I have talked to you all before about the diet I have been forced to undertake to try and bring my cholesterol numbers down out of the stratosphere.

I don’t know how the diet is working in regard to the cholesterol numbers, but one side effect is that I did lose about 27 pounds in two months. I like that.

I won’t find out about the cholesterol numbers until I get rescreened, which I promised myself I wouldn’t do until six months had passed so that my regimen of eating sprigs, twigs and cardboard would have a fair chance to work.

I can say that I am heartily sick of roasted chicken in all its iterations, the same with roasted turkey and I’m nearing the end of my string with baked and broiled fish.

I’ve eaten so many nuts of varying kinds that I’m about to grow a trunk in place of my nose.

I gave up potato chips, corn chips and any other fried snack.

I have given up my beloved Mountain Dew and now only drink non-diet, sugar-free sodas, tea and water and coffee.

I’ve never been so tired without my quick-hit charges of sugar and caffeine from Mountain Dew.

But I have cut the weight.

My wife watches me like a hawk when we go to restaurants. She doesn’t watch me because I might order something off my diet, I’ve actually been very good about that, she watches me because there is probably someone in the restaurant partaking of my favorite foods…hamburgers and French fries.

I have been known to drool on a plate or two as I stand over someone’s shoulder and sniff the aromatic ambiance of a well-cooked hamburger, or salivate down the front of my shirt as the unsuspecting diner drowns their golden-brown French fries in some savory catsup.

And I have been known to sit down at the table next to someone who is eating some eggs just so I can stare at the eggs and remember what it was like to taste something that wasn’t meaty, white or tasteless.

But now that I have cut the 27 pounds, I am on a mission to get rid of the other 20 pounds I feel I need to lose. And I realize that diet alone isn’t going to get me where I need to be.

I have been able to wear shirts in the last few weeks that I had given up hope of ever having on again, even though I refused to throw them away. I have also been forced to buy a belt to hold up pants that just a few weeks ago were hard to button. It seems I have lost most of the weight in my ass and there’s nothing to hold up the shorts anymore.

I have an extensive collection of t-shirts that are printed with sayings that are…shall we say…from somewhat to completely rude.

I bought very few of them. Most of them came from friends and family who understand that sarcastic people actually find humor in these things.

I am nothing if not sarcastic.

But anyway, I have a birthday coming. Usually I ask for nothing but accept all gifts of eagles, chess sets or swords. This year I want a bicycle.

I think a bike would help me cut the weight I want to cut the rest of the way out and wouldn’t be torture on my already tortured bad knees.

Also, our new six-year old recently learned to ride a bike without training wheels and we promised him we would ride with him when he learned that skill. I had forgotten how adept kids are at learning such things at an early age. I am ill prepared.

I’m not even sure I remember how to ride a bike although I’m told it’s a skill you never really forget, so I guess a bike is the best way for me to go at this point.

Back when I rode a bike a lot, I was a few decades younger and a couple dozen pounds lighter with no shifted-center-of-gravity issues to be concerned about.

I hope that makes no difference. I would hate to have to stop the extra pounds I have gained from crashing Earthward using just brute strength, something else I’ve lost over the years.

Where once I could dead lift 300 pounds off the ground and carry it a few feet, now I look at it and search for a dolly or a crane to do the same job. If I can find neither, it stays where it is until I can get serious help.

But I want to get my weight down. Maybe that will be the answer to my cholesterol problem. I have no blood pressure issues in fact my blood pressure is sometimes dangerously low for my age so I have no worries in that area.

There are still a couple of areas of concern, however. I have to either buy new shorts or remember my belt otherwise I will find myself toting grocery bags or newspapers with my pants competing with my ankles for foot time.

And I have to force myself to take the time to ride the bike. A bicycle sitting on the front slab that never moves won’t do me any good.

I already have a piece of low-tech equipment that barely moves.

Me.

I’ll let you know.

Maybe.

And that pressure will run headlong into the current project to establish a hurricane evacuation clearance time for the island chain that meets the state mandate of 24 hours for the permanent resident population.

Monroe County hasn’t been able to ensure that everyone in the Keys at any given time are able to get out of the way of a fast-moving, quick-forming hurricane in a couple of decades since the building boom of the 1980s and 1990s.

But with building allocations tied to the amount of time it takes less than 24 hours to clear everyone out of the way, there has been a lot of paperwork shuffling going on so as not to deplete the future home-building stock any more than has already been done.

