Good Morning Florida Keys

Found this nice troll bait from Biker Chick on yesterday’s Coconut Telegraph page of bigpinekey.com. She had told me of something she had emailed to ED of the CT, and of his sending something back asking if she was serious? Yep, she said she wrote back; she was serious.

[Sloan the Holy Stud] Totally true. Yes, I had great sex with Sloan! Afterwards, while we were cuddling, two of his Angels made my body physically shake uncontrollably. His Angels made themselves known to me and this paranormal experience has prompted me to tell you that these entities really do exist around Sloan. I am not Keys Diseased; we were not drinking or on anything but Sloan really does have special powers which he uses for good. This will be exciting to see what he does for the Keys after he gets elected.

When I showed Biker Chick’s post to Sandy Downs last night, Sandy nearly cracked some ribs laughing; then she nearly cracked some more ribs laughing over people writing to the CT saying it was her who wrote it. Sandy don’t have a motorcycle; ergo, no way she is Biker Chick. Rose Dell at Coco’s Kitchen in the Big Pine Key shopping mall met Biker Chick yesterday. I made the introductions. The health food chicks at Good Food Conspiracy on US 1 on Big Pine met Biker Chick yesterday. Lots of Big Pine and some No Name Key folks saw us tooling around on her bike, me in the bitch seat, hanging on for dear life to whatever I could grab. On the federal highway, she wouldn’t let me hang on to her boobies. Didn’t want to end up in a federal prison, she said. What a ride!

Also yesterday, County Mayor Sylvia Murphy and Bill Becker discussed on US 1 Radio the purchase of the Hickory House by the County. Although Bill tried yet again to tag incumbent Republican County Commissioner Mario Di Gennaro with having been on the Commission when the decision was made to purchase the Hickory House, again it didn’t stick. Sylvia said she came onto the County Commission some time after Mario was sworn in. She said Mario was not on the Commission when the decision to acquire the Hickory house was passed in bulk. She said, when Commissioners George Neugent and Glen Patton (Sylvia’s predecessor appointed by the Governor to fill deceased Commissioner Murray Nelson’s seat) realized later that day what had happened and tried to undo it, they were told by county staff that they would get a chance later. But when later came, they were told it was already done. This was, apparently, a Tom Willi, maneuver, as he was County Administrator then and Sylvia used his name in effigy a few times yesterday.

Sylvia did not say George and Glen had not looked over the bulk items before the meeting, or if they had looked them over, a $3-plus million dollar Hickory House item would have jumped screaming out at them. Sylvia said, after Mario got on the Commission he pushed for the acquisition of the Hickory house and negotiated a somewhat lower purchase price than the appraisal. Sylvia said there was a second, lower appraisal of $2 million, and she was unable to explain why that appraisal was ignored. Sylvia said she and George Neugent voted against the budget and the purchase of the Hickory House and the Vandenberg. At the end of the interview with Becker, Sylvia said it’s really important to know what candidates do and how they think before election day, because that shows what kind of elected officials they will make.

If I had I been a county commissioner back then, I would have told the other commissioners before they voted, if the lower appraisal was not used to determine what the County would pay for Hickory House, I would call the State Attorney right after the vote and make an appointment to file corruption charges against the commissioners who used the higher appraisal to vote to fund the purchase.

Sylvia’s has been seen wearing a “David Rice” campaign button. David is Mario’s opponent in the Repubican primary. In that vein is another kind of troll bait from day before yesterday’s Coconut Telegraph, in reply to my recent Mario & David, Mostly post, which described David Rice as being up to his eyeballs in conflict of interest when he last served on the County Commission, 2002-2006.

I have no particular feelings about David Rice or his candidacy. I have no current connection to any of the parties. However, Sloan is way off base as was Sandy Downs who started this nonsense in the first place.

Sloan makes it sound like Rice benefitted personally by these contracts and refers to the Guidance Clinic as “his organization.” Sloan makes it sound like as CEO of the Clinic, Rice would personally benefit from these contracts, as in putting money in his pocket. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

First, the Guidance Clinic is NOT a business. It is a non-profit organization with a board of directors. The Guidance Clinic of the Middle Keys and the Care Center of Key West have merged and both are a part of WestCare Foundation which provides financial assistance, technical assistance and other support. WestCare is represented on both boards. WestCare is a $70 million a year organization operating in more than eight states with many facilities throughout Florida.

These clinics are THE mental health facilities of the Florida Keys. They have extensive staff and facilities, plus have contracts with the state, county, the cities in the Keys, and the Federal government. There are various provisions in these contracts that only a local agency could provide. The clinics have vital national certifications and are approved for Medicare billing and similar federal programs. They have been providing services to the Sheriff’s department for a long time, both for inmates and employees. Both are approved by and affiliated with Florida DCF and all employees go through DCF background screening. Both agencies also have contracts with and support other agencies in the Keys such as AIDS Help, the Homeless Coalition and many others.

The simple fact of the matter is that no outside agency is going to bid on a measly 300k contract and then set up facilities in the Keys, hire people and obtain the necessary certifications and so forth. The fact the contracts are non-bid is totally unimportant because no other mental health agency could deliver the services and meet the other requirements of the contracts. No agency could survive on the Sheriffs’ contracts alone. No agency outside the Keys is going to spend millions of dollars to get established here just to bid on a couple of contracts worth several hundred thousand and then go head to head with local established agencies, much less taking on WestCare Foundation.

Please keep in mind we are not talking about a contract for grass cutting which dozens of firms could provide. We are talking about professionals with Masters and Doctorate degrees, years of experience, plus an expensive support structure. The Guidance Clinic and Care Center have already hired the best people. A few hundred thousand is not really that big of a contract. There is no practical reason at all for the contract to be put out for bid.

Sloan is parroting Downs, and both are raising an issue that is strictly for political purposes.

This commentator missed the entire point of what I posted. I have no beef with the Guidance Clinic doing business with the County and the Sheriff, if it lands the bids fair and square, and legally.

My beef is, David Rice should have disassociated entirely from the Clinic and the Sheriff Office after he became a county commissioner. His wallet benefited considerably via what he was paid by the Sheriff and the Guidance Clinic as its CEO. He should promise now that if he gets back on the BOCC, he will disassociate entirely from the Clinic and the Sheriff Office. Alternatively, he can promise to provide pro bono any of his services that they use, and the Clinic and the Sherriff Office can promise to hold him to his promise and furnish the County Commission with proof of it.

