The leader of the eight-member Senate majority will not support efforts by one of his colleagues to override Gov. Charles Turnbull’s veto of the establishment of a tourism authority.
During a Senate Finance Committee meeting on Tuesday focusing on the territory’s tourism industry, Sen. Alicia "Chucky" Hansen, a member of the majority bloc, said she would do what was necessary to override the governor’s veto.
But on Wednesday, the majority’s leader, Sen. Celestino White, said he doesn’t support such a move.
"It’s not a split in the caucus," White said, noting that he never supported the proposed tourism authority in the first place. "There has been nothing that has changed my mind."
White referred to the majority’s policy released in January that outlined the bloc’s major goals. Along with pursuing from the federal government the return of a portion of excise taxes on petroleum products manufactured at the Hovensa oil refinery, health and education issues, the policy agenda directly addressed the issue of a tourism authority.
"The agenda items," said White, "are the only items the majority caucus . . . have agreed on."
Hansen couldn’t be reached for comment on Wednesday.
The proposal vetoed by Turnbull would have seen the Tourism Department dismantled and a board of six private-sector representatives and three government-sector members installed to manage the territory’s tourism policies. The board, which would have been a semi-autonomous government agency similar to the V.I. Port Authority, would have also had the authority to issue bonds.
While the majority’s policy stated that the Legislature supports the idea of a tourism authority, the one vetoed by Turnbull placed "jurisdiction primarily in the hands of a few groups within the private sector."
Instead, the majority wants to see a plan that "creates an equitable balance between the public and private sectors in setting tourism policy and widens the representation of private-sector groups on the Authority’s governing board, as opposed to merely the hotel associations, the chambers of commerce and the taxi associations."

The leader of the eight-member Senate majority will not support efforts by one of his colleagues to override Gov. Charles Turnbull’s veto of the establishment of a tourism authority.
During a Senate Finance Committee meeting on Tuesday focusing on the territory’s tourism industry, Sen. Alicia "Chucky" Hansen, a member of the majority bloc, said she would do what was necessary to override the governor’s veto.
But on Wednesday, the majority’s leader, Sen. Celestino White, said he doesn’t support such a move.
"It’s not a split in the caucus," White said, noting that he never supported the proposed tourism authority in the first place. "There has been nothing that has changed my mind."
White referred to the majority’s policy released in January that outlined the bloc’s major goals. Along with pursuing from the federal government the return of a portion of excise taxes on petroleum products manufactured at the Hovensa oil refinery, health and education issues, the policy agenda directly addressed the issue of a tourism authority.
"The agenda items," said White, "are the only items the majority caucus . . . have agreed on."
Hansen couldn’t be reached for comment on Wednesday.
The proposal vetoed by Turnbull would have seen the Tourism Department dismantled and a board of six private-sector representatives and three government-sector members installed to manage the territory’s tourism policies. The board, which would have been a semi-autonomous government agency similar to the V.I. Port Authority, would have also had the authority to issue bonds.
While the majority’s policy stated that the Legislature supports the idea of a tourism authority, the one vetoed by Turnbull placed "jurisdiction primarily in the hands of a few groups within the private sector," White said.
Instead, the majority wants to see a plan that "creates an equitable balance between the public and private sectors in setting tourism policy and widens the representation of private-sector groups on the Authority’s governing board, as opposed to merely the hotel associations, the chambers of commerce and the taxi associations."

The leader of the eight-member Senate majority will not support efforts by one of his colleagues to override Gov. Charles Turnbull’s veto of the establishment of a tourism authority.
During a Senate Finance Committee meeting on Tuesday focusing on the territory’s tourism industry, Sen. Alicia "Chucky" Hansen, a member of the majority bloc, said she would do what was necessary to override the governor’s veto.
But on Wednesday, the majority’s leader, Sen. Celestino White, said he doesn’t support such a move.
"It’s not a split in the caucus," White said, noting that he never supported the proposed tourism authority in the first place. "There has been nothing that has changed my mind."
White referred to the majority’s policy released in January that outlined the bloc’s major goals. Along with pursuing from the federal government the return of a portion of excise taxes on petroleum products manufactured at the Hovensa oil refinery, health and education issues, the policy agenda directly addressed the issue of a tourism authority.
"The agenda items," said White, "are the only items the majority caucus . . . have agreed on."
Hansen couldn’t be reached for comment on Wednesday.
The proposal vetoed by Turnbull would have seen the Tourism Department dismantled and a board of six private-sector representatives and three government-sector members installed to manage the territory’s tourism policies. The board, which would have been a semi-autonomous government agency similar to the V.I. Port Authority, would have also had the authority to issue bonds.
While the majority’s policy stated that the Legislature supports the idea of a tourism authority, the one vetoed by Turnbull placed "jurisdiction primarily in the hands of a few groups within the private sector."
Instead, the majority wants to see a plan that "creates an equitable balance between the public and private sectors in setting tourism policy and widens the representation of private-sector groups on the Authority’s governing board, as opposed to merely the hotel associations, the chambers of commerce and the taxi associations."