So to make the 24-hour mandate, the state suggested we evacuate folks in two phases, with tourists and special needs folks going out first then followed by mobile home dwellers, and finally by what is termed site-built homes.

It is only the last set of folks the state cares about. They figure that since the paperwork says everyone else will already be gone, it’s only the last group we have to worry about getting caught in a raging storm on the single highway in and out of the Keys.

But the time is fast approaching when even the paperwork shuffle won’t allow us to meet the magical 24 hour number.

So we’ll probably move the standard backward when that happens, knowing that we are safely…on paper at least…able to get everyone out of the way. We’ll change the model assumptions again until we’re allowed 30 hours then 36 and we’ll demand that the storm wait until we’re darn and good and ready before it crashes ashore.

As ludicrous as that statement may seem, there’s nowhere left to go but with something ludicrous unless we grab ourselves by our own bootstraps and take control of an uncontrollable situation.

We make the 24-hour mandate this time out by shifting mobile home dwellers into the tourist phase of the evacuation procedure, ignoring the fact that they are as permanent as the rest of us and are usually some of the last ones gone due to financial considerations and work obligations taking care of the absentee owners’ homes.

If we count mobile homes where they should be, right alongside the site-built homes, we don’t make the 24-hour mandate. If we don’t make the 24-hour mandate, residential building allocations get cut off. Those get cut off and the county stands to face nearly $300 million in takings cases.

So our leaders will bend like the proverbial willow and change the rules to something that makes little sense in the real world rather than face that staggering sum.

But that doesn’t mean we don’t face it later on.

And with that in mind we must begin to consider how we will face that issue in a proactive rather than reactive way.

The only sure way to eliminate the takings risk a few years down the road is for some governmental agency to purchase the lands and extinguish the development rights.

That will be expensive, somewhere around $300 million in today’s dollars. The county doesn’t have that kind of money. The state doesn’t have that kind of money. The federal government won’t spend that kind of money. The three entities together won’t be able to pony up that much money to buy land here to ensure the safety of every man, woman and child in the face of a major storm that doesn’t play nice.

So we have the chance to do it ourselves…which is usually the way these things happen down here on this isolated string of islands.

The county has the option to start now to seek voter approval for a special tax, either through sales where our visitors pay half or so, or through property taxes, that is dedicated solely to the purchase of land in the Florida Keys.

By starting the process now, we could use a half-penny sales tax over the long haul to accomplish much of the goal and get some help from the state and feds, which we do get on a routine basis. Or we could establish a low-level special taxing district that goes against property tax to accomplish the goal sooner.

One of the problems with government ownership of land is that only the federal government pays any kind of taxes on land it owns, and that is an impact fee in lieu of taxes for the services that must be rendered by the local government to the land owned by the federal entity.

So we buy the land, donate it to the feds, and collect something in impact fees so we don’t lose everything from the tax rolls.

But only if we start now can we get ahead of the game. We hate taxes as much as the next person, but understand they are a necessary evil in some cases. This is one of those cases.

If we allow our leadership to keep moving the goal backwards, our children and grandchildren will face the very real possibility they will be forced to die in a major storm because they couldn’t get out.

And that is what is totally unacceptable compared to a few dollars a year now from each of us.

Gentlemen, and ladies, in case you live on another planet, or never had a Mother, let me remind you that Sunday is that second-most dreaded of holidays.

The first most dreaded of holidays is Valentine’s Day. Valentine’s Day is the one holiday that us guys can’t forget without paying for it for the rest of the year until we, perhaps, redeem ourselves the following year.

Mother’s Day is the holiday where both sexes can run afoul of the forget-me-at-your-peril lady in our lives.

And just because the lady in your life may not be your Mother, she’s probably Mother to someone or something, like children, or dogs, or cats, or fish, or the neighborhood.

And she expects to be remembered for that effort.

The range of Mother’s Day gifts never ceases to amaze me.

I had a female friend years ago who had a really bad habit of buying her Mother kitchen gadgets the younger would like to have, hoping for a reciprocal gift at some future time.

I’m not an expert on the female psyche, but a gift of something that means I do more work in less time is not really a gift…it’s still connected to the work I would do as a Mother.

So note to self…don’t purchase kitchen gadgets for Mother’s Day gifts.

I had another female friend who was a bit on the conservative side and would always purchase items of clothing for her Mother that the younger would wear even though Mom was considerably more flamboyant.

