County School District

To: Mark Porter
Cc: Amber Bosco, Andy Griffiths (MCSB)

Superintendent Porter:

Thank you for your prompt response. I had no idea of the particulars of how athletic programs are funded at our local high schools. I naively assumed, as I suspect the general public does, that the District provided funding of core expenses and that fundraising was to cover peripheral costs.

Larry Murray

Dr. Larry Murray
Fiscal Watchdog and Citizen Advocate

Setting Ed Davidson, Coastal, HOB and Larry Murray aside, I still say the only way to take care of the shortage of money in the school district Mark bemoaned is to raise taxes for school district operations. Catch-22, as long as the school district keeps producing the kind of dysfunctional news you normally expect to come out of Congress and the White House, the school district has about as much chance of persuading the voters to pass a school district operations tax increase referendum, as a snowball has on Key West’s Duval Street in August. Unless, the school board tells the public that all school sports programs in the Keys, and all cheerleader programs, will be axed if the school operations tax referendum does not pass.

For a fact, reading, writing, arithmetic, a foreign language, music, art, dance, drama, typing, etc. have far more to do with educating and preparing school children to be college and/or career and life ready, than do school sports and cheerleader programs. Meaning, perhaps school sports and cheerleader programs should be cut out of the school district budget now. Teachers pay is more important.

But then, didn’t Forrest Gump run back a lot of kick-offs and punts for TDs when he played for Bear Bryant and the Alabama Crimson Tide?

Raise school operations taxes, folks. The cost of living in the Keys is higher than any other part of Florida. Pay Keys teachers well to educate Keys kids, and let them play sports, too.

Sloan Bashinsky

keysmyhome@hotmail.com

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There is a post today at goodmorningkeywest.com, which you should be able to reach by clicking on this link: Key West – a separate reality

Meanwhile, on the school district’s settlement agreement with the Horace O’Bryant K-8 School architect and other at loose ends from yesterday’s post:

Florida Keys school board member Ed Davidson, retired decorated Vietnam Marine aircraft carrier fighter pilot, on photo credits, imperviousness, clean hands, bank robbers, finger-pointing, dodging simple questions, selling out, etc., etc.

Horace O’Bryant K-8

An email to the school district’s lawyers:

sloan bashinsky

3:21 PM

To: Theron Simmons, dsmits@florida-law.com

I don’t expect you guys to reply to what follows. In fact, I advise you not to reply.

My impression of Ed Davidson is, he is used to be on the plaintiff side of litigation, and he is used to pushing the bad defendants around, and he is used to winning.

I hope what I posted today gave Ed, and the rest of the school board members, and Mark Porter, and the other named “theoretical” adverse plaintiff witnesses from the SD, a sense of what might happen in a lawsuit filed by Coastal against the SD.

What else I could see happening, unless the HOB contract between Coastal prohibits it, Coastal files suit on the mainland, where it’s convenient to Coastal. Coastal subpoenas the adverse plaintiff witnesses from the SD to that mainland trial. Coastal does not put them on call, but requires them to be there until they are called by Coastal. Coastal asks the trial judge to invoke The Rule, and order all witnesses in the case, on either side, not to talk to any other witnesses during the course of the trial.

I don’t know how a trial judge on the mainland would deal with all of that, but I would give it a try, were I Coastal’s trial lawyer. I would put as much pressure on the SD as possible. Physical pressure, emotional pressure, mental pressure, $$ pressure and media pressure.

If Coastal is flush financially, I would be inclined to make a take it or leave it settlement offer to the SD, and if that offer was declined, I would roll the dice at trial, with Coastal’s permission.

The above, and what I wrote in my post today, is in no way a fantasy scenario. It is a real possibility, as you both know.

Any chance you can simply tell me in an email what the HOB architect was paid in the settlement, and what he was paid in all, if more than the settlement? I can share that with my readers, and their friends, and hopefully put that mystery to rest.

Or, if you can provide a link to wherever it is in the SD website, if it is in the website, I can use that link to chase down those numbers.

Dang am I glad I don’t still practice law.

I am unable to copy the settlement agreement and paste it into any of my word processors. So, cutting to the chase, which I tried to get Ed Davidson to do:

The HOB architect is to be paid a total of $684,454.94, $496,954.94 of which is for the original agreement between the architect and the SB, $187,500.00 of which is for additional work by the architect on HOB. $387,939.91 already has been paid to the architect. The balance is to be paid in installments varying in amount, starting January 2013, until paid in full.

The settlement agreement was approved by the school board at a regular meeting on December 11, 2012. Ed Davidson was elected in early November of that year. He was at that school board meeting. Look at all the time and trouble impervious (sort of rhymes with imperious) Ed could have saved me and Dirk Smits and his law firm by simply answering my very simple question: What did the school district pay the HOB architect before the settlement, and afterward?

If all of the above is not yet another mountain of proof that this testosterone-mad school district is terminally insane and needs to be take over by the Florida Board of Education, then insanity does not exist. Keep reading for more proof that insanity indeed does exist, and the school district is leading the charge.

The new sniffer dog, who supplied in yesterday’s post links to the HOB part of the school district website, chimed in again yesterday:

well i followed the link to mcsd website and opened some of the reports……was that pay applications and change orders in the reports. i say again…..change orders that have never been seen for over two years………are these the same change orders that have not been submitted to the board but are on their website ……… what am i missing……i see them….but they don’t.. capt hold me, the ass smell is getting bad….capt …..kess …………..dick………..fish………….how did this happen

http://construction.keysschools.schoolfusion.us/modules/groups/integrated_home.phtml?&gid=1574194&sessionid=cbb9d140dd9268f390b6af5af27c5d90

this is for the dick who needed eyes, add to this list the construction manager…. and rick smith along with the bank…..all worked for the district……dick how did it happen, how many eyes did you need….
A. Attendees
The purpose of this site visit was to review completion status, project activity, quality,
document compliance, change orders, and payment application. The following were in
attendance at the inspection:
County School District
Joseph Burke, Superintendent
Jesus Jara, COO (NP)
Michael Kineer, CFO
Fred Sims, Dir. Facilities & Const.
Christie Martin, Admin. Asst.
Michael Henriquez, Principal (NP)
Nicholas Ostehoudt, Dir. IT (NP)
Ken Gentile, District Auditor
Len Rhodus, Dist. Bldg. Official

I replied:

I think change orders $25,000 and more have to be submitted to the board for approval. Ed Davidison raised hell about Superintendent Proter appoving change orders greater than $25,000, and that was stopped by the school board.

Nashville J replied to yesterday’s post:

Whomever, the little bird is – sure dropped a nice egg into your basket. 

I wrote back:

Those many monthly HOB reports are from zumBrunnen; according to Larry Murray just now, an international construction consulting firm with great reputation. Larry said he didn’t even know how the SD was able to get zumBrunnen to take the job. Larry said zumBrunnen apparently did excellent work for a very reasonable hourly rate – $125.

Larry said, this should please you, that eventually the SD discharged zumBrunnen and hired a KW bubba conch contractor to do what zumBrunnen had been doing re HOB for the SD. Larry said the KW bubba conch did not make written reports, but made verbal reports.

Ed Davidson

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There is a post today at goodmorningkeywest.com, which you should be able to reach by clicking on this link: retire to paradise in Key West’s posh Truman Waterfront waterfront “assisted care center”

Meanwhile, Nashville replied to yesterday’s high explosives – Florida Keys school district post:

Sloan:

Sure appears we got a good old fashion SHE SAID – HE SAID here! Will be interesting to see whom is proven to be correct. Not about the Chemtrails – but about the MCSB and Costal.

Keep up the good work!

J

I wrote back:

I told Sandy last night, if I were a judge and she and Ed were standing before me, I would dismiss the case on the ground that the only two witnesses to the event are not in agreement and I have no way to determine who is telling the truth. Back when I practiced law, we called that kind of case a “dog fall” – the judge left the parties where he found them.

Me, personally, I’m heaps more concerned about what Sandy said about the Navy seeding the air over the Keys with aluminum compound, than I am about the he said, she said going on between MSCB and Coastal. Perhaps my lack of infatuation with the MSCD and Coastal blabber froth is influenced by my sincere beliefe that MACD needs to be taken over by the Florida Board of Education. Maybe HOB will turn out to be such a fiasco that becomes the last straw which triggers a state takeover.

Nashville J replied:

Seeding with aluminum compound! It might not be the same but my brother flew on AWAC planes out of Adak, Alaska in the late 60′s. He was a radar technician and told me stories of how they would release tiny aluminum particles when they were picked up by enemy radar and it would drive the radar screens crazy for a a couple minutes while they (his plane) would change headings and altitude to make it harder for them to pick up with the enemy radar screen cleared. Now I understand that the electronics then are no where near what they are now – so have no idea whether that has anything to do with it or not.

You can find all types of chemtrail stories by googling and some scary stuff – don’t know whether there is any truth to it or not.

J

I replied:

Sandy said she told Capt Ed that she was told the Navy was trying to control the weather with what they were seeding, and Capt Ed laughed, said they had been doing that for 20 years. I wasn’t there, so …

I told Sandy of someone I’d heard about from another former Navy carrier pilot yesterday, who (that pilot) also is an environmental activist and he has taken the Navy head on. This other ex Navy aviator said this person he knew also is ex Navy, and he knows a lot about and is concerned over what the Navy is and has been doing. I left it up to Sandy to run that third fellow down, but maybe I will try to locate him, hear what he has to say.

School board member Ed Davidson replied to yesterday’s high explosives – Florida Keys school district post.

Photo credits and imperviousness

Capt. Ed Davidson 5/20/13
To: keysmyhome@hotmail.com
Cc: citizenlarry007@yahoo.com

It may interest you to know that (in the picture Sloan uploaded) the guy in the blue shirt and white hat is former President Jimmy Carter, and the lady in the straw hat is former first lady Rosalyn Carter — the rest are the Carter grandchildren, who I am teaching how to make chewing gum out of sapodilla fruit latex juice. Plus a couple of Secret Service agents.

For Sandy Downs to have the enormous self-impressed arrogance to judge the worth of my entire life by a couple of lines of conversation she misunderstood in a brief exchange over one of her many disfactual conspiracy rumors is even more discrediting to her own distorted views, and I do not intend to have any further exchanges about or with a person so compulsively imperious to facts, and devoid of respect for others engaged in setting things right.

CaptEcoEd

I wrote back:

That said, Ed, will you look into whether or not the Navy is seeding the air above the Keys with aluminum compound, or did so in the past? The health of every school kid in the Keys, and every former school kid in the Keys, and every adult in the Keys, may be at grave risk.

It seems well known that Navy jet fighters are jettisoning most of their fuel over the sea before landing at Boca Chica. I can’t imagine that goes down well with the sea creatures and plants, or with people who come into contact with jettisoned Navy jet fuel in the sea.

I have heard from time to time that Navy ships are the worse polluters on the sea, dumping their wastewater, etc., but I also have heard cruise ships hold that distinction. Do you know, Ed, if Navy ships are the worst polluters on the sea around these parts? Or the second worst? If you don’t know, will you make your best guess?

I wonder how Jimmy and Rosylan Carter, and their grandchildren, and the Secret Service agents, would have responded if they had heard all of that above while they were in the Keys when that photo was taken?

So far, Ed, I don’t agree with you that the major blame lies with Coastal. From all I have seen and heard, the major blame lies with the school district, as far as the school district is concerned. You, a decorated retired Navy carrier aircraft combat veteran, know chain of command and where the buck stops. You know you cannot blame Coastal for record-keeping the school district did not maintain or require from Coastal as per the HOB construction contract.

Sandy Downs told me of her Coastal contact telling her that the school district fired everyone Coastal was dealing with in the school district, and of a scheduled contractor-school district monthly meeting at which only Coastal showed up. Do you know anything about either of those allegations? If so, did it happen that way? If you don’t know, Ed, treat that question as an official public records request under Florida statute.

Sandy told me that her Coastal contact was highly critical of the local newspapers reporting on HOB slamming Coastal and protecting the school district. I told Sandy that it didn’t look that way to me; it looked to me the local newspapers had gone after the school district hard. Even so, I told her to tell her Coastal contact to send me something stating Coastal’s position on HOB and I will publish it verbatim along with my own comments.

Re Sandy’s passed on allegation from the Coastal employee, that either Key West or the School District had sued the HOB architect, I inquired about that to Key West City Attorney Shawn Smith and school district attorney Dirk Smits today by email. I added, did they know if the architect had filed suit against the City or the school district? Have not yet heard back from Shawn. Dirk replied:

Dirk Smits

3:14 PM

To: sloan bashinsky, SD Smith
Cc: Mark Porter (Mark.Porter@KeysSchools.com)

The architect sued over fees he felt were owed. That part of the dispute was settled. I can ask Sally for the link where it was approved if you want. Any potential E & O has been carved out and is still available should the Board decide and there a is sufficient basis for a claim.

