Money Well Spent
By Rick Boettger
Hooray for our city and county governments for doing the right thing with our money, taking a million from the Bight board for Glynn Archer and spending $7 million for the deep injection wells on Cudjoe. But a small raspberry for three county commissioners’ letting the affable Greg Sullivan weasel us out of $110,000 on our waste contract.
The biggest deal is the deep injection well. I thank all of the county commissioners for quickly voting to fix the dangerous boondoggle of the shallow wells the Aqueduct wanted. FKAA noticed the public meeting to plan the wells in a Broward, not Keys newspaper. They did not get environmental reports done and lied about it. They fudged the number on the amount of sewage they’d be injecting. They fought for years against increasing common-sense objections.
Only when the science came in overwhelmingly against them, showing the shallow wells would pump effluent into our nearshore waters, did they relent. But even now they intend to use the bad wells until the deep one is built. The other Bubbas should have a back-room meeting with their FKAA brethren as they are giving our generally smooth-running Bubba system a bad name.
I hereby bestow the Margaret Mead Award on Jan Edelstein, founder of Dig Deep Cudjoe, two homeowners associations, and commercial fishermen Mike Laudicina and Don DeMaria. They believed Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” They pressed for years until they got the scientific study done that proved them right. Power to the People! Let’s hope Dump the Pumps has equal success replacing the grinder pumps with a gravity sewage system.
I also thank the four-member majority of good citizens on our Bight management board voting to spend my tax dollars to finish Glynn Archer. Realize our various governments are actually flush with our tax dollars. They have them squirreled away in various funds most of which they say are devoted to some special cause, in this case, rebuilding the Bight’s sea wall after a monster hurricane.
But tens of millions more sit in just plain “rainy day” reserve funds. That is, they take my tax dollars now in case they need them later. Money that I’m earning an average of 7% on instead sits in their bank earning close to zero percent. Please, let us keep earning money on our money until you actually need it, my dear government. And kudos to city staff who found the Bight’s money, and to the Bight for acquiescing gracefully, putting my dormant tax dollars to work.
On the other hand, back to my main job about being pissed off about things. I had a 24-second mini-solo in the Keys Chorale’s recent smash concert: I was a French revolutionary firebrand “singing the song of angry men.” No acting involved! Just sang my heart out.
In this case I’m angry that Waste Management’s political magician Greg Sullivan is wheedling his three pet county commissioners out of $110,000 more than our contract with WM calls for. Remember, the three first voted to give him the contract without competing bids. Now, he is saying we owe him more than what he signed on the dotted line for. Why the three commissioners would buy this is beyond me. I can’t call them a “gang” because that has the implication of toughness or danger, and they are more like three puppies in the genial Greg’s thrall.
Thank goodness for hero commissioners Danny Kolhage and Heather Carruthers for both watching our pocketbooks and offering visionary leadership to protect our homes and environment. Heather is our main hope of saving our homes from the usurious windstorm rates—I just got my own $5,320 bill to insure a house that has withstood 100+ years of hurricanes without a claim. She is putting in the decade of work her own Margaret Mead group is doing to stop our government from hoarding our hundreds of billions just because they can. The threat of our windstorm insurance to the value of our homes is now greater than actual hurricanes are.
And thanks to Danny, again, this time for wanting us to actually spend money on climate change, this year, on a real project. What a concept! Stop the studies already, and do something. That’s practical vision.
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Hear Hear!
Ah, that’s the Rick I know and love and have missed! Thank you for watching out for taxpayer money. Why is it that the FKAA, more than any other public entity, always smells the fishiest? And what are those worrisome State-Bubba connections about? Bravo bravissimo to the valiant and victorious of the “well-wars”, I bow to you. As for the “affable” Greg Sullivan, he supports the community big time; he came to my house and personally repaired my fence many years ago after one of his drivers hit it; I too am his thrall.