My own personal, biased view, the Guidance Clinic’s results with patients probably is pretty dismal. Band-aide methods with few, if any, cures, and lots of recidivism in substance abuse treatment. This critique is not aimed specifically at the Guidance Clinic, but at all such facilities and methods they use. I have some experience in this area and with its health care practitioners, including having quite a few of the practitioners as patients I was supposed to try to help. Practitioners with letters after their names: M.D., PhD, MSCW, LPC, etc. The blind leading the blind, they were/are, not all that unlike the many ministers I had as patients.

What I came to see was, people who cannot discern and deal with their own conflicts of interest have serious boundary issues dating back to early life trauma: incest, sexual molestation, physical abuse, mental abuse; in the home, in church, in school – one or more of any of that. Very difficult to treat, especially when the patient already views him/herself as an expert in the field. Cure only possible through strenuous and lengthy angelic interdiction. Symptoms of the cure would be diagnosed by the patients’ families, peers, ministers, doctors, etc. as this or that mental disorder and/or demonic possession

In a previous life, I had extensive training and experience in this area. I was trained by angels, who made me their patient and brought me patients. I relied on the angels to guide me in my attempts to help the patients. Some patients did pretty well, for a while. The rest didn’t get very far. I hold to my previous assessment and report of David Rice having a psychopathic personality. A well-known such personality is Barack Obama.

On the same topic is this front-page piece in the current issue of Key West the Newspaper (kwtn.com):

PAGE ONE COMMENTARY: When David Rice was a County Commissioner in 2002-2006, His Net Worth More than Doubled. No Wonder He Wants the Job BackRICE WALKED AWAY FROM THE JOB IN 2006 TO RUN FOR STATE REP WITH BIG-BUCK BACKING FROM THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. HE LOST TO RON SAUNDERS . . .

by Dennis Reeves Cooper

NOTE: Much of the information in this commentary was originally reported in this newspaper in October 2006.

It is no wonder that David Rice wants to be a county commissioner again. Although he served less than one term as a commissioner between 2002 and 2006, he raked in more than
$3 million of Monroe County taxpayer dollars during that period, according to financial records obtained by Key West The Newspaper (KWTN).
In fact, according to Rice’s financial disclosure forms, while he was a county commissioner, his net worth more than doubled— from $1.24 million in 2002 to $2.58 million in 2006!
At that time, Rice was chief executive officer of the Guidance Clinic of the Middle Keys Inc. Every year that Rice was on the Board of County Commissioners, his clinic received more than $800,000 in county taxpayer money.
In addition to his commissioner’s salary of $42,974 per year and reimbursements of almost $30,000 for expenses— such as the use of his private airplane— Rice was also getting paid by the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO). According to IRS 1099 forms filed by the MCSO, David P. Rice Consulting Inc received $90,000 in psychological consulting fees while he was a county commissioner.
According to Michael Scott, the former human resources director for the MCSO, Rice enjoyed a special personal and professional relationship with then-Sheriff Rick Roth— so special, in fact, that he never had to bid on his contracts with the MCSO.
“When I became human resources director, I asked that bids be put out on that contract, Scott said in a written statement given to KWTN for a story that was published in 2006. “That was the beginning of the end for me.”
Scott was forced to resign in April 2003.
According to Scott, Rice also used his influence with Roth to get his 28-year-old son, Michael, a cushy job in the Sheriff’s Office as a high-level administrator. Michael Rice was also given the title of “major,” although he was not a sworn law enforcement officer.
In 2005, with about a year remaining on his county commissioner term, David Rice decided to run for state representative to replace Ken Sorenson, who could not run again because of term limits.
But Rice got himself into a little trouble with elections officials by taking too long to resign from the county commission to run for Sorenson’s seat. Rice argued that the state resign-to-run law did not apply to him. So, even while running for state rep, he continued to sit as a Monroe County commissioner, allegedly soliciting campaign contributions from citizens who had business before the commission.
His service on the commission came to an abrupt end, however, right in the middle of a commission meeting on July 16, 2006, when he received a telephone call telling him that, indeed, the resign-to-run law applied to him. Reportedly, he got up and walked out of the meeting.
Unfortunately for Rice, his opponent for the state rep seat was former state rep Ron Saunders, who was and is very popular in the Florida Keys.
With heavy backing from the Republican Party of Florida (RPOF), Rice was able to collect and spend an estimated $400,000 in campaign funds. But he still lost the election to Saunders.
Now, after literally walking away from the commission job in 2006, Rice is trying to get the job again in 2010.

Dennis didn’t take out after the Guidance Clinic. He took out after David Rice.

I wish you could have seen and heard David’s cover-his-ass answers to questions at the Key West Chamber of Commerce Candidate county commission forum this past Wednesday. I wish the Chamber had let me design just two of the eight (wasn’t it?) questions put to all candidates. The rising temperature would have run all but a few out of the assembly hall. As, I suppose, would any of them getting picked up by Biker Chick. Good thing I had my nitroglycerin tablets with me. Good thing. Imagine what my old law school professors would think to see all of this horsing around. Somehow I don’t think the old Alama Mata will invite me to speak at any graduation ceremonies any time soon, although that doesn’t seem to slow their tracking me down and asking for donations.

Sloan Bashinsky

political advertisement, approved and paid for by Sloan Bashinsky, what you see and hear is what you get District 2 County Commission candidate

If I had my way, we would have no primaries in the Keys. All races would be decided like the Key West elections: if no one candidate gets 50-plus percent of the vote, then there is a run-off between the top two candidates. If I had my way, I’d abolish political parties in the US. Meanwhile, I’m selling common stock in a new diaper service. Here is a chain of emails, which starts with my reply to an email from Republican State Rep candidate Matt Gardi to several people, including leaders in our Keys Republican Party, challenging them to speak out about the State Republican Party’s contributions to Morgan McPherson’s campaign.
 