I hope this is responsive to your question.

Dirk M. Smits
Board Certified Specialist
Vernis & Bowling of the Florida Keys, P.A.
81990 Overseas Highway, 3rd Floor
Islamorada, FL 33036
Tel. 305-664-4675
Fax. 305-664-5414
dsmits@florida-law.com

I attended a school board meeting the middle of last year, as I recall, at which the HOB architect appeared from the mainland, from near Tampa as I recall. He wanted to discuss the various problems, including his not getting paid all of his fee, as per his contract with the school district (his claim). The board only wanted to give him three minutes as a citizen speaker. He said he had gone to great trouble and some expense to make that trip just for that board meeting. Then, I think, it was John Dick who gave the architect more time, but not nearly the time the various problems needed for discussion. I figured then, the architect would sue the school district. I figured then, Dirk was wishing he could kill his clients, the school board members. I was astounded, embarrassed and offended over the school board’s terrible manners and stupidity. Maybe you were, too, Ed? You were there.

I recall attending a Key West city commission meeting quite a while before that, at which the HOB architect appeared, to be grilled by then irate city commissioners and and citizens. The mayor was laying low, not wanting to queer the school board giving Glynn Archer Elementary School to the city for its new city hall, after the Glynn Archer students transferred over to HOB. I recall the HOB architect saying he had designed schools all over Florida, and, I think, two schools in the Florida Keys before HOB. I recall him saying he had never been challenged by a local government re any school he had designed, until Key West challenge HOB. I think I recall him saying it was his understanding that, under Florida law, school districts did not answer to local zoning authorities.

I recall thinking, Key West city officials had the HOB plans before them, and they never objected to HOB until the exterior walls went up and it then was apparent to the citizens in the HOB neighborhood just how tall the building was. I recall thinking, the city commissioner, Teri Johnston, in whose voting district HOB lay, was a licensed building contractor who read construction plans ongoing. I recall thinking Teri was the most irate elected official. I recall thinking her ire was misdirected at the architect, Coastal and the school district, instead of at herself. I recall during citizen comments my telling the city commissioners and mayor during that, as far as HOB was concerned, they would be remembered as the Pearl Harbor lookouts. A term that seems to apply very well to the school district and school board re HOB and countless other school district fleet sinkings by friendly fire.

What I don’t recall, Ed, is reading in The Citizen or the Keynoter, or hearing on US 1 Radio, of the filing of the HOB architect’s lawsuit and/or its settlement. Do you, Ed, recall reading of that lawsuit and/or its settlement in the local newspapers, or hearing of it on US 1 Radio? Do you know, Ed, what the school district paid the architect to settle the lawsuit? And, do you know, Ed, what was the architect’s total compensation for HOB? If so, what was he paid in total? If you do not know, Ed, please treat those two questions as an official public records request, as per Florida statute.

Also, Ed, I would like to hear your response to this last below in italics, which Sandy wrote to me re HOB soil samples, which is in the post to which you responded today. You also can can treat this question as an official public records request, as per Florida statute.

Thanks,

Sloan

Sandy Downs

After reading the response about the soil samples, I will add what I was told about that.
The soil samples were the responsibility of the school district as the school district would not trust the soil report from the contractor, because the contractor could “skew” it so as to save money and time. Coastal worker said the “soil” report was inaccurate because the soil is tested in various areas and not every single inch of soil is tested.
When Coastal found out after the construction had started that there was a problem with some of the soil, they built accordingly. I was told that instead of the whole school having to be built on pilings, only part of the school did. And that the faulty soil survey actually saved the school district a lot of money. Otherwise the entire school would have been built “up” on pilings. So did the faulty “soil” survey benefit the school district who hired the surveyors? According to the Coastal employee, it did. So was the survey skewed to leave out information about faulty soil to save the school district money? What profit was in it for whom? I don’t know. But I believe Coastal is taking the blame for anything and everything the school district failed to do, or failed to do properly.

Ed replied:

Capt. Ed Davidson 5/20/13
To: keysmyhome@hotmail.com

Public records requests have to be directed to their proper custodians, the School District. Coastal does not come to the table with “clean hands,” a phrase I believe you learned about in law school; and surely they did not teach you in your legal studies that it is a convincing defense to say it is someone else’s fault for not having kept them from violating the law, school board policy, and the clear stipulations of the contract they negotiated in detail — that would be pretty much like a bank robber blaming the police for not stopping him from robbing the bank.
There is neither merit nor worth in wasting any further time by being drawn into any further Sandy Downs-related discussions, as she has clearly indicated there is no honest dialog to be had — I need all the time I can muster for trying to straighten out the HOB mess and other schools management issues.

CaptEcoEd

I wrote back:

sloan bashinsky 8:50 AM
To: Capt. Ed Davidson
Cc: dsmits@florida-law.com, Larry Murray

So, Dirk. Will you tell me how much the school district paid the HOB architect to settle his lawsuit against the school district? You negotiated that settlement, didn’t you? And, if you know, were the lawsuit and settlement reported in the local newspapers and on US 1 Radio?

Your reply, Ed, was about what I expected.

What I wrote to you was a test. You answered no questions, your grade is F-.

However, you got A+ in finger-pointing, not answering questions, double talk and laying down and spreading your legs for your Navy alma mater. You have a great future as a politician.

Word has it on the street that the retiring Commandant of Naval Air Station Key West will be hired to replace Michael Kinneer as Superintendent Mark Porter’s new chief operating officer.

The “clean hands doctrine” is an equitable defense against someone who does not have clean hands and is asking a court for equitable relief. If Coastal sues the school district for damages arising from alleged breach of contract, that is an action in law, not in equity. The doctrine of cleans hands does not apply in such a case. The burden of proof is on the plaintiff. The judge, or the jury, if it is a jury trial, looks at the contract, and at the evidence, and decides what, if anything, the plaintiff is entitled to receive under the contract.

So, Ed, let’s start with a comment I heard you make at a school board meeting: that you were unable to get any HOB financial documents/records from the school district, and were having to get those records from Coastal. Hold that thought.

Then, let’s pretend I am Coastal’s trial lawyer and I sue the school district in state court.

Let’s pretend I depose you, Ed, and the other school board members, and past school board member Steve Pribramsky, and present and past school district superintendents, Mark Porter, Jesus Jara and Joe Burke, and present and past school district chief financial officers and chief operating officers, Michael Kinneer and Ken Gentile, and present and past members of the school board’s volunteer Audit & Finance Committee, including Stuart Kessler and Larry Murray. Under oath, I garner from you and them everything you and they said bad about the school district’s HOB financial and accounting practices.

I garner that Pribramsky didn’t like HOB’s financing to begin with. He didn’t like how the school district was going. He chose not to run again, even though he would have been a shoe-in to be reelected. Then, his accounting firm was hired to try to get to the bottom of HOB’s construction financials.

I garner that Burke, who arranged the HOB financing with the big penalty in it if HOB was not completed on time, saw the handwriting on the wall and took the schools superintendent job in Ft. Myers.

I garner that Jara took Burke’s place and later was terminated by the school board.

I garner that Kinneer and Gentile were terminated by Jara’s replacement, Mark Porter, with the school board’s amen.

I garner that Stuart Kessler, former chair and still a member of the school board’s volunteer Audit & Finance Committee created to spy on the school district administration for the school board, tipped you off to the utter lack of HOB accounting and accountability in the school district.

I get multitudinous earfuls from Larry Murray, one of your opponents in the District 3 school board race last year, and before that an outspoken member of the Audit & Finance Committee member. So outspoken, Larry was not reappointed after his 4-year term expired.

I find on the school district’s website what a sniffer dog discovered and sent to me this morning. Open the links, imagine how a judge and/or jury might view that evidence.

——————————————–

HOB Memo

my my i found this on the school board web site, too bad they have all left and or been discharged, with the exception of Mike H. Looks like some people may have not been doing their job, but lets just keep blaming everyone else.
 http://construction.keysschools.schoolfusion.us/modules/groups/integrated_home.phtml?&gid=1574194&sessionid=cbb9d140dd9268f390b6af5af27c5d90

wow, look at those reports, what you say, the board did not know………….is that ASS burning or just more babble from the capt and his disbarred buddy, say what….. certified disbarred

read some of the reports and see if it is, what they say it is…..again i ask, keep me out of it

——————————————–

I subpoena you, Ed, and the other named school district luminaries, present and past, to the trial as adverse witnesses for the plaintiff, Coastal. I can cross-examine and lead adverse witnesses.

I put you on the witness stand first, Ed, because you led the charge in blasting the school district over HOB. I read to you from your deposition, one at a time, every HOB criticism you leveled at the school district about at televised/recorded school board meetings, on Facebook, in the press, on US 1 Radio, on Sloan Bashinsky’s blog, and in emails to whomever. I ask you, under oath, under penalty of perjury, to tell the judge and/or the jury if you said or wrote each of those criticisms of the school district’s accounting practices re HOB’s construction.

You get to answer yes, or no. You do not get to elaborate. You do not get to talk about Sandy Downs, Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter, clean hands, or police letting bank robbers rob banks.

You do not get to tell the judge that you won’t answer a question because you don’t like the question. You can tell the judge you refuse to answer a question because it might incriminate you. In doing that, of course, you incriminate the school district and yourself.

A man with clean hands does not plead the 5th, which you did in your two emails yesterday.

By the time I am done with you on the witness stand, Ed, you are Coastal’s star witness against the school district. You are lit up like a Christmas tree on the front page of The Key West Citizen and the Keynoter and on US 1 Radio.

Yes, Dirk gets a shot at getting you to point the finger at Coastal, after I have already gotten you to point the finger at the school district.

After that, I put on my next adverse plaintiff witness, whom I get to point the finger at the school district, and Dirk then gets a chance to try to erase that witness’ testimony against the school district, by getting the witness to point the finger at Coastal.

And so it goes, down to my last school district witness, Larry Murray.

Then, I put on Coastal’s people who did Coastal’s HOB accounting and kept HOB records, who produce and explain those records. Neat records. Not unintelligible records stuffed into many boxes, which took a while to be found, and then not all at once, to all of which you and other adverse plaintiff witnesses already have testified.

Dirk gets a chance to discredit each of Coastal’s people.

Even so, the school district’s HOB accounting looks like spaghetti thrown against a wall; like the school district doesn’t even know the definition of accounting. Ergo, the only reliable accounting is Coastal’s.

But then, what do I know? Before I file the lawsuit for Coastal, Dirk tells the school board litigation is insane. The school district’s hands are way too dirty. The publicity will be horrible. Negotiate a settlement with Coastal, like the school district did with the HOB architect.

Sloan

Dirk Smits replied:

Dirk Smits 9:00 AM
To: sloan bashinsky

That was why I offered the link. It was done at a public meeting.

Sent from my iPhone

I wrote back:

sloan bashinsky 9:08 AM
To: dsmits@florida-law.com

Gosh, Dirk, does everything with the school district have to be so circuitous?

You cannot just tell me what the settlement amount was?

You cannot just tell me, if you know, the settlement was reported in the local newspapers and on US 1 Radio?

Have Sally send me the link.

Sloan

Dirk replied:

Dirk Smits

9:24 AM

To: sloan bashinsky

I am out of the office and really do not remember the amount. Will certainly look it up when I get in.

Sent from my iPhone

Then, Dirk sent me, with copies to Larry Murray and school board chairman Andy Griffiths:

 

Dirk Smits

10:48 AM

To: keysmyhome@hotmail.com

Cc: Lawrence Murray (larryafcomm@yahoo.com), andy@fishandy.com

1 attachment (223.9 KB

Rick Z Smith Settlement.pdf

View online

Download as zip

This is the settlement.

I have no idea what was covered by the papers and radio. The meetings were advertised and we had 2 advertised closed sessions on the matter.

I replied:

sloan bashinsky 11:09 AM
To: dsmits@florida-law.com
Cc: Lawrence Murray (larryafcomm@yahoo.com), Andy Griffiths

Thanks, Dirk, but am unable to open the attachment. So, I remain clueless re the settlement with the architect.

Later, I received this from Ed Davidson:

Ed Davidson replied to the Coastal v. school district part of today’s post:
Capt. Ed Davidson 11:18 AM
To: keysmyhome@hotmail.com
Cc: dsmits@florida-law.com, citizenlarry007@yahoo.com

You have your fantasy trial completely backwards, Sloan: if you had actually done your homework instead of trading in rumor, innuendo, and self-serving Coastal assertions, you would have discovered many clear construction team violations of contract requirements, and multiple failures to produce mandatory documentation (and some outright refusals to do so).
Those are simply the facts in extensive evidence, which are neither expunged nor exonerated by lax supervision on the part of some School District officials.

