Good Morning Florida Keys

 

There is a topically related, albeit more “scientific” The Second Coming – a somewhat less known version post today at www.goodmorningbirmingham.com, which you should be able to reach by clicking on either above link today, and by clicking on the first link at anytime.

Meanwhile, down here in the Florida Keys blackboard jungle …

Larry Murray replied to yesterday’s blackboard jungle voodoo in Key West mostly post at goodmorningkeywest.com:

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

Sloan:

I have said for a long time that Robin Smith-Martin has a “clutch problem”. That is, he has a disposition to engage his mouth before his brain. “Profanity from the heart”!! That’s one for the ages that I will have to remember. I have heard profanity excused in a variety of ways, but never because it was heartfelt.

You will always do what you always do. A piece of advice that was given to me a long time ago: “Never trade squirts with a skunk!”

When Smith-Martin “pulled a Mathewson” at the last Board meeting, he also demonstrated that he has “Low-T”. Talking one way and then voting another is indicative of someone who wants life to be both ways and doesn’t have either the balls or the courage of his convictions. Should he run for reelection, and I hope that he does, I will encourage his opponent to create a campaign poster of Smith-Martin’s pithy, profane and insulting remarks. Key West is famous for its chickens and it is time for this one to come home to roost.

Your exchange with Smith-Martin demonstrates in the most amusing manner the absurdity of the new School District policy of screening incoming emails for “verboten” words. Smith-Martin can lob all of the F-bombs he wishes, but is protected from profane retribution. I suspect that, had you said nothing profane in your reply, your email would have been rejected because of what Smith-Martin wrote! Now, how absurd is that?

Larry

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

I replied:

Hi, Larry -

A lot of my cussing is heartfelt. It just jumps out of me without any thought whatsoever.

There are so many skunks around, and so many opportunities to trade heartfelt squirts with them.

Some skunks are important people who other people put into important positions, which, if you expand on that, increases the skunk population exponentially.

Your take on the F word in Robin’s first email to me yesterday, and the School District’s server, is shared by Nashville J.

My first reply to Robin yesterday did not include the F word and was allowed through by the SD’s server, along with, I suppose, Robin’s first email to me, which contained the F-word, and the ass word, as I recall. So maybe there is something to it; maybe the SD server lets the F word and other unacceptable words – maybe ass = donkey is an acceptable word – out and back in, as long as a School Board member, or a lesser SD skunk, generated the verboten word(s). Maybe I should email Sherlock Holmes and ask him if he wants to dig into that?

Meanwhile, as I wrote to you the other day, Low T is a byproduct of too much masculine energy and too little feminine energy, which causes all sorts of commotions in men, and in women, and not just in the skunk men and women. A man, or a woman, with a healthy internal feminine would not have laid down and rolled over after learning Matthew Gilleran left school one Friday afternoon and went home and posted a farewell for good to his friends on Facebook and shot himself in the head. A man, or a woman, with a healthy internal feminine, upon learning of that, and hearing of widespread talk of Matthew being harassed at Key West High School, and of his probably being gay, would have left no stone unturned getting to the bottom of that.

Meaning, it ain’t not having balls that caused Robin and his fellow high-level skunks to lie down and roll over. It was not having a pussy …

Sloan

The rest of what I wrote to Larry, which was the fun high point of my day yesterday, was censored by the angels in dreams last night.

Meanwhile …

Bullying is a direct result of low ESTROGEN.

The American education model, which teaches mostly to the intellect, instead of to the whole child, is testosterone-driven. It is child abuse. It causes all sorts of soul damage in students. It fosters bullying and other forms of mental illness and destructive behavior.

What Florida Keys schools need is a very large dose of ESTROGEN.

Lots of luck, in T-Rexterone Nation.

Meanwhile …

A sure-fire way for kids to put a stop to being bullied at school, or anywhere, is for them to get some wild skunk piss and put it in a spray bottle and squirt the T-rex(es) in the face with it at the earliest opportunity.

Maybe a sure-fire way to get this post through the School District server is to only email the high level skunks the link to the post.

Sloan Bashinsky

keysmyhome@hotmail.com

There is a blackboard jungle voodoo in Key West mostly  post today at www.goodmorningkeywest.com, which you should be able to reach by clicking on either link today, 1/30/13, or any day by clicking on the first link.

Meanwhile …

Yesterday evening at Coco’s Kitchen on Big Pine Key, a woman I see around from time to time but don’t really know and I kept catching each other’s eye, so I left the communal table and went over to say hi. After introductions, perhaps reintroductions, my memory may have been on the blink, she said she voted for me last year, when I ran for the School Board. Then, she said she always votes for me. I paused, thought, said, did that mean she was crazy? She paused, thought, said, maybe so. We talked a little while longer, then she left and I went back to the regulars at the communal table, all of whom know I’m crazy, but they somehow seem to manage to get by it.

There were some other people in there I know somewhat, who live on No Name Key (photo is bridge from Big Pine Key over to No Name Key). I had not seen them in a while. Friendly people from No Name Key, as opposed to people from out there who want the island put on the grid and are certain I am both crazy and the devil. Maybe because they know I frequent Coco’s Kitchen, the No Name Key folks who want to put the island on the grid don’t use Coco’s Kitchen; at least not the pro-grid folks I know somewhat.

My involvement in trying to keep No Name Key off the grid, ie. the way it is, predates my knowing anybody who lives out there by 11 years.

Many times now, I have shared the story of how I was told in early January 1995, by the angels many people say I invented, to go to No Name Key from Boulder, Colorado, where I then lived. To go as soon as possible, it was important. To go there and end up on the middle of the bridge between No Name Key and Big Pine Key, surrounded by pelicans in the air, bawling my eyes out, hanging onto the bridge railing for dear life, looking toward the Atlantic Ocean, and hearing, “Because you love this place so much, you will be used to try to protect it.”

That night, this poem fell out of me:

Behold, the pelican!

Slow, ugly, clumsy afoot,

But in the air

a great fisher indeed!