So note to self…don’t buy young-adult clothes for retired Mother.

In both cases, Mom would thank the giver and act as though they were the greatest gifts they could have received because, frankly, that’s what Mothers do with their offspring.

And then we come to the guys who just don’t seem to get that the female psyche is way, way different from our own.

There are those of us of the male persuasion that like flowers and candy as a token of appreciation, but let’s face it, those are few and far between. On the other hand, there are a lot of females who love flowers and candy as a token of appreciation.

Don’t do like a buddy of mine once did for Mother’s Day.

Now granted, he had to buy for three ladies. He had to figure out gifts for his own Mother, his wife, the Mother of his children, and for his Mother-in-law.

That would drive me crazy, but not crazy enough for this particular stunt.

Mom-in-law had no male in her life. He had been taken by the Reaper years before and she was perfectly happy living alone.

That meant my friend used to get strange calls in the middle of the day or night to come fix a leaky pipe, re-hang a cherished picture frame, nail the carpet back down, stop the door from squeaking, open a stuck window, you know, the honey-do list we are all saddled with.

No matter where he was, he would drop everything and answer the call. And discover upon arrival that she had no tools with which he could perform said function.

So he bought Mom-in-law a tool box filled with basic hand tools for Mother’s Day so he would have them available when he arrived on a mercy mission.

His own Mother also lived alone on a rather large lot and she would call him when there were no neighborhood boys about to come cut the grass. The problem was that she had no mower.

He would have to go home, load his mower in the back of the truck, haul it to Mom’s house and cut the grass, clean the mower, load it back in the truck and return it home.

So he did what he thought was thoughtful and kind. He purchased Mom a lawnmower.

His own wife was a re-painting fanatic. She would get tired of the colors on her wall and send him to the hardware store for paint and all the accessories needed to repaint a room on a moment’s notice.

She loved to change paint colors, but had as much luck handling a paint brush as a three-year-old with a Sharpie.

But our guy thought he had this one nailed. She was partial to pastels in the blue, brown, green and egg spectrum.

So he went to the local hardware store and bought her eight gallons of paint in her favorite shades. He purchased no-drip rollers, or as close as he could get to no-drip, a selection of paint roller pans, foam edgers and drop clothes so the next time she got a hankerin’ to repaint the living room, he could go play golf and she could stroke the walls to her heart’s content.

Needless to say, none of the gifts went over well.

Guys, here’s the moral of this story.

Think outside your own box. I’m told by Mothers that flowers, candy, perfume and bath soaps are always a good bet.

But if you want to make it to the top of the list…visit the jewelry counter.

At least until the next crisis begins slamming already heavily burdened wallets.

By finally appropriating the first installment of a promised $200 million to help us in developing what has been more than $600 million in wastewater systems, the state stopped all of those in the Cudjoe Regional service area, Lower Sugarloaf to Big Pine, and Islamorada from being forced to shell out full cost for something the state mandated we have in the first place.

The full cost to each property owner could have been in the neighborhood of $20,000 per unit. The state’s money drops that potential bomb a little bit. It will take a concerted effort by all those who need to do so to get the sales tax extension passed in November that will further lift the monetary weights from the shoulders of those last in line.

But right behind dodging this particular bullet, we hope, comes another that is flying in from all angles.

That bullet goes by the moniker windstorm insurance and is being fired by Citizens Insurance, a quasi-state agency originally formed to allow coastal Floridians to meet the insurance needs of bankers and brokers to get money to buy homes.

But because private insurers weren’t happy with making loads of money in Monroe County and none elsewhere, they left the state. Citizens, true to the profit motive that runs any corporation, immediately declared itself a monopoly and tried to jack up rates here by about 200 percent, while leaving the rest of the state, where there was no profit, with miniscule rates comparatively.

The local group Fair Insurance Rates for Monroe successfully fought back that challenge to homeownership in the Keys.

But now, Citizens, pushed by a Governor and Legislature that cares little for the common homeowner, is again trying to divest itself of risk at the expense of Monroe County.

The company’s new move to not insure homes valued at more than $1 million does more damage here that in many other counties because of the high property values we have as a string of islands with limited space in a beautiful sub-tropical climate.

The new re-inspection program for mitigation credits hits many of our homeowners hard because the inspectors know nothing of local building codes, and get paid simply by the number of inspections they do rather than the quality of the inspections they do.