The Department of Planning and Natural Resources' Environmental Protection Division will hold two public meetings to educate the public on how to apply for the more than $400,000 in Pass Through Grants available for Fiscal Year 2001.
The grants, $419,333 in all, are funded through the Federal Clean Water Act for nonpoint source pollution control projects using best management practices for priority watershed areas, and for educating critical audiences. The meetings will also focus on discussing new ideas with grant applicants.
The first meeting for applicants is at 6 p.m. on Feb. 21 at the Curriculum Center in Kingshill, St. Croix; the second is the following day at 6 p.m. on St. Thomas, at the Curriculum Center in Anna's Retreat.
Applicants unable to attend the meetings can obtain information by calling Syed Syedali at DPNR, Environmental Protection Division, at 733-0565 or e-mail videpstx@viaccess.net.

Wayne Callwood, acting commissioner of the Public Works Department, denied Tuesday any knowledge of a letter from William McConnell, attorney for the Homer Wheaton estate, sent in September requesting dumpsters be removed from a site next to Skyline Drive, which McConnell said is Wheaton property.
"I was unaware of it," Callwood said. "We maintain it is government property, so we don't need a permit to put dumpsters on the site."
Callwood said the matter should have been referred to Public Works in the first place, and not to the Police Department. McConnell said the letter was addressed to police, with copies sent to several government officials, including Callwood.
The acting commissioner said he was at the site Sunday when he had the boulders that had been placed there by the Wheaton estate removed. Callwood said he spoke to a representative of the Wheaton estate there, "and I told them we should sit down and resolve the matter." Callwood wasn't sure whom he had spoken to, as the area was crowded with onlookers and taxi drivers.
Callwood said the dumpsters are there until the matter can be resolved. "It's no problem removing them," he said.
William Otto, who owns David Jones Real Estate and represents the Wheaton estate, said he may have spoken to Callwood, but it wasn't one on one. Otto said he had a professional surveyor delineate the property at the request of Christine Wheaton, and that the recorded map is in McConnell's office. It shows the property in question as belonging to the Wheaton estate, he said.
McConnell said Wednesday that Callwood had not contacted him yet, but that he would be in a better position to comment after speaking with him.
The Wheaton estate has been embroiled for months in a controversy over vendors who have set up at the Drake's Seat overlook on property also said to be owned by the estate.

The V.I. Police Department's Firearms Bureau will be closed in the morning Thursday, and all day Friday and Monday.
The bureau will be closed from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Thursday for training purposes, according to a police statement. Friday and Monday are set aside for unspecified court procedures. Regular office hours resume Tuesday.

James O'Bryan Jr., special assistant to Gov. Charles W. Turnbull, clarified on Wednesday remarks made earlier this week, when he told the Source that the V.I. government has wound up with a Fiscal Year 2000 budget surplus of $20 million. That is not, he said, "a hard and fast number."
At a Jan. 24 cabinet meeting on St. John, O'Bryan said Tuesday, Finance Commissioner Bernice Turnbull indicated that a preliminary review of government accounts for FY 2000 found a surplus. O'Bryan was eager to make sure the public understands that is a preliminary figure and is subject to change.
"What I want to emphasize is that it's a cash surplus," he said. "We ended the fiscal year with monies in the bank against bills still in the system. But the books are not closed, and we are still anticipating other bills coming in."
He said Gov. Turnbull did not want to announce the surplus during last week's State of the Territory address for fear of misleading the public. "The governor didn't want to make that kind of statement, because we know there are too many variables that could change," he said.
A number of factors may have led to the government being in the black for now, he said. "For one thing, we are coming out of a (teachers') strike during which monies were not paid," O'Bryan said.
A budget surplus would mean that deficit spending has been reversed for the first time in many years. "It does appear that the government ended the fiscal year in better financial condition than it had in several years," O'Bryan said.

Sen. Celestino White Sr., who chairs the Housing, Parks and Recreation Committee, said he will challenge an "outrageous" housing policy in the committee's first public hearing in the 24th Legislature at 6 p.m. Wednesday in the Senate chambers.
White said the tenants of public housing are being "short-changed" by the Virgin Islands Housing Authority's current rental policy. "While I was out of the Legislature, the VIHA not only threw the ceiling rent program out the window, but replaced it with a flat rent with a higher cap," he said.
During his tenure in the 20th Legislature, White said, legislation was passed allowing the VIHA to institute ceiling rents, with the understanding that there would be no increase in the cap.
"For instance," White said, "The ceiling rent for a two-bedroom apartment was increased from $511 to $568 a month, and a three-bedroom from $639 to $722."
White said the change in policy defeats the design of a home-ownership program, which is to assist tenants in saving money toward a down payment on a home or land.
Invited to testify are: Ira Hobson, commissioner of Housing, Parks and Recreation; Conrad Francois, executive director of the Virgin Island Housing Authority; and Claude Richards, executive director of the Housing Finance Authority. White's office said they had also had several calls from the public, mostly housing project residents, wanting to speak.