And in times of want

plucks out its own breast meat

to feed its young.

By that time in my life, I understood the pelican was the Christ bird in the Holy Grail tradition. I understood who had told me to go to Big Pine Key, to go as soon as possible, it was important. In early January, 1995.

However, I did not get involved in the politics of Big Pine Key and No Name Key until the spring of 2006, after I had moved to Little Torch Key, where I now live. The angels I am accused of inventing had me run for the County Commission seat held by George Neugent. That voting district stretches from just above Shark Key to lower Marathon, and George’s County Commission office was, and still is, on Big Pine Key.

It was in 2006 that I met Mick and Alicia Putney, two environmentalists living on No Name Key. They wanted the key to stay off the grid. Because it was off the grid was why they had built their dream home out there. They thought they had died and gone to heaven, being able to build a home in a Federal Wildlife Refuge.

George Neugent beat me 2-1 in that race, and in March 2007, the angels I am said to invent moved me down to Key West, where I lived until March 2010. During that time, the angels I am said to invent had me run twice for Mayor of Key West, and once for the County Commission seat then held by Sonny McCoy. To my great relief, I came in a distant third, as an Independent, against a Democrat and a Republican. The Democrat, Heather Carruthers won, and she would win a second term in 2012, by running unopposed.

Although I was living in Key West, I remained deeply involved in the politics of Big Pine Key and No Name Key, mostly due to my having made the acquaintance, in 2006, of “Captain Conch,” aka Deer Ed, of www.bigpinekey.com’s Coconut Telegraph, who had created a special archive on the Coconut Telegraph for my daily ravings, which was before he helped me start up www.gooodmorningkeywest.con, and a few months later www.goodmorningfloridakeys.com.

From Key West, I emailed Deer Ed “teasers” with links to my daily ravings at the goodmorning websites, for him to post on the Coconut Telegraph, for which service I paid him so much a month. I continued to rave from time to time about the politics of Big Pine Key and No Name Key. During that time, Mick Putney contacted a medical problem and quickly passed over, which really upset me. I memorialized Mick in a post at the goodmorning websites, and wondered out loud, who would take his place, defending No Name Key?

The angels I am said to invent moved me back to Little Torch Key in March 2010, and that year I ran again for George Neugent’s County Commission seat. After beating political new comer Danny Coll in the Republican primary by about 55-45 percent of the vote, George trounced me 3-1 in the general election, much to my relief, as I had not wanted to run for office again, and I sure as hell didn’t want the job in any event. By then, I knew for a fact that anyone who ran for office was crazy, an ego maniac and/or a crook.

The angels I am said to invent don’t care how I feel about anything they tell me to do. If I invented them, I would not be terrified of telling them to take a hike. I am terrified of telling them to take a hike, because they have demonstrated many times that they can do anything unpleasant to me, which they want to do to me, anytime they want to do it to me. They told me in dreams at an ungodly hour this morning to write about No Name Key today. I woke up, shot them a bird for waking me up so early.

It was in 2010 that I started frequenting Coco’s Kitchen and getting know its owners, Coco, who cooks, and her daughter Rose, who runs the counter. It was then that the pro-grid folks on No Name Key decided I was the devil, and they wrote on the Coconut Telegraph that Rose was Sloan’s wench and Alicia Putney was his witch. I took that as a great compliment, but I think maybe Rose and Alicia were less thrilled.

That brief history of time brings me to this recent article in The Keynoter:

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

No commercial power? County sued for $10 million

By RYAN McCARTHY

rmccarthy@keynoter.com

Posted – Saturday, January 26, 2013 06:00 AM EST

Four No Name Key residents filed a $10 million discrimination lawsuit against Monroe County Thursday in Circuit Court.

Jim and Ruth Newton, along with Robert and Julianne Reynolds, allege the county has for years willfully denied the Lower Keys island commercial power without proper cause. Currently homes there are powered by solar and generators.

“The county has a long history of discrimination against that island and the residents and its very flagrant. And if it’s not discrimination, it’s ignorance,” Reynolds said Friday.

The crux of the plaintiffs’ argument is Chief Circuit Court Judge David Audlin’s ruling in 2011 that the state Public Service Commission has jurisdiction over the matter, not the county.

That ruling came about from a county filing asking Audlin to decide whether county law allows commercial electricity on No Name. County officials say the law doesn’t allow it and that it can’t issue permits for it.

The suit concentrates on Monroe County fighting the installation of 62 Keys Energy Services power poles last year, as well as a 2001 county ordinance creating a coastal barrier overlay district prohibiting commercial utilities in federal coastal barrier areas.

Congress created the Coastal Barrier Resource System in 1982, and updated it in 1990, to protect undeveloped coastal barrier areas.

The lawsuit also addresses the Newtons’ controversial application last year for an electrical building permit from the county. Originally granted, it was revoked when county officials realized their home is on No Name.

In addition to the $10 million in damages — which Reynolds called a “low” number– the plaintiffs want Audlin to void the county’s coastal barrier overlay district law and grant homeowners electrical permits.

“If you knew what this has done to the friendships and relationships there … it’s pretty much the only thing they think about and talk about. I don’t know what the value of my peace of mind is, but in my mind it’s pretty significant,” Reynolds said.

He’s owned a house on No Name since 2005.

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

I told the No Name Key folks yesterday evening at Coco’s that Bob Reynolds and his wife, and the Newtons, had forgotten to sue the real defendants, the people who had caused them all of their misery out there on No Name Key, who were themselves who had bought and moved out there knowing the island was off the grid, without any inducement from Monroe County for them to do that, nor with any promises from Monroe County that No Name Key ever would be on the grid. I said I thought maybe the law requires plaintiffs to sue the real defendants, also sometimes called the real parties interest, aka the necessary parties, or their lawsuit is due to be dismissed.