And the inability to not get builder’s risk insurance, a requirement of banks to loan money for construction, slams a hard hand on a local construction industry that was just beginning to get back off the ground after the recession.

And all the while, Citizens leadership wants to continue to raise rates on Monroe County because of our isolated vulnerability.

Increasing rates here will only serve to drive out those residents barely hanging on waiting for the economy to turn, will cease the just-now-returning influx of new homeowners who might be able to squeeze out a mortgage payment, but never be able to cover the extra windstorm rates, and those who are just tired of paying more to live in paradise than our central state neighbors who actually cost Citizens all of its claim money anyway.

We have the most stringent building codes in the state. We have the lowest loss ratio of any area in the state. We pump money into Citizens regardless of the storm season.

And yet we are singled out for unrealistic rate increases.

This has to stop.

The state finally did what was fair and lived up to its promises when it mandated we put in advanced wastewater treatment systems and agreed to pay a fair share.

Now it’s time for fairness to enter the fray again.

We would urge Citizens to fund an actuarial study that will prove we are rated too high a risk. We urge Citizens to compare our loss ratio to anywhere in the state. We urge Citizens to put the burden of financially viable rates on the areas where they are actually losing money instead of the one area where they always make money.

But we can’t wait for the political games to play themselves out as politicians fear the hundreds of thousands of potential voters in areas where Citizens loses money, and discount the 50,000 voters Monroe County brings to the table.

Our county leadership needs to take a hard look at divesting itself of Citizens insurance either by enticing a private company with the windfall profits they’d realize here, or by going the self-insured route with a potential policy pool of about 60,000 homes that rarely, if ever, file a claim.

We would urge the latter.

Something must be done or we will see more empty homes and commercial properties as people throw in the towel and leave our paradise.

This year’s hurricane forecast is out. We are told there will be below average activity in the Atlantic basin this year, and that the strike probability along the Florida coast is hovering somewhere near 40 percent.

And each year when the hurricane outlook is released, some dimwit friend of mine from up north will call and ask the “over-asked” question–”Don’t you worry about getting blown off that little island in a storm?”

Sometimes I go into the lengthy diatribe about the storms they might encounter and how do they plan 1) not to get buried under tons of snow and ice 2) to swim out from in front of a flash flood 3) to hold on to anything sturdy while a tornado rages around them, etc., etc., etc.

Other times I am more calm and rational and just tell them that no matter where I’ve lived…and the areas have been far-ranging…there’s always been something that could upset my day, week, month or year in the form of a natural disaster.

Having grown up in Ohio by accident of birth, I lived there during the mid-1970s. Anyone from there who asks me why that is significant, didn’t live there during the mid-1970s. There were more tornadoes in a three-year span between 1972 and 1974 than I’ve seen before or since in that area. Every few months a tornado would come ripping across the landscape, tearing up another subdivision, destroying another housing development, the nightly news was constantly displaying scenes of wholesale destruction by wind forces.

And still many folks who didn’t live there asked the “over-asked” question about that area. The good thing between here and there is that here we get a week’s notice. There we got a few seconds, maybe a minute.

When I lived in Virginia, we had hurricanes on a regular basis, and they seem much more amenable to slamming the coast of Virginia than the tiny Florida Keys. We got slammed in ‘91, ‘93 and ‘94. Oh, yeah I almost forgot, we also had that killer ice storm in ‘92 that froze the east coast for days. Nice place Virginia.

In Indiana, we had killer ice storms, snow storms that buried cars, and yep…those pesky tornadoes. A gentle wind in the winter time would cut your face with flying ice balls because there are no hills in central Indiana to block a gentle—30 or 40 miles per hour—wind from making life miserable.

In Kentucky, I went through the blizzard of ‘77 and ‘78 where we walked through 66 inches of snow, or tunneled to be more precise. We got back and forth to school and work by digging a tunnel under the snow that allowed a neighbor with a four-wheel-drive to ferry us where we needed to go. We lived there a few years and even got tagged by a couple of minor earthquakes…you know just the Appalachian Mountains setttling in for the next 1,000 years.

In Sicily, where I spent a few years, the torrential rains flooded the area every rainy season, Mt. Etna spit black smoke into the air every day, kicking out big rocks and little pools of lava. It even went through two major explosions in ‘96 and ‘97, spewing ash everywhere. Nice place. Oh yeah, two earthquakes…little ones.

