Cherry-picked this beauty below off of yesterday’s Coconut Telegraph of bigpinekey.com, easily the most visited website in the Florida Keys. Maybe because Big Pine Key is the seat of the Resistance, the heart and soul of what the Keys used to be before local government officials (city and county) traded their souls for development.
Stay and Fight the Fight. I was speaking with a friend of mine the other day who is selling his home here in Marathon. Of course my friend is not alone these days. Take a ride through the city (or throughout the Keys, for that matter) and you’ll see For Sale signs everywhere. They litter the landscape like limitless tiny flags of surrender. My friend’s lived here nearly twenty years, loves the Keys, doesn’t really want to sell, but hell, you all know the litany by now: Insurance rates up the wazoo, taxes skyrocketing, no steady work for locals, the Keys becoming another manufactured Paradise as envisioned by big money whose closest connection to the water is the aquarium in their CEO’s penthouse, and so on and so on.
Some say it’s reached the point where this generation’s children may well be the last to truly be called Conchs. It seems our very own invasive Mr. Potters are driving the George Baileys out of town as fast as you can say, “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Isn’t it a shame? They didn’t have to pave Paradise, all they had to do was buy it outright and then slowly destroy it … well, maybe.
The bad news is my friend’s home is up for sale. The good news is nobody’s buying it. It’s been on the market since the start of the New Year and so far–nothing. It seems the market’s gone flat. A recent article in the Miami Herald reported that the number of houses on the market in the Keys and the amount of time it takes for them to be sold has increased dramatically. Some local realtors (which, by the way, seem to be just about every other person) have told me privately that sales are so lax that they may have to abandon their chosen profession, at least temporarily. Nobody’s uttering the word ‘bust’ yet, but, then again, “boon” doesn’t seem to be at the top of anyone’s vocabulary list. So you might ask, why would I view this downward trend as good news? The answer is simple, pilgrim. Let me explain.
Just yesterday, my good friend, the one who’s been here for two decades and who can’t even get a decent bid on his home, told me straight out, with a wry grin on his face, “Well, I made my decision. I’m not going anywhere. I’m here to stay.” And he added, now that he’s going to be here for a good long time, him and his family, he’s damn well going to get involved with all the nonsense that’s been going on. Only he didn’t say “nonsense” and he wasn’t just paying lip service. He plans to become actively engaged in the community – its politics and its lifestyle – once again. Why?
Because this is his home, his city and he has a decided interest in its future.
So the bad news is my friend couldn’t sell his home, but the good news is another soldier’s been enlisted in the war to keep the Keys from becoming a playground of Disneyesque proportions.
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When I tossed my hat, and God tossed the rest of me, into the District 2 race in 2006, against incumbent George Neugent, whose county commission office, yep, is located slap dab on Big Pine Key, even though part of District 2 includes part of the hugley undeveloped, still nearly wild city of Marathon, where George lives with his wife in a single-wide trailer stuck out all by its lonesome in the mangroves, I said over and over again, until I bored even my own self to death, “No more new development, period the end. The Keys are already way over developed, everyone knows it, and no one can look in a mirror and with straight face tell the person looking back the Keys are not already way over developed.”
About mid-way into the 2006 campaign, George took to saying at candidate forums that Sloan’s platform would bankrupt the county. Shortly after that election, which George won a little better than 2-1 in vote count, the county government was out of money. Ad valorem tax revenues were falling almost as fast as the Trade Towers came down. And I didn’t have nuttin’ to do with it.
What had to do with it was the insane blind belief on the county commisson during George’s previous terms, and before he was a commissioner, that development was the Keys’ Jesus. Development could do no wrong. And now developers’ oldest friend on the county commission, George wants another four years.
At the recent Hometown! PAC call for candidates, George did an aw shucks, then took credit for bringing the county government into a balanced budget and for the county’s assets now exceeding its liablilies. What horseshit!
I bet County Commissoner Heather Carruthers, standing just a few feet away from me when George said that, didn’t give George nearly as much credit as he gave himself. Nor did County Commissoner/Mayor Sylvia Murphy, also standing just a few feet from me. Nor did County Commissoner Mario Di Gennaro, standing a few more feet a way.
I didn’t see County Commissoner Kim Wigington there that evening, but I bet she doesn’t give George the credit he gave himself for tightening the budget. If Kim was there, I bet the conch farm she was wondering if George was taking the credit for tightening the budget, to divert attention away from his rabid resistance to her attempts to require lobbyists to register with the county, and to her attempts to stop county employees, including George, from being wined and dined by people and organizations seeking favors from the county government.
I bet County Administrator Roman Gastesi didn’t feel too super swell about George taking credit for tightening the budget, after Roman and his staff had worked their asses off to shave pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters off the county budget.
I bet a whole lot of Keys people don’t feel too super swell about George trying to get himself and the other county commissioners, and the county administrator and county attorney, exempted from a long-standing county personnel policy rule that prohibits county employees from accepting gifts of any kind from people doing business with or courting the county government. Gifts like Christmas and birthday presents. Gifts like free meals. Gifts like green fees. You get the picture.
Kim Wigington’s lobbyist registration ordinance is on tomorrow’s county commission agenda for yet another try at getting approved by the county commissoners. It’s set on the agenda for 3 p.m., Harvey Government Center, Key West. I do truly hope to see the Resistance there in full force, armed and ready to explain the facts of life to George Neugent and any other commissoners who don’t want lobbyists to have to register with the county, so we all will know who they are.
Meanwhile, the fact is, pilgrims, ad valorem taxes are still dropping, because the value of homes and business properties is still dropping. The fact is, homes and businesses that are selling are going for prices that would have been considered unheard of when I ran against George in 2006, and hollered and hollered against any more development, as George opined I was going to bankrupt the county, which was already bankrupt but George hadn’t figured that out yet.
