Sunday, October 25, 2009

First order of business for newly elected Mayor Craig Cates at the city commission on Tuesday was to proclaim it Massage Therapy Awareness Week in Key West.

"Have a great day," beamed the therapist who accepted the proclamation and the commissioners beamed right back, bathed in wellness.

It was a good evening for the soft-spoken Cates, characteristically attired in open-collared blue shirt and cream jacket. With the consistent coolness of a powerboat racer, he ran a tight meeting and God help any speaker who ran one second over the allotted three minutes.

We spied Mrs. Cates seated four rows back in the hall. (Key West has a First Lady now?) To believe that Cheryl stayed in the background of her husband's bid for mayor is to believe the north pole is the south pole.

Both Mayor Cates and new Commissioner Billy Wardlow declared positions at the meeting that had already garnered the most attention in the press. Cates said he was not in favor of a new city hall at this time, certainly not for $18 million. Wardlow reiterated that he wants the parking meters gone from Smathers Beach, despite receiving an e-mail about the thousands of dollars the city gets from them. "I went out there today and there are still many broken, so there's no money being made from any of those." He'd like to "give back to the citizens," he said, "and get those meters off the beach."

Wardlow also got a little testy over a matter of waste, formerly known as trash. (The percentage of Key West's recyclable rubbish that is actually recycled has, woefully, dropped to 6.6 percent from August's 7.3 percent.) How, asked Wardlow, did the city now intend to enforce recycling equitably among condo and multi-unit households? "We're trying," said the city's Annalise Mannix. "But how?" persisted Wardlow. Said the mayor: "I think we need to move on and discuss this another time."

Giving fresh meaning to the green idea of "going local" was a discussion during the city manager's report of a legislated "local preference" among competing street vendors. City Manager Jim Scholl and City Attorney Shawn Smith both wanted to rewrite the rules on this slippery wicket. Suggested Mayor Cates: "Let's try and keep it simple so code enforcement doesn't get carried away."

"Thank you!" said Smith.

Cates asked how code enforcement expected to enforce new vendor rules. Code enforcement's Jim Young spelled it out: First a warning, then if still not compliant, "he or she will be shut down."

Commissioner Barry Gibson charged in on this. "I can't agree to that," he said, being a store owner himself. "They're paying rent to the city the same as we are."

Said re-elected Commis-sioner Clayton Lopez: "I am diametrically opposed to what Commissioner Gibson is saying."

Said Cates to Gibson: "I think what you're trying to say is that you want stricter language," which got both Gibson and Lopez talking. "Let's not all talk at once," said Cates.

The matter was bounced back to Scholl and Smith so that the commissioners could then move on to a real hot potato from Smith. Said newly elected Commissioner Jimmy Weekley: "Shawn, I've got some concerns that the BCCLT [Bahama Conch Community land Trust] has not paid some of its utility bills, that they've not paid insurance and that the mortgages are overdue, that the residents will possibly be displaced and on the street ... Can we work with the utilities for a safety net?"

Smith responded with a sentence that began, "We had a very disturbing briefing today with the auditors...," inescapably guaranteeing the impression that something huge would soon be revealed about the BCCLT, something appalling involving lots and lots of money and Norma Jean Sawyer (cherchez la femme and follow the money). In the meantime, sanctimony prevailed. "The holidays are right around the corner," said Commissioner Mark Rossi. "Do we have a game plan in case this comes back to haunt us? We have to look out for these people."

Suggested Weekley: "We all need to be updated on the BCCLT. We must make sure we understand the situation completely."

"That'll take a lot of time," predicted Rossi.

"Before this body goes too far on this..." said Smith.

"My thoughts completely," said Cates.

A conclusion agreeable to all: Don't do anything right now; let it play out a bit.

Overall, the mood of the meeting was not so loose. The dynamic was best demonstrated by the newcomers. Faced with having to pay an upwardly revised cost at the waterfront ("The soil was not what we thought it was," explained Doug Bradshaw, port operations manager), Wardlow flexed muscle from the git-go. "I put the staff on notice," he said. "These change orders are a joke. Somebody's got to be held responsible."

Mayor Cates backed him up. "They should have done a test much closer to the site. Now the citizens have to pay the price."

There was another, more buoyant mood in the air. When the mayor and commissioners voted unanimously to pass item (k) on the agenda, agreeing to adopt a Key West Climate Action Plan, a loud yelp of delight whipped through the hall.

Three days after adopting the resolution, Mayor Cates found himself at the Broward County Convention Center, sitting on a panel representing Key West and discussing climate action. (Mayor George Neugent was there to represent Monroe County.)

The four-county regional summit that began Friday is a compact between Broward, Dade, Palm Beach and Monroe Counties to work together on climate-change issues. It will, say those in the know, give Key West a louder voice in securing funding.

The urge to merge with our neighbors to the north may have been stimulated at Tuesday's commission meeting by a show-and-tell from the city's sustainability board representative, Annalise Mannix, on what she called Key West's "extreme tides." Predictions are that sea levels might increase by two inches or more over the next few years, tides by three inches.

The good news is that the city can achieve a 15 percent reduction in its carbon footprint by 2015 if we invest in renewable energy, conserve more and produce more efficient power. One way to get there, we were told on Tuesday, as we had already been told by former Mayor McPherson, is by developing a large tree canopy.

Finally, regarding what we can only call Ducks Redux: The next step by CityView Trolleys to get a go-ahead to compete with Historic Tours of America was elided on Tuesday when Commissioner Teri Johnston, who'd sponsored a resolution to at least start going ahead, said she'd only just received the paperwork that afternoon and needed time to read it.

That did not stop Greg Wythe of CityView Trolleys from speaking at the podium and revealing, as Ed Swift's former employee and son-in-law, a strange ignorance about his former place of employment. His comments about HTA's use of propane in Key West were so obviously off the mark that he was swiftly made mincemeat of by an HTA attorney.

A baffling performance from an unexpected quarter.

mhowell@keysnews.com