Then I hit the Florida Keys. Hurricane Georges, Tropical Storm Irene. Hurricane Michelle. No flooding, it disappears back into the water in a few hours. No earthquakes…yet. A couple of tornadoes and mean water spouts.

Along came the storm seasons of ’04 and ’05 and the another weekend-another hurricane matra that we all lived with for a long time.

But always, plenty of warning. I never wake up in the morning to the sound of flying rocks crashing into my patio, although I did wake up once to a very tall palm tree smashing into the porch of my house and another time to rising water in Hurricane Wilma that covered me to the hips and allowed me to kayak down my street and canoe into the refuge.

So I guess when  I get asked the “over-asked” question this year, I will just have to smile and ask them how their last storm season went, with the hundreds of inches of snow, the freezing ice, the bitter cold…ahhh there are those who just don’t learn.

Me, I’ll go check my hurricane cabinet now and just wait for the day off that I can really use.

And that change in philosophy may have a major impact on the future of residential building in the Florida Keys.

Several years ago, Florida told Monroe County to work out a plan that brought hurricane evacuation clearance times under the 24 hours that had been mandated by the state for the remote string of islands with one road out.

To make that happen, Monroe County’s elected officials formally adopted an evacuation plan they had been informally using anyway that called for the forced evacuation of tourists 48 hours prior to landfall and the forced evacuation of mobile home residents and those living in low-lying areas 36 hours prior to expected landfall.

By pushing more than one-third of the Keys’ daily population out of the equation, on paper at least, county officials were able to bring the evacuation clearance time slightly under the magical 24 hours mandated by the state for public safety.

But we all knew the phased evacuation plan was bogus when the county introduced it the first time. The phased evacuation plan is predicated on every person who flew into the Keys being able to fly back out, or having enough rental cars on hand to allow tourists to drive out within the 12-hour window before the next phase starts.

Then, every person who lives in a mobile home, or in a low-lying area, or has special needs, will be flooding the roadway—the only roadway, during their six-hour window to get out of the way of what the county calls “permanent population.”

And it is only that last batch of folks, called “permanent population” that actually counts in the evacuation clearance scenario to meet the 24-hour mandate.

While the percentage of mobile home dwellers is probably statistically even between year-round and part-year folks with single family homes, those who live in mobile homes are a large percentage of our workforce.

They are the folks who board up homes for the part-time residents in the face of a storm. They are the waitresses and waiters who serve the tourists as they scramble to get out of town then close up the bars and restaurants for the owners who have already hit the road, or don’t live here anyway. They are the mechanics who work feverishly to the last possible minute to ensure that our cars will make it safely out of the Keys and to a haven on the mainland. They are the work crews that go around the neighborhoods putting away potential missiles, securing pools and porches, and trimming hazardous branches. They are the utility crews that prepare power and water lines for the storm. They are the firefighters who leave last. They are the police officers who turn out the lights when they leave.

Those who live in mobile homes will, for the most part, be leaving with or after the rest of the “permanent population.”

And that puts us over the 24 hour mandate.

To get to the 24 hours, officials have been playing an assumption game where they use various behavioral and research studies to determine how many homes are occupied during hurricane season, how many of those will leave in the face of a storm, how many cars they will put on the road and so on.

And, the clearance time was supposed to be based on a Category 3 storm, where many long-time Keysers would stay put and throw a party.

The state last week, however, said we can’t do that. We have to plan like it’s a Category 5 heading down our throats, which means that even some of the most hard-nosed islanders will pack up and hit the road for drier climes.

The evacuation clearance time in that case still manages to come in under the 24-hour mandate, if you assume some weird things.

You assume all homes for sale are vacant. You assume no one came into town for July 4, Labor Day, Fantasy Fest or Thanksgiving to fill up those seasonal homes you don’t count. You assume no mobile home residents will stay past their mandated departure times. You assume no second-home owners who live close by on the mainland will venture down to secure their own house during the evacuation. You assume half the town isn’t out fishing and doesn’t hear the evacuation call. You assume the storm will be considerate enough to grow as anticipated, track where anticipated, maintain projected speed and not exceed the anticipated storm surge.

That’s a lot of assumptions to gamble on lives with. And even one life lost because our county officials placed safety as a second-tier priority is too many.

Yes, we understand the pressures to allow people who bought lots with the intention to build a vacation or retirement getaway to do so. We understand the pressures to allow speculators to build homes to be sold again to investors or actual residents.

We understand those pressures and the potential financial liabilities that could come down the road.

And yet we must think strictly of safety.