The fact is, the real estate market is not going to bail the county out of this depression anytime soon, if ever. It will take years just to unload all of the “affordable housing” now on the market in the Keys. It will take years for the lenders who ended up holding mortages on homes, the value of which plunged below the mortgage amounts (affectionately called upside down or underwater mortgages), can breath dry air again.
Frankly, I think that’s a really good development. I think it’s a really good development because it has stopped development in its tracks in the Keys, hopefully forever. It has forced the Keys to invent a new way to survive. Or at least lean more into existing ways, which have not received their just due because of the insane infatuation the Keys developed with development.
What we the Keys people need to do is turn our full attention to turning the Keys into the kind of place a community living on top of the fossilized part of a living barrier reef should have become a long time ago. The Keys are a natural treasure. They also are a national and a state park. Where else can people live in a national and a state park in America in such numbers, but in the Florida Keys?
I say let attrition take its toll. Let the law of natural selection reduce the human population in the Keys. Let even the Conchs, who were born here, whose parents and grandparents and great grandparents were born here, leave if they can’t get by here. Let the population shrink. Let the Keys become an eco-tourist subtropical ocean destination inside the continential United States.
Finish the bicyle trail from the mainland. Promote bicycle vacations in the Keys.
Promote nude breaches in the Keys, for the maybe 60,000,000 nude beach enthusiasts world-wide, many of whom live inside the continental United States.
There is a very long narrow natural beach on the Atlantic side of Long Key, which stretches far away from either side of the state park there. I have bonefished that flat many times, it would be an excellent secluded nude breach. There is a shorter, equally secluded stretch of beach at the end of Boca Chica Road on Geiger Key.
We locals know of secluded swimming holes where locals peel down and jump in. Such a swimming hole is located on the bayside of Ramrod Key. Right now that swimming hole mostly is where locals go in the afternoon and get roaring drunk and play really loud music, and then they get into their pickup trucks and weave back to US 1 and to wherever they are going next, all with the Sheriff Office’s knowledge and apparent consent, since nothing is ever done about it.
Let Key West, the bawdy engine that runs the entire Keys economy, many howls of ignorant protest to the contrary, become known as Babylon West, with more churches and bars per capita than any other city on this planet; the bonafide planetary mental institution where nuts are allowed to walk around uncaged and even allowed to leave on their own recognizance.
Let Marathon remain the geriatric retirement center of the universe.
Let Islamorada remain the fishing capitol (note the correct spelling of capitol in this capital context) of the world.
Let Key Largo remain the dive center of the continental United States.
Let the politically correct Tourist Development Council become politically incorrect. Let it get rid of its high-paid south Florida advertising agency and be our in-house ad agency. Let the TDC promote the Keys online, for amost no cost, instead of through printed and television media, which cost mucho doubloons.
Let the TDC promote the Keys as the absolute get-away-and-get-lost-be-your-real-self place in the continental United States, which all us locals know about but the TDC keeps trying to compete with Maui and the Caymans and the Bahamas, and, yes, Disney World, instead of promoting and selling what none of those places are: a refuge for people who simply don’t fit in anywhere else.
That’s right folks, the Keys still are a hideout for the likes of Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Willimas, Robert Frost, Jimmy Buffet, and Captain Tony Terrancino, the beloved womanizing, cussing, drinking mayor of Key West, now dearly departed and we have not rested in peace ever since. Captain Tony kept a jaundiced and supsicious eye on developers and their lawyers. He knew the real Keys – not the Keys the developers and their lawyers were trying to create, with help from plenty of turncoat Conchs and wannabe Conchs like George Neugent.
The only way to turn the Keys economy around is to bring more visitors here. The question is, do you want to bring the mega rich here? The kind of people George Neugent likes to hobnob and play golf with, without you even knowing about it, if he can arrange it that way? Or do you want to bring regular folks here, who will love the Keys, pick up after themselves, and want to keep coming back because there is no other subtropical island get-a-way in the continental U.S. where they can let their hair down and be who they really are? We already have plenty of lodging rooms for that crowd.
If you don’t believe me, ask anyone in the lodging business in the Keys. You can bet the conch farm, the lodging industry doesn’t want to see any more transient rental condominiums, motels, hotels or time-share condominums (motels in disguise) built in the Keys. By lodging industry, I mean people who are actually in the lodging business. I do not mean developers like, say, Pritam Singh and the Spottswoods, who build to sell, then get stuck with what they built and by default become members of the lodging industry.
If we want to build something in the Keys, let’s build more state parks, where eco-tourists can camp in tents or small RVs. Let’s set up ferries to run nekkid people and other nature lovers out to our secluded beaches on Long and Geiger Keys, and elsewhere. Let’s make it easy for nature lovers to come here and hang out a while, then leave.
And yes, let’s raise the sales tax a penny, so our nature-loving and wild-side-seeking visitors can help us pay for modern wastewater treatment where we don’t already have it in the county. There’s no way we are going to get the money for wastewater treatment from the State of Florida, which, thanks to super-over-development and its inevitable what goes up must come down crash and burn in hell karma, can’t even pay its own bills.
There’s no way we are going to pay for wastewater treatment from ad valorem taxes.
There’s no way we are going to stop killing of the reef with our own shit, if we don’t raise the sales tax and use every penny of it to stop killing the reef.
I wonder how many people living in the Keys today, other than developers and their lawyers and lobyists, and government officials like George Neugent, who like being wined and dined by developers, but not reporting it so we the people will know about it, give a flying fuck about developers and their lawyers and lobyists?
Sloan Bashinsky