Cruise ship referendum debate on deck at City Commission meeting
BY TERRY SCHMIDA
KONK LIFE STAFF WRITER
Key West’s oft-debated relationship with the cruise ship industry will be debated further today, July 21, as the City Commission holds its regular virtual meeting.
With the Coronavirus lurking in the background as an economic spoiler, District II Commissioner Sam Kaufman intends to ask City staffers to “obtain input from community stakeholders to develop policies regarding cruise ships in the City of Key West; Directing the City Manager to report findings at the Commission meeting scheduled for September 1, 2020.”
Members of one group who didn’t make the list of “community stakeholders” doesn’t believe its exclusion was an accident. The members of “Key West Committee for Safer, Cleaner Ships” claim Kaufman is attempting an end-run around the referendum they seek to include on November’s ballot.
That group, led by local environmental activists Arlo Haskell and Jolly Benson, has been at work to gain enough signatures from Key West residents to force a referendum laying out new rules for the industry. They needed 1,500 for certification, but managed 2,500, including a number of well-known local business people.
Kaufman, a lawyer by trade who also serves as the City’s Vice Mayor, doesn’t believe such a referendum could survive legal challenges. Kaufman’s preference would be for staffers to learn from other jurisdictions with significant cruise ship business to arrive at a deal with the individual cruise lines.
As partisan gridlock at the federal and state levels has made significant political changes harder to achieve, citizen initiatives have emerged in recent decades to give ordinary Americans a voice on prickly issues such as recreational marijuana and gay marriage.
But powerful special interests have taken note, and are now taking aim at such citizen input.
“My take . . . is that the referendum will not be enforceable,” Kaufman said “I don’t think it’ll survive court scrutiny or state preemption. Just look at the sunscreen fight. We spent time and money on it, and it ended up being preempted. Same with Uber. All that effort is now moot. I want to ask City staff to see what contracts we can sign to achieve the goals of the referendum.”
As for “Safer, Cleaner Ships”, Kaufman said that their omission from the list of stakeholders, (including Key West harbor pilots critical of restrictions on cruise ships) was an “oversight.” He said he has reached out to the group repeatedly since early June, but hasn’t heard back.
In rebuttal, Jolly Benson professed to be “disappointed but not surprised” at being left off the list.
“This is a pretty naked attempt to legitimize a minority (the four harbor pilots and a few other business owners) who oppose the referendum and would prefer it not be on the ballot at all,” Benson said. “It seems like Commissioner Kaufman is acting more like a lobbyist for the harbor pilots rather than an impartial member of an official governing body. He is trying to give merit to a group that is actively suing the city and others in federal court.”
Benson also said that his group had attempted to meet with Kaufman only to be rebuffed.
Kaufman has denied this. “They don’t want to discuss the content of the referendum, and that it has issues. This is a time when the City can utilize the referendum to have a stronger negotiating position. So my proposal is that the city engage with the stakeholders to identify things like longer stays, and staggered arrivals, so that there’s one per day, instead of three one day, and none the next day.”
Commissioners will also discuss the City’s
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