I replied:

As I wrote today, Ed, in my fantasy lawsuit, Dirk would be allowed to use you and other school district personnel to try to lay it all on Coastal. That’s how lawsuits go. I don’t trust either side to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. If I did, that truly would be fantasy.

I leave for my readers to make up their own minds. Like judges and juries make up their own minds.

My horrorscope in The Key West Citizen today – www.keysnews.com:

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct.
23) — One of your greatest
gifts is your ability to instruct
people without making them
feel stupid or imposed upon.
All your suggestions will be
followed.

Either I blew it today, or the Horrorscoper blew it. Darn, was I hoping Ed would look into Sandy’s allegations about the Navy seeding aluminum in the sky over the Keys. I really don’t care what happens between Coastal and the school district. It will be what it will be.

A bleah, and a bleah, and a bleah, and that’s all, folks! Except for what’s over at goodmorningkeywest.com today: retire to paradise in Key West’s posh Truman Waterfront waterfront “assisted care center”

depress Ctrl and + keys at same time to increase zoom (font size), depress Ctrl and – keys at same time to reduce zoom

There is a post today at goodmorningkeywest.com, which you should be able to reach by clicking on this link: healthy press and commentary vs. government, political, social and religious infringement – Key West variations

Meanwhile, today’s post at this website moves from warm to hot to searing to hot to warm …

Nashville J responded to yesterday’s posts at goodmorningfloridakeys.com and goodmorningkeywest.com:

Sloan:

Two more good ones today – keep it up! Tell the citizens the truth – if the politicans ever do that they will be run out of town on a rail and they know it!

I understand that there are several programs in the market that work very well with voice typing. A person speaks and the program types it out. This might be of interest to Larry – maybe not if he has the greatest IT person ever.

Dragon Naturally Speaking Premium12 apparently has had a nice boost in accuracy and guesswork algorithms but is like US$160 or so. The latest Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium 11, [Old Version] , 11, is more affordable at US$64. This one still does file transcription (record from somewhere, take home and transcribe on your computer). they claim 99% recognition out of the box!

Just passing along – I found the above by google.

Regards,
J

I replied:

I might have still being tinkering with the Key West post when you read it.

Actually, the old Flagler rail road was removed quite a few years ago from Key West, but there still are rumors of walking the plank and keel-hauling in shark-infested waters; fat chance Key West politicians telling the truth even when they are staring down from those devices over shark-infested waters.

Will pass your Dragon Naturally suggestion on to Larry, although I wonder if it might make his world’s best IT specialist jealous, him sidling up to a lady dragon; it is a lady dragon, isn’t she?

I received a beauty a little whilst ago, below, trailed by my reply.

———————————————

1013.48?

Changes in construction requirements after award of contract.—The school board may, at its option and by written policy duly adopted and entered in its official minutes, authorize the superintendent or president or other designated individual to approve change orders in the name of the board for preestablished amounts. Approvals shall be for the purpose of expediting the work in progress and shall be reported to the board and entered in its official minutes. For accountability, the school district shall monitor and report the impact of change orders on its district educational facilities plan pursuant to s.1013.35.A

after reading the letter sent to fish andy, and reading the response from the capt, the real question (one of many) that was posed but not answered is that if they had a super team consisting of kessler, murray (ok, he was not approved by the board, but is there with the others) and the capt, after months of being involved in the change orders, why have they not brought the noted deductive change orders as stated at over nine million dollars to the board. with two meetings a month, you could not list them or it was not part of the rant. if you say it has to be done, then why i ask you has it not been done, are they waiting for the contractor, the attorney, porter…………..some of those change orders go back to 2010

when you read the above, the last sentence speaks for itself, the school district shall monitor and report……

please leave me out of this, your sniffer is starting to work in the right way and see that this has been all bullshit…..after reading in your blog that kessler was a Certified auditor, well that is something you could make the phone call on, because when i did it, he registered, but was never certified because he needed to have on the job experience as an auditor, so the capt pitches him for an 18 month engagement. is that sniffer working. better yet, ask for a copy of it, maybe i am wrong, but don’t think i am. again i ask don’t list my email, look it over and maybe see it from another prospective

I replied:

Thanks, no problem keeping your sniffer out of public view. Larry Murray not the problem, other than he is so charming. Will sniff some on my own, what your sniffer suggested.

—————————————–

Nashville J replied:

Interesting, I do know that in Tennessee, change orders mean more money for the contractor as they are not bid out. They are done at cost plus 10% or 15%. One of the tricks is that COST included EVERYTHING from copies, staff time, executives time, and anything bought for the change order – they make an automatic 10 or 15% on top of the cost. $9 million in change orders would mean a minimum of an extra $900.000 for the contractor. If you decide you want a light switch in a different place than the orginal plans – that is a change order and costs you.

I still don’t get how MCSB can get away with not folling the law and regulations on reporting and putting into the minutes as required. In particular, since it was stimulus money from the feds, I would expect them to require each and every “i” dotted and “t” crossed before they would pay a penny. JMO

Keep the fire lited under their ass – sooner or later you will smell ass burining!

J

I sent the sniffer email to Stuart Kessler (photo), with this note:

Hi Suart -

From someone today; please respond to part about your certified auditor credentials, thanks. And, if you wish, to other parts of it.

Thanks,

Sloan

Stuart replied:

Stuart Kessler11:44 AM
To: sloan bashinsky

Outlook Active View
1 attachment (418.6 KB)

Certified Internal Auditor history.pdfView online
Download as zip

Sloan

1. The “deductive change orders” are nothing more than a method to avoid sales tax. If the contractor buys materials for the project, they have to pay sales tax, if the District buys the materials directly than the purchases are sales tax exempt. In the HOB project, the sub-contractors were asked to identify materials they needed that the District could buy directly – the cost of those materials were deducted from the construction contract though a “deductive change order.” While avoiding sales tax this way is great (and legal according to the FDOR) I don’t like the accounting method used at all since it mixes the “real change orders” and “deductive change orders” (which are really nothing more than accounting entries) together and makes it hard for the average person to understand what is really happening. Any suggestion that someone should get credit or praise for these “deductive change orders” is nonsense, since nothing was actually saved except for the sales tax, and this process was always contemplated as part of the construction project plan. Most, if not all, of these deductive change orders have already been approved by the School Board as routine accounting (no cost) change orders.

2. Attached is the transcript reflecting the fact that I passed 12 hours of Certified Internal Auditor testing, which, along with my Accounting degree and M.B.A. makes me eligible for that designation upon obtaining employment experience as a CIA. Your “sniffer” is correct, that until I am employed as a CIA, I won’t receive that official designation, and have never stated otherwise. Kind of a chicken and egg problem.

Stuart Kessler
P.O. Box 2730
Key West, Fl 33045
skessler@kesslerlegal.com
305-295-7670 (home)
305-393-5066 (cell)

I looked over the attachment Stuart sent. It is as he says it is.

Having read yesterday’s Capt. Eco Ed charm offensive – Florida Keys (grab your best hold) post will help you track what follows.

Ed Davidson wrote:

Capt. Ed Davidson 1:40 PM
To: keysmyhome@hotmail.com
Cc: citizenlarry007@yahoo.com

My “contractor’s charm offensive” posting was taken down for a few minutes while I corrected a couple of typos I noticed, and was then re-posted in its entirety — and was read by more than 200 people in the first 24 hours afterwards. I never saw your comment on the original posting, so unbeknownst to me it must have gotten flushed with the temporary take down. This is probably insufficient reason to assail my consistent and decadal critique of Bubba funny business with taxpayer dollars.

I have never excused the multiple failures of past and recent senior School Administration officials to exercise proper oversight, both of HOB and other matters; but the far greater fault is the wholesale failure, and occasional outright refusal, of Coastal Construction to provide the extensive documentation plainly required by the terms of the contract they signed in order to acquire roughly 40 Million dollars-worth of taxpayer’s money. It is absurdly naive for Sandy Downs to take any inevitably self-serving assertions of Coastal officials as gospel, when there are voluminous, widely available, and publicly attested facts to the contrary.

As for Ms Downs, her diatribe toward me in your post continues to incorporate her usual laxity about both truth and factuality: I have never had any factual knowledge about the alleged Navy seeding of clouds with aluminum compounds, and the conversation she claims she had with me about that imaginary issue therefore never occurred. Because she heard it and repeated it doesn’t make it the least bit true; and all I could possibly have said was that Navy fighter planes routinely jettisoned excess jet fuel in those days upon approach to landing, as Naval combat aircraft have the strictest maximum fuel weight limits in order to reduce the heavy impact forces sustained while landing on the decks of aircraft carriers — the sink rates and impact forces of which are practiced in every terrestrial field landing as well: “every landing is a carrier landing” ( I have 297 of those, mostly in combat ) for Navy pilots, who do not flare and float just before touchdown like Air Force and civilian pilots do.

CaptEcoEd

I replied:

sloan bashinsky 2:16 PM
To: Capt. Ed Davidson

I forwarded yours to Sandy and asked her to reply.

I told her I was not persuaded the person she knows at Coastal is entirely reliable. I recall, I wrote that in yesterday’s post.

For example, he said the HOB architect had been sued by either the City or the School District, according to Sandy. I told her I did not think that was correct. She insisted he was correct.

I look forward to her reply to yours re the Navy seeding clouds with aluminum conversation you say did not happen. She and I had quite a long conversation about that, after she brought it up.

Sandy wrote:

Sandy Riddle 4:36 PM
To: sloan bashinsky, sloan bashinsky

I am looking at a photo of Capt. Ed with his blue ball cap on. This is the man I had the conversation with outside a candidate forum in the Upper Keys in 2008 about the “chemtrails.” I figured because he was ex-navy he might talk to me about them. And because I had seen him at many public events and he seemed “interested” in doing the “right thing”. He told me that the Navy had been spraying for a decade or more and this was “nothing new.” He refused to continue the conversation when I told him how dangerous I was told this was, and tried to ask more in depth questions. He was with a woman who appeared to be around his same age.

I was told of the toxicity of chemtrails by a man who did documentaries for PBS, and was down here photographing the sprayings, and trying to get a warning system implemented to alert people when the chemicals were being sprayed, so people would stay inside. Dennis Cooper of KWTN told me about him and set up a meeting with him and me about another subject. When I met “Gary”, he went out on the boat with us and talked non-stop about the dangers of the chemicals. He was adamant about the need for a warning system to alert the people every time a spraying was taking place so they could stay inside and avoid being poisoned. He told me to google it. I did that and learned alot. There was a photograph online taken from Marathon FL of the chemtrails. A lot of concerned people were posting stuff online about the chemtrails and trying to document when they were being “sprayed.” Lots of people in the Keys were participating in the “postings.” I was not one of them. But I did not forget about “Gary’s” passion for the environment and his concern for us down here who might be victims of the spraying. Gary had lots of trouble trying to get information from the Navy, so I thought maybe an ex-navy man might talk about it. If Capt. Ed would have shown more interest and willingness to talk, I would have given him Gary’s number.

Whether or not Capt. Ed remembers our “run in”, it happened in the parking lot outside a forum in the Upper Keys in 2008 when I was running for Sheriff. Ed accussed me of lying in your post today. And accused me of having done it previously. Please Ed, explain when.

Capt. Ed reported also to you that the Navy USED to dump excess fuel before landing in Key West. That practice still occurs. Ed must know that. So why did he say, “the Navy” used to do it? The pilots still dump “enormous” amounts of fuel before landing.

A currently Navy pilot told my son approximately how much fuel they dumped on each and every landing. I believe he said it was for safety so if the plane did not land properly, the plane would not cause a giant explosion and fireball. The pilots “HAVE” to dump all excess fuel before landing each and EVERY time they fly according to what the pilot told my son. Ask Capt. Ed about that.

I have a strong dislike for people who get into public service positions, and do not fulfill them with complete honesty. Ed says I lied? I have no hidden agenda. I tried to get to the bottom of the chemtrail problem, but only the Navy knows the answers to that. It was a dead end path for me to dig any further if even the retired Navy would not talk about it.

One of your readers, J, questioned why out of the blue I reported what had been told to me by a Coastal employee. I reported it “out of the blue” because I got the information out of the blue. And no,….I have no motive to do work for Coastal, nor have I ever worked for Coastal, nor do I do any work with the school district. I merely reported what I had been told to allow the school board to respond to it to you, where the response would not be “skewed” or “spun” as the stories are in the Citizen. After reading the response about the soil samples, I will add what I was told about that.

