The Three Pronged Test (Redux)

Yet another link added, "The Three Pronged Test." Thanks again to Bob Kelly for remembering this handy test for initiatives that come before local governmental legislative bodies.

All too often in the past we have seen items presented as "housekeeping" ordinances, or items presented with a sense of urgency that defies the fact that no one seems to be sponsoring them!

We've always been wary of changes to regulations that might take away the few protections that regular people enjoy with regard to their residences, especially (but by no means limited to) Old Town in Key West.

And we remember how almost all the standards for variances simply disappeared from the city codes a few short years ago, supposedly from a printing error. In short there has been an "urge" originating we know not where, to re-do the variance system, whether it's to divvy up variances into "big" and "small" sizes, and let the Board of Adjustment handle the "big" ones, while the "small" ones can be handled "over a handshake behind closed doors" (as one real estate entrepreneur put it a few years ago).

So now comes a plan (which looks to be by and large a "done deal," so we can only hope for the best here) to turn the variance granting authority over to the city planning board. How does this plan do when the Three Pronged Test is applied?

Bear in mind two things here. Similar plans have been deep-sixed in the past because the public insisted on having these decisions in the hands of elected officials rather than appointees. And in other areas, variances are just that, a rare and seldom granted variance to the land development regulations, granted only when the applicant can prove a hardship--not as a matter of course, or convenience. Here in Key West a few years ago one builder was advertising on his vehicle, "We do Variances!" On to the test:

1. Who wants it and why?
Obviously in this case the city commission. It's a lot of work and a lot of sitting through long meetings. (Some say that way back when some officeholders supplemented their incomes through this activity. This being 2008, we'll dismiss such talk as anecdotal.)

2. How does it benefit our Key West community?
Well, it may actually help speed up the process. Since each commissioner will now appoint a planning board member, rather than have the mayor appoint all (with the usually pro forma consent of the commission), there will still be some degree of public accountability.

3. What about negative consequences and what could we do to mitigate them?
The answer to this might lie in the small print of this ordinance. Unless someone has the time and resources to take a close look, and to come up with a reasonable critique, there is no advantage in expressing an opinion.

Conclusion:
Unless there is something more than what we see on the face of it, this new method of granting (what should be) rare variances seems acceptable. It would be comforting to know exactly who on the commission is sponsoring it, and a few more reasons why it will benefit our community.

PS: It's not really a new issue. Look at what happened to these poor saps a few years ago. They left and put their house on the market; it finally sold a couple of years later. Click Here.

A Couple of New Links

I have posted a few new links. The first is a link to Bill Estes's new web site. (That's Bill on the left, at the Key West Seaport in 2003.)
Bill is running for Monroe County Commission, and has some good ideas about how to keep the Florida Keys a great place for visitors and residents alike.

Jim Kunster is an author and artist, who has written several books on urban planning. The most well-known is "The Geography of Nowhere," about how faulty long-range planning has marred the American landscape. He has been in Key West, both as an invited lecturer (to the Florida Planning Association) and as a winter resident. He is highly opinionated, and his language is (more than) a little salty, but he accurately predicted the arrival of our current energy crisis almost to the month. His blog is a good read, if you are interested in what people need to do to get us out of our current situation.

And we also added a link to Save The Turtles, an Upper Keys organization dedicated to doing just that. Sure, there are a few oldtimers around who will tell you that sea turtles were just plain good eatin', and even I can remember when some fishermen would shoot them just for fun, and let the bodies sink to the bottom. (They claimed they damaged lobster traps.) But it's now 2008, and informed up-to-date people must realize that those days are over. We must save the turtles. "As the turtles go, so go the Keys (and, for that matter, the seas)."

A Good Question

Above photo: an abandoned Duval Street during Hurricane Ivan

Another post by Bob Kelly, quoting a couple of entries from Citizen's Voice.