——————————–

No Name Key Bridge today

During breakfast at Coco’s Kitchen in the Big Pine Key shopping center yesterday morning, I met two women from adjacent No Name Key, who were not in the least happy with the recent 3-2 vote on the Florida Keys Aqueduct Authority Board of Directors to rescind an old rule that prohibited FKAA from extending drinking water to environmentally sensitive parts of the Keys, including No Name Key, Middle and Big Torch Keys, and parts of Key Largo. Rose Dell, who along with her mother own and operate Coco’s, is a member of the FKAA Board; one of the two Board members who voted not to rescind the rule, for which vote she was viciously criticized on the Coconut Telegraph page of bigpinekey.com.
 
One of the two women said, after the Boarded voted 3-2 to rescind the rule, she spoke with with the woman Board member who had voted to rescind. The woman Board member said the plastic bottle of dirty water brought to the meeting by Attorney Mick Barnes had come from Beth Ramsay-Vickery’s cistern at her home on No Name Key. Cistern water was not safe to drink.

Beth and her husband bought out there fairly recently, then started making a huge amount of noise about getting electricity, drinking water and sewerage brought out there. Beth has repeatedly written and spoken that cisterns are unsafe, but she has yet to have the County Health department examine her cistern, and, as far as I know, none of the other residents of No Name Key who have sided with Beth have had their cisterns tested by the County Health Department. Instead, they quote so-called experts from elsewhere in America, who have never been to No Name Key, or even to the Keys, as far as I know, to the effect that people who drink cistern water are nuts and will catch horrible diseases.
 
Anyway, when Beth did this poisoned-water spiel at the FKAA Board Meeting, she did not mention the bottle of dirty water Mick Barnes (of Duck Tours in Key West infame) had shown to me before the discussion began and said it had come from Beth’s cistern. Mick did not answer me when I asked if he had seen the water in the bottle be taken from Beth’s cistern, or if it had been drawn and tested by the County Health Department? When Mick spoke to the Board and intimated a lawsuit would be filed if the Board did furnish No Name Key with good drinking water, he pulled out the bottle and said it came from Beth’s cistern. He did not say he had seen the water drawn from Beth’s cistern, because he didn’t have a clue where the water came from. A lawyer who pulled such a stunt before a government agency in Alabama would have a high probability of being asked to explain himself to the Alabama State Bar Disciplinary Section.
 
Conveniently, Beth did not have to explain the bottle of dirty water to the Board, because she had already spoken to the Board when Mick did the stunt. Yet the woman board member accepted Mick’s statement as the Gospel; may God have mercy on her tortured soul, for I will not. It is no big secret that she replaced her husband on the FKAA Board after he died, and that her husband was a friend of Board Member Bob Dean, who rigged her appointment and she is his puppet on the Board. It also is no big secret that the other Board member who voted to rescind the rule is Bob’s whore also.
 
Let’s move laterally. A day or two after the rigged FKAA 3-2 vote, News-Barometer Publisher Steve Estes was interviewed by Bill Becker on US 1 Radio. They talked about the FKAA Board vote. Steve told Bill that if the rule had not been rescinded, FKAA water could not have been run out to Wisteria Island. Bill did a double take on the air. I called Steve a little while later, we talked a while. He said he strongly felt No Name Key was not important enough to cause FKAA to rescind the rule. The impetus had to come from something bigger. He said he felt that bigger impetus was Wisteria Island. I said I had just learned Bob Dean and Jim Hendrick go way back, are tight. Steve said that was true. I said that caused me to believe he was correct about Wisteria Island being the real impetus for FKAA’s Board rescinding the rule, since Jim was the Wisteria developers’ adviser and he was tight with Bob Dean. Steve said I might be right. I heard nothing contrary from the angels, which I take to mean Wisteria Island was the impetus for the Board’s 3-2 vote to rescind the rule.
 
When I later shared this perspective with three county commissioners, separately, each did a sort of gasp/double take. They did not try to contradict me. Hell, in the Keys this sort of sneaky maneuvering is business as usual. The awful thing is, there is nothing anyone in the Keys can do about it, because FKAA’s Board is appointed by the Governor. Only the Governor can clean out this Gang of Three, who do not answer to the County Commission, the Department of Community Development, the Department of Environmental Affairs, or US Fish & Wildlife. This Gang of Three answer only to the Governor, who makes a lot of noise about being a friend of the environment, but he was drill, baby, drill until the BP mega-disaster. 

Moving laterally again, the two No Name key women at Cocos said an attempt is being made on No Name Key to sell the mining pit and operation on the Gulf side of the island, and the plan is to turn it into a beach, marina and development; and a Realtor has the listing. It was said Beth Ramsay-Vickery and others on No Name Key are in on this. It was said this is far bigger than a few homeowners on No Name Key getting drinking water, electricity and sewerage treatment. I probably have no way to confirm any of that about the mining pit, but I have seen enough of Beth Ramsay-Vickery to know I would not trust her as far as I can throw her above-ground swimming pool, which she fills from out of her cistern and swims in that horrible dirty water she had Mick Barnes show to the FKAA Board and tell them it came out of her cistern.
 
Dear Beth, you just can’t have it both ways. You can’t just buy a home you know has no public water or public electricity or pubilc sewerage treatment, and then turn around and say you were screwed by the various agencies who furnish those things. You can’t say you were a victim. You can’t threaten to sue anyone without suing you who screwed yourself.

Meanwhile, keep bringing your father to public meetings to back you up and let us know you are making veiled threats through him. Keep instigating the sheriff deputy harassment, via your brother, Sheriff Colonel Rick Ramsay, of No Name Key residents who have fought you and your gang fang and claw. Keep threatening to sue Alica Putney for telling the truth at public meetings. You and that wannabe lawyer out there, Mary Bakke, keep threatening to sue Fish & Wildlife, because local F & W manager Anne Morkill spoke at the rigged FKAA Board meeting and said FKAA did not agree with the rule rescission. You and your idiot dolts sue F & W. You already pissed them off so bad that you will wish you had never opened your mouths. Sue F & W and see them make you wish you had never bought a home in the Keys.
 
Meanwhile . . .
 
After breakfast yesterday, the two No Name Key women and I went outside and talked some more. Imagine your surprise to read now that FKAA’s Executive Director Jim Reynolds came cheerfully walking up the steps toward Coco’s. As he passed, he said hello and I said, “We were just talking about you spreading your legs for Bob Dean.” Jim stopped, thought, said, “For three; you know how it works.” I replied, “I know how it works and we were just talking about it.”

