For the second time this week the change of ownership of a Virgin Islands business has meant the firing of a sizeable number of workers.
A wave of bad news struck food and beverage employees of Bluebeard’s Castle Hotel on Tuesday afternoon. That’s when their union was notified that the workers are being let go under the new ownership of the hotel.
The workers are represented by the United Steelworkers Union, and International Representative Randolph Allen said Wednesday evening the poor performance of the restaurant at Bluebeard’s Castle in recent times has led the new owners to sublet it to another company.
"They have terminated 19 employees and will now lease it to a new company," Allen said. The new owners have not met the affected workers and there has been no indication whether the fired workers will be re-hired, he added.
According to Allen, the workers are being paid severance and other benefits in accordance with the collective bargaining agreement, but he suggested that the terminations are not in keeping with the purpose of the years of tax exemptions the hotel has enjoyed as a beneficiary of the Industrial Development Program.
"Bluebeard’s has enjoyed benefits for 45 years," Allen said. "A new company comes in and displaces the employees in the height of the holiday season. This is not in keeping with the purpose of the IDC program whose ultimate goal is to secure employment for Virgin Islanders."
He assailed the ownership of Bluebeard’s Castle for not caring about the employees' welfare or ability to survive. "The Virgin Islands has no claim on the years that this company has enjoyed tax exemptions…when things get hard, they send home the employees."
Bluebeard's is the second major jobs setback this week. On Monday, V.I. Cement and Building Products, also an IDC beneficiary, terminated more than 40 workers under new ownership. Those workers also were represented by the Steelworkers Union. Reportedly, half have been rehired as new employees.
The union hopes it will win additional benefits for the workers under the territory’s plant closing law. However, the new company reportedly is maintaining that the changeover is not a plant closing.
The key difference between the companies that laid off workers this week is that Bluebeard’s Castle continues to enjoy IDC benefits while V.I. Cement and Building Products' tax exemption certificate expired in 1999.

Virgin Islands Ecotours offers an up-close look at the sea creatures living in the mangrove lagoon on St. Thomas' East End. The area is a marine sanctuary. But it's also an eyesore.
Before reaching the pristine waters, visitors must first propel their sea kayak through an area littered with sunken vessels and debris.
Now the lagoon area has been targeted for revitalization by a group of concerned businessmen. A non-profit organization, Mangrove Lagoon Waterway Village and Eco Preserve, has been formed to save the region.
Jimmy Loveland, a spokesman for the group, said, "We must save this estuary for future generations to enjoy. This is a sensitive area and it must be cleaned up before permanent damage is done."
The group has put a plan into place and will host a high profile promotion designed to raise needed funds, draw visitors and stimulate the economy in that area.
On Friday and Saturday evenings, from 6 p.m. to Midnight, patrons can park in any number of designated areas and ride a ferry to the restaurant or pub of their choice. One of the main parking areas is Compass Point Marina, one of five designated ferry stops.
The $5 ferry charge is good for the entire evening and includes two complimentary Cruzan Rum drinks. Cuisine along the ferry route includes American, Cuban, Japanese, Caribbean, German and more. Restaurants already committed are Raffles and Hemingways at Compass Point, Bottoms Up, Ernie's, Schnitzel Haus, Sushi by Sato and Sea Side Inn.
Premier Wine & Spirits is also a participating sponsor.
"This waterway village can be an asset to the community," said Loveland, "Our attention and energies are directed toward making this a safe area in which to work, play and do business, particularly in the evening hours."
Loveland said a revitalization of this district will create economic benefits that are not now available.
It will encourage merchants to extend evening business hours, thereby creating jobs for the community and promoting a sense of pride in an area not frequented by tourists and residents after dark. Incentives offered by merchants and restaurants in the area will be designed to draw residents and visitors alike and encourage them to spend their money on an enjoyable evening of dining and entertainment offered in that area.
"And while we'll be raising funds to clean up the lagoon while passengers on the ferry will have a first hand look at the area they are helping to save, " Loveland said.
Ongoing promotions and events must include outreach and support from the business community. Participating members of the Mangrove Lagoon Waterway Village and Eco Preserve feel that if business takes the initiative, the community will be more receptive to new ideas.
According to Loveland, "This promotional event is expected to draw residents, visitors and families to share our cultural gifts and the beauty of our islands."
It's an excellent opportunity to showcase the multi-ethnic population of our island. "We are committed to being a vital part of the revitalization of the mangrove lagoons and we encourage everyone to show their support by attending these special events," Loveland concluded.
For information on how you can help call 775-9500.

Popular blues and jazz singer Leeolive Tucker has made a decision to pack her bags and head back home to New York after many years on the St. Croix and St. Thomas entertainment scene.
Her friends will stage an informal bon voyage party on Thursday, Jan. 6, beginning at 7 p.m. at Blackbeard's Castle, a venue where she has entertained many residents and visitors over the years.
Sally Smith, one of the organizers, said "We' ll be there all evening so Leeolive can say goodbye to her fellow entertainers and friends, and especially to her friends at V.I. Find, a non-profit organization very close to her heart."
Tucker said she' s returning to her roots in New York City's Harlem, where her family still lives. " lost my mother just before Christmas," said Tucker, " and that helped me make up my mind to go back home."
But, she said, it is with bittersweet feelings that she leaves the island.
"While I' ll miss St. Thomas and my friends, associates, fellow musicians, poets and everyone I met — especially the audience who has always embraced me — I must enter this new phase of my life. It' s time for me to move on. I have to get back to my poetry and I must record my songs."
Friends can drop by Blackbeard' s on Thursday evening from 7 p.m. until closing to bid her a fond farewell.
For information call Sally Smith at 777-5467.

My fifteen year old cousin, Nate, wanted to know, "How does a young woman who never saw a black person until she was seventeen get involved in the Civil Rights Movement?" (I grew up in a totally segregated rural area of northeastern Ohio.) "Where did you get the interest and the passion?" Good questions that brought back a lot of memories; resulting in this writing.
My first awakening experience came in the summer of 1962 when a campus Christian group held a conference at a lake resort in Wisconsin. I was with a racially mixed group of college students who went into a drug store in the small town to have lunch at the counter. The black students were refused service and told to leave the store. The whole conference spent the rest of our time discussing Civil Rights.
My senior year at Bowling Green State College in Ohio, I was asked to room with a black student. The college was about to lose federal funding because they had no integrated student housing. So Mattie Hayes and I roomed together for one semester and in that one room was the beginning of a great friendship and justification for federal funding!
After graduation I went to a seminary north of Boston to study religion. One of my professors, Harvey Cox, was a well-known theologian involved in the organization of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with Dr. Martin Luther King. In the fall of 1963 he and five other Boston area ministers were arrested for demonstrating in a small town in eastern North Carolina.
The call went out for students to go south. As we were getting organized, John F. Kennedy was shot and killed in Dallas. In spite of a moratorium declared by the civil rights organizations for the mourning period, twelve of us made the fourteen-hour trek from Boston to North Carolina in three cars. I was wedged between two other students in the back of a Volkswagen Beetle. We had replaced the back of the seat with our duffel bags.
The trip may have paralyzed our bodies but it was an eye-opener. Two of the five students in our car were black and we vowed that we were not going to eat in segregated facilities. After we passed the Mason Dixon line we had to give that up real fast. The black students could only get food at restaurants if they went around to the back window so we all did that. Finding bathroom facilities was particularly difficult.
We staggered out of our cars at the home of a young black woman in Williamston, N.C. before 7 a.m. Andrew Young was asleep on the couch and Jessie Jackson was taking a shower. By the time we got our much needed coffee, a man arrived to 'read the water meter' and count the heads and check out the mixed up colors of these horrible northerners who had come into his little town where life had been just fine until we got there!
Williamston was a small city of 6,000 people –– about half black. It is located in an area of North Carolina that resembles the deep south with the chief industries being peanuts, lumber and tobacco. It was considered one of the worst sites for racial discrimination and it was felt that when integration came to Williamston, as the county seat of Martin County, it would also come to all of North Carolina.
Black sections were spread throughout the town and evidenced by lack of sidewalks and sub-standard housing. The schools were still completely segregated although it had been ten years since the Supreme Court ruling on Brown Vs. the Board of Education. All restaurants, lunch counters and other public accommodations such as the swimming pool and library were "white only".
In the spring of 1963, the SCLC sent a field secretary, Golden Frinks, to organize school boycotts, public demonstrations (resulting in a city ordinance banning them), sit-ins and an all out boycott of the downtown stores. Williamston had the usual long record of police brutality toward blacks, with beatings, cattle prods and general harassment playing a large part in every demonstration. Little progress was being made in spite of the establishment of a mixed race "Citizens Council".
The Ku Klux Klan was active in town and frequently held rallies. The major source of employment was the peanut factory, which was owned by the mayor. Many people had lost their jobs for participating in the movement or trying to register to vote. Surplus food distributions had been cut off and the welfare lists were drastically reduced.
The Boston area ministers answered a distress call by sending food and clothing and generally adopting the area. We were the first outsiders who were not clergy to come into Williamston in what they considered ‘‘large numbers’’ and they were extremely threatened by our presence.
Part two: Sit-in at a restaurant and going to jail

All but one section of the last bill passed by the Virgin Islands Senate in the 20th century was signed by Gov. Charles Turnbull Tuesday.
Turnbull vetoed a section of bill 23-0193, which was approved by the Senate on Dec. 15, the last session of 1999. At the session senators tacked on several amendments to a zoning bill.
In his transmittal letter to Senate President Vargrave Richards, Turnbull said he vetoed one section of the bill because it sought to change the way the government’s recent $300 million bond issue would be distributed.
The vetoed section would have increased the amount for working capital from $74 million to $75 million and added language to allow for the payment of $1 million of the V.I. Housing Finance Authority debt. The section would have also reduced the amount authorized for vendor payments.
Turnbull also said the vetoed section would have made the VIHFA and other government agencies "potential recipients of bond proceeds."
"As written, the amendment reallocates bond proceeds and places no limit on the amount of money that could be committed to these entities," Turnbull wrote. "Hence, in addition to the fact that the amount authorized for vendor payments has already been committed, this ambiguity creates a substantial change to the circumstances as they existed at the time we closed the bond deal.
"More importantly," Turnbull said, "bond counsel has informed us that any reprogramming of bond monies or a change in the recipients would create a situation which violates the terms of the bond documents."
Of the $300 million in bonds, some $136 million will go toward tax refunds, $46 million to pay vendors, $30 million for bonding services and escrow, $30 million to pay Banco Popular and $15 million to pay the government retirement fund. The balance will be used for covering payroll expenses.
Turnbull did sign the bill that bestows the Virgin Islands Medal of Honor on Judge Verne A. Hodge. The bill was proposed by Sen. Judy Gomez.
Hodge, who retired last November as presiding judge of Territorial Court — a position he held since the court was created in 1976 — was cited for his myriad accomplishments in the courtroom and the community.
One of his best-known contributions was the creation of the V.I. Territorial Court Rising Stars Youth Steel Orchestra, which has won national and international recognition.

The Public Works Department will be picking up discarded furniture and appliances on St. John on Tuesday, Jan. 11.
Public Works Deputy Commissioner Ira Wade said there will be two collections sites and they will be in operation from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.
There will be a 30-cubic-yard bin at the Pine Peace site, Wade said, with a backhoe available to load heavy and bulk items into it.
In Coral Bay, a bin will be in place at the junction of Route 107 and King’s Hill Road near the old Joe’s Discount store.
The bulk waste collection day is part of a Public Works effort to relieve the burden placed on public and private sanitation crews since the Susannaberg transfer station was closed in mid-November.
Wade said only furniture and appliances may be dropped off at the bins on Jan. 11; garbage and trash will not be accepted.
With the transfer station closed, Wade said, people who would have taken their furniture and construction waste there have been putting them into roadside bins that are not intended for such use. The bulk waste pickup is intended to encourage the public to discontinue that practice.

Some 800 customers of the V.I. Telephone Corp. on St. Croix went without phone service for the second day Wednesday.
On Tuesday, Vitelco President Samuel Ebbesen said about 800 phone customers in Estates Carlton, Whim and Two Williams were affected by a problem with a cable. Ebbesen blamed the trouble on Hurricane Lenny, which hit the territory on Nov. 17, and recent rains on St. Croix.
Vitelco spokeswoman Katrina Comissiong said the company hoped to have service restored by the end of Wednesday.
"We expect to complete repairs on that particular cable by this evening," she said.

One of the two bodies recovered from the sea off St. Croix over the New Year’s holiday has been identified as Jian Quan, a Chinese citizen who attempted to enter the United States illegally.
Deputy Police Chief Novelle Francis said Quan, 35, drowned while attempting to illegally enter the country from a boat with 25 other Chinese immigrants early last Thursday. The group of immigrants was picked up by police after an officer spotted them in Sally’s Fancy. Quan’s body was recovered by police near Point Udall later on Thursday.
A second body was recovered from the sea in the same area on Sunday morning. But Francis said investigators aren’t sure if the individual was part of the group trying to come ashore at Isaac Bay. Identification of the individual has been hampered by the advanced stage of decomposition, Francis said.
Both men had drowned, according to an autopsy. Quan’s body was identified using a photograph, Francis said.
Meanwhile, seven of the 25 Chinese immigrants are being held separately as police investigate the deaths of Quan and the unidentified man. On Tuesday U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeffrey Resnick said he would appoint a private attorney for each of the seven men. An arraignment hearing is scheduled for 9:30 a.m. Thursday. The 17 remaining men, plus one minor, were turned over to the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Sandy Meyer arrives on St. Thomas next week for her annual watercolor exhibition at the Tillett Gallery and two days of watercolor workshops on Thursday and Friday, Jan. 13 and 14, in the Tillett Gardens complex.
Her show will open with a reception before, at the intermission of, and following the Siegel-Schwall Blues Band concert in the garden on Wednesday, Jan. 12. That will be open to concertgoers only, but the works will be on display through the end of the month and open to public viewing during regular gallery hours — daily except Sunday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
The two watercolor workshops Meyer will conduct on Friday and Saturday are open to experienced and beginning painters alike, with artists working at their own skill levels under her supervision. Participants may attend either day, or both. Each individual will complete a painting by day's end in either case.
Workshop hours are 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. both days. Registration is $30 for one day (either Friday or Saturday) or $50 for both; the fee does not include the cost of materials. Because space is limited, pre-registration is requested. For reservations or more information, call 775-1929, fax to 775-9482 or e-mail to tillett@islands.vi.
Meyer, a Nebraska resident, takes island images home with her each winter and returns a year later with paintings of local flora, fauna, places and people. Meticulous detail characterizes her works, which also include florals and landscapes depicting the American Midwest.

The Siegel-Schwall Blues Band, which came of age in Chicago in the '60s, takes the spotlight in the Westin Resort ballroom for a St. John School of the Arts concert. The band features three of its original four members, plus legendary drummer Sam Lay. Tickets are $35 with a $25 rate for students. For more information, click on Arts/Entertainment/Music. For more information and reservations, call 779-4322 or 776-6777.