The soil samples were the responsibility of the school district as the school district would not trust the soil report from the contractor, because the contractor could “skew” it so as to save money and time. Coastal worker said the “soil” report was inaccurate because the soil is tested in various areas and not every single inch of soil is tested.

When Coastal found out after the construction had started that there was a problem with some of the soil, they built accordingly. I was told that instead of the whole school having to be built on pilings, only part of the school did. And that the faulty soil survey actually saved the school district a lot of money. Otherwise the entire school would have been built “up” on pilings. So did the faulty “soil” survey benefit the school district who hired the surveyors? According to the Coastal employee, it did. So was the survey skewed to leave out information about faulty soil to save the school district money? What profit was in it for whom? I don’t know. But I believe Coastal is taking the blame for anything and everything the school district failed to do, or failed to do properly.

My interest in this is the same as in everything. I just think the spin should be taken off, and citizens have a right to know the truth. All of the Keys media is controlled. Only one independent radio station exists, Pirate Radio. The newspapers are controlled. The independent ones are often afraid to print “real” stuff, for fear of retaliation. Sloan, you try to publish what everyone else is afraid of. And I know you depend on accuracy in your reports from people. I have tried to be accurate every time I write to you. Sometimes it is about events from years ago.

These things I am sure of.

1. I had the conversation with Capt. Ed about chemtrails in 2008 outside a forum, in the parking lot, on my way in.

2. A Navy pilot told my son that fuel is dumped by every plane before it lands.

3. If Ed knew the fuel was still being dumped, he attempted to defraud you and your readers.

Sandy Downs

When I spoke with Sandy on the telephone last night, she was still deep in Coastal’s camp. She blames the school district for all of the problems between the school district and Coastal, which, she said again, has a great reputation building schools in Dade County and elsewhere in Florida. Poor Coastal, having to put up with the insanity this school district is. I replied, yes, the school district is insane, but surely word of that had gotten out of the Keys and into Coastal’s ears before it undertook to build Horace O’Bryant K-8 School in Key West. Beyond that, I said, the school board and district are required by law to reconcile the books for HOB; people could go to prison if that is not done, because this in not a private corporation, it is a school district, and the school board members and the superintendent have a fiduciary duty to get to the bottom of it, whatever the bottom of it is.

I again said, I hope former school board member and accountant Steve Pribramsky can do that for the school district. I again said, it might turn out that Coastal is squeaky clean and the school district is covered in shit. And, I again said, Ed Davidson, after being apprised by Stuart Kessler of the total disarray in the school district’s HOB records, demanded that the school district get its HOB house in order, and he got his way as a result of speaking freely to the news media, which seemed glad to give him a lot of air time. I told Sandy, no doubt Coastal hates Ed, but this is not about Coastal; this is about the school district getting its HOB house in order, as required by state law, and probably by federal law, given a US Government stimulus package loan, with, it is said, a $20 million +- penalty for not completing the construction on time, was used to finance the construction of the school.

Sandy continued to tell me I have been duped by Ed Davidson; that he is not what he appears to be, he is a sorry, useless person. I continued to tell Sandy she is mistaken with respect to Ed’s work as a school board member on very serious HOB accounting problems, which were brewing before he was elected last November. Very serious problems the school board did not know existed. I told Sandy I was at a school board meeting when Coastal’s claims for large cost savings bonuses were discussed, and it looked to me Coastal’s claims might not be valid. I told Sandy, again, that she could not automatically trust what someone high up in Coastal, who has an axe to grind, tells her about Coastal’s side of this fracas. I told her she has to take sides with the truth, not with one side or the other. I also told Sandy, again, that Ed has been a staunch defender of the Key environment.

Here is a googled photo of Ed teaching children and adults about the environment.

I myself would like to know if Ed is interested in speaking with Sandy about what she wrote about that the Navy is doing? I can think of no better person in the Keys than Ed, decorated Vietnam aircraft carrier combat pilot, former teacher in the Navy’s Top Gun pilot training program at Naval Air Station Key West, well-known environmentalist, to look into that. If the Navy is seeding the air with aluminum compound, it is falling on children and adults alike, and on wildlife, and on the ocean, and on the land. Aluminum is toxic. If ingested, it causes serious problems. As, I imagine, does jet fuel.

I told Sandy, it was God who arranged for her to meet that high-up Coastal employee, all that followed was part of God’s plan, and if she had a problem with how it was going with Ed, with me, then she should file her complaint with God. Such a sense of humor God has, dumping on us what we don’t want dumped on us.

Moving back to school district reporting,

County Commissioner Sylvia Murphy (photo) recently asked me what did I think of the new online Key West the Newspaper? (www.thebluepaper.com) I said I thought it is doing great, except it has sold out to School Board member Andy Griffiths, and is presently useless for reporting on school district woes. I said The Blue Paper’s owners, Naja and Arnaud Girard, have children at Key West High School, which is notorious for retaliation and bullying. And, Andy Griffiths is advertising his school board position on the front page of Key West the Newspaper, and when Andy puts up something on Facebook about him, the school board and district, Naja clicks that she likes it.

Sylvia is a straight-shooter. I agree with her most of the time on county issues. She seemed taken aback by what I told her about Key West the Newspaper and Andy Griffiths, but we agreed, on other hot areas, Naja and Arnaud are doing great. Sylvia said maybe something will change, and The Blue Paper will start going after school district issues the way it goes after other hot Keys issues. Meanwhile, she said, I am giving the school district good coverage. I said, yes, but I do not have the readership Naja and Arnaud have. Sylvia said my writing is known throughout the Keys. What do I know, maybe it gets around better than I know. The great thing about publishing news and commentary online, it is easy for other people to open and read, and, if they like it, it is easy for them to copy the link, or an entire daily post, and drop it into an email to someone else, or eleses. Nothing I publish to my websites is copyrighted; it goes into the public domain every day. All I ask is that it not be altered or used out of context. I treat written feedback and contributions the same way, as this post demonstrates.

By the way, several of Sandy Downs’ older children attended Florida Keys schools, and her youngest son is a freshman at Key West High School.

Sloan Bashinsky

keysmyhome@hotmail.com

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There is a post today at goodmorningkeywest.com, which you should be able to reach by clicking on this link: Key We$t Chamber of Commerce charm school, and other southernmost truth twisting (business as usual)

Meanwhile,

Nashville J responded to yesterday’s posts:

Sloan:

terminally dysfunctionally insane – Florida Keys school administration; interactive investigative journalism

Very interesting and full of information. I look forward to the continuing saga as it plays out and thanks for providing it to everyone.

Why is Sandy Downs carrying water for Costal Construction??? That info from out of the blue (not the Blue Paper as they will not cover it yet) does not really fit in. Kinda like a rock falling out of the sky and hitting a person on the head – what are the odds? Does Sandy’s company do lots of work with Costal projects? Is she trying to do lots of work with Costal projects. I don’t know, just everything she said was contrary to what I have had the chane to read here or other places. Oh well, we will know in the fullness of time.

As to another subject, how is it possible that it appears that the MCSB just fails to follow any of the laws it is suppose to follow? No one can call the hot line to complain now since they also screwed that up so bad that it never worked.

Thanks for both blogs today – enjoyed reading them.

J

I replied:

Thanks.

Sandy has a hidden agenda, which I left out of today’s post. I don’t think it has to do with doing tree work for Coastal. It has to do with she hates Ed Davidson because of something he did several years ago, which I only learned from her last night. Way things are shaping up, I will go into that, and more about Ed Davidson, in tomorrow’s post. Won’t be pretty for either of them, if I get to tell it like it really went down back then, and when I spoke with Sandy last night on the telephone.

What the heck, FYI for now, here’s what I have written so far, tentative draft for tomorrow’s barn burner. It also addresses school board and district responsibility to abide by law, do their duties diligently.

————————————-

This came into my Facebook account today:

Capt. Eco Ed

Ed Davidson
The 40 Million-dollar HOB school project CONTRACTOR is conducting a CHARM OFFENSIVE — BUT SHORT ON THE CHARM,Aa AND LONG ON THE OFFENSIVE — apparently intended to deflect blame for their repeated failures to produce a weath of documentation specifically required by the detailed terms of the school construction contract that they themselves negotiated and willingly signed.
One of their chief tactics has been to blame School District officials for not insisting strongly enough or often enough that the Contractor obey the plain English terms of that contract and stop violating Florida Law and School Board policies (and the terms of the $36,000,000 federal bond/loan) with respect to Change Order processing and documentation.
But neither the former Interim Superintendents Burke and Jara, nor any other member of the Administration or the construction oversight committee, ever had the authority to over-ride Florida law, School Board policy, or contract requirements. Thus the blame for the many irregularities in, or outright lack of, back-up documentation — plus some highly questionable claims of credits and savings — fall directly on the Contractor who surely knew (or should have known, as the lawyers say) what the rules were after many decades of experience with other public construction projects. Not to mention that ignorance of the law has never been an adequate excuse in any courtroom in America.
Like · · Share · 5 minutes ago ·

Sloan Bashinsky
Are you saying, Ed, that the school board, the superintendent and his administration do bear any responsibility? Aren’t they, as lawyers say, charged with the same knowledge of the law and duties, from their side of it? Ex-lawyer me.

———————————————-

When I posted my comment, I immediately was notified that it had been removed by the administrator. Not very neighborly, after I had patted Ed on the back in today’s “terminally dysfunctionally insane – Florida Keys school administration” post for his efforts to try to straighten out the school district.

Sandy Downs

I also reported in today’s post what Sandy Downs told me a high-up Coastal Construction Co. employee had told her about the school district re the building of Horace O’Bryant K-8 School in Key West.

I did not report today, how much Sandy said she detests Ed Davidson, dating back to when she ran for sheriff in 2008, and she learned the Navy was seeding clouds with some kind of aluminium concoction to try to control the weather. Sandy said she was interviewed by someone making a documentary film on the subject, and when she saw Ed and his girlfriend, I think she said at a candidate forum, she told him about what the Navy was doing and about the documentary. Ed laughed at her, said she was way behind the curve; the Navy had been doing that for 20 years. Sandy said she asked Ed if he would get involved, use his influence with the Navy to try to get it stopped? Ed and his girlfriend turned and walked away. Sandy said, since that day, she has had no use for Ed. She said he has an ulterior motive for being on the school board; there is something in it for him nobody is seeing.

Believe me, I did my darndest to change Sandy’s mind about Ed’s work on the school board, and why he wanted to be on it after attending school board meetings religiously for 10 years, and trying as a citizen advocate to bring about change, but to no effect. So, he ran for the school board, and he has been the only voice of sanity on the school board since he was elected last November.

I gave Sandy bloody hell for not telling me before last night about what had turned her against Ed. I said, had I known of it last year, I would have beaten Ed up with it during his campaign. I would have beaten him up with it, because (a) aluminum is highly toxic, causes all sorts of medical problems; and (b) for a very long time Ed has held himself out as a staunch environmentalist. He has brought lawsuits in federal court to protect the Keys environment. He conducts eco tours and eco classes. He teaches children the importance of protecting the environment. He calls himself Capt. Eco Ed, and he dresses accordingly, even at school board meetings and school board training and politicking seminars and functions on the mainland.

If what Sandy reported is true, Ed was the best person in the Keys to jump on the Navy seeding clouds with aluminum whatever. He was the best person, not only because of what you read above, but also because Ed was a decorated Vietnam combat carrier pilot, who survived many missions and finally served out his tour of duty. Ed was flying on John McCain’s wing, when John was shot down over North Vietnam.

On coming back to the States, Ed moved to the Keys and dedicated rest of his life to trying to do something good, in return for his surviving Vietnam. On top of that, Ed became a flight instructor in the Navy’s Top Gun program at Boca Chica, Naval Air Station Key West.

Yes, indeed, Ed was the perfect person to try to stop the Navy from seeding clouds over the Keys with aluminum. And if, as Sandy told me, Ed laughed about it going on for 20 years, and then he turned and walked away from her, in answer to her plea for his intervention with the Navy, yes, I fully understand Sandy’s feelings about Ed. However, and I told Sandy this, she needs to separate those sentiments from Ed’s work on the school board, unless she has concrete proof he is a worthless human being with an ulterior motive, as she described Ed.

I asked Sandy, what kind of human being would not tell me what she waited until last night to tell me, when so many people’s health was at risk? Where was her concern for so many people’s health, when she did not tell me about it? She said maybe she told me, and I told her I didn’t want to hear about it, like I sometimes do after she has told me more than I can take in.

