A Somewhat Different Perspective on the N Roosevelt Blvd SNAFU

Maybe six weeks ago, I ran into former Key West city commissioner Barry Gibson, who told me his one regret as a city commissioner was he did not hold out for a faster work schedule on N Roosevelt Blvd. He said he would have been only one vote, but he wished he had held out.

When I later shared that conversation with other people in Key West, including an assistant city manager, they said that was the first they’d heard the city had any say in how fast the N Roosevelt Blvd work could have been done. Hold that thought.

I attended State Representative Holly Raschein’s townhall meeting at Old City Hall in Key West, at which Ananth Prasad, the head of the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT), held forth on N Roosevelt Blvd and was grilled by many citizens. Prasad was appointed by and serves at the leisure of Governor Rick Scott.

During my citizen comments, I began by telling Prasad I had run for mayor of the city three times and redoing N Roosevelt was a very tough job from the get go. He nodded appreciatively.

I said I was in that very meeting room in 2010, when I heard the job would take 820 days, and part of the time the traffic would be one-way into town, and part of the time one-way out. I knew it was insane. I knew N Roosevelt Businesses would be killed.

Prasad by now was having a private conversation with one of his underlings. I said very loud, “Are you listening to me?” Prasad looked at me, said yes he was listening to me. I said it didn’t look that way to me.

Mayor Cates said Prasad was listening to me. I said Prasad wasn’t listening to to me, he was talking to someone else while I was talking to him. Mayor Cates said I was embarrassing the entire community.

I turned and said to Prasad that I had two questions for him. I would say them and he could then answer them. He had answered several citizens’ questions already. Holly Raschein had encouraged citizens to ask questions.

I said my first question was, given how rough it was known this project would be on local businesses, why was not the work done round the clock from the beginning, instead of one shift a day? I said my second question was, why he had taken so long to get on top of this project, when everyone knew there were serious problems from the beginning?

Prasad wandered all over everywhere without answering my first question. So I asked him, was there some federal law which prohibited work around the clock from the beginning? He said no. He said he put the bid out for one shift work. I asked why he didn’t put the bid out for round the clock work, since he knew how rough it would be on the N Roosevelt businesses? He said the noise at night would have violated the city noise ordinance and would have disturbed the N Roosevelt neighborhood.

It already had come out in the meeting, that for some time Key West had been offering de Moya, the prime contractor, a waiver of the city noise ordinance, meaning the city could have offered the waiver at the outset.

I was out of time, Mayor Cates told me to sit down. I said Prasad had not answered my second question. Cates told me to sit down, Prasad would answer my second question. I sat down, I was the last citizen speaker.

Cates tried to move onto something else on the printed agenda. I said to Cates, Prasad did not answer my second question, you told me he would answer it. Cates told the KW police officer on duty to get me to shut up. I said to Cates again, with the officer on my right shoulder, you said Prasad would answer my question. The police officer told me it wasn’t going to be answered.

I wondered why the officer did not tell Cates to tell Prasad to answer my question, which Mayor Cates had said Prasad would answer?

Prasad then said he had been on top of this project from the beginning, making adjustments all along. Nobody in the audience believed him.

During an ensuing break in the town hall meeting, I told Gwen Filosa off to the side, she covered the meeting for the Key West Citizen, that the reason Cates was put out with me was because I had forced Prasad to admit the reason the work wasn’t done round the clock from the beginning was because Cates and the Key West City Commission didn’t want to disturb the neighborhood at night. I said Cates and all the city commissioners but Yaniz, who had not been elected, threw those N Roosevelt businesses under the bus. Gwen said she got it.

I told Holly Raschein the same thing. She said she got it.

I told State Senator Claude Bullock’s representative the same thing, and to pass that along to Senator Bullock, whom I know. Bullock’s representative said he would do that.

I told the same thing to Naja Girard, co-publisher of Key West the Newspaper. She said so what? She was glad some changes had been made and the work would move faster. I said not in time to save businesses already out of business. Not in time to save business that will go out of business before the work is finished. Naja said so what was the point to getting the work to go faster? I said there is no point, it now is hopeless for many of those businesses.

I said FDOT and the City Commission threw those businesses under the bus, because they didn’t want to disturb the N Roosevelt neighborhoods. I said Cates knew what I was driving at. The five city commissioners who were in on it with Cates knew what I was driving at.

I told several private citizens at the meeting what had really happened. Tom Milone. Dan Dombromski. Tim Gratz, who works at Domino’s Pizza on N Roosevelt. Others. They seemed to get it, but they had not understood it when I was grilling Prasad and Cates was grilling me.

Hard to believe, I suppose, that their elected officials had thrown those N Roosevelt businesses under the bus, and had then laid it all on FDOT and de Moya, who also deserve to be keel-hauled in shark-infested waters.