Frames of Mind Gallery will host a meet-the-artist reception on Friday, Feb. 9, from 5 to 8 p.m. to open painter Aphrodite's first solo show on St. John. The artist, a winter-season St. Thomas resident, will be exhibiting oils, watercolors and prints of St. John and other Caribbean images. The gallery is located in the Lumberyard complex. To learn more, call 693-8560.

When Dion Parson comes home to the Virgin Islands to perform, he brings a lot of baggage. It goes with the territory when you're a drummer.
But when he heads back home to New York, he travels light.
That's because he leaves his drums behind – by design.
"It started two years ago," Parson says. "Every time I come home, I donate a set of my drums to a school." He's given sets to Eudora Kean and Charlotte Amalie High and helped Central High get a set. After Saturday night's concert at the Reichhold Center for the Arts by 21st Century, his New York-based jazz band, he'll be donating the set he uses to a school to be announced.
Each set he gives away is "the set I actually play on for the concert," he explains. "I get some drums, I tour the world with them, then, when I come back home, I leave them and go back and get a new set." While he does have some personal drums that "I would never give away," the ones he uses on tours "are drums I get for the purpose of giving them away." It's not too painful parting with them, he says, because "I have endorsement companies now" that supply the instruments he plays.
The idea of donating drums was a natural outgrowth of Parson's commitment from his college years to conducting school music workshops when he's on island. He still has this memory from when he was doing one at then-Bertha C. Boschulte Junior High School of "drums held together with strings, sticks broken." He says, matter-of-factly, "When I was a kid, I would've spent my lunch money to buy new sticks, but that's not how it is today."
Now, don't get the idea that Dion Parson is a totally selfless musician. It's important to him that he get credit where credit is due, and he makes the point in talking about 21st Century, the jazz band he and saxophonist and fellow St. Thomian Ron Blake started three years ago.
21st Century came about, Parson says, through "an ongoing process" that led to the "actual formation of the band when we did the first CD" – released in 1998 and titled simply "21st Century." The process got a jump start nine years earlier, when Blake, a graduate student at Northwestern University, and Parson, an undergrad at Rutgers, spent a week playing in a pickup quartet with fellow Virgin Islander Bryce Sebastien, in from New York, on string bass and University of the Virgin Islands faculty member Martin Lamkin on trombone.
The occasion was the Premier Virgin Islands Jazz Festival, which had saxophonist Gary Bartz as one of the headliners. Blake and Parson sat in with the Bartz trio and a relationship resulted which has continued through the years.
Parson, son of the late Niels "Sonny" Parson and Winifred Sullivan, and Blake, son of Tommy and Gwendolyn Blake, have also performed with Nancy Wilson, David Sanchez, Terence Blanchard and Diana Reeves and appear on more than 50 recordings in addition to the two 21st Century Cds to date.
On St. Thomas, 21st Century made its debut at Insomnia with Blake doing most of the introductions and fellow St. Thomian Reuben Rogers playing bass. The CD that came out soon thereafter has nine songs, three written by Blake and three by Parson. The CD itself and the spine of the plastic jacket read simply "21st Century / Dion Parson and Ron Blake." It was clearly a crediting of equals.
Now, things have changed.
The concert Saturday night is officially called "Dion Parson Project 2001 with 21st Century and Ron Blake on Sax."
"It's my band," Parson says. "I'm the band leader. Ron is the featured artist of the band."
The new album, recorded in New York last March, is titled "People Music." The cover is a photograph of drums, with the title words across the top and "Dion Parson" in capital letters and "featuring the 21st Century Band" in smaller letters across the bottom.
Although Saturday is the official release date for the album, Parson will be at the Modern Music store in Nisky Center at 6 p.m. on Friday to sign copies – and sell his own "Musicwear" line of T-shirts and hats. "The Musicwear logo is the logo for both 21st Century and for Dion Parson," he says. "It doesn't say either; it promotes the band and it promotes me."
The other members of the band are Carlton Holmes (piano), St. Thomian Reuben Rogers (bass), Ron Jackson (guitar), Robert Thomas Jr. (percussion), Denise Jannah (vocals) and St. Thomian Rashawn Ross (trumpet).
All "have some kind of Caribbean connections or tropical descent," Parson says. Thomas is from the Bahamas, Jackson is from the Philippines and Holmes is someone he has known "for 10 years, since I've been in NewYork; I just introduced him to Jon Lucien and they've been having a wonderful time."
What's on the new album
For "People Music," Parson says, he "basically wrote eight of the nine songs (he composes at the piano), did all of the pre-production, designed the graphics myself." He offers these brief descriptions of the tracks:
