By the time you read this, it might have rained three inches and Key West commissioners might have told City Manager Brian Barroso to pound sand. (As it turned out, they downshifted a bit to “get real.”) The Floriduh Virus, once reserved for the dumbest things happening on the mainland, has laid us low, so I haven’t been holding my breath.
On the off chance you need an example of Floriduh, consider what happened up in Tallahassee (now there’s a virus cluster for you) earlier this week at Florida A&M University.
First, some context. February is (at least for now) Black History Month, which President Gerald Ford (Republican, not MAGA) made official in 1976. Florida A&M University was founded in 1887 and is one of the nation’s 107 Historic Black Colleges and Universities. A student at FAMU’s College of Law planned a history month program and made a flyer. Following so far? Good.
Now for the Floriduh part: “Ya gotta get rid of the word ‘Black’ on the flyer, cuz it violates the state’s rules against diversity, equality and inclusion.” The ban also included references to “women.” Go ahead. Read that again. I know it’s a head-scratcher.
Oops, said the university president after the flyer-maker took her story to the local TV station, not so fast. That was an overzealous interpretation of state law by a low-level university staffer. It’s OK to use “Black.” And while we’re at it, “women” is OK, too. (Well, at least until Gov. Ron DeSantis and Attorney General James Uthmeier decide uppity women and Blacks don’t warrant monthlong celebrations.)
Ah, Floriduh.
OK, back to the island, where we pride ourselves for our own brand of wacky, safe from Floriduh within our Key West bubble. Let’s leave Brian Barroso for last and start with rain.
It’s not been a rainy rainy season in South Florida. We’ve only gotten about half what we usually do. Nice for outdoor fun. Not so nice if the taps run dry, and that makes the water management folks nervous. So the South Florida Water Management District issued a water shortage warning last week to six counties, including Monroe, begging us to conserve and warning mandatory restrictions could follow.
Ah, Floriduh | What could possibly go wrong?
Key West gets its water from the same place Miami and most of South Florida does, the Biscayne Aquifer, which in turn gets refilled when it rains — a lot — in the Everglades. (like that toe bone connected to the foot bone connected to the ankle bone ditty.) Worked fine until Floriduh went berserk with asphalt, concrete, high-rises, golf courses, tourists and sprawling subdivisions. Combine a drought with explosive development and we’ve taxed Mother Nature beyond her ability to cope.
“I think so many of us take for granted, when we turn on the tap, that water is going to be there and that there’s this endless supply at the other end. And it’s not. It’s something that we need to protect, something that we need to conserve as much as possible,” Everglades Foundation Chief Scientist Steve Davis told the Miami Herald.
Last Stand of the Florida Keys, a four-decade-old, Key West-based environmental protection nonprofit, minces no words. “In November, Last Stand warned that Monroe County’s potable water supply is approaching a hard limit. If demand keeps increasing at the pace we saw in 2025, aquifer withdrawal permits could hit capacity in about five years. … The Keys have real, physical limits. Endless growth is not compatible with a fragile island chain that depends on a stressed regional water supply.
“Even though official population estimates look stable, water, sewer and solid-waste data indicate there are more people in the Keys than ever before. A likely driver is the explosion of short-term rentals, which often house far more people than the outdated infrastructure planning assumptions of roughly two people per household.”
Ah, Floriduh. More people. Less water. What could possibly go wrong?
Well, we could make Key West’s city manager one of the highest-paid Florida Man-style officials in the state. With one year under his belt, Brian Barroso asked the city commission to up his compensation package to a whopping $350,000, extend his contract from two to four years and give him unprecedented leeway to approve $100,000 contracts without commission review.
On Wednesday commissioners reined things in a bit. In a 5-2 vote, they approved a package that gave Barroso a hefty pay increase, but rejected the additional benefits and compensation he wanted. Mayor Dee Dee Henriquez and Commissioner Sam Kaufman voted no, both to the original proposal and to the final adjusted proposal.
When he started on Jan. 28, 2025, Barroso’s base salary was $215,000. He got a bump a few months ago. With Wednesday’s vote, his base salary will be $265,000. Roll in car allowances, severance payouts, health insurance and payroll taxes, Key West taxpayers are on the hook for upwards of $345,000.
Mary, Joseph and the Wee Donkey, even for Floriduh, that borders on nuts.
READ MORE
https://www.famu.edu/about-famu/history/index.php
https://www.sfwmd.gov/news-events/news/sfwmd-issues-water-shortage-warning-multiple-counties-region
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/environment/article314632977.html
I was amazed and appalled on our first visit to KW in 2001 when I saw the groundskeeper at our “condo” daily hosing down pretty much anything made of concrete, including the pool area, sidewalks, etc., etc. When I asked about it at the front desk and commented that fresh water must be precious in the Keys, the response was “We have to keep these areas clean for the guests/owners.” Dunning/Kruger graduates seem to be multiplying faster than iguanas.