After Jim left Coco’s, I went inside and told Rose what I had told him and what he had said back. Rose seemed to go into shock. She understood, but didn’t really want to believe Jim said he worked for three of FKAA’s five Directors. As does FKAA’s lawyer. If he was any kind of lawyer, he would have told the Gang of Three they were nuts to rescind the Rule, because Fish & Wildlife had imposed it on FKAA in exchange for FKAA getting a loan from the Federal Farm Administration to build the new pipe line, which opened the door to unbridled development in the Keys. Before the new pipe line was built, nobody could tap onto the old water pipe. All new homes, and many older homes, were on cisterns, just like the homes on No Name Key. And nobody made a big deal about it.
 
If Governor Crist has a soul, he will fire the three FKAA Board members who rescinded the rule that was passed to protect the more sensitive Keys lands from development. If he has a soul. We already know the three Board members who voted to rescind, and Jim Reynolds and FKAA’s lawyer, sold their souls. As for you, Beth, sorry, but you are not the fairest in the land. Nowhere close. If you were my daughter and had Mick Barnes pull that stunt at the FKAA Board meeting, I would have snatched you across my knees and spanked the living daylights out of you in front of everybody at the Board meeting. Then, I would have gotten up and stomped out of there and never had any further dealings with No Name Key.
 
Sloan Bashinsky

political advertisement, approved and paid for by me, District 2 county commission candidate – No Name Key lies in District 2

Mario and David

Not long ago, the Key West Citizen did a piece on the District 4 County Commission Republican primary, where incumbent Mario Di Gennaro and former County Commissioner David Rice will square off on August 24.
 
The article stated Mario voted, as a County Commissioner, to purchase the Hickory House on Stock Island. On yesterday’s US 1 Morning Magazine, Mario told Bill Becker that he was not yet on the County Commission when it voted unanimously to enter into the contract to purchase the Hickory House. This news seemed to leave Bill at loss for words. Mario added, after he got on the Commission, he voted to approve the County budget, which included the purchase of the Hickory House and also the Vandenberg. Mario said Commissioner George Neugent opposed the Vandenberg and voted against that budget. 
 
Not mentioned in the Citizen candidate comparison article, David Rice personally and through the Guidance Clinic of the Keys, where he was the chief executive officer, made a great deal of money off of the County and the Sheriff Office during his one term on the County Commission. Colonel Rick Ramsay, #2 at Monroe County Sheriff Office, was on the Board of Directors of the Guidance Clinic during that time. David’s son, Major Mike Rice, #3 at Monroe County Sheriff Office, was the Sheriff executive who authorized the lucrative Sheriff contracts with his father and the Guidance Clinic. No-bid contracts. Each year David was on the County Commission, he voted to approve a County  budget, which included the payments to the Guidance Clinic, and the budget presented by the Sheriff, which included payments to David and the Guidance Clinic.
 
The State of Florida Ethics Commission ruled there was nothing wrong with any of that. All the more reason for We the People of the Keys to do all we can to help County Commissioner Kim Wigington and State Attorney Dennis Ward persuade the rest of the County Commissioners to pass a county ethics ordinance with real ethics and real teeth. Nobody on the County Commission should be doing business with the County. Nobody working for the county government should be doing business with the County. This is so obvious that I’m astounded I even have to write it.
 
For anyone who thinks I dreamt all of this up about what David Rice made off the County and Sheriff, I have copies of the Ethics Commission complaint and the Commission’s ruling. The documents show the $ numbers David and the Guidance Clinic made off with, which numbers the Ethics Commission did not dispute in holding there was no ethics violation. The Ethics Commission also had before it, as an Exhibit to the complaint, a Key West the Newspaper article dated October 13, 2006. Sandy Downs, who filed the ethics complaint against David Rice, loaned me her original paper copy of the article, which I typed out for skeptics: 
 
Dr. David Rice served less than one term on the Monroe County Commission. But during that period, he raked in more than $3,000,000 of County Taxpayer money, according to financial records obtained by Key West the Newspaper. Between  July 2002 and July 2006, Rice’s net worth more than doubled, from $2.24 million to $2.58 million. [I have an email, dated yesterday, from Dennis Reeves Cooper, Publisher of Key West the Newspaper, saying $2.24 million should have been $1.24 million.]
 
Rice is the Republican candidate for the seat on the State House of Representatives currently held by Ken Sorensen. Sorensen can’t run again because of term limits. Rice’s Democratic opponent is former State Rep Ron Saunders. Rice’s campaign website reveals that, until he began his campaign, he was the chief executive officer of a corporation named Guidance Clinic of the Middle Keys Inc. Every year that Rice served on the Commission, his clinic received more than $800,000 in taxpayer money.
 
In addition to his Commissioner’s salary of $42,974 per year and reimbursements of almost $30,000 for expenses such as use of his  private airplane, Rice was also getting paid by the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office. According to IRS 1099 forms filed  by the Sheriffs’ Office, David P. Rice consulting Inc. received $90,000 in psychological consulting fees while Rice was a County Commissioner.
 
IRS 1088 forms filed by the Sheriff’s Office also show that Rice’s clinic received another $379,951 from the Sheriff’s Office while he was a County Commissioner — on top of the more than $800,000 per year the clinic was already getting from the County.
 
According to Michael Scott, the former Human Resources Director for the Sheriff’s Office, Rice enjoyed a special  personal relationship with Sheriff Rick Roth — so special, in fact, that he never had to bid on his contracts with the Sheriff’s Office.
 
“When  I became human Resources Director, I asked what bids be up out for for  that contract,” Scott said in a letter to Key West the Newspaper in November 2003. “That was the beginning of the end for me.”
 
According to Scott, David Rice used his  influence with the Sheriff to get is 28-year-old son, Michael, a job in the sheriff’s Office as an administrator. He now carries the title of  Major, although he is not a sworn law enforcement officer.

Not covered in KWTN’s article, David Rice filed to run against Ron Saunders before he resigned from the County Commission. After being informed he had violated the State’s “resign to run” law, Rice said he had been told by his campaign advisers that the “resign to run” law didn’t apply; then, he resigned from the County Commission. This resulted in a four member County Commission: George Neugent, Dixie Spehar, Sonny McCoy and a man whose name now escapes me, who was appointed by the Governor to serve out the term of deceased Commissioner Murray Nelson. This four-member commission, Mario Di Gennaro told Bill Becker yesterday, entered into the contract to purchase the Hickory House.
 