Sandy will talk and talk and talk, and not give her audience a chance to breath. She jokes that she “waterboards” people, and I tell her that turns people off; it turns me off. Maybe she “waterboarded” Ed and his girlfriend; maybe that’s why they turned and walked away.

Even so, if Sandy had told me about that event before last night, I darn sure would have written about it during last year’s school board races. And, I would have tied it into cooking food in aluminium cookware.

I would have inquired last year, if school lunches are prepared in aluminum cookware, on or off campus?

I asked Sandy last night if she knew cooking food in aluminum cookware is toxic to people, because the aluminum in the cookware gets into the food? She said she did not know that.

I said using aluminum cookware to cook food is the same as seeding clouds with aluminum concoction. As is putting aluminum in underarm deoderant. Disregard of human welfare.

I would have had a field day with what Sandy told me last night, if she had told it to me last year. Or even before that.

Better late is not always better than never. Late sometimes is too late.

J replied:

Interesting indeed!

Larry Murray responded to yesterday’s “interactive investigative journalism” and “terminally dysfunctionally insane – Florida Keys school administration” posts:

Date: Sat, 18 May 2013 13:17:13 -0700
From: citizenlarry007@yahoo.com

Sloan:

The School District hired Ken East to represent its interests in the construction of Coral Shores High School and the working relationship between he and John Padget was extremely volatile. Subsequent to that, East went to work for Coastal Construction, though, to my knowledge, he has no involvement with the HOB project.

East was/is a personal friend and longtime fishing buddy of Fred Sims, former head of construction for the School District. I know of their close personal relationship because of a conversation I had a couple of years ago with Fred. His contract was not renewed by Jesus Jara in the middle of the whole HOB project.

I went to a Catholic High School, Central Catholic in Pittsburgh, best known as the alma mater of Dan Marino. In my day, typing was not available in the college prep curriculum and I never learned to do it. To this day, I have “keyboardophobia”.

That has not stopped me from publishing several books, numerous professional articles, countless papers for professional associations etc. ad nauseum. I guess it would be more convenient if I did type, but I am comfortable with my system. I have the world’s best IT Director.

I would do more with the Coconut Telegraph, but my “missives” are generally much too long for them. As for the Blue Paper, their once a week publishing would rob a lot of my stuff of its timeliness. I have always appreciated your willingness to publish my “missives”. While your readership may not be as large as some others, feedback tells me that our message gets out.

Larry

Dr. Larry Murray
Fiscal Watchdog and Citizen Advocate

I replied:

Hi, Larry, thanks.

Maybe this below tweaks you?

==============================

This came into my Facebook account today:

(Same thing I had sent to Nashville J, which Ed Davidson had posted, along with my reply and explanation that my reply had been deleted immediately by the administrator. I did not include what I had written to Nashville J about Sandy Downs and Ed.)

Larry replied:

As Arte Johnson used to say: “Very interesting!”

What “administrator” removed your comment?

I replied:

Ed would be the administrator of his Facebook account. As fast as the comment was removed, immediately, I wondered if Ed had blocked me out of his Facebook account. If so, he never saw what I wrote in reply to his. What I wondered, mostly, do you wish to write to me what you think about what he wrote? I found it a bit weird, him blaming everything on Coastal, after all the blame he had heaped on the school district.

Larry replied:

Both Ed Davidson and Keith Sockaloski are flailing like a couple of wounded bull dolphins on the deck of a boat and I think it best that I stay out of it. Let’s wait for the results of Pribramsky’s attestation before we conclude who was wrong about what.

——————————————-

I agree, hopefully Pribramsky will get to the bottom of it. Meanwhile, though, is sure looks to me like the Ed Davidson who wrote that Facebook page comment is a different Ed Davidson from who has been beating the school administration black and blue about its record keeping and cost accounting on HOB. Like the Ed Davidson Sandy Downs told me she encountered about the Navy seeding clouds with aluminum is a different Ed Davidson who has been holding himself out as Capt. Eco Ed.

Back where I come from, that would be called multiple personality disorder. In the Florida Keys, though, it’s politics as usual.

Sloan Bashinsky

keysmyhome@hotmail.com

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There is a post at goodmorningkeywest.com today about my relationship with Key West the Newspaper, and its relationship with school board member Andy Griffiths, which you should be able to reach by clicking on this link: interactive investigative journalism – Key West, Florida Keys, and beyond. In that post, you see how Naja and Arnaud Girard and Griffiths neutralized Key West the Newspaper from reporting on adverse school district goings on.

Meanwhile, from Sandy Downs yesterday, on Horace O’Bryant K-8 School:

Coastal Construction is the only company that is allowed to build schools in Dade County. Dade County found their construction to be superior to all others and to be the lowest priced for the quality delivered. Dade County no longer puts the school building “out to bid”, but instead just awards all building to Coastal.

Coastal built HOB and finished it early and $1,000,000.00 under budget. The School District splits the $1,000,000.00 under budget with $600,000.00 going back to our school district, and Coastal keeping $400,000.00. Upon this news being delivered, our school district decided to do a certain type of “audit” of Coastal and that will delay the $600,000.00 delivery.

If our school district does not complete the “audit” by June, the loans owed will not be paid, and the interest rate on the loans will skyrocket. Steve Primbransky is in charge of the “audit”. Thank God, because he has some sense.

Because the School District or the City is suing the original architect, the parking lot for HOB was put on hold. Now, that architect’s plans are not being used for the parking lot, and so there are no drawn up plans by an architect for a parking lot. The city has not given Coastal permission and a permit to build the parking lot they submitted plans for, so HOB will be finished with no parking lot.

Cheery news, huh?

I replied:

Can I send this to Larry Murray for his thoughts? It may be more complicated than you have presented it; but, you may have condensed it to what really is going on beneath all the thrashing around.

Also, I want to talk to you about how you arrived at what you wrote.

Thanks

Sandy replied:

Yes, please send it to Larry. The School District knows all this, but how they spin it is their madness. Ed Davidson seems to be a problem in all this.

I replied:

Ed’s problem in all of this, also Stuart Kessler’s problem before it became Ed’s problem, also Larry Murray’s problem, and my problem, the school district seemed to have no records, or at least no intelligent or easily found records, of the construction costs and payments to Coastal. For all I know, Coastal is squeaky clean; but according to Ed, I heard him say this at a school board meeting, he was only able to get HOB construction cost and payment records out of Coastal; he was unable to get anything out of the school district. Later, after that splashed the news really good, or really bad, Ed started getting records from the school district, but I heard the records were all jumbled up, like all in a big box, or in boxes, and were not organized and it was not easy to make sense of any of them without lots of effort. That is why, as I understand it, Steve Pribramsky finally was hired; to get to the very bottom of it. It may be nothing to it, but the school district cannot simply rely on Coastal’s word for their numbers, no matter how well thought of Coastal may be in Dade County. Coastal built other schools in the Keys. Coastal had to account for its numbers then. My recollection, perhaps faulty, there were some “negotiations”. A problem with HOB, as I recall, a fellow ramrodding HOB for Coastal once had worked for the school district in similar capacity, either as an employee, or as an independent contractor. What is truly astounding to me in all of this, everyone knew the huge penalty that would be imposed if HOB was not completed on time, basically the school district would have to pay $20 million in interest which had been waived as part of the $36 million loan to build the new school. Yet, knowing that, the school district today really has no clue if it went okay with Coastal. More specifically, the school board has no clue; and, make no mistake, it was the school board who approved the stimulis “creative financing” with the huge penalty in it, because it was interest free, basically, if everything went okay. Pribramsky told me that he warned the school board against approving the stimulus financing, because he knew the school district’s history and he was worried something might go wrong and the huge penalty would have to be paid. He was ignored. All the more astounding, we now hear the school board is clueless about the HOB and Coastal numbers. As I wrote earlier, it might be more complicated than you presented it; but, you might have boiled it down to its essence from an accounting perspective. Am forwarding all of this to Larry now.

Thanks

When I later spoke with Sandy on the telephone, I asked where she got the information in her two emails? She said from someone high up in the construction company building HOB. She asked me to not publish who is is, which I agreed was best because this person might provide more information. I said Ed Davidson is the only person in the school district administration trying to get the district straightened out, he is not the problem with HOB. I said I was not aware of any lawsuit being filed against the HOB architect. Sandy said the high up person in Coastal had said the school district is insane. I said, on that point, I agreed.

When later I talked with Larry Murray by telephone, he said as far as he knows, no lawsuits have been filed re HOB by anyone, but such might happen later. I said that is my take, also.

In reply to what Sandy wrote, Larry wrote to me:

Lawrence Murray (citizenlarry007@yahoo.com)Add to contacts 5:00 PM
To: sloan bashinsky

Sloan:

I will not be responding to Sandra Downs’ commentary as it is rife with error and misinformation. I have neither the time nor the inclination to make the corrections. I will, however, say a few things about a subject you raised, HOB recordkeeping.

When I joined the Audit and Finance Committee, now 3 1/2 years later, I raised the issue of District recordkeeping and what an abysmal job was being done. State law requires that the District have a Records Management Liaison Officer (RMLO) and a Records Management Program. The MCSD has neither.

Joe Burke simply swatted my concerns aside as was his wont to do. Jesus Jara humored me by appointing Nick Osterhoudt, then IT Director, as RMLO. He wanted nothing to do with the job and consequently did nothing until he left the District a year ago.

When I raised the records management issue with “Poor” Mark Porter, his response was: “What RMLO?” and “What Records Management Program?” It was typical of his ignorance. Eventually, he appointed Michael Kinneer as RMLO, who was as enthusiastic about the job as his predecessor and did exactly as much, nothing. So far as I know today, the District has no RMLO and I know for a fact that it has no Records Management Program, hence the problems with records for the HOB project.

As we all know from complaints raised by Ed Davidson and Stuart Kessler, Porter feigned ignorance, something he is good at, and refused to give requested documents to the Board committee investigating the HOB Change Orders. Finally, under the weight of public pressure, Porter gave Davidson and Kessler 10 boxes of miscellaneous records in no particular arrangement as you reported.

I just learned today that Porter, in response to records requests from Steve Pribramsky, the District’s Attestation Officer, has provided 8 more boxes. It seems that some records were found in the Transportation Department and others at Marathon High School. Like the first batch, there is no organization or arrangement to the mishmash of records. I was not all that wrong in my original surmise that the records were in a storage locker in Islamorada. I was only off by 20 miles! Who knows if there are more records and where they may be located.

I understand that Pribramsky has, like Porter and Dirk Smits before him, requested records directly from Coastal Construction. It remains to be seen if he will be any more successful than his predecessors. I doubt it. My Public Records Request of Coastal has so far been ignored.

It does not surprise me that there is no organization to the records as the District does not know how to create, store and retrieve records. If you look at assorted documents, you will see that it is a commonplace that there is no date, no letterhead, no originating office(r), no indication as to whom the document is directed and no signature. Other than that, they are pristine.

Equally important, there is no plan or program for storing and retrieving documents no matter how woefully prepared. I once asked Nick Osterhoudt if he could give me the last three directives issued by Burke and the first three issued by Jara. He laughed and said, “No way!” The general thinking is that electronically communicated documents can always be found–assuming you know where to look. For paper documents, common with the HOB project, good luck.

My guess is that if you want any District records, HOB related or otherwise, ask Sally Smith, the administrative assistant to both the Superintendent and the Board. If anyone knows where the dead and wounded are buried, it would be Sally.

Larry

Dr. Larry Murray
Fiscal Watchdog and Citizen Advocate

Last year, Larry and I both ran for the school board seat Ed Davidson ended up narrowly winning from a retired Florida Keys school principal in the general election. Before that, Larry had served a 4-year term on the school board’s volunteer Audit & Finance Committee, from which position he repeatedly tried to bring sanity to the school district’s financial and accounting practices.

I called Larry and asked him to write briefly to what Sandy had reported, and I asked him about the employee who had worked for the school district, whom I thought maybe had gone to work for Coastal. Larry said he would send me something brief. He said, the Coastal employee, last name Eaton, had been a buddy of a school district employee, last name Sims, who had looked after construction projects for the school district, including HOB. I said my fear is, by the time it’s all said and done, Coastal will come out squeaky clean and the school board and school system will have shit all over it. Larry said that might well be, but the school district must pursue and complete its HOB investigation via Steve Primbramsky. I said I agreed.

Larry’s second reply to Sandy Downs:

Larry Murray 7:59 PM
To: Sloan Bashinsky

Sloan:

1. HOB should be finished on time and over budget. The principal buildings are complete and they are working on a punch list. A parking lot remains to be done. HOB was bonded for $36 million. Best estimate today is the final cost will be $40 million +/-.

2. HOB will not be completed under budget let alone $1 million. There is no $1 million to be split.
As there is nothing to split, there is no delay in the delivery of any money. The District holds all of the money until it pays Coastal.

