We selected a property because of it’s commercial zoning. There were three restaurants within 100 feet and no one ever complained about aroma. There was a bakery added and it didn’t arouse the discontent of the neighborhood either, so what changed? What brought a whole neighborhood to sign a petition against this restaurant? It certainly couldn’t have been the aroma of cooking food with traditional fuels since at times the aroma was alluring.

Of course there are those who would like to convince us that there no distinction between cooking with electric and or gas and burning wood for 16 hours a day but their depth perception would be in question. Some would try to trivialize our experience by making claims that this rural activity is to be accepted in an urban environment in the South end of our nation, as if we were out of sync with the local or regional culture, but since there were southern born and raised neighbors who signed the petition and filed complaints with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) that argument would be unsubstantiated.

The surrounding properties were purchased with established restaurants in place, there was no surprise there, what changed was that the City decided to allow the use of unregulated fuel to process the food. There was no reasonable expectation by anyone purchasing these properties that a congested City, with 40 foot lot sizes would invite an activity reserved for a rural environment, especially without regulating what was burnt in the smoker or what was emitted in the process. In addition no one expected that a site plan would leave the regulation of this activity up to the proprietor using flexibility as a justification for a half-baked plan.

On top of that, no one expected that a City with ordinances in place to protect property from unnecessary emission would circumvent their laws to appease a former City Councilman, Larry Cooper in the 49th street instance. No one envisioned that a City who prided itself on a healthy canopy and concern for the quality of life of it’s citizens would contradict it’s own public statements on YouTube about their concern for air quality and the environment.

To suggest that this neighborhood should have expected to be inundated with toxic waste by a City who expressedly stated that they place the heath of it’s citizen, the environment and the value of it property above everything else in their Mission Statement, City ordinances, and verbal statements is to ignore all reality.

4 out of the five candidates that ran for the City Council agreed that a smoker in this congested urban environment did not fit. The FDEP agreed as well and stated that the zoning for this smoker was inadequate. And everyone who took the time to observe the activity, that has no hidden agenda, also agreed that the area was too congested and the plumes of toxic waste were too overwhelming to be suitable.

If you have any semblance of recognizable intelligence and or are able to put yourself in our shoes, imagine wood smoke in every breath you take. Imagine it in your home and office. Imagine it in your garden, your car, your cloths your storage, and in the face of your neighbors, visiting friends and clients. Watch as the birds nests that you nurtured leave your yard and the beehive relocate. Watch as the gardens that you’ve spent thousands of dollars on and countless hours building be destroyed in clouds of smoke

Just put yourself in someone else’s shoes for just one minute, engage your imagination, and you may come away with a different perspective. Of course you may not, which would qualify you for the seat on the Council in Ward 1 and 2, not to mention a seat in the mayors chair. All you have to do is deny reality, make excuses, lie, cheat and steal our clean air and you can replace these scalawags.

Have a Nice day!

What was your first clue that you had bought a house next to a restaurant? Huh? Did they turn a daycare center into a restaurant and surprise you? Look, when the wind is right my front porch smells like a wet ashtray. That’s what McDonalds smells like to me on a humid day, wet ashtray.

If you bought a house next to Publix, you’d be smelling chicken fryers. Great to live in Le Chateau in South Pasadena isn’t it? And while we’re on the subject, Ted Peters Smoke Fish smells like low tide but somehow folks survive.

If you want to live near the fun then you have to put up with the fun.

This is the South, people cook here. People cook everywhere, you should get out more.

If you want to eat granola and pumpkin soup, fine, not a soul will stop you. I see you qualify for the door prize at the dialing for dummies convention. It’s quite a leap to equate the rejection of placing a commercial smoker 40 feet away from a bedroom window and in a congested urban area to classifying the opponent as a health food proponent.

We didn’t oppose the smoker because it cooked meat, dimbulb, we opposed it because it buried us in smoke. If they smoked granola we still would have rejected the location. It’s not about the food, it’s about the fuel. Duh?

Emergency services are concerned with the implications of high voltage risk in accident scenarios with electric vehicles and also with the toxic aspects of the contents of current technology batteries.

Easy to talk green for votes and feel good vibes when there is no consideration of the unintended..but highly predictable..consequences.

How is it the council is hot to get on the electric vehicle bandwagon after they voted down the opportunity to allow street legal electric golfcarts in Gulfport? Could it be that the applicant was brash enough to oppose the dominant council member in an election?

Old time locals have frequently said that first you have the election and then you get the retribution.

An electrifying tradition of focus on the individual rather than the issue.

Greenopia.com

Risky Business like British Petroleum (BP) took a chance on Deepwater Drilling without safeguards and the result was devastating, just as the City of Gulfport took a chance on a Smoker in a congested area of 49th street. Careless, reckless and irresponsible shallow short term thinking will continue to haunt us until this Good-ol-Boy government is dissolved or evolves into an intelligent body of concerned citizens who study the issues and have a reservoir of knowledge to understand the scope and depth of the decisions they face.

If one has a principled position then they have a basis of knowledge to rely upon. If the City wants clean air they wouldn’t deliberately pour toxins into it. If they want clean water they would do everything humanly possible to avoid toxins going into it. If they want safe traffic flows they should not establish an exception for red cars to drive 15 miles over the speed limit.