Mario filled Rice’s vacated District 4 seat by being the only candidate to file to run. Sylvia Murphy defeated the Governor’s appointee in the Republican primary. When Dixie and Sonny proposed Mario to be County Mayor, Sylvia was off in a corner of the commission chamber enjoying her coronation party thrown by Keys friends. George voted in favor of Mario being Mayor, making it 4-0 with Mario’s vote for himself. Sylvia did not vote. She told me afterward that she had been advised by friends not to cross Mario; she would need to be in his good graces on the Commission. Now Sylvia is County Mayor, and Mario and David Rice are having a donnybrook in the Republican primary.
 
While David Rice and District 4 Independents Don Vasil and Mike Forster, and District 2 candidates George Neugent and his Republican primary oppenent Danny Coll and Independent me attend the Key West Chamber of Commerce candidate forum today and try to sway and impress the audience, Mario will be in Destin, Florida with the Oil Spill Task Force, trying to pry more money and protection out of BP and the US Government. 
 
Sloan Bashinsky
 
political advertisement, approved and paid for by me, District 2 county commission candidate

From a Key West man yesterday, this email about District 2 County Commission candidate Danny Coll: 
 
Sloan,The power of deduction.
 
I don’t know if you noticed but at the bottom of Oh Danny boy’s pages was a mention of attending some Illian Ross Lehtin affair’ a bells ball or something.
 
I surmise Danny boy is kissing the asshole of Illy. These the remnants of dear Batista’s regime from the grand old Island gal  days of cuba. they are angeling through the keys, my guess danny boy’s a tool or pawn, to wrench further control over the gringos.
 
If you care have a look see, word search the Balarts, family team, astounding from my point of view.  The cuban crown in Miami, connect the dots, as they lay to takeover in the keys now.
 
John Just before opening John’s email, I came out of a nap filled with dreams, the last one of large Hispanic men in black suits and black ties moving in and starting to take over a community in which I and others I knew and didn’t know lived. Do you think maybe that dream had anything to do with John’s email? Naw. It was just a dream. Dreams don’t mean anything.
 
I sent John my phone number and asked him to call me. Then, I googled the Barlarts. They seem to be serious movers and shakers, real heavy weights in the Miami Cuban-American community.

Meanwhile yesterday, I was told by someone else, and then confirmed it myself with the Monroe County Tax Collector’s Office in Key West, that Danny didn’t pay his ad valorem taxes on the NAPA property until May, past the April 31 due date, but before a certificate was issued for a lien to be filed. That suggests to me that Danny has a serious cash flow problem, because he could have saved a good bit of money by paying his ad valorem taxes last fall after he received the tax bill. I know from talking earlier this year with Key West Mayor Craig Cates, who owns the NAPA dealership in Key West, that auto parts stores do better in down economies than in up economies, because people put off trading in their vehicles and fix them up instead. The NAPA dealer in Marathon seems to be doing very well also in this down economy. Yet Danny’s NAPA store on Big Pine, according to all I hear, is not doing well. Even as Danny says on his campaign website (dannycoll.com) that, if elected, he will crunch the county budget and be the county’s fiscal watchdog. It just doesn’t compute. But don’t take my word for any of this. Do your own investigation of Danny and his NAPA business. Drop by the garages on and near Big Pine Key and talk with the mechanics and garage owners like I did. Listen to what they say. Go to Marathon and talk to the people in the NAPA store up there. Then make your own deductions.

When John finally called me around dinner time yesterday evening, we agreed that it makes sense for Cuban Americans to try to establish a presence in the Keys governments, looking forward to normalization of US relations with Cuba. We also agreed that we should know this is what the Cuban-American community is trying to do before it happens, rather than learn about it after they already have done it. In that vein, a fairly recent Solares Hill article featured Danny as a Cuban American. When asked in the article if he would go back to Cuba, Danny said he didn’t think he would go back to his home country while the Castro government was still in control. Taking Danny at his word, his home country is Cuba, not America. It’s hard to imagine Danny doesn’t have deep ties to the Cuban-American community, after seeing in the Calendar of his campaign website that this past April he attended a kick-off campaign reception for Congresswoman Lleana Ros-Lehiten, who has deep ties to the South Florida Cuban-American community.

Danny has come out strongly against the Keys remaining a designated area of critical concern under the Department of Community Affairs’ oversight, while George Neugent and I have come out strongly in favor of retaining the area of critical concern designation and DCA oversight. So I can’t help but wonder if the Cuban-American power brokers in South Florida would like to see the Keys look a lot more like Miami Beach and Havana. I can’t help but wonder if Danny Coll is their front man for moving in that direction in the Keys. But then, if he was their man, wouldn’t they make sure he was squeaky clean? Wouldn’t they see to it that he cleaned up his business troubles before he threw his hat in the ring? It just doesn’t compute.
 
I heard last night that yesterday was the last day for for Keys registered Democrats and Independents to register as Republicans, if they wanted to vote in the Republican primaries this year. Think about it, registered Republicans. If you don’t get George Neugent through the Republican primary, you will have to choose between Danny Coll and me on November 2.
 
Sloan Bashinsky
 
political advertisement, approved and paid for by me, Indempendent District 2 county commission candiate

Drop  trow at candidate forum last year, right to left of me, Craig Cates, Morgan McPherson and Mike Mongo looking on

From yesterday’s Coconut Telegraph bitch and whine page, bigpinekey.com:
 
To Sloan – Here’s a suggestion, people who live in glass houses should not throw rocks.  If the incumbent even slightly fears that you are competition he will be airing your dirty laundry. I’m a recent arrival and a faithful voter, but I hear your laundry is really dirty.
 
As a recent arrival, this poster could not know how often I have aired my own dirty laundry under the quaint notion that before God we all are naked and have no secrets. Being a recent arrival, this poster could not know how many people I have turned off by airing my own dirty laundry. As a new arrival, this poster could not know I answer any questions about myself that are posed, regardless of the consequences to me. Of course none of this is news to any regular reader of the Coconut Telegraph where my posts have appeared ongoing since mid-2006 at the instigation of its Ed, one of my prime provocateurs in the Keys.
 
