I don't care about City Commission meetings anymore. For me, it's just a good excuse to sit in the air conditioning and trade snide remarks with George Maurer, then argue afterward with Sheila Mullins over a bowl of delicious Thai soup.
Sign up to speak? Undergo the preparation, the grooming, the butterflies? Offer myself up to cross-examination by Harry Bethel? Forgeddaboudit. I sit there with my poison pen, waiting smugly for the Commission to do something inane, and then chastise them from the Olympian heights of Mt. KTWN. This is the life!
Some people actually still care enough to put themselves on the line for what they believe in—they actually get dressed and go before the commission and try to influence the outcome of events. Maurer and Mullins are two such people.
So is Robbie Reckwerdt. The City Clerk's office says he called from Miami to make sure he was signed up to speak on the subject of Stock Island Annexation. "I was afraid I'd be late and they'd approve it without public discussion," he told KWTN.
If no one signed up to speak, it would be automatically approved along with mundane change orders and routine special event permits. It was on the Consent Agenda. "A resolution directing the City Manager to seek a consultant to provide a study for the annexation of Stock Island and Key Haven."
What usually happens next: money is spent on a study. The study is costly and ambiguous, and raises a lot of controversy, but since so much money has already been spent on consultants, the only way to avoid declaring it "wasted money" is to move forward with annexation . . .
Reckwerdt, who owns Robbie's Marina, is a big Stock Island property taxpayer with a big question: "What is the City going to do for us?"
Despite signing up in advance, he never got a chance to ask it. The Commission did not allow any public input, although both Maurer and Reckwerdt had signed up to speak. The Commissioners immediately began debating the pros and cons of annexation, then voted to table the resolution. Once there is a motion to table offered by a Commissioner, no more discussion is allowed.
"May I ask a question?" Reckwerdt queried from the audience after the panel voted, 7-0, to table for two weeks. "No," said Mayor Jimmy Weekley curtly.
Reckwerdt responded, as he left the room, "You won't allow public discussion? This is why you won't get Stock Island, my friend."
Reckwerdt the following day voiced his misgivings to KWTN: "We have been nothing but dumped on—literally—by the City. In my opinion, they are sneaking this in . . . I am not happy about this. I have no choice but to feel this way." He noted that Weekley did not thank the would-be speakers for coming, "he just flat cut us off. They have dumped on Stock Island for years, and now they are going to grab Stock Island to further their own agendas."
Wouldn't Stock Island benefit from sharing Key West's glossy image?
Reckwerdt, who has invested heavily in creating a Keys-to-Cuba ferry terminal at the end of Shrimp Road, holds a dimmer view of the City "The mayor and city commissioners have been indicted. Buquebus: how did they get this past the DCA (Department of Community Affairs) and DOT (Department of Transportation)? There is no infrastructure to support a major car ferry there. You think they are going to clean up Stock Island when they can't clean up Key West? They have sewage in the water, the beaches are shut down . . . Higher taxes . . . What is our incentive?"
He continued "We are a family business, started from nothing and proud of it. I bought this property from the GSA (General Services Administration—forfeited in a drug case) and I put it on the tax rolls. What are my taxes doing for me? I can't get the services I pay for. I can't get mail out here. I have to pay an attorney every month to get what I pay for. I am going to have my attorney research whether it is legal what they did at that meeting. I'm not going to take this crap."
If the City annexed Stock Island and Key Haven, and the millage remained the same as in 1999, an annexed $100,000 property would pay about $15.55 more in property taxes per year. They would also inherit all the City boards and laws.
Commissioner Harry Bethel expressed concern that the 3,000-plus residents of the area must have a "fair" chance to vote o incorporation. They should not be "overpowered" by a referendum which would allow City dwellers to outvote Stock Islanders, he said. The City Attorney said they could vote separately.
Mayor Weekley said the reason he wants to study annexation is that "as more areas in Monroe County incorporate, the unincorporated areas are going to pick up the damage" of assessments for County services. "I think it ultimately will occur," he said.
He could throw it on the consent agenda as a last minute add-on—as he did his 1990 resolution for the City to approve in concept the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary—and nobody like Reckwerdt would have a chance to sign up and speak against it. Except Maurer, perhaps, because Maurer is retired and is always there. I think I'll go argue about this with Mullins now over some nice hot Thai soup.