It’s a tight wire to walk. The end of development will come soon. We must prepare for it now or take some expensive steps to make sure people can get out. If we make it impossible for only one person to make it out before the storm hits, we pay that financial liability.

Safety must be first. All else must be secondary.

And just when I thought it was safe to cruise through the shopping center parking lot again, I am reminded that it doesn’t have to be an out-of-town car or driver to make all of our lives miserable.

For several years, the shopping center parking lot here on Big Pine had one single space that was close to the entrance door and not a handicapped only space. I watched many a dance of Detroit iron trying to figure out a way to get to that spot. Then, about eight months ago they made that single space a handicapped space and the daily potential metal twisting ballet was over.

Now there are three spaces on two aisles that are near the stores, and for some unknown reason are not painted blue, signifying handicapped spaces. These have become the latest targets of what I like to refer to as the “unable to walk my legs are both broken” crowd that seems to be so much more prevalent today than they were even five years ago, and definitely more prevalent today than they were 20 years go.

I know you’ve seen them. They’re the drivers that will spend 30 minutes cruising the parking lot waiting for a space to open up that is right in front of the store they wish to visit. This gets so bad at times that the various drivers will miss appointments or watch the store they want close before they have found that perfect parking space. And then they walk up and bang on the front door trying to get let in, eventually storming off in a huff that there’s no one around to let them in after hours because they cruised the parking lot for 30 or 40 minutes waiting for a parking space that was convenient.

And they vow never to patronize that store again. Go figure that one.

Anyway.

I saw quite the dance the other day when I was trying to get into Winn Dixie on a typical late afternoon. I will have to admit that I am one of those aggressive drivers. Over the years I have gotten quite tired of waiting for other people to make up their mind and decide what they’re going to do. It has nothing to do with a lack of patience it has to do with making sure I’m well out of the way before this ding-a-ling can cause a major catastrophe. That attitude behind the wheel has kept me out of trouble for more than 27 years.

This particular day, a youngster who probably shouldn’t have been behind the wheel to start with because he didn’t have enough maturity to be able to make a decision, let alone the right one, and was definitely young enough to have walked the extra 15 feet, really wanted that space up front. There were two of the six remaining. He wasn’t going to settle for the one further away. He wanted the one right up front. I was coming in from the Key Deer Blvd. side. He was coming in from the Wilder Road side. Another vehicle was headed that general direction from the southernmost Key Deer entrance, and yet another was homing in from the southernmost Wilder Road entrance. It was shaping up to be quite the “chicken” episode.

I personally don’t care if I get one of those spots or not. Walking another 20 or 30 feet is probably good for me, and it keeps me and my vehicle out of trouble. But, like everyone else, unfortunately, sometimes I just can’t resist doing the dance.

I sped up just a little so that I would arrive at the opening to the row the same time as our young friend. This of course forced him to think about whether he should stop or take the chance I wouldn’t run him over. He needed a left turn, which gave me the right of way. I admit I had a little bit of a mean streak going so I took my time before I signaled him to go ahead in front of me. He whipped into the row, only to meet the car coming from the southernmost Key Deer entrance that didn’t wait to either give or get the right of way and slipped right into the spot further away from the store.

That must have confused our youngster and he overshot the closest space. Once he had done that, the car coming from the southernmost Wilder entrance had a clear shot into the close space and was in it in seconds. Our aggressive youngster wound up parking four spaces further away and walking that extra 30 feet. I parked on the far side of him, and just to be a butthead, parked as close to the yellow line separating parking spaces as I could. Since he was as close as he could get to missing his space on my side, that left about eight inches for him to open the door and crawl in the vehicle.

Should I feel bad about that…probably. Do I? Nah.

But overlooked in the circus-clown atmosphere of the Republican Presidential primary thus far is that there will be important votes facing us on the local ballot this year.

Three of the five Board of County Commission seats are up for reelection. Only in District One where incumbent Kim Wigington has decided not to seek a second term is the current office holder not back on the ballot.

Only retiring County Court Clerk Danny Kolhage has filed to fill Wigington’s seat. Thus far District Three incumbent Heather Carruthers and District Five incumbent Sylvia Murphy have drawn no opposition.

Single-term Monroe County Sheriff Bob Peryam has decided to retire after more than 30 years in the law enforcement arena, leaving current second-in-command Col. Rick Ramsay to duke it out with four other deputies and a State Attorney investigator.

