Political Conversation

So today was voting day. I never vote for people or issues I don't know anything about, so I spent 2 hours watching everyone explain themselves. Thanks to Hometown Key West for the video. I already discounted one candidate because she kept saying "anyways."

They brought up many issues I noticed living here. Visitors and part-timers don't necessarily notice this stuff, but when you're here full-time, small things have a much larger impact. Like:

• The homeless situation. The homeless are people too and create challenges nationwide, but people actually move down here to be homeless. I actually do know one specific case like this. A woman came down with her dog hoping to be put up somewhere but was perfectly ready and willing to live on the streets. Despite a recent law, there are many living in their vehicles too.

• Parking is a pain in the butt. You can't convert houses meant for one family into apartments housing 10 individuals (all with vehicles) or B&Bs and not think there are going to be consequences.

• The jobs stink down here. They are mostly service oriented and seasonal and just don't pay well. It's so expensive to live here that subsidized housing is necessary - and that isn't free or plentiful - which leads to varying degrees of homelessness or drifters.

• Security/crime is a problem. Supposedly crime is down, but there are 105 cops for over 3 million people that live here or come down and visit over the year. I think, by the numbers, that the police are doing a great job, but there are a lot of drunk people bumbling around and they get into fights, drive drunk, and do stupid things.

Speaking of drunks, I looked into getting us health care via the Affordable Health Care Act, and read that those of us in the Keys will pay more than other Floridians because:

Monroe residents overall tend to have more unhealthy behaviors like smoking and heavy drinking, an older population, and fewer insurance companies willing to write policies in Monroe County...If you look at the statistics, we have a high percentage of heavy or binge drinking, and a high level of adult smokers. They look at this and say they have to charge more in Monroe County... Keys residents also have a lower percentage of people who seek early diagnostic screening tests for cancer and other diseases.

Yeah, because we're uninsured thanks to the crappy jobs... So now I'm waiting to see if we get that job farther north, where a health plan will hopefully be cheaper.

I'm not trying to disparage Key West (anymore than the politicians talking about it were), but the point of all my blogs (and my book) is to show a more realistic portrait of the places I've been.

The biggest issue on the ballot was whether or not to fund a study to dredge 17 more acres into the harbor in order to accommodate the ever-growing girth of the latest cruise ships. The no side was obvious to me, so I wanted to hear the yes side.

I first got annoyed when the pro guy explained that silt was natural by showing a picture of silt lying off the coast. Yes, it was lying there. That was the important part of that picture. It didn't even compare to that of the photos that show what happens when a cruise ship comes through. And for those ding dongs who then compare that to what happens after a "natural" hurricane hits, give me a break. There's quite a difference between silt upheaval from one hurricane every few years to that of several cruise ships coming in each day and neither are good for the coral.

A lawyer representing the pro side of the study and harbor expansion gave three seemingly different answers to whether tax payers could get stuck with the tab. She also kept saying that Key West was the highest ranked place "in the Caribbean" cruisers wanted to come to (I found no such statement anywhere, although it is a popular destination). First of all, Key West isn't in the Caribbean. And second, many cruisers don't really want to be inconvenienced by non-English speakers, foreign food, and unfamiliar places (which is why so many never actually leave the ship). Key West fits their desired criteria, while still giving them an "experience." If people want to come, they'll demand it, and the ships will find a way without us killing the reef. No one is retiring the smaller boats anytime soon, and there are plenty of islands throughout the Caribbean that can't handle these sailing behemoths either, so they'll have to be accommodated too (as they are now in varying ways, including shuttles). I'm so sick of being blackmailed by businesses who want us to subsidize their efforts with no actual net gain to the people who paid for it. If there's a market for Key West, the ships will come whether or not we dredge.

Here's what happened in the Dominican Republic. The cruise ships built this fairytale place cruisers could come and shop and say they'd been to the DR.

DR photos belong to Kristen formerly of Whisper.

Here's what was on the other side of the walls of that utopia.



St. Thomas, in the US Virgin Islands, is so hectic and crazy when ships are in that it's not even a possibility as a place to move for us, despite our strong desire to move back to the Caribbean. One ship? Sure. Three? Not so much. We know several people who thought about retiring and investing in the Caribbean who have changed their minds for the same reasons.

I certainly understood the point that many people would never have experienced Key West if they hadn't visited on a cruise. And many of those people will later drive or fly back and visit for longer periods of time. I think that's true for other cruise ship destinations too. And certain businesses most definitely benefit from cruise ship passengers. But...

In my opinion, there is a point it becomes too much. If an island is too small to handle the huge influx of passengers coming off the ships, no one has a good time - not the passengers themselves, the other visitors that are swarmed by them, or the locals not in the tourism industry. Take it from someone who sailed to over 30 islands in a sailboat. We avoided anywhere that had a cruise ship anchored or docked there. We either sailed that area off-season, or just waited for the boat to leave. It was unnerving to sail past an island dwarfed by a ship that had more of everything (people, food, entertainment, electricity, etc.) than the poor island it was towering over. Many sailors have quit sailing, saying it's not the same, and it really isn't.

Similarly, many old timers here say that Key West has changed for the worse (every generation has said that as they aged, but they could still be right). We watched this happen on many islands over our 7 years in the Caribbean. The locals changed - and not always for the better. Their view of other cultures came from the cruise ship passengers, which are not exactly our best representatives as a country (any country). The rest of us visitors (or expats) - who stayed longer and put more money into the local economy by shopping in grocery stores, doing laundry, taking the buses, paying customs fees, buying boat parts, taking longer tours, maybe staying on-island a night, even volunteering - were treated more coldly than before these hit-and-run visitors from the large ships started invading the islands. Many islanders felt exploited but powerless to change anything because they'd become so reliant on the ships. Some became jaded and phony (anything for a buck), and I see that happening here too.

Everyone's calculating what they think they're gaining, but it's also important to calculate what they might be losing. You can have too much of a good thing. And then there's the environment impact...

My opinion is do we really need to spend $3 million to prove there will be bad environmental effects from the dredging? There's already been proof of this in both Bermuda & Australia. Why do we always have to screw things up ourselves too to be sure? I don't need a study to confirm that sh** stinks. I just know it does. If the city is going to go forward no matter what in the long run, then just do it already and save us the $3 million for the study. I'm so sick of studies that prove the damage we're causing to the economy, animals, the environment and then we go ahead and do what we want to do anyway.

UPDATE: The vote was a big fat no - at 74%.