3. There are no loans to be paid in June as the $36 million paid is amortized over 20 years. What remains is paperwork, the final accounting. No interest will skyrocket as there is no interest penalty. If needed the District can request an extension in filing the paperwork, an extension that most likely will be granted since the building is effectively done.

4. Steve Pribramsky is not conducting an audit and has said so many times. He is reviewing documents, attestation, to determine validity and accuracy. He can quit anytime. His work technically has no direct relationship to the bond. His job is to confirm that the District received everything that it paid for. [Re HOB]

5. The School District is not suing the architect or anyone else for that matter.

6. Yes, the parking lot is on hold and remains to be resolved.

7. There is more than one set of plans for the parking lot that are being considered, two I believe. All have been prepared by a licensed architect.

8. So far as I know, the School District does not require a permit from the City of Key West to build a parking lot or anything else. Coastal is awaiting an agreement with the School District to building a parking lot, not permission from the city. The School District is self-permitting and does its own inspections.

9. Whether the parking lot, actually a second parking lot, will be built before school opens remains to be seen. Either way, the world will not end.

Enough said.

Larry

Dr. Larry Murray
Fiscal Watchdog and Citizen Advocate

Larry also forwarded by attachment a May 17, 2017 (yesterday) email from the Coastal’s HOB Project Executive to the school district demanding retractions of erroneous statements made against Coastal by school board and district personnel at school board meetings and in local newspapers and blogs. The email tears the school board and district to shreds. I am unable to copy and paste the email into this post. Maybe I can get it sent to me in a different format, which I can share in a later post. Here is today’s article in The Key West Citizen – www.keysnews.com – about the email.

HOB builder: Take it back
BY TERRY SCHMIDA Citizen Staff
tschmida@keysnews.com

Coastal Construction, the contractor charged with building the Horace O’Bryant K-8 School, formally requested Friday that School Board members disown comments made in public regarding the project.

The email, sent to School Board Chairman Andy Griffiths and copied to all board members, Superintendent Mark Porter, project architect Rick Z. Smith, and the media, marked the first time the contractor has spoken out on the controversial project. The company’s policy is not to communicate with media on the record.

The missive, signed by Coastal Construction Project Executive Keith Sockaloski, states that, “Coastal is concerned with statements made in Board meetings, quoted in the newspapers, and again repeated on US. 1 Radio, by certain Board Members.”

Sokaloski is not the Coastal employee Sandy Downs told me she spoke with.

It goes on to request that any assertion that Coastal was the contractor that built Coral Shores High School be retracted.

I would like to know if Coastal participated in building Coral Shores High School, even if it was not the contractor.

The email also takes issue with a statement allegedly made by “Board-appointed HOB Change Order Specialist” Stuart Kessler that Coastal had “‘double-dipped’ on the Fire Proofing line item.”

“This statement was made without merit and was not correct, as shown to Mr. Porter and yourself the following day,” it reads.

Further, Sockaloski states: “It should be noted that all of our change orders have previously been approved by a Monroe County School District authorized signatory, the district’s construction manager, and the architect. The failing was that in 28 months of construction, the district failed to report the change orders to the board. This failing was not the fault of the contractor or architect, but rather, the district.”

Hard to argue with that on the face of it. However, read on …

Reached by phone on Friday, Sockaloski declined to comment on the email.

Griffiths sided partly with the contractor.

“They are correct,” he said. “They did not build Coral Shores. And I await the documentation to discuss the rest.”

Who, then, in the school district, or on the school board, said Coastal built Coral Shores?

District 3 board member Ed Davidson, the most vociferous critic of the project, conceded that the email was likely directed at him.

“I would point out to Mr. Sockaloski that Florida law requires that all change orders must be reviewed by and filed in the minutes of the School Board, which delegated that authority to the superintendent, but only up to a $25,000 limit,” Davidson said. “Florida statute 1013.48 requires even such delegated approvals to be reported to the board and entered in its official minutes, neither of which happened over a period of two years.

“There were roughly 16 to 18 change orders that exceeded those limits, and which the superintendent had no authority to approve on his own,” Davidson went on. “The contractor is responsible for knowing and obeying both Florida law, School Board policy, and the terms of the contract he signed. Our own attorney advised the board that we had to retroactively reapprove those change orders which had no legal standing, because they violated state law and School Board policy.”

Given how many schools Coastal apparently has built in Florida, I’d say Coastal has to know what Florida law is on this subject. However, that does not excuse the school board from not staying on top of the HOB construction, change orders and costs.

Sockaloski’s email also referenced the “unsuitable” soil discovered at the site that required extra work.

“We find it interesting that the oversight of change orders does not bring up the fact that the majority of the additive costs are related to the unsuitable soils, and contaminated soils — that was the responsibility of MCSD (Monroe County School District) to establish those particular liabilities on this site. MCSD commissioned KACO (Kaderabek Company) and EEG (Environmental Enterprise Group Inc.) for said services, not Coastal.”

Davidson contested this point as well.

“To the expensive issue of unsuitable soils, I would direct Coastal officials to review page five of the zumBrunnen report, that states as follows: ‘A reasonable amount of construction contingency funds are budgeted to fund additional costs that may be encountered during earthwork operations, and road and foundation construction, due to limited amounts of unsuitable soils.’” Davidson said. “But Coastal instead billed the full $300,000 directly to the taxpayers.”

Also on Friday, Kessler, in an email sent to a number of interested parties in the construction project, stood by his earlier statements and offered supporting documentation to back them up.

——————————————–

All of the above is an example of dynamics which provide a real world view of how the school district administration operates.

Imagine a company keeping records like the school district kept on HOB. When I see something like that, I am looking at a forest burning down. Steve Pribramsky was hired to deal with a few burning trees. HOB is not an anomaly; it is but one of many symptoms of what I started saying early last year is a dysfunctional terminally insane school district administration. Larry Murray told me about month ago, which I published, that he had come around to agreeing with me, that the only way out is for the state to take over the school district.

I told Ed Davidson at candidate forums last year, if elected, he would not be able to change the school district.

I told candidate forum audiences last year, it didn’t matter who they elected, nothing would change. A state takeover was needed, along with each school becoming a charter school and having its own board of directors and coming out from under control of the school administration and tending to doing what school are suppose to do, teach children.

I told candidate forum audiences last year, they were not ready to hear that yet, but a day would come when they might remember what I told them.

Sloan Bashinsky

2012 school board candidate

keysmyhome@hotmail.com

wild queen conch

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Jerry Weinstock (weinstock@bellsouth.net)

 

8:31 PM

To: sloanbashinsky@hotmail.com

Diesel fumes —near roadways because
cities do not have Cruise ships sitting in the middle of the city.!!!

One Cruise ship in one day emits the
equivalent of 13 million cars————–Jerry

I, Sloan, am unable to get these pics to say in view, so scroll down past the blank spaces, read the text, and keep on scrolling down to other features in this happy meal.

—– Forwarded Message —-
From: ”Dominique Browning, Moms Clean Air Force” <dominique@momscleanairforce.org>
To: weinstock@bellsouth.net
Sent: Thu, May 16, 2013 8:20:14 PM
Subject: Air pollution & asthma

Dear jerry and Donna, Click here to read the e-book Moms Clean Air Force is sending you a free e-book calledASTHMA TRIGGERS: A Guide for Parents, Teachers, Doctors, and Nurses. Asthma is a national epidemic. Nearly 26 million Americans live with asthma — including 7 million children. While we can control some of theasthma triggers in our homes, we can only protect ourselves from air pollution triggers by supporting strong regulations to clean our air. The Environmental Protection Agency has recently proposed a very important regulation, with the support of the automobile industry: the Tier 3 Standards. The rule will clean up our gasoline and tailpipe emissions. Send a message to the EPA telling them you support their new Tier 3 standards. The air near major roadways is a notoriously noxious mix of diesel exhaust, oxides of nitrogen, sulfur dioxide, coarse particles, smaller particles (or soot), as well as the ground level ozone (or smog) that results from these emissions. These pollutants, alone and in combination, damage our children’s lungs: they trigger asthma attacks, they impede normal lung development in children, and they may actually cause the underlying disease of asthma to develop in children without asthma. The Tier 3 Standards will reduce levels of dangerous traffic pollution across the nation.  Remember, we share the air. That’s why Moms Clean Air Force is uniting to protect strong clean air standards – the promise of the Clean Air Act signed into law more than forty years ago by Democrats AND Republicans. We hope you will find this e-book helpful — and that you will use it in good health. Sincerely, Dominique Browning Co-Founder and Senior Director, Moms Clean Air Force PS: Join Moms Clean Air Force for a Twitter chat with experts from the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America. Click for more information.

Also down Key West way, this week’s edition of online Key West the Newspaper is available – www.thebluepaper.com.

Here is the teaser for the feature article, which makes city commissioner Billy Wardlow out to be an idiot, a lying idiot, in fact; the city government out to be about the same; the Florida Department of Transportation out to be in league with the Devil, which would be the contractor doing the job. The cartoon is from an earlier blue paper edition; in the article today is a new cartoon. You need to open the link  above to see Arnaud Girard’s latest artistic mischief.

Roosevelt Boulevard Watch: Things Are Not All That Swell On The Boulevard

BY ARNAUD AND NAJA GIRARD

The infamous green fence that hid the Boulevard worksite blew away last week in an unexpected gust of wind.  It revealed the same moonlike landscape, unmanned machinery, and lack of progress and has renewed the perplexity of passersby jammed in traffic.According to local mainstream press, some Key West politicians, and FDOT everything is swell on the Boulevard.  One might think business was thriving.   The Key West Citizen even reported last week that new businesses are opening up and Commissioner Billy Wardlow, in whose district the project lies, declared himself proud of the achievement.  It really looked as though no one has bothered asking those business people on the Boulevard about their side of the story.

So here it comes. It may be unpleasant work but someone’s got to do it: [...full article]

 

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I heard yesterday that someone of note in the Keys, who is moving to the mainland, when asked what he would do there?, said maybe he will do what Sloan did, start a blog. I thought that might be a really good experience for him. He is smart, has seen a lot. His wife is smart, has seen a lot. He, or they together, might create a really interesting blog, cutting through the smog, not having to answer to a public relations-minded corporate headquarters on the mainland.

Correction to yesterday’s stars fell on Key West deux, death of paradise – I’m being redundant, again  post. I posted a photo I said was of Jerry Winestock, M.D. Jerry wrote to me that it was not him. I replied, mea culpa, and that I had removed the photo from the post and would notice my readers of that in today’s post.

flats fishing

Jerry responded to yesterday’s post:

Sloan–thanks for the heads up —-my canal is full of petro-
chemicals and trash from Cruise ships plus bacteria–in
key Haven prior to those polluting machines –clear
full of fish and very swimable—-before crusie ships
key west was a different place —–Far far far far far BETTER.
Jerry

The jet skis around here have torn up bay bottom
and some have ventured onto flats —-scaring every organic form
of life————-Flats fishing is beautiful and my passion for
many years—–received the Bonefish release trophy in 1971.
Had those in charge respected the natural world of the keys
this would have remained a paradise. THANKS !! Jerry

I replied:
Jet skis are horrible for the flats. I recall Rick Ruoff telling me of a time he was fishing himself on an outside flat maybe 3 feet deep near Bud n’ Mary’s, and as he was sneaking up on a school of bonefish, a guy came roaring past him on a jet ski. Rick said he poled his skiff into a hole in the flat, near the edge, and jumped the boat onto a plane, trimmed his motor up, and took out after the jet skier, who had no clue he was being chased until something caused him to turn and see Rick in hot pursuit maybe 20 yards behind. the jet skier freaked out, turned out, stalled out, probably fell off the jet ski. Rick eased back around and had a prayer meeting with Jesus with the fellow, which converted the fellow to a firm belief that he’d better well not do anything like that again, at least not to Rick. The odd thing is, Rick is super get along with everyone, if at all possible. I never once saw him lose his cool, and I saw him have some opportunities to do so, especially with some of the truly awful fly casts I made fishing with him. He and I swapped lots of personal stories, as and he told me a number of really interesting fishing stories, and about as many Islamorada stories.

I never would have dreamed of entering a fishing tournament, much less win one. I dreamed of catching a permit, but never did. Found tarpon way too much hard work, once hooked up. Remained a bonefish worshipper until that evaporated. Don’t fish at all anymore, unless someone needs another person in the boat to fill out a table fish charter.