In that race, local favorite Tom Petek is on the opposite side of the party aisle from Ramsay with one other Democratic challenger while Ramsay faces two Republican challengers in the primary.

Speaking of those primaries, they are fast approaching, with the Keys primaries scheduled for August 14 when the fields will be whittled down to one from each primary party.

Five have filed for the District Three School Board seat currently held by two-term incumbent Duncan Mathewson. Mathewson has decided not to run in that non-partisan race. All voters will go to polls in August because of the non-partisan races. Should no candidate receive 51 percent of the vote, the top two will slug it out to the general election in November.

Mosquito Control District seats are up for grabs, with two challengers to 20-year veteran Joan Lord-Papy in the local district seat.

State Rep. Ron Saunders has decided to vacate his seat this cycle in favor of a run at the state Senate after Larcenia Bullard reached term limits.

Three folks, led by Saunders’ current aid Holly Merrill, have filed to try and take over that seat that serves the Keys and part of Miami-Dade.

Of course, there will be the usual spate of federal representative and Senate seats up for grabs, and the overall turn-out draw…the Presidential election.

But that’s not all we’ll see.

Monroe County plans to have a straw vote issue on the ballot to see how county voters feel about transitioning the Florida Keys Aqueduct Authority board of directors from an appointed to an elected board.

Also, Monroe County will have a one-cent sales tax referendum on the general election ballot.

This might be the most important measure voters in the Lower Keys will see. That tax has been in place for about two decades and has paid a sizeable chunk of money toward the completion of state-mandated wastewater systems every where but the Cudjoe Regional.

That tax is the primary contributor to the revenue streams that will be used to complete the Cudjoe Regional wastewater system, estimated at about $150 million to develop.

Any voter in the Cudjoe Regional service area, which includes everything from Lower Sugarloaf to Big Pine, that votes against the extension of the existing one-cent sales tax will be voting to open their own wallets for about $60 million over 20 years because the state says we must build the system, and about half the sales tax is paid by tourists, and the other half is contributed to by every resident who buys anything in Monroe County.

Without eh tax, the folks in the Cudjoe Regional will pay, in some way, to have the wastewater system installed.

If you show up to vote for no other reason, chime in on the sales tax extension.

The difference to residents in the Cudjoe Regional service area could be $100 per month or more in user fees over the next 20 years.

And of course, going to the polls and making a choice in those people that will represent you is probably in your best interests as well.

Educate yourself with the various candidate forums, read your local newspapers, attend candidate functions.

Voting is your best weapon to ensure your interests.

On the heels of announcements from the local lodging association that this has been one of the best seasons in history for lodging income, comes a little tidbit from the central south portion of the United States.

I get phone calls from all over the country. People come here to visit, get interested in a certain area or certain subject, and sometimes periodically call in to our office to get updates.

And then we get calls from all over the country with people dropping little tidbits of information on us, asking for directions, asking for phone numbers, and even a few seeking people they have lost track of over the years.

I didn’t say all the calls made sense.

One of the strangest calls I’ve ever had was one where someone from Arizona actually asked me if I could drive to Islamorada and knock on someone’s door to see if they were home and ask them to call this person back. Oh, and by the way, could they use my phone to do that?

I laughed before I hung up the phone.

But last week, I got a call from a part time visitor from Arkansas who just had to inform me of an issue with the national weather.

He was watching Al Roker give his daily weather forecast on The Weather Channel. The Arkansas weather was predicted to be nice for this time of year, and Roker was talking about a string of storms getting ready to hit the Texas panhandle.

The gentleman, whose name is Frank Frenzel, keeps track of the weather in the Keys because he comes here to visit often and dreams of our warm weather while he’s stoking up the wood stove for warmth in Arkansas.

Anyway, Frank used the mode button on his remote control and punched up the zip code for Key West.

What he found was quite surprising.

According to The Weather Channel, the Wednesday forecast for Key West was a high of 53 degrees.

This was in April. I don’t know if 53 degrees would be a record for cold in April in the Keys, and personally I don’t want to know. That’s cold weather for anytime in the Keys.

But the predicted high for Thursday of that week was 58 degrees with a low of 34 degrees.

The weekend was predicted to be balmy with highs of 61 degrees, 64 degrees and 70 degrees. The lows were predicted to be 38 degrees, 47 degrees and 58 degrees.

I have lived here for 16 years, visited here for much longer than that, and I have never seen those kinds of temperatures in April.

