April 16, 2007 — Sen. Carmen Wesselhoft was a no-show at Monday's Coral Bay Community Council, apparently stuck in a Senate Rules Committee meeting on St. Thomas.
While Wesselhoft was touted as the main event, her chief of staff, Kim Lyons, stood in to speak about Wesselhoft's accomplishments since she took office in January and to hear gripes from some of the several dozen people who attended the meeting.
In addition, Tregenza Roach, who is spearheading the campaign to educate V.I. residents on the upcoming Constitutional Convention, made a presentation.
"Many in the community said that since we failed several times, why try again?" Roach said.
Although the territory unsuccessfully took up the issue in 1964, 1972, 1977 and 1980, Roach said educating the public about the benefits of writing a V.I. Constitution was not paramount in those previous attempts.
In fact, he said, some people in the community are proud of their work to defeat an earlier measure.
Having a constitution would give the territory the right to set its own property-tax laws, a hot-button topic since residents face steep tax increases when the revaluation project mandated by a federal judge is complete.
Roach also addressed the issue of who can vote both for delegates and on the finished constitution. "This activity is open to all registered voters," he said.
However, he said, delegates to the Constitutional Convention must be three-year residents and qualified voters.
During the portion of the meeting related to Wesselhoft, Lyons heard a complaint from Steve Crumrine about parking. Although Cruz Bay has a horrendous parking crunch, he said, police are now ticketing cars as well as having them booted and towed away.
"Nobody has any place to park," he said. "What are we supposed to do?"
It would be better if such efforts were directed at abandoned vehicles, he said.
Edmond Roberts complained that the men's room at Cruz Bay's only public bathrooms, located in the parking lot across from the post office, has been closed since October. "The men have to use the ladies' restroom," he said.
This prompted Alvis Christian to note that the public bathrooms close at 6 p.m., which means visitors and residents who are out later face challenges when it comes to finding a restroom.
Christian also stressed that Wesselhoft should address the issue of only one access road to Coral Bay. In the last 10 years, he said, 40 percent of all development happened at the eastern end of the island.
"That must be a priority," Christian said.
Norm Gledhill noted that the island is currently in its annual potable water shortage, which means that people who must buy water from the V.I. Water and Power Authority have to get on a list with their water hauler. When a half-dozen major construction projects now in the works or in the pipeline get finished, St. John will run short 25,000 to 30,000 gallons a day of potable water, he said.
In return for the required occupancy permit, Gledhill suggested, the developers should pick up the tab for hooking up WAPA's planned undersea water cable from Red Hook to Cruz Bay. He also suggested that when those projects start using WAPA power, Cruz Bay will go dark.
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