Jerry replied: 

Sloan: your narration created a glow of pleasure for me—really! –thanks for taking the time and effort. I have released over 100 Permit and they are “more than they are cracked up to be in every dimension possible;”

They are a dream sportsfish. But when I was here in the 1960?s and 1970?s they were much more numerous—–still just as wary and sensitive however. On 12 lb. test it took an hour or more to tail one and rejuvenate it and release.

My wife and I went before the FL. Wildlife and Fish Conservation Commission Board in person to make the case for Permit (to present) the rationale for game fish status—they were deaf to it—even the economic benefit would be STUPENDOUS.

Mark Twain said –god created boards for practice then he created morons–he was correct. Bone fish and Tarpon they still have not conferred game fish recognition to those incredible fish. In the distant past I have seen more than a hundred Permit on the Harbour Key flats near dusk—-when the sun lost its heat—still plenty of time to get home.

Tom McGuane wrote a classic “The Longest Silence” about Permit and I wrote a piece also—we fished together –long ago—-Mark Howell edited that piece for Solares hill—the one I wrote. Tom has a book of short stories called the Longest Silence just beautiful— all his writing about fishing —like Zane Grey —wonderful !!.

Our best fishing for the most part in books—–kind of sad–it didn’t need to be that way.

best regards —Jerry

My goodness, maybe Jerry should start a blog!

My goodness, I was a cane pole and cut bait fisherman compared to Jerry!

permit, giant cousin of pompano

If I had seen over one hundred permit at one time, I would have had to sit down and drink a couple of beers to stop shaking. Most permit I ever saw at one time was maybe six or seven in a school on the east side flat off Indian Key. Threw a crab somewhere in the vicinity of where they had come from. They didn’t stop and turn around to see what the commotion was. Not long after, on the west side of the key, I saw a gigantic permit cruising close to the key toward me. Head-on, it looked close to a foot wide, maybe 60 pounds, maybe more. I made a good cast with the crab that time. The dream fish went down on the crab, sniffed it, kept moving. Left me shaking.

tailing, or maybe a hooked permit in shallow water

I was fishing that day with my father’s brother, Leo. He’d caught and released lots of permit and tarpon off Indian Key, using crabs. He was a spin fisherman, never took to saltwater fly fishing. I pretended to take to it, and actually did catch and release maybe half dozen bonefish on fly. Most of the bonefish I caught, however, were on spinning tackle with live shrimp. And, a few blind fishing a white bucktail jig off the edge of flats when the weather was coldish and windy, the sky was cloudy, the water was stirred up and a little murky.

bonefish, aka grey ghosts

Then, I sent this to Jerry:

Hi, Jerry – did you see this below yet; can you reply to it, with copy to me?

Am loving your fishing and related stories. Sloan

richard tracy (floridafunguy4u@gmail.com)

 

5/14/13

To: fishandy@fishandy.com, sloanbashinsky@hotmail.com

 Hi Andy and sloan  -  As one who travels through Los Angeles often I am amazed that as a flight descends into LAX one can see that the city is covered with a thick dark pollutant cloud.  Not at all like Key West which I do not recall seeing a bubble of pollution covering our city.

A brief read of the article referred to by J Weinstock didn’t make a reference to cruise ships.  Perhaps were I a subscriber I could have read the article more in depth.  This link provides a good summary.  You will see ‘traffic-related air pollution more than one time.  People love to put their own spin on what they read, but they need to be truthful and factual.

http://archpsyc.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1393589&link=xref

Results  Children with autism were more likely to live at residences that had the highest quartile of exposure to traffic-related air pollution, during gestation (AOR, 1.98 [95% CI, 1.20-3.31]) and during the first year of life (AOR, 3.10 [95% CI, 1.76-5.57]), compared with control children.

Conclusions  Exposure to traffic-related air pollution, nitrogen dioxide, PM_2.5, and PM₁₀ during pregnancy and during the first year of life was associated with autism. Further epidemiological and toxicological examinations of likely biological pathways will help determine whether these associations are causal.

Jerry replied, I supplied the pic:

Sloan: Number one I don’t like people accusing me of spin
who basically know very little or nothing, especially
when health matters are involved. An accusation of lying or
distorting when they have done no research or investigation.
Sloan why don’t you look up on the internet: OEHNA Air
Health Effects of Diesel Exhaust: [ Office of Environmental
Health Hazard Assessment: ] Nitrogen Dioxide happens to
be basically colorless and odorless—-it is major factor
in Autism etiology—a Fact. This department happens to
be quite excellent and is part of California’s well regarded
EPA (environmental Protection Agency- ) highly respected.
The Journal of the American Medical Association discusses
car exhausts because most major cities do not have Cruise
ships parked in the middle of the city. They discuss diesel
exhaust, the focus of our concentration-Benzene, Arsenic,
and Formaldehyde are “poison” for humans. LA sits in a valley
with not too much rain or wind—weeks of carbon particles, soot
can accumulate and with the sun acting on it alters it—and
the result is “”smog”” and we can dissect that also but too
much to get into now. Shop people adjacent to Cruise ships
in Key West —facing them have to hose their shops down.
Thank goodness Key West doesn’t sit in a valley surrounded
by hills. I think I will get into Smog–a bit-although I could explain
pages: there are 2 types: Sulfurous and Photochemical–over
LA Photochemical is most prominent. The gas “Smog” caused
over 1000 deaths in 1909 in Glasgow and Edinburgh was FIRST
described by H.A. DES Voeux, an astute scientist in a report,
to the Manchester Conference of the Smoky Abatement league
of Great Britain in 1911. The type of visible smog in LA
originates in nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbon vapours
which undergo –over time (to become visible)-reacts in the
lower atmosphere with ozone–a chemical reaction takes
place—ozone is highly toxic—and even more Nitrogen
oxides are produced —on and on and with sunlight turns
brownish and can cause human respiratory distress and
eye problems immediately. Rising cases of Autism,
escalating cases, in fact, we now know one major
causative factor are Nitrogen oxides—they are in
diesel emissions. From the stacks of Cruise ships
comes Nitrogen Dioxide. I can go into this much more
and write out the formulas of all the reactions. I did
score Number one in the country on a National Science
test at Northwestern in competition with all the ivy
league schools and most important I love Science.
Thanks for reading my article–I am truly grateful to
whom ever it is–thanks Sloan for calling it to my 
attention !! ——– Jerry

OEHHA Air: Health Effects of Diesel Exhaust

www.oehha.ca.gov/public_info/facts/dieselfacts.html

————————————————

I also heard yesterday about this article in the latest edition of the Keynoter – www.keysnet.com. My interjected thoughts in italics. I supplied the pic.

installation of power line poles on No Name Key last year

PSC clearing the way for No Name Key electricity

By RYAN McCARTHY
rmccarthy@keynoter.com
Posted – Tuesday, May 14, 2013 04:28 PM EDT

Moments after recognizing itself as having jurisdiction over the decision, the state Public Service Commission on Tuesday voted unanimously to allow No Name Key property owners to have commercial electricity.

The long-awaited decision likely means that a decades-long battle over the issue is nearing an end — with victory for the pro-power residents on the 43-home island.

“Assuming no appeals or delays in the processing of amendments, we project February 2014 as the date that [Monroe] County may issue permits,” Assistant County Planning Director Mayte Santamaria said.

George Neugent

“The big hangup for all the commissioners is circumventing the process,” Mayor George Neugent said. “We know what we’re doing; are we going to punish these people for another 18 months? I wonder if the courts could weigh in on this and demand that the county issue the permits based upon things that have happened and where the commission appears to be headed.”

George, if it is punishment now, if it was punishment last year, it was punishment when the county government changed its comprehensive plan years ago and, responding to federal law, passed land development regulations which prohibited utilities from being run out to No Name Key. Punishment approved the the Florida Department of Community Affairs. Punishment you have gone along with during your many terms as a county commissioner, until very recently. You showed for all the world to see at a fairly recent county commission meeting in Marathon, that you and Beth Vickrey-Ramsay were bosom buddies, when you, as county mayor, let her continually interrupt and heckle citizen speakers; then, when Beth’s turn to speak came, you let her accuse citizens of the vilest behavior; and then, when I spoke and called Beth out, you threatened to have me ejected from the meeting if I continued that line of speaking. Only because I wanted to see how the ensuing discussion by the county commissioners went, and their vote, did I not eviserate you right then and there for all the world to see. After I sat down, a citizen said you and Beth were getting it on. I said, I didn’t know that, but you and Beth’s husband Brad were in bed with each other in some way. You know as well as I do, George, that the only people who punished Beth and Brad were Beth and Brad, who bought their home on No Name Key, I think in 2005, knowing of the county prohibitions against utilities being run out there; and right after that, they started clamoring for utilities being run out there. They had nobody to complain to about not having public utilities but themselves. Ditto for anyone else who bought a home out there, after the county changed its comprehensive plan and barred utilities from being run out there. The only people on No Name Key who have any beef with the county are people who bought out there before the county punished them by changing its comprehensive plan, in response to federal law, which punishment was approved by the Department of Community Affairs, which punishment was responsive to federal law. The person who should have been ejected from that county commission meeting was you, George; ejected by the other four county commissioners, for selling out to the folks on No Name Key who never wanted it to be off the grid. What do I know, maybe they photo shopped this pic, as part of their propaganda, although several times I have heard it likened to Beth.

The No Name Key Property Owners Association paid approximately $650,000 last summer to have Keys Energy Services install power poles and lines on the island. The homes are now powered by solar or generators.

“We are very pleased with the outcome, especially on the unanimous votes on each staff recommendation. We’re looking forward to getting our permits and [Keys Energy Services] is ready to connect us,” association President Kathy Brown said.

Filed in March 2012 by No Name Key residents Bob and Julianne Reynolds, the PSC complaint argued that the PSC, not Monroe County, has jurisdiction over electrifying the island.

The Reynolds do not live on No Name Key. They live around Miami, and sometimes they come down to their place on No Name Key. They, like Brad and Beth, bought fairly recently out there, knowing full well the county prohibited utilities from being run out there.

At Tuesday’s hearing, PSC commissioners heard from attorneys representing Reynolds, Monroe County and the No Name Key Property Association, as well as residents Mary Frances Bakke, Jim Newton, Ruth Newton and Alicia Putney.

Alicia Putney

The main sticking point was a 1991 territorial agreement the PSC made with Keys Energy and the Florida Keys Electric Cooperative, which serves the Middle and Upper Keys.

The Reynolds’ attorney, Bart Smith, argued that state law “has expressly preempted local governments” from controlling which residents receive commercial electricity. He cited a Third District Court of Appeal ruling saying jurisdiction lies with the PSC.

“The statutory authority granted to the PSC would be eviscerated if initially subject to local governmental regulation and Circuit Court injunctions of the kind sought by Monroe County in the case at hand,” the court wrote.

Tallahassee attorney Scheff Wright, an outside counsel for Monroe, argued the opposite. He said the territorial agreement doesn’t apply to electricity on No Name.

“The county fully respects the commission’s right to regulate territorial disputes,” he said.

The county has repeatedly blocked attempts to bring electricity to No Name because its land-use plan contains a law “prohibiting” utilities in federal Coastal Barrier Resource System areas, of which a portion of No Name Key — not the entire island — is included.

Congress enacted the Coastal Barrier Resources Act in 1982 to protect coastal habitats, while in 2001 the county created a coastal barrier overlay district prohibiting utilities in such areas.

“All the county wants to do here is carry out its duties under its [comprehensive] plan. Our regulation of the CBRS, of growth management, does not conflict with your authority with respect to utilities,” Wright told the PSC.

Commissioners were clear they believe jurisdiction over electrifying the island lies with them, and voted unanimously on that issue. It was also apparent how several commissioners felt regarding electrifying the island during Putney’s comments to the board.

The PSC truly believes its jurisdiction preempts federal law? The Florida courts truly believe the PSC’s jurisdiction preempts federal law?

Putney has been the most vocal against commercial electricity, and is in the minority in that regard. She told the PSC she lives comfortably on solar power and argued “the uniqueness of No Name Key should continue to be respected.”

Alicia does not live comfortably on solar power in the summer, when she heads to her place in Canada. I told Alicia that she needed to live on No Name Key full time to have standing to argue that she lives comfortably on solar power. I told Alicia, her not doing that was causing her side problems metaphysically, which would play out physically.

Commissioner Eduardo Balbis noted that Putney has the right to “remain off the grid.” He also raised concerns about the environmental impacts of all the batteries, generators and diesel fuel being used to power many homes on the island.

My understanding is, most of the generators are gasoline-powered. And, what about the environmental impacts of

Florida Keys Energy Services’ electricity being produced by a coal-fired plant and a nuclear-powered facility in south Florida? Out of sight, out of mind?

Putney responded that bringing electricity changes the character of the island.

