OPINION: In Spite of Yourselves, City Hall Keeps Feeding the Beast

Power showed up in person as Key West confronted the only honest question left: Is HTA the big door prize? Or do we have to look behind door number three?

Top HTA management doing what they do. / LARRYDICKMAN

By the time the gavel fell on the Jan. 6 City Commission meeting, the outcome had already been decided.

You could feel it in the room.

This wasn’t deliberation.

It was confirmation.

Another lease extension.

Another franchise expansion.

Another increase in sightseeing vehicles.

Room service for the house.

If we were staying at the Four Seasons on the Aqueduct dime, we could have ordered the seafood tower.

But we are more austere.

At some point — and that point was years ago — a city has to stop pretending this is accidental and ask the only question that still matters: how much is enough?

For Ed Swift and Chris Belland, this isn’t civic engagement.

It’s portfolio management.

Buy the best corners.

Control the routes.

Sit tight.

Turn Key West into your own little private Idaho… er Disney World.

Let time and City Hall do the rest.

And when it mattered, they didn’t trust fate.

They brought the big guns.

Belland was there.

Barton Smith slithered in — because when you’re locking down waterfront control, public rights-of-way, and long-term leverage, you don’t send interns.

You show up in person to remind everyone who’s really at the table.

That isn’t participation.

It’s muscle memory.

Key West didn’t push back.

It folded.

The same goes for the Walsh family interests tied to the Opal Collection.

They didn’t sneak into town.

They arrived the right way — capital, counsel, connections — and City Hall cleared space.

With some obsequious ties to Mayanne Downs and likely her former employer… GrayRobinson.

We are not arguing what she is about. Now, we are just kind of negotiating price.

Prime waterfront. Friendly interpretations. Public land treated like a concierge perk.

This isn’t a crime spree.

It’s worse.

We’ll get to Mote Marine later. Dr. Eugenie Clark must be clawing at her coffin top.

We have a new word for the New Year.

But the Grand Jury will get to that later.

It’s governance capture dressed up as professionalism.

And the machine has a handler.

City Manager Brian Barroso has become his own species of bureaucratic weather event — a walking gerund, forever going Barroso.

Nothing ever lands.

Everything is “in process.”

And Commissioner Castillo’s low sugar rants… please.

This has been one of the most expeditious city commissions I have seen in 40 years.

Maybe Donie Lee needs to have a Zip-Loc (TRADEMARK) of Snickers (TRADEMARK) bites next to him on the dais.

Leverage evaporates.

Wastewater, flows downhill.

With it, goes accountability.

Pressure flows to underlings while power flows upward.

Around 1300 White Street, you can feel it when the codeword is going Barroso: tempers flare below, smiles hold above, and another “inevitable” recommendation slides onto the agenda.

That isn’t leadership.

It’s grist through the mill.

And the votes?

They came right on time.

The investments paid off.

Lissette Carey, Aaron Castillo, and Donie Lee delivered exactly what was expected — reliability.

Predictability.

The soft thud of “aye” votes that turn momentum into municipal policy.

Huge dividends.

The outlier is Greg Veliz.

Decent person.

You know who the other two are.

They have been standing up all along.

Veliz knows the job.

He is not one of them.

Been there, done it.

Bought the T-shirt.

But what happened yesterday was a farce.

I am not saying people were “bought.”

Not in envelopes — in early extensions, expanded franchises, increased vehicle caps, and a City Hall allergic to the word “no.”

The Jan. 6 agenda wasn’t random.

It was a harvest.

Extend Tropical Shell years early.

Raise the sightseeing vehicle cap.

Advance Conch Tour Train and Buggy Bus franchises.

These weren’t single votes.

They were cumulative acts of surrender.

When residents raised concerns — congestion, public streets turned into private loading docks, environmental damage — the answers were pure theater.

Technical jargon.

Legal soft soap.

Wink-wink process.

Nudge-nudge inevitability.

Take turbidity.

Whether you like it or not.

Clouded water.

Sediment plumes.

Construction runoff.

Turbidity is pollution.

Period.

It doesn’t stop being pollution because an attorney says it’s “temporary.”

Fish don’t care about memos.

Seagrass doesn’t read case law.

Here’s the disclosure City Hall won’t make:

I’ve guided anglers to 36 world records certified by the International Game Fish Association in the waters off Key West.

I drift-dived this harbor when the bottom was visible and the water column made sense.

I served on the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.

I know what is up.

Today, the harbor is a skeleton of what it was.

There is absolutely no way you can tell me cruise ships are a good thing.

Hell, I caught the city selling the cruise ships water at a subsidized rate… I dare anybody to prove me wrong.

In the words of Jackson Browne…

“Repertoire.”

But I wouldn’t get in that water now — not out of nostalgia, but out of judgment.

My friend Don Kincaid would agree.

So ask it plainly, without irony:

How much is enough?

Because “in spite of ourselves” stops being charming the moment it becomes policy.

And right now, it is policy.