Whenever I start talking about tossing in the towel and moving to parts unknown, because I feel like I’m talking to the terminally blind, deaf and dumb, or to the terminally corrupt, ED butts heads with me and says my work here is not finished, I’m needed around here. He is hardly alone in butting heads with me over that, but I mention him, since the Coconut Telegraph is his creation where the recent arrival gets to post for free, but I do it the old fashion way: I pay Ed for posting my drivel daily and linking it over to one of my websites, goodmorningfloridakeys.com and goodmorningkeywest.com, both of which Ed built and designed for me after he told me I needed my own website.
 
Something else the new arrival may not know, being a new arrival, is I don’t accept campaign contributions. I pay for everything out of my own pocket, because I think raising and spending money on a run for office is obscene, and because I do not want to owe any favors if I end up getting elected. I don’t use campaign signs, buttons, bumper stickers, media ads, and so forth, either. I don’t like the litter, and what does that stuff say about a candidate? It says zip about a candidate, other than the candidate spent money saying zip about the candidate. I post rocks and nuclear bombs and carnivals and spoofs to the two good morning websites and to my ”spam” email list, I attend candidate forums, and I cooperate with media interviews. I am of the quaint view, as someone told me day before yesterday, that anyone who wants badly to be elected should not be.
 
As for the incumbent taking out after my dirty laundry lying in plain view, George Neugent won’t do it, although the Republican Party might do it for him, like the Republican Party took out after Ron Saunders in 2006 for David Rice. When I asked David to lay off the attack ads the Republican Party was running, he said he had no control over the Republican Party. I said, ”You have control. Tell them you will pull out of the race if they don’t stop the attack ads. Then, if they don’t stop the attack ads, pull out of the race.” David didn’t do that, the attack ads continued.
 
When day before yesterday, on US 1 Radio, Bill Becker took Morgan McPherson back to to 2006 and asked if he was going to campaign against Ron Saunders in the way David Rice had campaigned against Ron, Morgan said he had no control over the Republican Party. I laughed; it was the same dodge-ball answer David Rice had given to me in 2006. 
 
Several people who heard Morgan’s interview with Bill told me Morgan sounded really screwed up. Like a cliche, sound bytes strung together. A preacher pulling Bible verses out of the air. One observer, deeply involved in Keys politics, said Morgan is not well liked in Key West and the Keys, and it is not out of the question that Matt Gardi will beat him in the Republican primary. “A Bold Plan,” Morgan keeps saying the people need, but he never says what the bold plan is, other than it’s him.
 
When Morgan ran for mayor of Key West last year, his campaign slogan was “Start to Finish,” and he used small black and white checkered raceway flags as campaign banners. I said at a candidate forum that ”Start to Finish” sounded like a Viagra ad. Morgan’s prepared spiels were canned, full of cliches and sound bytes run together. After he spoke, I remembered nothing he had said but “Start to Finish.” He was like a robot, an automaton. As someone said day before yesterday, a hollow man. Morgan sounded that way with Bill Becker.
 
Morgan was different when he ran in the Key West mayoral and defeated Jimmy Weekley in 2005. But something changed toward the end of his first term, and what I think changed was Morgan became identified with being an elected official. He became unable to separate himself from the office and could not imagine himself not being in office. And, I sort of suspected, a good bit of Republican money was somehow flowing into Morgan’s family, to enable them to pay the bills and enjoy life. His home and a rental property were both in foreclosure. He wasn’t making any money in the real estate business. He earned $10,000 a year as mayor.
 
In that vein are excerpts from an email I received yesterday from Matt Gardi, addressed to Morgan:

A correction to the recent Revenge of the Clones – Florida Keys post.
 
I wrote that the Wisteria Island developers can bring their application at a later date without paying application fees. That was not correct. If the developers come back, it’s anew and application fees will have to be paid. I was told by two county commissioners, separately, that staff have been told to come up with a new rate schedule for applications, so big development applications like Wisteria Island, which take up so much of staff’s time, will pay their way more than has been the case in the past.
 
I was also told county staff were instructed by the County Commission, Mayor Sylvia Murphy leading the charge at the recent commission meeting, to come up with a new future land use map (FLUM) designation for Wisteria, which will ”zone” the island for two homes. This change will have to wend its way through the County like the Wisteria application wended its way through the County, and ultimately will have to be approved by the Department of Community Affairs if it’s still in existence by the time the application is transmitted to DCA by the County Commission next January.
  
Even so, I remain disturbed that the County Commission seems to have had no say-so in the application being withdrawn by the developers. I think the County needs to change its procedure. I think the County needs to make withdrawal of an application, after it is set before the County Commission, allowed only with the Commission’s approval.
   
The way it went down, the two commissioners whose seats are up for grabs this year, Neugent and Di Gennaro, did not have to weigh in against the Wisteria application. Thus was the application conveniently removed as a campaign issue. Thus were the developers better positioned to try to stack the county commission in this year’s elections. Welcome, County staff, to Keys politics 101.
 
Commissioner Carruthers said during the county commission meeting, after the Wisteria application had been withdrawn, that she wanted to compliment county staff on how they had handled the Wisteria application and she would like to see that approach used by staff in the future. Heather spoke only for herself. Of course she liked the way staff had handled the application. Heather wanted the the application approved.