The No Name Key folks were laughing so hard, as were some other people at Coco’s, that they nearly fell out of their chairs. They laughed even harder when I said Bob Reynold’s wife should sue him for making her move to No Name Key. Then, I said, maybe she will. From what all I’ve heard and read about Bob on the Coconut Telegraph, not put there by me, and other places, he is not someone I would want one of my daughters to spend any time around. But then, what do I know? Maybe his wife is completely happy with him, and is thrilled they bought their place on No Name Key. Although if she is thrilled they bought out there, why is she so unthrilled now? What changed since they bought their place in 2005, to kill her thrill?

Apply the same crazy justice thinking to the Reynolds and other people living on No Name Key, who are pissed off at Monroe County, Alicia Putney and me. They moved themselves out there without consulting Monroe County, Alicia Putney or me. Nobody twisted their arms that I ever heard to get them to move out there. They could have bought a home on nearby and closer in Big Pine Key, instead, and had all the Keys Energy Services electricty and Florida Keys Aqueduct water they wanted, for so long as they paid their utility bills.

I, who once was viewed in America as a leader in home buyer’s rights, a defender of home buyers against unethical real estate agents and brokers, mortgage companies, etc., who later bawled an ocean of tears on No Name Key bridge, have not yet found it in me to shed even one tiny tear for anyone who bought a home on No Name Key and now blames Monroe County, Alicia Putney or me for it not being on the grid.

Sloan Bashinsky, ex-lawyer, author of HOME BUYERS: Lambs to the Slaughter? The pro-grid folks on No Name Key slaughtered themselves.

keysmyhome@hotmail.com

 

This floated in on a rising tide yesterday, and led to some back and forth tides:

From: Rising Tide

rtflkeys@gmail.com To: RTFLKEYS@gmail.com Subject: Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2013 07:00:11 -0500

If you care about our Keys environment read on. If not, delete this message.

Are you fed up?

· Sick of the county and the cities continually changing their comprehensive plans to suit developers?

· Tired of the utilities being more interested in selling water and kilowatts than helping the Keys make a serious and rapid transition to alternate energy?

· Stupefied that Key West would dredge a channel to bring in even bigger cruise ships, that Crane Point in Marathon would be allowed to build a zip line in a protected area to entice even more tourists, that county planners would push for a shopping mall on Rockland Key, or that an electric utility would build on a protected coastal area?

· Stymied by local environmental groups that still hope for voluntary action? Or convene endless meetings and then issue un-acted upon reports?

· Or fed up by the greenwashing by local governments and businesses that think that if we just recycled more we’d stop the ravages of global warming?

Meanwhile, the oceans are rising, the reef is dying, fishing stocks are depleted, and calamitous weather is striking all over the globe.

If you’re not fed up by any of this then delete this message and you’ll never hear from us again.

But if you are disgusted by the continual erosion of our environment while developers, government and the chambers only want more, then join us now.

We’re Rising Tide of the Florida Keys.

Rising Tide is an international, all-volunteer, grassroots network of groups and individuals who

· Organize locally

· Promote community-based solutions to the climate crisis and

· Take direct action to confront the root causes of climate change.

We do not believe that the dominant, business-friendly means of addressing climate change will have any significant impact on preventing catastrophic global warming. Nor do we accept the idea that environmental groups must cozy up to governmental organizations in order to effect change. That has not worked.

Want to hear more? If you’re interested in helping us form an active and aggressive Rising Tide chapter here in the Keys, one of the most vulnerable areas to global warming, then respond to this email and we’ll be in touch.

It’s time we took action to stop business as usual.

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

I replied:

From: sloan bashinsky [mailto:keysmyhome@hotmail.com] Sent: Monday, January 28, 2013 8:38 AM To: rtflkeys@gmail.com Subject: RE: climate change

How about sending me a list of all of your Florida Keys members, so I will know who you are.

And, how about also sending me a list of changes you say need to happen in the Florida Keys, to slow down climate change.

And, if you have a website, send me a link so I can look it over.

Thanks,

Sloan Bashinsky

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

Rising Tide replied:

From: rtflkeys@gmail.com To: keysmyhome@hotmail.com Subject: RE: climate change Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2013 09:22:05 -0500

http://risingtidenorthamerica.org/gtide

We don’t have Keys members Sloan because we are just organizing, as the email said. We’ll be developing what needs to happen in the Keys but it’s no mystery. I don’t think you’d be a good fit Sloan.

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

I replied to Rising Tide:

From: sloan bashinsky [mailto:keysmyhome@hotmail.com] Sent: Monday, January 28, 2013 10:47 AM To: rtflkeys@gmail.com Subject: RE: climate change

My requests were reasonable, your knee-jerk reaction was not.

I wonder if my response had been to swallow hook, line and sinker what you cast my way, you next would have requested a donation?

So far, I don’t see anything about you into which to fit.

In case you haven’t looked around, there are plenty of blogs and outfits loudly promoting online much the same you are promoting, some do it just because, some to get donations.

I don’t see them giving up their automobiles, though, and walking and riding bicycles and taking public transportation, or at the very least down-sizing to motorcycles. I don’t see them in houses or apartments covered with solar panels. I don’t see them growing their own food using the old methods which do not require oil or natural gas to produce.

I can’t see anyone living in the Keys not seeing the most environmentally friendly thing they can do for the Keys and the planet is to move to the mainland. But we down here, who claim to be environmentalists, don’t move to the mainland for that reason.

More down to earth, a recent Facebook exchange with a climate change amiga in Key West, who has lots of stop climate change friends down here and in Europe, which is her origin:

Erika Biddleshared a link.

January 22

Marcy Murninghan

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

The Myth of Human Progress

www.alternet.org

The technical and scientific forces that created a life of unparalleled luxury—as well as unrivaled military and economic power—for the industrial elites are the forces that now doom us.

Sloan Bashinsky my scruffy opinion – This species is too numerous, too diverse, and too mixed up to be changed by human methods. A global cataclysm might bring about species change. A jolting supernatural intervention in plain view might bring about species change. A supernatural intervention into the soul of individual members of this species might bring about change in them, and might bring about change in the species, if it happens across the board in individual members. Otherwise, I think things on this world are going to continue to decline. Hope I’m proven wrong.