“You can’t say with a sense of pride that you live in a solar home,” she said. “I don’t live with the pollution that is being described. Using a diesel generator is something they’re doing by choice. For far less money, you could live in a solar only home like I do and be comfortable.”

I told Alicia that she didn’t go far enough; she did not have a compost toilet; she was still using a septic tank, which leaches into the ground, and then into the water table, and then into the canal next to her property. Recently, other No Name Key residents, who also oppose the island being on the grid, told me the canals on the island are polluted, which is a keys-wide problem – 502 polluted canals, according to the county government. The result of the canals being dredged too deep, and too far from the sea, for the tides to change out the water in the canals; and the result of septic tanks.

Commissioner Art Graham noted that whether or not there are utilities now, residents had no “knowledge it would always be off the grid.”

“These houses were plotted with utility easements, so why would you have that if you’re not going to allow them to have utilities? We’re basically legitimizing what they’ve already paid for,” he said, just before moving to grant electricity.

Nearly all of them got what they paid for: homes off the grid, which they knew were off the grid. Now, if the PSC had based its decision just on homes bought before the county, responding to the feds, removed No Name Key from the grid, that would be a sensible argument.

Monroe County, as well as Wright’s Gardner Law Firm, are two of seven parties of record on the PSC complaint. After Tuesday’s ruling is filed, likely within 20 days, all parties have 21 days to protest it before a “consummating order” making it final is filed.

It’s unclear whether Monroe intends to protest, but it would appear unlikely given the County Commission’s recent unwillingness to continue its fight against electricity.

The PSC changed Tuesday’s hearing to a “proposed agency action,” meaning it ruled on jurisdiction and the right to electricity. PSC spokeswoman Cindy Muir said that gives Putney, who was listed an “interested party,” the right to appeal.

I will be surprised if Alicia does not appeal.

Alas, the real tragedy here is No Name Key could have become a model solar community for all the world to see and for people around the world to visit and study. Homes which relied solely on solar power. Homes which used cisterns and modern water treatment methods for all their water needs. Homes which used compost toilets. A community completely off the grid in ever way, except, of course, for fossil fuel-powered vehicles residents used to get out there and back.

Meanwhile, here’s a smog-cutting Key West channel-widening study letter to the editor in The Key West Citizen today – www.keywnews.com. I supplied the pic and the channel-widening study referendum language:

“small” cruise ship tearing up the channel bottom as it leaves Key West’s outer mole pier

“Shall the City of Key West request that the Army Corps of Engineers conduct a comprehensive feasibility study, at no monetary cost to the City, to determine the environmental, economic and social impacts of widening the Key West Main Ship Channel for use by modern and longer cruise ships while also addressing navigational safety?”

Chamber’s language is anything but clear

I have to admit that “I just threw-up in my mouth a little bit” when I read the letter from the [Key West] Chamber of Commerce shill who wrote that the upcoming channel-widening referendum represents “a clear path to an honest, clear, credible discussion.”

What has been clear in this discussion is the chamber’s intent to be less than clear when it comes to clarity of language in the 75-word ballot question.

The chamber has insisted on substituting the language “modern and longer” instead of “larger” cruise ships, even though the Army Corps of Engineers’ preliminary study on “dredging” claims that the purpose is to accommodate “wider, longer, and sometimes deeper drafting vessels that can carry more passengers” (page 11).

The Army Corps Reconnaissance Study refers exclusively to the new ships as “larger” and the older ships as “smaller.”

While the chamber insists otherwise, the Army Corps never refers to the older ships as “shorter” and the newer ships as “longer.”

Instead, they use plain language — the older ships are “smaller” and the newer ships are “larger.”

Combine that with the confusion that the chamber creates by insisting that the verb “widening” must be substituted for the actual act of “dredging” and you get the idea of exactly how much confusion the Chamber of Commerce would like to create in 75 words or less.

Here is the entire question, in 20 words:

“Should the Main Ship Channel be dredged to accommodate even larger cruise ships than can presently call on Key West?”

Elliot Baron

Key West

Amen. Thank you, Elliot. The chamber lady who wrote that letter to the editor might have a bright future at the Scrub Club [male adult entertainment] on upper Duval Street. They also want the channel dredged to make it easier for cruise ships already calling on Key West to get into port on days when strong winds prevent those cruise ships from being able to crab into the channel, so they are turned away. As this old editorial cartoon in The Key West Citizen divined, they want even more cruise ships calling on Key West, regardless of their length, width, depth.

But you will never get them to admit that to the voters. Or, that removing a one-mile long, 150-foot wide sea bed is dredging. The truth is not in them, and Last Stand let them get away with it, by agreeing to the referendum wording. What’s the pirate method of dealing with traitors? Keel-hauling comes to mind.

Cheers!

Sloan Bashinsky

keysmyhome@hotmail.com

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There is a post today at goodmorningkeywest.com, which you should be able to see by clicking on this link: stars fell on Key West deux, death of paradise – I’m being redundant, again

Meanwhile,

Amiga Ginger of Jupiter Beach, Florida wrote:

Dear Sloan,
Sending one of my cheap cruises that I take as cheaper than flying and paying for hotels. Actually only did this once. explored real estate possibilities in Nassau. Don’t have the cash available now to buy. I prefer the cruise to Belize to trek out and climb the Mayan pyramids that can be as low as $360 just “after” hurricane season at end of November. I am concerned this year that we might get hurricane hits as rainy season began this month, not July!
Ginger

I replied:

Maybe I will die and to to heaven, or to hell, and end up on a cruise ship to somewhere?

I can’t say I look forward to a hurricane this summer, but this is a hurricane zone.

Ginger wrote:

Sloan, getting concerned about hurricanes this summer, fall as the rainy season seems to have started in April. And we get powerful squalls. I don’t ever remember getting continual daily rain storms like this in May and April. Actually, it used to be a little dry for 2 or 3 months before the rainy seasons. I think the cloud pattern has changed. If I drive down to visit you, and the Keys, it should be before Hurricane season. just looking at that “one road out of town” scares the hell out of me. You need more than two days warning to avoid everyone on the road a day before, and nothing moving. You r right! Anything hitting Key West will most likely also hit Miami as hurricanes have a 60 mile to 120 miles plus diameter. And everyone in key Largo will head for Miami. Then if it doesn’t go across the Keys but still hits the Keys but goes up the East Coast of Florida as it frequently does, then every place u might stay along I 95 could get hit, and the Motels aren’t always that we’ll built. So if a hurricane is scheduled to hit Key West, come on up but it takes about 8 hours driving time. However, I would advise u to go to the light house that Hemingway could see from his house and the Bar, as that is close by and convenient and well built. Or build a Block House, square, with concrete blocks, and get inside that. The sides will protect you from being pulled out to sea in a tidal surge, but you will need a sturdy roof also as most will blow off if not attached tightly. We have had 3 hurricanes where there was very little rain, but high winds…when it comes over land.
Cheers, Ginger

And this

I replied:

Same deer, different, much smaller herd. Most of the deer on Big Pine Key and adjacent No Name Key, just up the way from here. No way to keep them out of garden without fencing it or elevating it above their reach. They mowed an entire patch of sweet potato vine in one shift. Could not grow enough cucumbers to keep them away from other crops, and, land here is not good for growing crops, and lots of irrigation necessary in cooler months. I grow enough for salad and cooking greens in raise containers, but that doesn’t stop the iguanas, nor the peacocks, which can fly up and nibble, gobble, depending on their mood. I grow enough for the iguanas and peacocks and me. No way to grow enough for the deer and the iguanas and peacocks and me. I like having the deer around, and the raccoon, and even the rats, as long as the rat cat keeps them out of the trailer. Lots of lizards, tree frogs, black racers and corn snakes, rattle snakes on some keys; scorpions, centipedes, birds, mosquitoes (fresh and saltwater breeders), roaches, noseeums. I’ve heard possum here, too, but haven’t seen one. Wonderful trees and shrubs. A one-acre wildlife sanctuary. Walden. The land is sacred, I can feel it.

It’s rained pretty good here lately. Saw a waterspout today maybe a mile away. Second one in a month, the first one was above Key West. The Keys are not like any other place in America. Key West not representative any more. This area closest now to the old Keys.

On another topic, Ginger wrote:

Dear Sloan,
The Kuwait Govt in exile approached one of the big PR firms to represent them to get support to get their country back and it worked. Daddy Bush was smart and went to the Iraq border, got the Irawis out of Kuwait and then left. He knew it could be a protracted ground war if he invaded Iraq. Saddam behaved himself somewhat. But Baby Bush invading Iraq was insane. We all knew it and knew that the invasion wasn’t needed. There was no uranium build up. Look at what they did to female CIA agent Flamme [forgot spelling] and her husband an Ambassador and well respected. They wrecked their careers when they didn’t agree with the forged letters. So we have a 16 Trillion debt from fighting wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Why are we giving Foreign aid to Pakistan when they accept the Taliban and were hiding Bin Laden for years. Why did we invade Iraq when it was obvious that the terrorists on the planes were all Saudis? And we knew the family connections.The only planes allowed to fly that day were the planes picking up the Bin Laden family in California, Washington, Boston etc and flying them to England and Switzerland. The father of Osama Bin Laden as you know was one of the wealthiest men in the world and a partner and friend of George Bush Senior in the CARLISLE GROUP company that had a $12 billion worth at the time and invested in armaments, oil, construction and some shipping. Look at the Board of Directors; made up of the top economists and wealthy Americans–Bill Simon, Treasury Secretary, etc. Same thing with the Libyan situation. Obvious terrorist, they showed up with hand held missile launchers. And it was on 9/11, how could it be more obvious. I couldn’t figure out why they were saying it was a demonstration. Its a big deal now because they didn’t let the news media report it like it was. The WH didn’t have to comment, just let it unfold. Its a big country, I am amazed they could figure out who was involved one way or the other. We haven’t had GUNS AND BUTTER TAXES yet but we will as we have a 16 or 17 Trillion dollar deficit. Do we get hyper inflation or inflation or will bread cost $10 a loaf or 10000 deutch marks a loaf? Better grow a little corn [for the carbs], plant sweet potatoes [good for you and the leaves poisonous so not nibbling by rodents], and prepare to live off the land in 5 to 10 years.
Ginger in Florida May 13, 2013

I replied:

My recollection, Daddy Bush wanted to go all the way to Baghdad, but the Saudis and other Muslim allies would not stand for it. My recollection, Daddy Bush’s ambassador to Iraq told Saddam the US would not intervene if Saddam invaded Kuwait. My impression was, Daddy Bush set Saddam up. They had known each other a while, back when Daddy Bush was CIA Director and was beefing Saddam up to fight Iran. I remember Daddy Bush saying on US national TV that he could not let the American way of life be threatened; his justification for the US pushing for saving Kuwait from Saddam. On Larry King’s TV show, Ross Perot begged Daddy Bush not to do it. Perot said it didn’t matter who controlled the Kuwait oil fields, the oil would be sold to America.

I heard Daddy Bush asked Baby Bush if he had an exit strategy for Iraq after that invasion. Some exit strategy. I saw in TV news last night, 22 US vets a day kill themselves; there are 600,000 US vets with post traumatic shock syndrome due to combat overseas. 9/11 was so clearly bait, a trap. Baby Bush and his confederates, and most Americans swallowed the bait hook, line and sinker. What you describe of the financial aftermath was precisely what Osama bin Laden hoped to achieve; he won, Baby Bush and his confederates and America lost, which multiplied geometrically the insanity that was Vietnam, and there will be no recovering. Osama let it be known pretty quick that he was behind 911.

This not a good place to grow corn, as I wrote elsewhere, key deer love sweet potato vines. I grow them in a pot on my screened porch facing morning sun, where deer, iguana and peacocks cannot get to them. I use the leaves in salad, raw. They are not poisonous. White potato leaves are poisonous. Sweet potato leaves more nutritious than spinach, and like hot humid Keys weather, unlike spinach. Collards, mustards, chard like this weather, too, as do critters mentioned above.

To live in old way down here, I’d need to catch fish, harvest crabs, conch. No grains grow well down here, but could grow enough sweet potatoes and white potatoes in containers to provide starch. Edible wild fruit and berry trees and shrubs on this land. With a rifle, or bow and arrow, I could provide venison, iguana, peacock. With bird traps, I could harvest the different varieties of doves. My hope is, I won’t be on this planet when it gets to that. Alas, I was told in a dream last night, I will be here a good while longer.

Don’t have the deuch marks to build a block house, or any house. Maybe that will change. Maybe I will be abducted by aliens. Sorry, couldn’t resist.

Sloan

Today’s P.S.

Before dawn, my dream maker told me to write about Vietnam, so …

keysmyhome@hotmail.com