1.  
   1. Key dates

2.       FLUM Designation
a.       MC - Appropriate & Compatible when combined together with the SAP
3.       Sub Area policy
a.       Mooring Field
                                                   i.      The SAP addresses two of the major environmental issues facing Monroe County – near shore water pollution and sea grass degradation resulting from unmanaged mooring of vessels.
                                                 ii.      Public Access mooring field must be developed prior to any other upland development
b.       Native Upland Preservation and Density Reduction
                                                   i.      SAP encourages native upland habitat preservation and density reductions through the required use of transferable development rights (“TDRs”) and transferable ROGO-exemptions (“TREs”)
c.       Permitted uses and regulatory review
                                                   i.      Limited uses at very low intensity levels
                                                 ii.      All non-mooring field-related upland development requires conditional use review
                                                iii.      Eliminates individual residential docks
d.       Density/ Intensity
                                                   i.      Strict limitations on density and intensity
                                                 ii.      “Requires” mixed use development per Chapter 163, F.S., and Chapter 9J-5, F.A.C.
e.       Hurricane Evacuation
                                                   i.      Requires private evacuation
f.         Wastewater
                                                   i.      SAP prohibits on-island treatment, thereby requiring connection to existing AWT
g.       Wetland Impacts
                                                   i.      Avoid and minimize impacts to any wetlands considered undisturbed by the Monroe County
h.       TIER & Offshore Island Status
                                                   i.      SAP clarifies that Wisteria is not an Offshore Island as contemplated by the Comprehensive Plan and the Land Development Regulations.  Wisteria is unlike any other island in the County’s jurisdiction, Wisteria is a disturbed spoil island with the following set of characteristics:
1.       Within or adjacent to a deepwater commercial port designated in F.S. Sec. 403.021(9)(b);
2.       Has access to water at least four (4) feet below mean sea level at low tide;
3.       Generally meeting the County’s definition of disturbed lands;
4.       Located outside any Coastal Barrier Resource Area; and
5.       Located outside any National Wildlife Refuge.
                                                 ii.      Alternative suggestions
___________________________________
Trepanier & Associates, Inc.
Land Planners & Development Consultants
402 Appelrouth Lane, P.O. Box 2155
Key West, FL 33045-2155
Ph. 305-293-8983
Fx. 305-293-8748
 
Here me, county staff. I am trying to help you. I am trying to show you that you are no match for Jim Hendrick, nor for Roger Bernstein, whose performances at the maybe eight public meetings I attended showed me just how shrewd and persuasive Roger also is. Many times, when I practiced law, I encountered lawyers like Roger and Jim. Silver-tongue devils, who take you for a ride on the Reading without you being any the wiser, all the while they keep at their subterranean burrowing. What I did with such lawyers when I practiced law was distrust everything they said. I dug for facts. I talked to other people. I got to the bottom of it. That was before I knew angels were leading me. Maybe they helped me get to the bottom of things back then, but I was not aware of it.
 
My advice to you, county staff, when a developer brings something to you, automatically assume you are being set up. Automatically assume the developer, or anyone representing the developer, is trying to get you to defect without you even realizing you are defecting. View any developer and any talking head in the developer’s pay as the wolf coming into the sheep herd, the fox coming into the hen house. If it is a big devleopment, assume Jim Hendrick is somehow involved.  You need to be totally loyal to the taxpayers in the way a lawyer is supposed to be totally loyal to a client.
  
You have noticed that you ended up on my email list. This is not  something I contrived. Nor was it an accident. It was arranged by the angels who lead me around by a ring in my nose. Every county commissioner will receive and read this post, as will the County Manager and the County and Assistant County Attorneys. As will DCA. As will a number of Keys journalists and perhaps 1,000 Keys people. You are center stage, county staff. Many are watching. Serve the people who pay your salaries, We the People of Monroe County.
 
Sloan Bashinsky
 
paid political advertisement, approved and paid for by me, District 2 county commission candidate

Below is the text of an email I sent to Tim Gratz this past Monday. Tim wrote back that he no longer was working in Danny Coll’s campaign, but he would forward it to Danny and hoped I would give Danny a chance to respond. I didn’t hear from Danny until he came to me in a dream in the wee hours this a.m. and pressured me to to publish what I had been sitting on. So here it is.
 
==============================
 
Morning, Tim.
 
I sent an email draft of of this down below to Ira Conkright. We then talked on the phone about the draft, and I made some corrections and sent him another draft. He made two corrections and sent it back to me. This down below is what he signed off on.

I left out some stuff about Danny and Tammy’s history.
 
Perhaps Danny would like to respond?
 
I’m copying this to Ira.
 
Sloan
 
=======================
 
The other day, one of my spies on Big Pine Key called and left a voicemail saying she had a friend living in Seahorse Trailer Park, whom I maybe should meet and learn about his employment at Danny Coll’s NAPP business on Big Pine. We played telephone tag until Sunday about noon, and I got the fellow’s name and address and went to see him, as he had no telephone.
 
Here’s a summary of what Don Conkright told me.
 
He is a seventh-generation Key West conch, as is his brother, Ira.
 
He is on disabilty for physical injury, and is only able to work part time.
 
Until recently, he and Ira both worked for Danny Coll’s NAPA business on Big Pine Key.
 
Fairly recently, Don was accused by a superior named Rene, a recent hire from Duncan Ford in Key West, of stealing a part he had ordered for a customer. He went to the special order shelf and got the part and showed it to Rene. She told him he was fired. He filed an unemployment claim. Danny Coll’s NAPA company denied liablity, claiming Don had quit. No defense of theft was asserted. The unemployment claim is still being processed.
 
Don said things had started going awry at NAPA when Danny brought his fiance Tammy into the business. Then, it got worse when Danny brought in Rene and put her over his brother, who was running the business for some time.
 
Don said they tried to get Ira to jiggle the books, and not long after that they fired him, too.
 
I asked Don to call Ira, to see if he would talk with me. Using his friend’s cell phone, his friend who is my spy, Don reached Ira. Yes, Ira said he would speak with me. So I drove the short distance to Ira’s place east of Seahorse Trailer Park.
 
Ira and Don’s father is retired Navy and lives with Ira.
 
Here’s a summary of what Ira Conkright told me.
 
Danny obtained this NAPA dealership about eight years ago and hired Ira about six months later. Ira learned the business from the bottom up, and about two-one-half years ago Danny made him the manager and an officer in the company.
 
Danny then told Ira of a $300,000 bank loan the company had to keep secured by that much inventory. They didn’t have that much inventory. The bank had sent a notice of non-performing loan, based on the inventory being too low, and had given 4-5 months to cure the low inventory. Danny told Ira to pad the inventory in ways the bank holding the loan and NAPA Headquarters would not catch.
 
After Tammy was brought into the business last year and Danny put her in charge, Ira told her about the inventory problem. Things got hot around the business.
 
Ira was told by Tammy to file papers with NAPA Headquarters that that were not correct and would allow Danny’s company to profit at NAPA Headquarters’ expense. Ira said he wouldn’t do it. It would be lying to NAPA Headquarters. 
 
Ira was instructed to go on a refund spree for customer’s of the business, by accepting returns of defective/used products without testing them to see if they were defective. He went along with this. The business billed NAPA Headquarters for the refunds, and collected. Ira had nothing to do with that.
 
The refund spree, Ira said, was a public relations move aimed at causing Danny’s NAPA customers to like and vote for him in the county commission race.
 
