KEY WEST, Fla. — The Big Lie has been circulating from the beginning: The College of the Florida Keys walked away from Key West’s water-quality testing program, leaving the City Commission with no choice but to find somebody else.
Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels described the method on Jan. 12, 1941: When one lies, one should “lie big, and stick to it.”
That is precisely what Commissioners Lissette Carey and Aaron Castillo have done.
Carey and Castillo are liars.
Period.
They are the do-boys for the Chamber of Commerce, Pier B owner and billionaire hotelier Mark Walsh, Ed Swift’s HTA — and any other big cruise ship interests that don’t care about the water that Key West’s tourism industry relies on; all they are worried about is a headcount buying chatchkis.
Hopefully they are getting paid; but again the thesis is that they aren’t that smart.
But Carey and Castillo are complicit nonetheless.
The story was false when city officials began circulating it under former Mayor Danise Henriquez. It was false when Carey and Castillo repeated it over and over. It was false again on Thursday as it was uttered in commission chambers during September’s City Commission meeting.
And it will remain false no matter how many times they repeat it — from the dais and beyond.
Because facts are very stubborn things.
Kind of makes you wonder how much Carey’s testimony will or can be trusted when she puts on her canary costume for the State Attorney’s office and starts singing about friends and family at the top of her ummm lungs in the upcoming Bubba Bozo Trio corruption trial.
The documented chronology surrounding water quality testing shows that the College of the Florida Keys initially withdrew from an Interlocal Agreement (ILA) only after four commissioners — Mayor Henriquez, Carey, Castillo and Donie Lee — voted against renewing its agreement during a Jan. 12, 2024 city commission meeting.
Just one problem. The college did not kill the agreement.
Henriquez and the commission eviscerated it. Walsh, et al. sharpened the knives; Carey and Castillo wielded them like meth-addled addicts carving a Thanksgiving turkey.
Yet the un-dynamic duo have continued pushing a rewritten version of version of history that absolves them of responsibility as they attempt to place the onus squarely on former College of the Florida Keys President Dr. Jonathan Guevara and marine scientist Dr. Patrick Wright.
Their argument follows the familiar MAGA formula: Repeat a convenient lie until repetition is offered as proof.
Let us also dispose of the inevitable distraction.
Carey being of Cuban/Latino descent has nothing to do with this criticism. Castillo being African American has nothing to do with it. Their identities neither excuse their conduct nor explain it.
Their statements, their votes and their refusal to acknowledge the written record tell you all you need to now.
Based on the facts, Carey and Castillo have convincingly made the case that they are the two dumbest members of the dais. If “dumbest” strikes some readers as impolite, substitute “least intellectually capable.”
The distinction is becoming increasingly difficult to detect.
What the record says
In November 2024, the College of the Florida Keys reported 32 cruise-ship-related water-quality violations, including elevated turbidity — the clouding of water by suspended sediment.
Five days later, at the Dec. 12, 2024, 9 a.m. commission meeting, Henriquez, Carey, Castillo and Lee voted against renewing the college agreement. The item was later revived and postponed, but the message to the college was unmistakable.
“I would respectfully request that you rescind your December 16, 2024 letter,” wrote Ramsingh.
But that was not the end.
At the Jan. 7, 2025, commission meeting, city officials reported that discussions with the college were progressing and that a proposed renewal was expected to return on Feb. 4, 2025.
Then came the email that destroys the Carey-Castillo narrative.
On Jan. 29, 2025, Gueverra emailed newly installed (overpaid and still unproven) City Manager Brian Barroso, requested the proposed interlocal agreement and said the college remained committed to the work. He asked whether the city was “ready and willing to continue.”
The ball was in Barroso’s court. And the answer was a resounding “No.”
Barroso Delivered the Desired Outcome
What happened next looks less like neutral contract administration than the management of messaging (propoganda in Herr Goebbels’ book) and moves made to produce a predetermined result.
At the Feb. 4, 2025, commission meeting, Barroso presented the issue as an either/or choice: Renew the college agreement or pursue a request for proposals.
Commissioner Monica Haskell proposed doing both — continuing the college work while seeking additional options. Her amendment failed 5-2. Now-Mayor Sam Kaufman voted with her.
Henriquez, Carey, Castillo, Lee and Commissioner Clayton Lopez towed the pro-cruise ship party line.
The commission then chose the RFP route rather than renewing the college agreement, again by a 5-2 vote.
Commissioner Kaufman offered another off-ramp: Allow the college’s monitoring equipment to remain on city property at no cost. That motion also failed 5-2, with the same bloc voting no.
That was not the college abandoning water testing.
That was City Hall closing one door after another and slamming the college’s toes in each one and shutting them out of the room.
Oddly enough, the outcome aligned neatly with the interests of the cruise ship lobby, including Pier B operator Mark Walsh and attorney Bart Smith, who has represented Walsh for years and is associated with the privately owned Key West Resort Utilities wastewater operation of shallow water injection/manatee fame.
Funny how that work$.
The college said it remained willing to continue; Walsh and Smith decided that was bad for (their) business. Barroso converted the matter into an either-or decision, and the commission majority rejected every proposal that might have preserved uninterrupted testing.
If Barroso was not doing the bidding of cruise-industry interests, he somehow delivered precisely the outcome they wanted, demanded — and paid for — at precisely the time they needed it.
The Chamber joins the campaign
The Key West Chamber of Commerce should not receive a pass.
The chamber has long promoted the economic arguments for expanded cruise traffic and opposed restrictions adopted by Key West voters.
Its political objective is apparent: Remove the obstacles to restoring greater cruise-ship volume, potentially including multiple large ships in port on the same day.
They ran — and lost — a campaign on issue last month. Bigly.
Independent, credible water-quality testing is likely the biggest obstacle of all; unless you count residents.
Looking at the election results, the clique clearly did not.
The chamber’s alignment with Walsh and Ed Swift’s Historic Tours of America makes it complicit, at minimum politically, in the effort to weaken water quality as an issue. Their interests converge around the same result: Discredit the testing, sever the college relationship, control the scope of whatever replacement testing occurs and clear the path for more cruise traffic.
And have MOTE Marine — the hired guns paid for by guess who — do the testing.
That alignment now matters far beyond the college contract.
MOTE receives $1 from every cruise ship passenger that waddles off the boat onto a Conch Train or down Duval Street.
The Outer Mole
In March 2026, Barroso sent an email to the Navy suggesting termination of the city’s longtime lease of the Outer Mole Pier.
BREAKING: Navy Moves to Redefine the Future of Key West’s Outer Mole.
KEY WEST, Fla. — The U.S. Navy is seeking new ideas for the Outer Mole Pier at Naval Air Station Key West as it ends its long-standing lease with the City of Key West, marking a rapid shift in control of one of the Florida Keys’ most politically sensitive waterfront assets.
On May 5, 2026, the Navy notified the city that it was terminating the lease effective Aug. 3, 2026, using the agreement’s 90-day termination provision.
On May 6, 2026, the Navy issued a Request for Interest seeking ideas for future use of the pier. The notice was described as market research, not a request for proposals or a promise that the Navy would issue a solicitation.
The Navy was still determining the pier’s future as of July 9, 2026, and cruise lines and their cheerleaders (you know the names by now) were already expressing interest in returning.
The jury remains out because the Navy — not City Hall — controls the property and is considering its options.
What is documented is troubling enough: Barroso suggested ending the city’s lease, the Navy ended it, and the federal government immediately began examining alternative operators and uses.
The usual suspects nuzzled into the trough.
But the potential outcome is unmistakable.
A privately controlled Outer Mole cruise operation could create a second private, major cruise berth outside the city’s direct control and reopen the possibility of multiple large cruise ships visiting Key West on the same day.
That makes the campaign against water-quality testing look less like an isolated contract dispute and more like one integral piece of a larger political solution in search of a problem.
If the clique can undermine the testing, it can undermine the environmental argument against additional cruise traffic. If it can portray the college as unreliable, it can dismiss the 32 violations the college reported. And if it can persuade the Navy to place the Outer Mole under private control, the cruise lobby could accomplish through a federal lease what Key West voters rejected at the ballot box — multiple times. By a lot.
Follow the political influence
Walsh is no stranger to Republican power.
Sound familiar? It is the same strategy used during the 2026 municpal elections. The main difference being that this time they threw a ton of money at it, engaged in dirty political theater ala Jack Niles and the Family & Friends for the Keys PAC and still got their collective asses kicked.
The Florida Legislature subsequently stripped Key West of much of its home rule authority to regulate cruise operations at the privately controlled Pier B.
The business interests seeking to preserve and expand Key West’s cruise trade are not political strangers wandering helplessly through government. They are monied hyenas with relationships and access in Republican circles extending from Tallahassee to Washington to the Pentagon waiting for the next hunk of carrion to fall.
And thanks to Carey and Castillo, they had a stranglehold on the science.
The Navy’s eventual decision must be judged on its actual record. But Key West residents would be foolish to ignore the possibility of political influence when control of a valuable federal pier and the future of the city’s cruise policy are at stake.
The cleanest defense against that influence is the very thing the cruise lobby appears most eager to weaken or destroy: independent, continuous and scientifically defensible water-quality testing.
The lie’s purpose
The lie that the college walked away serves several purposes.
It absolves Carey and Castillo of complicity. It wasn’t their fault. It was the bad people at the college (watch the video and listen to the Queen of Ummms comments.
It shields Barroso from questions about how he handled the college’s Jan. 29, 2025 offer to continue.
It helps the chamber and cruise-industry interests portray water-quality testing as unreliable, unmanageable or expendable — unless it is performed by the scientists on their payroll.
And it provides political cover while the Navy decides whether the Outer Mole will become another cruise berth — one that could return Key West to multiple large cruise ships a day.
Carey and Castillo can continue repeating The Big Lie. But repetition will not alter the record.
The college withdrew after a hostile regime voted against renewal. The city asked the college to reconsider. Negotiations resumed. The college expressly said it remained committed. Barroso presented an either/or choice. Carey and Castillo voted against every available path that would have preserved the work.
Those are the facts.
The Big Lie may continue to circulate.
But the facts and emails remain.
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