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

Chris Hedges’ article in the link Erika provided was about as cheery, although longer, as my reply to Erika.

More to the point, Rising Tide.

Looks to me that the only way people can avert what part of climate change is human caused, and not nature caused (the planet has warmed in the past without human help), is to exterminate about 90 percent of the invasive species, ie. people. Hopefully, that can be achieved in a non-environmentally destructive way, which the native buzzards and other native carrion feeders and the planet will appreciate. May I suggest mass suicide outdoors, using guns and knives?

Sloan

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

Rising Tide replied:

From: rtflkeys@gmail.com To: keysmyhome@hotmail.com Subject: RE: climate change Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2013 10:51:20 -0500

You have magnificently and brilliantly proven my point. No need to write back.

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

I replied:

From: keysmyhome@hotmail.com To: rtflkeys@gmail.com Subject: RE: climate change Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2013 10:53:00 -0500

Because you went outside and eliminated your contribution to the problem?

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

In one part of their website, Rising Tide says they put their bodies in front of bulldozers to stop the building of new dams to create hydroelectric power.

If it has not yet seen it, perhaps Rising Tide should rent and watch “The Emerald Forest”, about stopping bulldozers tearing down ancient Amazon forests and building a huge dam across a wild natural river.  The movie demonstrates in perhaps Hollywood fashion, perhaps there was some real truth, how a white teenager, stolen in his very early years by a wild Amazon tribe, used shamanic gifts the tribe had taught him to summon nature and all of its creatures and a huge rain storm to flood the river above the dam his own white father had engineered and supervised its building, to knock the dam down. By that time his father had found him and was being initiated into the aboriginal tribe and was working in league with them to defeat the bulldozers and the dam.

There is a great deal aboriginal shamen can do, which modern people cannot fathom or believe, but the training is long and intense, and I have yet to meet or hear of any modern white shamen, including myself, who seemed able to do that kind of shaman work. I would do it if I knew how.

I would call in a Category 5 hurricane to landfall Key West and run the entire length of the Florida Keys. I bet the Rising Tide folks would love that, but I doubt they would love being run over by bulldozers and ground into little pieces mixed with dirt and vegetation, and biologically returned to nature. And I don’t see them killing themselves, and in that way encouraging other members of the invasive species to follow suit.

Another way to reduce carbon emissions, which people, including Bible thumpers who claim all things with God are possible, keep telling me is impossible, while the angels who drive me nuts say is possible, is to invent an engine that runs on water and uses the hydrogen for fuel and releases the oxygen into the atmosphere.

Another way to reduce carbon emissions is to ban tobacco smoking. I suppose, pound for pound, a person who smokes one pack of cigarettes a day puts out as much air pollution as an 18-wheel tractor trailer, a jet air plane, a cruise ship, a sugarcane factory, a coal-fired power plant, etc.

I read some time ago that Boulder, Colorado, where I once lived, outlawed tobacco smoking in all public establishments except saloons, and then that city outlawed smoking outside. Zero-minus of chance of Key West, or anywhere else in the Florida Keys, following suit.

It is the height of hypocrisy to smoke tobacco and be against global warming.

Ditto for using wood-burning stoves for heat and being against global warming.

Ditto for using air conditioning, or gas, oil or electricity for heating, and be against global warming.

I suppose the same argument can be made against smoking marijuana, although most marijuana smokers don’t smoke nearly as many joints a day as your average cigarette smoker.

Which brings me back to the resolution the invasive species has the ability to achieve, which I don’t imagine the Rising Tide folks will use. Mass suicide outdoors.

Perhaps if the Rising Tide folks had done their homework, they would have known the only person who ever ran for public office down here in the Keys, who met and actually exceeded their standards, was me. If The Rising Tide folks had seen the clobbering I got at the polls, they would have known they were wasting their breath trying to recruit Keys environmentalists to stand in front of bulldozers.

I know maybe a dozen Keys people who regularly stand in front of their local elected officials and tell them they are operating the bulldozers and cruise ships, and polluting the ocean. I never saw, or heard, any of those maybe 12 publicly campaign for me.

Back to the Category 5 resolution, which would return the Florida Keys to the equivalent of the Ice Age and put an extreme chill on development.

Sloan Bashinsky

keysmyhome@hotmail.com

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

Both enterprises (Drone Nation and Key West) look to me like they could stand a huge infusion of the Divine Feminine. I seriously doubt, though, that there would be enough hospitals in America or in Key West to receive and keep on life support the patients she created, were she to make such a grande entrance.

Sloan Bashinsky

keysmyhome@hotmail.com

 

Nashville J replied to yesterday’s

Pearl Harbor lookouts – a great pair, Florida Keys school district and Key West post:

Sloan:

“scrambling to figure out how to fund and build a $350,000 handicap-accessible parking lot at Horace O’Bryant Middle School in Key West.”

LOL – forgot the parking lot ! ROFLMAO. Wasn’t it last year or the year before when a new firehouse was built in the Keys that the doors were not big enough to pull the trucks in?? Or did I dream that? Regardless, no one will be fired or held responsible for not catching the parking lot issue when the plans were drawn up.

Regardless, they are sweating the $350,000 because they will just raise taxes or fees so that the Citizens get to pay more for it. You just wait until they get thru with the price over runs on the Glynn Archer property – they will throw up their hands and say, “WE didn’t know that or no one told us that or that was not our fault”, but we have to pay so give us another 2, 3, 4, 5 million to complete the project. Just wait, it will happen.

J

I replied:

Hi, J -

Don’t remember anything about fire station doors not being big enough; will ask around.

I imagine the School District will find the $350,000 internally; raising taxes requires voter approval on a referendum.

It will be another two years, I imagine, before the City of Key West knows what their new City Hall will cost them. Mayor Craig Cates is using completion of the new City Hall as his reason for running for reelection this year for a third term, and again next year, if he wins this year, even though he told me when he ran for his second term that he would not run for a third term.