– "'Promise to the Future' is a song about a world filled with laughter where our kids can grow strong … Music is the answer." Although he's not a parent, he says, "I have personal meanings behind it." The song was "written for kids and parents. You do what you have to do today so tomorrow will be better."
As explanation, he offers: "When I was a kid, I used to have constant dreams, used to see stadiums with hundreds of thousands of people going berserk. I would always see them from behind drums, a band playing." That was odd, he says, because at that time "I wasn't even playing drums. I was playing trombone." The dreams, he recalls, "stopped once I got into playing the drums."
– "'The River Rolls On' is the song (St. Thomas jazz vocalist) Cynthia Saunders did at last year's Reichhold concert. She recorded it on her CD that just came out. Jon Lucien produced the CD, and I was a part of that."
– "'Little Melonae' is a song that sax player Jackie McClean wrote for his daughter … I just couldn't get it out of my head, so I made an arrangement."
– "'Mellow D' I kinda wrote for myself. It's a reggae song, nice vibes."
– "'Lullaby for Belle' I wrote for a very dear friend of mine when she had gotten sick."
– "'To Us' is one my guitar player wrote when he was 19 years old; it's a contemporary fusion song."
– "'N.G.P., for Sonny' is my father's initials. It's my tribute to my father, who passed away last year. Niels Gerald Parson – on St. Thomas, everybody called him ‘Sonny P.'" Although his mother "knows my every more," he adds, "she doesn't know I wrote the song for my father, since nobody has heard this new CD."
– "Brazilia" is a samba he wrote after playing for a week in Rio de Janeiro and "checking out Brazilian rhythms, then hanging out in New York with newfound friends from Brazil."
– "'Child's Play' is a soca with a little twist, in six beats to the bar. I experimented with organ, a 12-string guitar and different instruments, trying to get different sounds."
Parson says he took up drums because "I had no choice. I got a lot of resistance, but every time I couldn't play the drums, the more I heard ‘no,' the more I said ‘yes!'"
Leroy Trotman was his music teacher in elementary and junior high school. Austin Venzen taught him at Charlotte Amalie until his senior year, when Georgia Francis took over the band. "My main influence was all the drummers who played in the calypso bands," he recalls, citing Freddie Canton, Lenny Monsanto, Alvin Baptiste,
Tommy Pilgrim. "They're the guys I first heard. None of them are really jazz drummers."
But the early jazz influences were there. "Seeing people do it made it more intriguing," he recalls. "I had no idea what it took." At 15, he was playing with pianists Louis Taylor, Roan Creque and the late Windsor Rhoden, "who took me under his wing."
The making of musicians
He and Blake, who is two years older and attended high school at the Interlochen Academy in Michigan, didn't meet until Parson's junior hear in high school. "One day I was playing at Magens Point with Windsor Rhoden, and Ron's father dropped him off. That's where I met Gary Bartz, who was just back from the Berlin Jazz Festival."
After getting a degree in music education from Rutgers, Parson moved to New York, and when Blake, too, made the move in the early 1990s, they became roommates for a year.
Parson got to know Rogers, several years his junior, while teaching in band programs on St. Thomas. "When I first met Reuben, he was a clarinet player. He doesn't like anybody to know it. To go from clarinet to the bass is a wonderful thing – he's a natural."
Ross "is one of the kids I used to teach in summer workshops. He just graduated from Berklee (School of Music in Boston). Now he says, ‘Man, all that stuff you and Ron used to tell me about music, I didn't take you seriously, but it's true.' He turned out to be one of the kids that took our advice and made it work for him." One element of that advice was, "You've got to prove yourself. You can't graduate with a music degree with a 4-point-0 and get a job."
In addition to his work in 21st Century, Parson performs regularly with pianist Joanne Brakeen (and recently performed in Isreal with her); Jon Faddis, director of the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band; and flautist Sherry Winston. On Fridays, he's got a regular gig at St. Nich's Pub, "one of the last remaining organ clubs in Harlem," where he plays in the Bill Saxton organ trio. His 2001 calendar includes playing in South Africa in March with Fatimah Benjamin, and in Paris and Corsica in May with a French band.
One thing Parson would like his home community to know is that "St. Thomas is a very rich culture musically. I travel the world, I hear about it. I've never been anywhere that I haven't met somebody who's been there and loved it and wants to go back."
Concert time Saturday is 8 p.m. Tickets are $25 in the covered section and $18 in the open air. They're available at Krystal & Gifts Galore, Modern Music/Havensight, Parrot Fish Music, the UVI bookstore and the Reichhold box office on St. Thomas, and at Connections on St. John. For charge card purchases, call 693-1559.