Well.
There it is.
Ironically, it is an odd number.
Thirty-seven percent.
Like a really odd number.
Thirty-seven percent.
Not a number that even makes sense.
And I was told there would be no math.
But there it was… sponsored by the City Manager himself.
Hey. I want a raise.
Can I get one?
Thirty-seven percent.
That’s the proposed raise for Key West City Manager Brian Barroso, a figure now drifting through coffee shops, marinas and back-channel group texts with the velocity of a rumor that happens to be true. In a town where bartenders calculate rent in shifts worked and dishwashers count groceries in hours, a 37 percent bump in executive pay doesn’t land quietly. It hits like a dropped anchor.
The official salary of Florida’s governor sits at $141,400 a year. That’s the number on paper for the person running a state of 22 million residents. Of course, paper numbers in government are polite fictions.
The governor travels with security, (rightly so,) flies on the public dime, operates inside an executive apparatus with staff, protection and benefits that push the real cost of the office far beyond the base pay. Power is never as cheap as the headline suggests.
But what the actual FUCK?
Still, comparisons have a way of creeping in when the tide goes out.
Key West is a city of about 25,000 residents perched on a sliver of coral at the end of a highway.
It has nearly $1B of asset and zero liabilities.
Let me say that again. ONE BILLION DOLLARS OF ASSETS…
And ZERO DEBT.
And cannot figure out how to finance mass transit.
This economy runs on service workers, seasonal labor and the fragile miracle of tourism. Here, raises are measured in tips and extra shifts. Here, survival is a math problem most residents solve weekly.
And now the city manager’s contract is up for discussion alongside proposals to shift commission meetings, tighten speaking rules and move the machinery of local government onto a more controlled timetable.
Efficiency is the watchword.
Order.
Professionalism.
All tidy concepts until they collide with the island’s long-standing tradition of loud public input and marathon meetings that stretch into the night.
Let’s just guess what the landed gentry sees as their reward.
And why they want Brian Barroso where he is.
Hmmm.
Under former leadership, meetings ran long and messy.
Citizens spoke until the clock lost meaning. It wasn’t always pretty, but it was unmistakably participatory.
Now, the rhythm is changing. Shorter comments. Different schedules. A recalibration of who gets the floor and for how long.
Changing rules.
Into that recalibration comes the raise.
Supporters frame it as retention.
Competitive pay. Stability in the city’s top administrative job.
Critics see it as a signal — that executive power is consolidating at a moment when public access feels increasingly strangled.
Both narratives exist in the same humid air, circling each other like storm bands.
The Governor’s office in Tallahassee comes with a mansion, a security detail and a statewide platform. The city manager’s office in Key West comes with fewer ceremonial trappings but plenty of authority over budgets, development, contracts and the daily machinery of a small city that punches above its weight in controversy.
The comparison isn’t perfect.
Because the opportunities for grift are greater.
Really… ask your self… what is the purpose of public service if you can’t enrich yourself, your friends and your family?
Kind of seems like what we are witnessing.
There is no symbolism here. This is a big ask. And it is being sponsored by the biggest families in the city.
When a town built on service wages watches its top administrator eye a 37 percent raise, the conversation moves beyond numbers. It becomes about gravity — who rises, who treads water and who sinks when the cost of living keeps climbing.
I mean… can he claw and scrape with both fists?
Key West has always had a nose for power shifts.
It’s a place where residents track commission agendas like tide charts and where a single contract vote can ripple through neighborhoods before sunset.
The island declared independence once as a joke and kept the instinct to question authority ever since.
But this smells like LOW TIDE.
No vote has been taken yet.
Public comment is expected.
The usual theater of local government will unfold under fluorescent lights and the steady gaze of residents who have seen this movie before.
But the number is out now.
Thirty-seven percent.
In a town where nothing stays buried for long, that number is already walking the streets, slipping under doors, floating through open windows on the salt air.
The math of government is one thing.
The math of living here is another.
Soon enough, they’ll meet in the same room.
And if you get the impression that I am pissed the fuck off, I am.
And you know what?
You should be too.
Because if you are not… you are not paying attention.