I hope the new City Hall cost estimates are pretty close, a little overrun wouldn’t be awful. Hope don’t necessarily translate to actual, and it won’t surprise me if the overrun is substantial. Don’t know where they would get the money for a substantial overrun, they had to dig into reserves to pay for the Duck Tours settlement. Maybe they would use the Tree Commission to raise the money. Maybe they would raise parking meter fees. Maybe they would put parking meters in residential neighborhoods. Maybe, as you say, they would taxes. And, as you say, there would be plenty of pointing the finger away from themselves by any city officials who voted to put the new City Hall in Glynn Archer School.

I told them to put it on Truman Waterfront. They owned the land. There was plenty of land for it, and for a lot of green space/park, too. The drawback would be remoteness from most of the rest of the island. Glynn Archer is a better location, in the geography respect. They could have rebuilt it where it was, at the corner of Angela and Simonton Streets. Now they are going to put public parking, public restrooms and some green space there, as I recall the latest plan. And the new Fire Station goes in there. I think that’s all pretty much set in stone now.

If a new mayor is elected this year, perhaps he/she will focus on doing something worthwhile with Truman Waterfront; building two homeless shelters, one bare bones for the addicts, another more comfy for people trying to get back on their feet; converting Duval Street into a pedestrian mall in the afternoons and evenings; leaving the channel alone and even discouraging cruise ships from calling on Key West at all; and ridding the city streets of conch trains, conch trolleys, amphibious ducks, which make street traffic awful and seriously aggravate city neighborhoods.

The street cleaning could be accomplished simply by not renewing licenses presently granted to tour companies, when their licenses come up for renewal. I believe reducing street congestion and improving quality of life (a popular cry of some elected officials) would be sufficient legal and moral reason not to renew those licenses. The tour companies and cruise ship lines would howl, and perhaps some businesses out on North Roosevelt, but everyone else might be delighted.

Something needs to be done for Bahama Village. That’s going to be tough for a variety of reasons. A good start would be to give Bahama Village say on how city law enforcement is deployed there.

Maybe more will come to me later. Maybe I will see a V of wild geese flying somewhere, and sprout wings and flap away with them.

Sloan

After sending that to J, these thoughts came to me:

The Tree Commission needs to be reined in. Looks to me the city ordinances it is enforcing against private property owners were passed to regulate developers and city land, easements and rights of way.

The City needs to trim/or let Keys Energy Services and/or private homeowners trim trees back from power lines.

The City needs to let its property owners paint their roofs white, to reflect sunlight and lower electricity usage for air conditioners.

The City needs to encourage community gardens in its green spaces, and use treated water from its sewage treatment plant to irrigate those gardens and its green spaces.

The City needs to turn lower Duval Street into a pedestrian/arts and crafts and musicians and street performers’ mall every afternoon and evening.

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

Last night, I called Sandy Downs (photo) about Nashville J had sent about TVA, which I included in yesterday post:

Sloan:

Just thought I would pass along a little info on power lines and trees here in the Nashville area and how TVA handles it. As I remember – the power company in Key West refuses to cut them.

The TVA though says this is all part of necessary line maintenance that needs to be done to keeps the power running and their customers safe.

“The tree doesn’t have to touch a line for it to be a problem, it can grow in proximity to a line and be a problem,” says John Dooley with the TVA.

Under state law the TVA has the authority to cut and trim any kind of plants or trees that grow in the easement area around their power lines.

http://www.newschannel5.com/story/20662471/clear-cutting-angers-brentwood-residents

J

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

That led to Sandy telling me quite a bit that mostly was news to me, which I will summarize:

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

After getting nowhere with her efforts in Key West to do something about the City’s Tree Commission, Sandy spoke with the Florida Attorney General’s Office, the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity (DEO), the Florida Commissioner of Agriculture’s Office, the Governor of Florida’s Office, US Senator Nelson’s Office, the Florida Senate Joint Administrative Procedure’s Committee, the Department of Environmental Protection, and the Florida Public Service Commission.

Some months passed of going back and forth and round and round.

Early last November, Sandy told a fellow at the Public Service Commission to go to Google Map and use it to drive through the parts of Key West where tourists go, especially Old Town, and see where power lines were in trees.

Early last December, Sandy told Rebecca Jetton at DEO, whose south Florida office has jurisdiction of the Florida Keys, how the City of Key West and its Tree Commission were using ordinances DEO had approved for regulating development, to gouge private property owners; and how the City of Key West had changed an ordinance DEO had approved, so the Tree Commission could gouge private property owners.

Rebecca told Sandy that was the second time the City of Key West had done something like that. Rebecca asked Sandy if she had talked with Key West’s City Attorney Shawn Smith about all of that? Sandy said she had talked with Shawn and he had said what the City and Tree Commission were doing was illegal and there was nothing he could do about it. Rebecca said that didn’t sound like the Shawn Smith she knew, and she was going to call him right then and there.

Sandy said, not long afterward she saw Asplundh and Keys Energy Services tree crews running around Old Town Key West chopping tree limbs in power lines back to the trunk. Butchering trees. The kind of limb cutting the Tree Commission would have buried Sandy’s tree company for doing.

Not long afterward Sandy was before the Tree Commission on an application to remove a problem tree on land of a homeowner, which application was denied. I was there for that, then I left.

After I left, Sandy heard Kenny King, who does a lot of tree work in Key West, speak to the Tree Commission. King had a lot of permit requests for total removal of trees on private property, which had been cut back to the trunk – butchered by Asplundh or Keys Energy Services tree crews. King told the Tree Commission that never in all his years in the tree business had he seen trees be butchered like that. Sandy said Kenny has been been in the tree business at least 20 years in Key West. He is a Conch, and he is the one the Tree Commission refers business to.

Sandy said, with her sitting in the audience, the Tree Commission told King they could not give him permits that night, but they would try to work out hardship permits to be issued at the next month’s Tree Commission meeting.

Sandy said Paul Williams, the City of Key West’s Urban Forester, told her that he left that job yesterday and is going to work for Everglades City. Paul told Sandy that the City is broke, its tree maintenance equipment is old and worn out and cannot be replaced, and the City is looking at contracting out all of its own tree work.