"Gas prices are at all-time highs. Airline travel has increased to the point the average tourist won't travel. Stay-at-home vacations will be the norm this year. What impact will this have on Key West? It will be devastating. Someone better tell the powers that be that the tourist economy that we have come to depend on will be nonexistent this summer. This news, with the housing market crisis, will have a negative impact on our economy. Where will the money come from? How will the average worker survive? It's a mess!"

"If you haven't put money away this season to survive through the summer, you're likely leaving KW soon. Rising airfares, hotel rates, and food prices couple with overdevelopment, crooked government, unwanted upscaling, and vanishing character no longer makes it such a great place to be for both tourists and locals alike."

He asks, "Are they pessimists or realists?"

***

My thoughts, unedited:



"It will be devastating. Someone better tell the powers that be that the tourist economy that we have come to depend on will be nonexistent this summer."

Surprisingly, I don’t think so. There is a traditional election year slump, but a large number of summer visitors are Florida people, still arriving from relatively short distances by car. As long as you can walk from your lodgings to a place where you can find a drink, or (ahem) other things people like, Key West will be an attractive venue. After all, as H. L. Mencken (I think) said, "Nobody ever lost any money by underestimating the taste of the American people."

"This news, with the housing market crisis, will have a negative impact on our economy."

Barring another hurricane, the housing market will eventually recover. Rents, of course, are a function of supply and demand. Although they have seemed unconscionably high to some of us for 20 years, it's only recently that demand has not exceeded supply. Still, many people employed in our local economy seem willing to pay up to $800 a month for a room in a shared house. "Catch as catch can" has been a major and workable "affordable housing" solution for many years.
What will happen after the inevitable "feeding frenzy" of buying that so many real estate agents are praying for is another question.

"Rising airfares, hotel rates, and food prices coupled with over-development, crooked government, unwanted upscaling, and vanishing character no longer make it such a great place to be for both tourists and locals alike."

There’s the rub. The signs of what was going to happen have been evident for almost twenty years. For a number of reasons, the public has not been galvanized to work for change. With the exception of a few well-informed individuals and groups like Last Stand (which has had its ups and downs, but now seems to be emerging from its Great Sleep) the public interest has been largely trumped by smart lawyers and politicians, few of whom even bother to pay lip service to the idea of maintaining some modicum of balance. There is always the danger that word will get out that Key West is in danger of becoming an overcrowded, overpriced dump, but then, again, maybe Mencken was right.

I Saw A Turtle!

Not that some people don't see them every day...but yesterday was one of those warm, calm spring days when you know that the snorkeling will be world class here in the Keys.

Just offshore one of our favorite spots, a few short miles north of Key West, I came face to face with a green turtle. (That's not the same one in the photo above, but you get the idea....)

The one we saw was about 18 inches across the shell, measured lengthwise. On the right rear of its shell, approximately at the 4 o'clock position, there was a chunk missing. Most probably this was caused by a collision with a motorboat propeller.

It took one look at us over its shoulder and high-tailed it out into deeper water--a smart fellow. I hadn't seen one so close up since I lived in the middle Keys in the early 70's. They were more plentiful then.

In fact, turtle steak was still on the menu of many restaurants. A few turtles were still brought in to the fish houses in Marathon. If you've ever seen one butchered, it's a sight that you probably didn't forget.

Having seen it, that's one of the reasons that I recognized the remains of a much larger turtle on the bottom as I swam back to shore. Who knows what happened to that one. A collision with a motorboat? Death from ingestion of plastic or some kind of man made debris?

The point is, it's good to know that some of them are still around. And it's a reminder of how precious our environment is here, and how important is the work of the few who exert considerable effort to preserve a little of what we had here for future generations, no matter how thankless that task seems at the present time.

Here's another picture showing the "bountiful harvest" at the "turtle kraals" in Key West Bight earlier in the last century (probably sometime before 1935). Turtles were still harvested as late as the mid 1970's. A couple of current Key West old timers, who contrived to have retirement homes in the Bahamas, were heard bragging about dining on fresh turtle, as if it were their birthright. Too bad they didn't take care of what they had, rather than giving it away for the price of a house.