Ira was accused of stealing by Tammy, and she fired him. He filed an unemployment claim and prevailed, and is drawing unemployment. Danny’s NAPA company did not defend the claim by accusing Ira of stealing.
 
Ira said Tammy and Danny went on a wedding cruise, even though they weren’t married. The business had won the cruise from NAPA Headquarters. This was the week of Hometown! PAC’s first call to candidates last spring, which Danny did not attend because he was on the cruise. Right after the cruise, Tammy and Danny had a big blowup and split for a while.
 
This was some time after I had met Danny and Tammy at the NAPA office on Big Pine Key, and Danny and Tammy had told me Tammy would run the business, so Danny could spend the time needed to be a county commissioner, if he got elected.
 
Ira said Tammy doesn’t know how to work the counter, or how to pull inventory or order parts, or how to work the machines in the back. She only knows how to do the books. Rene isn’t there any more. Danny is doing most of the work.
 
Ira said the NAPA dealer in Marathon, and an independent competitor from Marathon, have taken a lot of Danny’s best business away from him, and Danny’s inventory is not being replenished. $56,000 of inventory on the books is not there. 
 
Ira said he will be happy to be interviewed by Tim O’Hara at Key West Citizen, Sean Kinney at the Keynoter, Steve Estes at the News-Barometer, and Bill Becker at US 1 Radio on Big Pine Key. Ira said an interview with Bill Becker will have to be by telephone, as US 1 Radio is next door to NAPA.
 
I will provide Ira’s phone number to any of those journalists who contacts me, and to anyone from NAPA Headquarters who contacts me.
 
I told Ira perhaps State Attorney Dennis Ward and the US Attorney might wish to send investigators to speak with him and Don, to determine whether or not a state and/or interstate/federal crimes might have been committed.
 
Perhaps hosts of candidate forums will ask Danny about these matters. 
 
Sloan Bashinsky
 
============================
 
Post-script. As fate had it, I took my car to a nearby garage the same day I wrote to Tim (last Monday), because my “check engine” light came on. I spoke with two of the mechanics and the owner and they confirmed the inroads NAPA in Marathon had made in this area, and they had sharply curtailed doing business with Danny’s NAPA store on Big Pine. They knew Ira and Don. They knew a lot about Tammy and Danny. One thing was, Danny had hired a fellow from a NAPA store on the Florida mainland to his NAPA store on Big Pine. But he was not paid well and he quit after Danny bought Tammy a big rock of a wedding ring instead of giving him a raise. This was after Danny had let Ira go. Then, as if the heavens had opened, the owner of the Marathon NAPA store was at the garage when I picked up my car. He told me he once had had the NAPA store on Big Pine, but when the Marathon store had become available, he took it and gave the Big Pine store back to NAPA. After that, Danny got the Big Pine store from NAPA, and he and his father ran it until his father passed away. The Marathon NAPA owner was reluctant to talk, but the little he said confirmed what the mechanics and owner of the garage had told me about the inroads the Marathon NAPA store has made in this area.
 
I was left wondering if Danny’s NAPA business will survive. I was left wondering how Danny would be able to focus on the rigors of being a county commissioner, with all the other stuff he apparently has going on in his life. I was left wondering why Danny did not respond to my email. I was left wondering why I did not see Danny at the heated Wisteria Island public meetings. I was left wondering why Danny did not attend the Contractors candidate forum yesterday in Marathon, where I spoke to the contactors about the grave threat the County and FEMA pose to the Keys economy because of their stance and actions toward owners of homes with downstairs enclosures, and my view of the kind of federal lawsuit that should be filed. I was left wondering why I did not see Danny at the Aqueduct Authority Board meeting in Marathon yesterday, where three members of the Board, in the face of strong opposition from the US Department of Fish & Wildlife, the Florida Department of  Community Affairs, and the Monroe County Commission, took a “fuck you, nobody is the boss of me” stance, and voted 3-2 to rescind the Aqueduct Authority’s rule prohibiting it from providing water to environmentally sensitive lands, particularly No Name Key. I was left wondering why George Neugent and I are working our butts off on county issues, but Danny seems to be relying on Vote for Danny Coll signs along US 1, and letters to the editor other people write for him, and an article about him being from Cuba in Solares Hill and the Cuban community’s vote. I was left wondering what would have happened if I had not entered this race, and George and Danny had squared off in an open Republican primary, and the 35,000 registered Democrat and non-affiliated voters, knowing nothing about Danny but a lot about George, had gone to the polls against the 20,000 Republican registered voters.
 
Circling back around to the beginning, early this year I received an email from Danny asking for us to get together. We met in his office at NAPA on Big Pine. He said he wanted Tammy to sit in. I said okay. First thing out of my mouth, I asked where he would find the time to put in 60 hours a week as a county commissioner and run his NAPA business? Danny said Tammy would run it, and he would oversee her and have the time to be a county commissioner. Tammy agreed. In that moment, they made their relationship and Tammy’s ability to run the business a campaign issue. I had no idea where that would lead, but the angels who put that question into my mouth certainly knew.
 
There are no fig leaves in Paradise, nor any secrets.
 
Sloan Bashinsky
 
political advertisement, approved and paid for by me, District 2 county commission candidate

I recently was introduced online to a mainland friend of one of my local spies and provocateurs. The landlubber wants to buy a place in the Keys and live here more than half the year, which I don’t have any problem with. But when he told me I should be cloned, I said if I was cloned, I would have to leave the vicinity, perhaps even the planet. He took that as an invitation to share with me the woes of other cities with their elected officials, to which I responded yesterday:

Most people are probably not going to vote for you because you keep stating unequivocally that you don’t want the job!!
 
Well now, maybe that’s the biggest reason they should vote for me: I don’t want the job. I have even written that a few times over the years when I ran in other races. I recently told the Board of Realtors that’s why they should vote for me, but they didn’t get it and asked what I meant? I said, because obviously there is nothing in it for me. I would only look after the people of the Keys and Mother Nature, and put up with all manner of abuse.
 
Unfortunately, most people don’t think that way.
 
Unfortunately, Hope doesn’t sound too hopeful.

Then more chuckle to yesterday’s Terminal Stupidity – Keys Politics post from a salty gal who only recently moved from Key West to the southeast Florida coast.

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