Sandy said Paul told her that the City wants to remove all of its many trees that were planted in wrong placeas and are dying. The City cannot take care of them and doesn’t want the liability of trees falling on people and homes. Sandy said that is why the City wants homeowners to keep their trees, no matter the cost or inconvenience to homeowners.

Sandy said Paul told her that there is an opening on the Tree Commission and she should apply for it, or have her arborist apply for it, or her son, who heads up her company’s tree crews. Then, on learning from Sandy that neither she nor her arborist or son were born in Key West, Paul said that would not work because the City wanted people born in Key West to be on the Tree Commission.

Sandy said the Chairman of the Tree Commission, Neils Weise, who, along with Assistant City Attorney Ronald Ramsingh, had given her the most grief, had resigned from the Tree Commission. Ramsingh is the Tree Commission’s lawyer. I personally saw and heard him steer the Tree Commission to do things at a Tree Commission meeting, where Sandy’s company was charged with violations, which I thought were grounds for disbarment.

Mainly, Ramsingh would not let Sandy call Tree Commissioners or City employees to  testify in her defense, and he misrepresented to the Tree Commission that the Florida 3rd District Court of Appeals had ruled in an earlier Tree Commission case that people hauled before the Tree Commission could not call Tree Commissioners or City employees as defense witnesses.

Furthermore, Sandy asked and was told twice at the beginning of her tree company’s part of that Tree Commission meeting, I was there and put her up to it, that the meeting was being recorded;  but when she went to City Hall the next day, she got the run around about getting a copy of the recording, and finally it came out that there was no recording of that meeting.

I told Sandy there was no way City Attorney Shawn Smith could do nothing about what Ramsingh was doing. Shawn hires and fires Assistant City Attorneys, and answers not to the City Manager but to the City Commission.

Sandy and I both have a court reporter’s transcript of a Tree Commission meeting we did not attend, in June 2009, at which Ramsingh and the Tree Commissioners talked about getting caught by a Key West lawyer at a prior Tree Commission meeting, when they were trying to screw the lawyer’s client, Paul Tripp, and how they would have to pass new ordinances to enable them to keep screwing the public. They didn’t say screw. They said continue to do what they had been doing. The new ordinances never were passed.

I told Sandy a year ago to file a grievance against Ramsingh with the Flordia Bar Association. Maybe I messed up by not telling her to file a grievance against Shawn Smith, too.

It is known in Key West what the Tree Commission and Ramsingh do. The Tree Commission are called the Tree Nazis down there. They were clobbered in an editorial in The Key West Citizen. Sandy told me that she sat down face to face with Mayor Cates and told him what the Tree Commission was doing, and he told her to sue the city. In emails, I told the city commissioners and the mayor what the Tree Commission and Ramsingh were doing. Tree Commissioners are appointed by the mayor with the advice of the city commissioners. Tree Commissioners serve at the leisure of the mayor and the city commissioners.

The Tree Commission gouges private property owners in several ways the law does not allow. Property owners are charged fees for trimming limbs back, and they are charged for removing trees that are diseased, causing problems or they do not want. These fees are couched as “donations”, instead of as fees. In lieu of paying donations, private property owners can do mitigation and buy equivalent trees, or many smaller trees which add up to the equivalent, to be given to the City and planted on its land, at the property owners’ expense.

Private property owners know that objecting and appealing to the City Magistrate is futile, because the City Magistrate will side with the Tree Commission and charge the property with court costs and the City’s attorney fee. So private property owners either do what the Tree Commission tells them to do, or property owners hire lawyers to represent them at Tree Commission meetings, like Paul Tripp did.

To this day, Sandy’s tree company cannot get a tree removal permit for a private property owner in Key West, without her client being gouged. To this day, her company gets different treatment from other tree companies. To this day, her company’s private property owners in Key West do not get the same treatment from the Tree Commission, which other private property owners in Key West get.

Sandy said she has lost all interest in fighting the City and its Tree Commission. She did not recover for the private property owners the loot the City’s Tree Commission gouged out them, but maybe she made the City’s RICO enterprise less lucrative; and maybe she headed off more people, like her 15-year-old son Preston, being electrocuted by trees in or near power lines.

Sloan Bashinsky

keysmyhome@hotmail.com

 

From Larry Murray yesterday:

Prompted by Sean Kinney’s article in today’s Keynoter, Bill Becker has invited me to join him tomorrow (Thursday) as the closing act at 8:55 on Morning Magazine. He wants to discuss my findings subsequent to my PRR for Hotline reports. Stay tuned!

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Each day’s Morning Magazine is available by noon for replay online – www.us1radio.com

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Schools official focus of hotline complaints

By SEAN KINNEY

skinney@keynoter.com

Posted – Wednesday, January 23, 2013 09:57 AM EST

After months of pushing, a Big Pine Key man got a glimpse of public records he’s been seeking from the Monroe County School District since October — and if what they say is true, they’re not pretty.

Larry Murray, a former member of the district’s Audit and Finance Committee, had been unsuccessful in getting records related to the district’s fraud and abuse hotline until he brought in Dennis Ward, former Keys state attorney now private counsel, to threaten a lawsuit for lack of compliance.

Monday, the two met with School District attorney Dirk Smits and received five reports from the hotline, which is managed by Oregon-based vendor Ethics Point at a cost of $5,000 per year.

Three of them allege district Finance Director Ken Gentile acted inappropriately on the job.

From Case No. 41, logged by the hotline on May 17, 2012, by an anonymous tipster: “Ken Gentile has created a very hostile work environment for staff. We are asked to get on our knees to pray with him. No one can refuse the forced religion for fear of retribution from this zealot … who now [has] the power to investigate and fire staff at will. This is so inappropriate it’s hard to believe it’s true.”

“This is totally baseless and unfounded,” Gentile told the Keynoter Tuesday. “I cannot even speculate as to why someone would allege this. It saddens me to think that someone would allege this. It saddens me to think that someone would allege I would force anyone to pray.”