The New Flag of the Conch Republic

Or some Conchs call it our official "flower," since they seem to be sprouting up everywhere like our trees and bushes in the spring: real estate for sale signs.

For those of us who have been around any length of time, it's not really a new thing. We've seen other cycles, way back when, when the Conchs built houses in New Town, and sold their family homes on Simonton, Duval, and Caroline Streets.

Concrete and block houses were easier to take care of. They were closer to Winn-Dixie and Food Fair, not to mention the new Sears store, and the high school. And besides, everybody was moving out there.

Then there was the great gay influx. Not that they/we/one human family weren't here all the time, but a bunch of them did bring in a certain verve, making something out of nothing. Jimmy Russell and Peter Pell set the dye on the first "Key West Handprint Fabrics" in the dryers at Pinder's laundromat, didn't they?

Before you knew it, some of the old houses downtown actually had paint again. And they were sold and resold, always in cycles. At one time or another, the early eighties for example, fully one third of the houses in some areas in Old Town were on the market. People came and went. As some wags say, "In Key West only the actors change. The roles remain the same."

Let's face it. A lot of people made a lot of money buying, remodeling, "cream-puffing," renting, selling, "flipping," condo-converting, or whatever. If you made a lot of money, you were an expert. You could rip a wing off the goose, and it would still lay that golden egg.

Three short years ago, easy mortgage money, loose appraisal practices, and good old-fashioned All-American greed led to skyrocketing real estate prices, and for a few clever ones, some nice profits. As far as the real estate boom went, as one local banker said, "We can't see the end of it with binoculars!"

Of course some of the old-timers, who hadn't sold out and joined the massive Conch emigration to Lakeland, Ocala, and points north, clicked their tongues, and said, "Just you wait and see." Sure enough, Mother Nature, the mortgage markets, insurance companies, and politicians feeding off of our ad valorem property taxes pretty much killed the goose that was suppose to lay that golden egg.

Without further elaboration, we are now at the beginning of another cycle. Some say that if we don't get another bad hurricane this year, the real estate market will recover by next winter. (Yes, they said that last year too, but that was just wishful thinking). After all, our hole card has always been that it doesn't snow here in January. The inconceivable is finally happening: prices are actually coming down.

So, barring a depression or similar national tragedy, some real estate people are hoping for the coming "feeding frenzy." And given the past economic history of this place, there's no reason that it won't happen.

And then will everything be "all right" again?

Ay, there's the rub. More of this anon.

Latest on Missing Student

Nicholas Garza has been missing from the peaceful and bucolic campus of Middlebury College in rural Vermont since the night of February 5th, 2008. He was last seen leaving on foot from one dormitory to another about 11:00 PM.

Now that spring has arrived in Vermont the area around the campus has been searched by police, search teams with dogs, and on the weekend of April 26, by more than a hundred volunteers who came from all over Vermont and adjacent states.

The only clue that has been reported in the press and media is the vague sighting of something that might have been similar to some of the clothing that he was said to be wearing when he disappeared, seen in the fast moving waters of Otter Creek, which flows from south to north through the town of Middlebury.

A more comprehensive search will have to wait until the spring flood waters subside. It's a sad and baffling story. Middlebury College is one of the most competitive and highly-rated liberal arts institutions in the country. The young man reportedly was bright, popular and well adjusted. He was not wearing winter clothing when he left to dormitory. The section of the creek where the objects were sighted is not readily accessible from the campus, and in February there was substantial snow cover on the ground, which would have impeded the progress of anyone, even with the proper clothing and footwear.

His family is still maintaining a website: http://www.nicholasgarza.org/

Haitian Baptists in Key West

The Haitian community in Key West includes an active Baptist church. One Sunday afternoon they baptized five people at a public beach in Key West. I filmed part of it with a cell phone.

Some of the tourists on the beach seemed puzzled, especially the couple from Israel. When I explained what was happening, they said, "Ach, ja! They do this in the Jordan, too!"

The Haitians appear to be using a church on Big Coppitt Key, while their church on White Street, which they share with a Spanish speaking congreation, is being remodeled.