I rarely see those temperatures in January or February for any extended period.

Now there is little doubt that this was simply a typographical error on the part of the graphics generator operator for The Weather Channel.

But Frank tells me this has been going on for weeks, and as of this writing the mistake was still appearing.

What makes it even more bizarre is that he punched up the zip code for Big Pine Key, which we all know is a far distant 30 miles from Key West, and the predicted temperatures were in the mid-80s for a high and high 70s for a low.

So what this leads me to believe is that someone who has access to the character generator at The Weather Channel planned on a vacation in Key West in early April and wanted to fight crowds as small as possible.

Or, some other large resort city, tired of fighting with the beautiful weather of Key West for winter time visitors, found a willing partner and made it look like Key West was as cold as the rest of the south so people planning to go somewhere might decide on somewhere other than Key West.

Frank’s logical explanation is that someone at The Weather Channel is simply, “asleep at the switch.”

But he did have words of warning for all of us cold wimps who live here in a sub-tropical paradise.

“Take care and put on your long johns if you venture out at night!”

So tell me, have we witnessed a recent dearth of visitors from the Arkansas region in the past month?

County officials and state officials have been working for more than a year to put the basic tenets in place to run the next generation hurricane evacuation clearance time model for Monroe County.

The new model will be based on new population numbers derived from the 2010 census. Since Monroe County is one of the few counties in Florida that lost population in that census, it would seem to follow that our already established evacuation clearance time should drop on its own.

That time is within minutes of the state-mandated 24 hour deadline to be able to clear all the permanent residents out of the Keys in the face of a major storm.

And the lower that clearance time, the longer building can go on in the Keys because our annual Rate of Growth Ordinance allocations are based on the amount of time it takes to get the permanent residents out of the Keys under 24 hours.

Yes, we’ve said permanent residents.

We don’t count tourists in that number because we have a policy that requires tourists to leave 48 hours in advance of landfall of gale-force winds in the Keys for a Category Three or higher storm.

We don’t count special needs folks because they are ordered out 36 hours in advance. And we don’t count people who live in mobile homes because they are also ordered out before the permanent resident evacuation begins and the 24-hour clock begins ticking before the onset of gale-force winds in the Keys.

During the 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons, the worst ones in recent memory, twice a storm that was forecast to miss us, or come through as a gentle breeze by our standards, increased in intensity or changed course and smacked us with a near-miss.

Many of you might remember the last of those storms in 2005. It was named Wilma. Wilma occurred within six days of Fantasy Fest, a time when occupancy in the Keys is as close to 100 percent as it’s ever going to be.

Permanent residents couldn’t have gotten out of the Keys if they had wanted to get out.

The new clearance time model is to be run with an agreed-upon set of variables delineating how many homes are actually occupied, what percentage of occupied homes will adhere to evacuation calls, and hoe many cars those homes are anticipated to put on the road.

Every model run thus far using the preliminary numbers from a Category Four or Five storm has put us over the mythical 24-hour mark for permanent resident evacuation.

So the folks involved in the negotiation have decided to use a Category Three storm as a baseline because, well, because using a set of variables that includes just about one-third of the actual residential structures in the Keys, we still make it under the 24-hour mandate.

And that keeps residential and multi-unit commercial building permits flowing.

But there are two inherent problems in using the best-case scenario as a baseline for ensuring the safety of our people in the face of an onrushing major storm.

The first problem is that some storms won’t be so nice as to let us have 48 hours to clear out the island chain.

The second problem is that is a Category Three intensifies to a Category Four and one half of the occupied homes decide to get on out of town, they don’t all make it.

And the overriding problem with all these calculations is that our officials expect the bulk of our workforce, people who live in mobile homes, to leave 12 hours before the folks for whom they work, or the folks for whom they perform services.

Our guess is they won’t do such a thing. In fact, they’ll be around to the last minute, boarding up homes for absentee second-home owners, clearing neighbors’ yards of potential missiles, putting away merchandise in our shops, locking up the store, and aiding the elderly lady down the street as she prepares to leave.

We know it’s unrealistic to expect the county to shut down building on lots with vested rights. We can’t afford the law suits.

And we can’t afford to buy all those lots with our money, which is the only real way to extinguish the building rights.

But when it comes time to vote, our elected leaders have to play the safety first card.

If one person is injured or killed because we didn’t give every one who wanted the opportunity to leave a proper chance to do so, the price of expedience will have been too high.