That complainant further alleges Gentile’s wife Donna calls herself a “volunteer” and “runs around” the district office in Key West “looki[ng] through files.” Gentile didn’t address that.

When he started with the district in April 2010, Gentile was chief internal auditor, a direct employee of the School Board. After then-Superintendent Joe Burke resigned, his successor, Jesus Jara, named Gentile chief of staff directly employed by the superintendent, not the board. Now under Superintendent Mark Porter, Gentile is finance director earning $122,000 per year.

Gentile launched the hotline in September 2011. As the district’s contact, he reviewed tips — except for those concerning him, which were supposed to be forwarded to the superintendent and the chairman of the School Board.

That never happened and inexplicably, reports concerning Gentile were forwarded to his part-time assistant, Amy Reno, who worked for him from March 28 until July 1 in 2011.

Gentile couldn’t explain why Reno, who wasn’t responsible for investigating waste, fraud and abuse complaints regarding her boss, received the reports; and Reno never initiated any follow-up investigations into Gentile’s alleged behavior.

“The reports should have been channeled to the board chairman,” Gentile said. “This was an instruction given to the vendor. I am investigating with the vendor why this was not accomplished. By design, I do not see these reports if they are about me.”

Case No. 54, filed Dec. 13, 2012, alleges Gentile “created a contract and split it up into smaller amounts to avoid taking it to the board.”

The board has to approve contracts costing more than $25,000 while Porter can give the OK below that threshold. That’s been a sore spot lately, as board members have been apprised by Smits they’ll have to redo a number of change orders on a school rebuild that were previously approved but not in compliance with district rules.

Case No. 48, initiated with the hotline on Sept. 27, 2012, calls into question Gentile’s use of the “certified public accountant” designation on documents. Gentile has never been a CPA in Florida and had an inactive — since reinstated — CPA status in New York. In December, Gentile served a one-week unpaid suspension as discipline.

The only non-Gentile complaint of the five provided to Murray deals with Horace O’Bryant Middle School Principal Mike Henriquez.

Opened on Dec. 20, 2011, the complainant alleges Henriquez “is allowed to scream, berate and use profanity toward subordinates and coworkers. He has repeated these outbursts many times. I know of at least half a dozen women who have been abused by this man.”

There was no follow-up conducted by the district, according to the report, and Henriquez didn’t return messages for comment.

Gentile’s wife Donna filed the fifth report given to Murray and Ward. She applied for a grant-writing job with the district in May 2012, which she didn’t receive, prompting a complaint about not being treated fairly in the hiring process.

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There also is an article on the Hotline in The Key West Citizen this morning – www.keysnews.com. You will have to pay with plastic money to open and read today’s issue.

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On the Hotline, this from Larry Murray yesterday:

Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2013 10:34:11 -0800 From: citizenlarry007@yahoo.com Subject: Who Is Amy Reno and Why Do We Care? To: keysmyhome@hotmail.com

We all remember the ballyhoo surrounding the School District’s decision to create a Waste, Fraud and Abuse Hotline. The Monique Acevedo affair was fresh in memory and the Hotline was intended to be a major impediment to anyone trying to again defraud the District.

The decision to proceed with a Hotline was announced in August, 2010 by the School Board’s new independent Internal Auditor, Ken Gentile. Gentile and then Audit and Finance Committee Chairman Roger McVeigh waxed enthusiastically about the impending Hotline, characterizing it as a “whistle-blower” program. At a cost of less than $10,000 per year, McVeigh observed, “(If) one out of 10 calls turns out to be real fraud,… it’s well worth the money.”

For whatever reason, it took nearly a year to bring the Hotline system on line. The Audit and Finance Committee was anxious to see the Hotline up and running quickly, chiding Gentile to move things along. Gentile assured the AFC that all was well, to be patient. As it turns out, we, I was on the AFC at the time, should have been more suspicious at the delay. Facts recently uncovered reveal that the administration of the Hotline has been rife with problems, if not corruption.

Let’s take a case in point. Ken Gentile was the Hotline administrator throughout, the sole person within the District with unfettered access to the Hotline. No one else could gain entrance. But, what would happen if Ken Gentile’s name came up in a Hotline complaint?

This subject was never discussed by the AFC though it had nominal oversight for the Hotline. Burdened by wrestling with no end of financial and other problems confronting the District, the AFC was lax in its oversight. Gentile issued one report about Hotline activity in September, 2011 and that was it. The AFC never requested additional reports and Gentile was free to manage the Hotline in any way he wished.

That all came to a crashing end beginning on October, 17, 2012, the day that I made a Public Records Request for all records generated by and associated with the Hotline. The first and continuing response of the District was to ignore my request, to stiff arm me to see if I would go away. That was a strategy that had worked with other individuals’ PRR’s so why not try it again.

For three months, I sparred with the District. A lot occurred during that struggle which I will share with you later. There is one aspect however, that calls for sharing now.

At the December, 2012 meeting of the AFC, Ken Gentile tried to placate me and the Committee with a cursory and cryptic 5 line Hotline “report” that was entirely unsatisfactory. During the meeting, however, Gentile offered an interesting revelation. He told the group that any calls to the Hotline that cited him, “Gentile”, bypassed him and went directly to the Superintendent and the Chairman of the School Board. This revelation was in response to my direct request for any and all records of Hotline cases in which he or his wife was mentioned.

Well, it turns out, after examining the previously unreported cases, that declaration was a bald faced lie. As the sole administrator, Gentile was responsible for determining who, besides him, would have access to the Hotline system, especially should his name arise in any complaints. And, to whom did he assign that responsibility? Amy Reno.

Who was Amy Reno? Amy Reno was a very nice accounting student from FKCC who Gentile hired, part-time, ostensibly to assist him in his role as Internal Auditor. For all intents and purposes, she was a paid intern. Ms. Reno worked for three months in the spring of 2011 and was gone before the Hotline was even operational. Yet, she remains on the list as one of the three people (Dirk Smits was added on 1/21/13) who has continuing access to the internals of the Hotline.