What has stuck in my craw from that May 18th Meeting was when Michele King said: “”if we don’t belong to the Consortium we won’t have a seat at the table”".

Hey Michele, we don’t want a seat at that table, don’t you get it? We could use a seat at another table, one that represents the values that you yourself claim to have. The object is to reduce water contamination not join polluters who will balance their bad behavior with our progress.

If the object of this Consortium is to increase seagrass by virtue of reducing pollutants entering into the water, why is the Consortium objecting to having a closer look at individual polluters and reducing pollution even further?

Is the hidden agenda coming to light? If the issues is too complicated please allow others who are willing to do the work to have the time to examine the issue in depth and possibly find another seat for you to sit upon.

Sam Henderson had just returned from vacation so he just followed whatever Fred Metcalf recommended, and David Hastings was just introduced to the water in Gulfport so he has a lot of catching up to do. Mike Yakes, well, he likes it just the way it is, just throw money at it and get back to baseball.

“How eager they are to be slaves”
Tiberius Caesar after being given Carte blanch by the Roman Senate.

I didn’t go to the meeting as most of you know who were there, but due to the fact that I was home cleaning (trust me it is a better way to spend an evening then sitting through a city council meeting).

But one of my fellow cherry covered nut case pals wanted me to come to the meeting and speak out about the nitrogen issue and even add my two cents to the Electric car charger resolution. I told her I didn’t give a shit any more and she should not expect to see me there.

I had the computer up and running hoping to hear from my future love of my life, so I decided to watch the city council meeting on line.

I think not being there was better then attending in person as I was able to listen to the speaker whereas when I would attend the event due to the back talkers and the noisy air conditioner and of course my rock and roll hearing loss, I would not be able to hear all of the speakers prose. .

I had no preconceived knowledge or idea even what the Nitrogen Initiative was all about. I listened to every word our Tampa Bay Engineering guy had to say. I have only one thing to say in conclusion. Gibberish. His whole presentation focused on paying the money, how we paid it in the past and could not really explain what the initiatives purpose is.

If it hadn’t been for Councilwoman Dr. Jennifer Salmon’s research into the item, I might never had known what it was. But Salmons had done her homework, certainly in contrast to the other four members of council.

From her home work I found out that when we look at the bottom line the nitrogen consortium does two things, neither one of which I think is in the benefit to the citizens of Gulfport.

The consortium takes the cumulative nitrogen wastes from its members and uses that number to report nitrogen discharge into the Tampa Bay area. Let’s call this nitrogen for sake of ease, pollution.

Some entities nitrogen pollution are below the average that the consortium reports and some to balance it out are higher. These entities include cities, government entities and private corporations. The higher polluters get to keep polluting at their current levels (which may be individually higher then legally allowed) because they are in the consortium. The lower polluters, in the meantime are helping out the higher polluters keep polluting at their higher level rather then strive to meet the standards currently set.

This is kind of how Cap and Trade will work for Carbon emissions, except they will be trading those on some sort of exchange.

Gulfport is one of those entities that has a much lower nitrogen pollution factor then say the big phosphate companies across the bay who are also members with us in the Nitrogen Consortium. BY us remaining in the consortium with our lower levels of pollution we are enabling the heavier polluter to continue their current level of pollution output.

Secondly they are a lobbying entity whose goal is to relax the federal governments EPA standards. Now I don’t know about you but I really don’t trust the EPA’s standards or the rest of the governments ideals. Not with a huge oil slick headed our way while under the “CAREFUL” watch of our federal government. So to think that this organization wants to relax pollution rules set up by an EPA which is hardly protecting the environment as it is, is just ludicrous to me. The only ones to benefit in relaxing EPA pollution rules would be the large polluters and certainly not the citizens of Gulfport.

Now given that four of the five council member voted in favor of renewing our membership I think I will give you my impressions of why each one voted.

First off it appears to me to be the old ploy where you think you are doing good when in reality you are doing the opposite. And remember it appeared that the council with the exception of Dr. Salmon was unprepared to delve into what this expense and organization was about.

The mayor, probably voting for it the last time it came up, and probably under similar vague explanation circumstances and of course pollution wasn’t much of a concern to those in power in bygone years. No bad came of it so he probably thought that he would renew.

Our new Ward One representative, said, its only $6,000 so what’s the big deal. Hey David, we elected you the CPA to watch over our finances, no matter how small the expense is. His voting for the renewal shows that he did not understand the consortium or as he was during the campaign a little shy on environmental issues.

Ward Two Vice Mayor King, also obviously unaware of the activities or goals of the organization went along with the crowd. She would have voted for it in 2006 and without any real knowledge of the organization went along with the mayor.

Ward Four our environmental watch dog Henderson, champion of mountain tops couldn’t have possibly looked at the material, understood the organization and voted for the renewal if he was even paying attention to his fellow environmentalist Jennifer Salmon. Sam, since when do you vote for an organization whose stated purpose is to relax EPA standards for pollution?

There seemed to be some rush to push this through because as stated Dr. Salmon thought we should workshop it.

Proponents for the measure advised council you don’t want to be left out of the Consortium, and we can get you in for only $6000. At least it wasn’t a Nigerian million dollar scheme.

I decided to regurgitate what Big dog might have said to better understand the issue myself. I hope my analysis helped.

I wonder if the City will be offering this service for free?