Prasad promised there soon would be two-way traffic. Two-way traffic will be nightmare of its own. When they start redoing the business side of N Roosevelt, all traffic will be on the new sea side of N Roosevelt. Every business will need its own driveway through the construction on the business side of N Roosevelt. Traffic coming into town and going up N Roosevelt will be very slow. None of that could be avoided. What could have happened instead, though, they could have worked round the clock and it all would have been finished before now.

In the next morning’s Citizen, Gwen Filosa wrote this about my palaver with Mayor Cates and Prasad:

Moments later, Cates had to deal with one local critic screaming at Prasad, “Are you listening?” piercing through the chamber’s audience of about 70 people.

“He’s listening,” Cates told Sloan Bashinsky, a local blogger who has run for various political offices. “You’re embarrassing the whole community, buddy.”

Same morning, received a copy of this email to Tom Tuell, Editor of the Citizen:

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

CC: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]

Subject: Please Print: Filosa made a critical mistake!

Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2013 10:57:28 -0400

Dear Tom:    IT IS IMPORTANT THAT YOUR READERS KNOW THAT N ROOSEVELT BECOMES TWO WAY IN ONLY FOUR WEEKS.  UNBELIEVABLE THAT FILOSA REPORTED IT AS DEC 23rd.  THANKS  TIM    For Letter to Editor:

Re your article on the 8/6 FDOT meeting, your reporter got one of the most salient decisions wrong.  FDOT Secretary Prasad had first suggested making N Roosevelt two-way on or about December 23, but after the complaint by Donna Nelson of Imagination Station that December 12 was too late (which complaint you reported), Prasad huddled with his advisers and returned to promise that FDOT would make N Roosevelt two-way shortly after Labor Day.

Most of the businesses rejoiced at this news and it should be good news for the citizenry as well. Now people working downtown need not detour on Flagler.

Prasad is to be applauded for listening and responding (as you reported he’d heard many complaints from the business owners) and the City owes a deep debt of gratitude to Mayor Cates and Rep Raschein for getting Prasad to Key West. Without their efforts, this progress might well have not occurred.

Your article got the interchange between Prasad and Bashinsky wrong.  This may have been because your reporter was far from the dias where Prasad was standing.  I sat within five feet of that Dias.  When Bashinsky started his questions of Prasad, Prasad was indeed not listening but had turned to talk with two of his advisers.  Bashinsky was correct in asking loudly (not shouting) “Are you listening?” and Mayor Cates was absolutely wrong in stating that Prasad was listening.  He was not, and indeed Prasad apologized to Bashinsky. The embarrassment to the communuity did not come from Mr. Bashinsky, as Cates claimed.

Your article missed one other critical point.  In response to a question, Prasad admitted that before FDOT planned the project it had not conducted a study of the effect of the plans on the businesses.  Prasad admitted mistakes in the planning process.  Those mistakes could have been avoided had an economic impact study been performed. It is almost beyond belief that no one at FDOT thought to conduct such a study.

Bottom line, though, is thanks to Mayor Cates and Rep Raschein for setting up the meeting and thanks to Prasad for responding to Ms. Nelson and re-opening N Roosevelt to two way traffic in four weeks.

Tim Gratz

Coalition of North Roosevelt Affected Businesses

(Three days later, the Citizen published the text Gratz’s email.)

Same morning at Gratz’ email, Jerry Weinstock, M.D. (Psychiatry, retired) of Key Haven emailed me:

Sloan: You were exercising one “our” most  a basic rights,

freedom of speech.  Living here for half a century

in my “heart of hearts” I feel there is a dimension of

rancid corruption underlying this project –not the

construction co.–but some “devious strategy” coming from

the key West faction—-noise ordinance sounds like

fantasy—18 wheelers and ear splitting Motocycles

roaring by 24/7—–your questions were excellent!

it was a pleasure meeting with Naja and Arnaud

yesterday !   Jerry

Jerry had told me a while back, that at one time or another he had treated every writer in Key West, and as far as he knew the only people who ever got mad at him were those who could not get an appointment to see him when they wanted to see him. His practice was full up, and he consulted (sounded to me like he ran) the challenged students program at May Sands School in Key West and was the School District’s psychiatrist on call. For decades Jerry was the only psychiatrist in Key West.

Early on, Jerry and his wife, Donna, fell in love with the ocean and the reef, through diving and fishing. Jerry became well versed in ocean and reef biology. Thus developed a second aspect of his calling to serve, heal.

Jerry and I met via Sandy Downs, with whom Jerry had conversed about the current attempt to widen the channel and bring in more and even bigger cruise ships than this one tearing up the bottom of Key West’s harbor.