Think about what Gentile did. He created a system whereby any Hotline reports about him would be funneled to a subordinate and a part-time one at that. When Ms. Reno left the School District, she was not replaced in the Hotline system. Because of that “oversight”, all complaints, 6 of them, dating to December, 2011, a year ago, about Gentile and other top administrators, e.g. former Superintendent Jesus Jara, went into a “black hole” until Dirk Smits rescued them in response to my demand.

How did we discover that there were missing Hotline reports? It was very easy. Every time a case is logged with Ethics Point, it is automatically given a number in a consecutive log. When I received a copy of the log, it was immediately obvious that at least 6 complaints lodged with Ethics Point were missing.

That fact had been known by Gentile all along. Whenever he checked the Hotline system, he could easily see that case numbers were missing. What did he do when he discovered missing cases? Nothing, much as he did nothing with regard to the other cases brought to his attention by the Hotline.

You have got to admit that what Gentile did was slick. How better to CYA than to have someone wholly dependent on you for their job to examine complaints against you! Then, when she left, before the Hotline even went operational, you leave a phantom employee on the list of those with access. Who would ever know?

With his ruse exposed, Gentile told Sean Kinney of the Keynoter that he could not explain why Ms. Reno was charged with investigating complaints about her boss. Gentile claims that he told Ethics Point something entirely different and plans to “investigate”. Yet, Gentile “told” Ethics Point nothing. Every communication was electronic with Gentile himself typing the pertinent data. The buck is flying fast and furious. I cannot wait to hear what Gentile has to say.

Will Gentile investigate why he made no inquiries for over a year with his superiors or Ethics Point when he discovered missing cases? After all, there may have been reasons other than his name occurring that caused a case to be missing or, as Dirk Smits likes to characterize them, “orphans”. No, Gentile just went on with business as usual, expecting that no one would be the wiser.

Had I not made my PRR, Gentile’s behavior would have remained a deep, dark secret. The School District, specifically Superintendent Mark Porter, stymied my demand for the documents at every turn for over three months. I would like to think that my persistence led to the exposure of Gentile’s nefarious activity. No, that was not the case. It was only when I turned to Dennis Ward for help that the School District finally caved and began to comply with the law.

To date, I have received for only 5 cases the detailed documents from the Hotline that I requested. More are to come. But, each case exposes another layer of School District shenanigans. More to come.

Larry Murray

January 23, 2013

Dr. Larry Murray

Fiscal Watchdog and Citizen Advocate

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I told Larry the other day that there is something terribly awry when the person responsible for the Hotline is responsible for handling complaints against the person responsible for the Hotline. I think the School Board should be in the Hotline loop, and I think at each School Board meeting the Superintendent should read to the Board, in the sunshine, any Hotline complaints received since the last Board meeting, and the Superintendent should bring the Board up to date at each Board meeting on the status of the investigation into each Hotline complaint.

Larry told me a good while back that when he first corresponded with Superintendent Porter about getting information on the Fraud Hotline, Porter replied that he had never heard of the Hotline. How could the School Board vet and hire Porter, without telling him about the Fraud Hotline?

The School Board created the Audit & Finance Committee, on which Larry was one of the initial appointed members, to help the School Board bring the School District under financial and related control. Larry learned the Board had no intention of heeding anything that came out of the AFC. Larry learned the Board created the AFC as a public relations ploy, to give the public the impression that the Board was going to rein in the School District. Larry learned the AFC was a fraud. He might not say it that way, but that’s what he learned.

It looks to me that the Fraud Hotline also was created as a public relations ploy, to give the public the fraudulent impression that its input was important. Perhaps that will change. Perhaps not. It’s up to the School Board to change it, since they now have a Superintendent they can fire on 60 days notice without giving any reason.

Meanwhile, while the Fraud Hotline is in the limelight, it might be a good place for people with information on what happened at Key West High School, which led up to Matthew Gilleran’s suicide, to report what they know without fear of retaliation.

To make a Hotline complaint, click on the School District website link – www.KeysSchools.com – and then scroll down the left-hand menu to Hotline and click on that. I pulled this from that webpage for general information:

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To Make a Report

You may use either of the following two methods to submit a report:

Select the “Make a Report” link at the top of this web page.

OR

Dial toll-free: 866-842-2093

 

After you complete your report you will be assigned a unique code called a “report key.” Write down your report key and password and keep them in a safe place. After 5-6 business days, use your report key and password to check your report for feedback or questions.

EthicsPoint is NOT a 911 or Emergency Service:

Do not use this site to report events presenting an immediate threat to life or property. Reports submitted through this service may not receive an immediate response. If you require emergency assistance, please contact your local authorities.

The School Board of Monroe County, Florida is dedicated to providing our faculty and staff with a safe and productive workplace. Our Code of Conduct is simple and straight forward.

Play nice

Take responsibility

Be a faithful agent to students, their families and the community

Take it personally

Uphold the code

The Superintendent of Schools and his administrative team value your input. That is why we have selected EthicsPoint to provide us with an anonymous and confidential method to hear your suggestions, concerns or report of misconduct. The information you provide will be sent to us by EthicsPoint on a totally confidential and anonymous basis. You have our guarantee that your comments will be heard.

Our Commitment

Our goal is to assure and enhance the integrity, people, processes, and assets needed by all stakeholders of the School Board of Monroe County, Florida. We believe that the viability and integrity of the School Board of Monroe County, Florida depends on the protection of our critical assets, including our people, physical assets, and our information. We also believe that our communication, internal controls, and processes must constantly adapt to the changing needs and objectives of the company as well as to the changing marketplace. We appreciate your support and cooperation in keeping the School Board of Monroe County, Florida an ethical organization from top to bottom.

Attention!

This web page is hosted on EthicsPoint’s secure servers and is not part of the School Board of Monroe County website or intranet.

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Looks good on paper …

Sloan Bashinsky

keysmyhome@hotmail.com

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The rest of what I wrote to Larry was not particularly sweet, so here’s the sweetened version: