Former KWHS Security Guard

Gets $10,000 in Hush Money
from School Board

GUARD REPEATEDLY REPORTED
PAYROLL FRAUD TO SCHOOL
OFFICIALS. ADMINISTRATION
ALLEGEDLY IGNORED REPORTS;
THEN DEMOTED GUARD

by Rhonda Linseman
& Dennis Reeves Cooper

The Monroe County
School Board has paid Pedro
Alvarez $10,000 to settle a
whistleblower lawsuit Alvarez
filed in June of 2006. Alvarez
had been a security guard
with the school district since
January 2001 at Key West High
School.

In his lawsuit, Alvarez
accused Key West High School
Principal John Welsh and
Assistant Principal Christina
McPherson of malfeasance
by knowingly allowing two
employees to commit fraud
and by condoning the use
of taxpayers’ money to pay
selected employees for hours
they allegedly did not work.

KWPD Opens Administrative Review

Into
Benkoczy Incident

KWTN Staff

Key West Police Chief Bill Mauldin has ordered an
administrative review of the so-called IUI (“investigating
under the influence”) incident at the Conch Republic
Seafood Company restaurant two weeks ago. Police Lt.
Jim Benkoczy, off-duty and after reportedly consuming a
couple of drinks, allegedly harassed a large table of 12-15
businessmen and attorneys from out of town, accusing
them of using drugs. Four uniformed officers were called
to the scene.

The Race For Mayor:

McPherson vs. TAMPOA

THE TRUMAN ANNEX MASTER
PROPERTY OWNERS SET OUT TO
ELECT THEIR OWN HANDPICKED
CANDIDATES TO THE CITY
COMMISSION— CANDIDATES
WHO WOULD ENACT THE
CONTROVERSIAL 2000
AGREEMENT

by Dennis Reeves Cooper

They call themselves the
Truman Annex Master Property
Owners— or TAMPOA.

The second “A” in TAMPOA
stands for Association. Just
in case you’ve just moved to
town, Truman Annex is that big
upscale housing development
behind the wall off Whitehead
Street.

For years, TAMPOA has
been headed by Tom Tukey,
a man accustomed to taking
what he wants. Back in 2004,
Tukey and his wife found a
neighbor’s cat— the now-famous
Bigfoot— wandering
around Truman Annex. And
they kept him, even taking him
to Maine for the summer. The
neighbor had to sue to get her
cat back.

German Rocker At Sloppy Joe’s

GERD RUBE is back from
Europe and he’s at Sloppy
Joe’s for the early gig today,
Friday, October 19,
noon ‘til 4:45.

 

OPINION

Will Greg Veliz Be the Next
Assistant City Manager?

by Dennis Reeves Cooper

Greg Veliz, a convicted felon, is a good friend
of City Commissioner Danny Kolhage. Apparently, a
very good friend. Veliz is currently Deputy Director of
the City’s Parks & Recreation Department, a job created
especially for him. In a series of stories last year, we
told you all about how this job fix went down.
Now we are hearing that Kolhage is pushing for
Veliz to be named Assistant City Manager when John
Jones, the current assistant, retires. We hope that’s not
true, but that’s what we’re hearing.

If you’ve been keeping up with the news, you
know that new City Manager Jim Scholl recently
named former City Utility Engineer Annalise Mannix
Deputy Assistant City Manager. Well, reportedly,
when that happened, Veliz went whining to Danny and
Danny publicly scolded Scholl for failing to tell him
in advance so he could have provided some input as
to who should have been appointed to fill that job.

Motor City Josh At Schooner

MOTOR CITY JOSH is back at the Schooner Wharf Bar tonight
and tomorrow night, Friday and Saturday, October 19-20, 7 ‘til
midnight.

 

Rhonda

Bowling for
Breast Milk

by Rhonda Linseman

I’d recently been thinking
about how childhood really
hasn’t changed all that much
from my generation to my
children’s generation. But I was
cured of that last weekend when
we let our kids borrow some
kind of Xbox something-orother
from a friend. I suppose
I’m lenient in other ways, but
such game systems have traditionally
been banned from my
house. Too many media studies
classes in grad school invoked
my irreversible paranoia about
desensitization to violence.

Nonetheless, all the boys,
including dad, played some
bloody killing game for approximately
72 hours straight.

ON THE SONNY SIDE

While I Was Away in China

by Charles “Sonny” McCoy

On the completion of my fifth consecutive term
as Mayor of Key West I was invited to go to China
with a dozen other architects and while I was gone
strange things were happening here on the Island. I
had designed a hotel on the site of an old abandoned
marine repair yard. The plans were approved and construction
began and I was told that a former draftsman
of mine would be supervising construction.

On my
return from China I went by the site and observed that
the architectural exterior of the building appeared to
be in conformity with the permitted plans that I had
sealed for the City Building Department.

Passing the Painted Pig

by Hal O’Boyle

A recent front page article in the Wall Street Journal reported
a meeting between a group of bankers from the world’s biggest banks
and representatives of the U.S. Treasury Department. The meeting, we
are told, is "in response to the world credit crisis." Its purpose is to
"avert a crunch."

Mark Twain once
noted that no man’s property is safe when Congress is in session. A
corollary to that rule can surely be found in what happens when
supposedly competing bankers gather around a table with the people who
are supposedly regulating their competition. The WSJ story is about
just such a meeting. The reporters do their best to make it sound as if
some good will come of it.

Letter:

Here Comes the Vandenberg

Dear Editor,

Our new Artificial Reef,
The General Hoyt S. Vandenberg,
will be dry docked in its
Norfolk Shipyard next month,
before its towing to Key West
and spring 2008 scuttling 5.5
miles off our coast. On Monday,
October 8, Florida and Federal
officials, including the Chairman
of the White House Council
on Environmental Quality,
toured the Vandenberg.

The
Vandenberg project is the 10
year work of visionary Captain
Joe Weatherby. Its arrival in Key
West, with our tourist-based
economy, will have been made
possible by our forward thinking
city and county officials,
who shared Joe’s dream and
saw the many benefits the
Vandenberg sinking will bring
to our community.