Cultural Preservation Society, Inc.

Special Meeting

January 28, 2003

Mayor Weekly’s office at City Hall

In attendance:

Mayor J. Weekly

Myra Hernandez

Raymond Archer

Isaac Valdes

Ann Summers

Sabrina Liguori

Jan Nelson

Barb Winko

Wink

Mike Liguori

Ed Woolford

The meeting began at 10:10 a.m. in the Mayor’s office. Isaac began the meeting with introductions of the new Board members to the Mayor and Myra.

Isaac wanted to let the Mayor know what a good job Myra and Raymond are doing. They have been trying to work with us to solve the issue of the cruise ships in port when we are occupying the pier. We all realize what a difficult job it is to coordinate the security, ships and CPS all at one time. Isaac asks the Mayor what we as a group can do to help with the issues at hand. The Mayor advised us that the City is going to try and work out some meetings for Key West citizens to have input on how they feel about the ships and asked us to come and participate in the meeting. Some of the items to be discussed are the generators on the ships, the PA systems and the black smoke coming from the ships. We said we would like to attend.

We wanted the Mayor and other City officials to know that we as a group are not opposed to the cruise ships in general, only when they are in port and block the sunset. We discussed how many complaints we receive from visitors from all over the world when they come to see the sunset and instead see huge ship. The ships not only affect our participants, but they affect people who have traveled many miles looking forward to attending the historic sunset celebration. We all agreed that we need to work closely together to keep tourist coming to Key West. We are a good draw for the City and we want to continue to be in that position.

Jan brought up the fact that we are trying to start discussions now about next years schedules. If we get an early start we can probably be better prepared for what it to come in 2004. Of course, now that the time is moving to a later set up for us the problem will pretty much correct itself for the remainder of this year.

The Mayor advised that Last Stand and another agency had agreed that 260 ships could be allowed into port in Key West and so far they have only had 164 in any given year. But now is the time to start doing the studies to see how they are affecting us and if the City should lower the number of ships coming in. This will all be discussed at the upcoming summit.

Myra asked if other boats entering Key West contributed to any water quality damage. Mayor Weekly advised that Julio would be looking into that in the near future.

Eddie brought up the fact that the security barricades are what is affecting us the most right now. We understand that the Federal and State have set up many guidelines regarding the security of the ships in port and that they (the city) have to abide by their decision. Raymond stated he has just returned from Tallahassee where he spoke to the Senate and tried to explain that even though Key West is a port it is also a place where people come from all over the world to attend the happenings at Mallory Square. They want to be able to enjoy the water from up close and not be barricaded away from it. He is trying very hard to assist in keeping Mallory as open as possible, considering the problems in American today. One thing he is doing is telling the ships that want to come in to port that they must leave one hour before sunset, even though our lease states 45 minutes. This give a little wiggle room in case something comes up and they are late leaving. Raymond agrees that when ships are in port we can continue to use the plaza. Jan explains that when some of the food vendors set up in the plaza, and then the ship leaves, it is hard for them to move their cart once it has been set up. Raymond agreed that they could remain in the plaza under those circumstances.

Isaac brought up the fact that the new board wanted to work closely with all concerned on the tough issues coming up. He also advised that only Board members could represent CPS and when that took place it would always be two of them. If others come to complain or attack, there is nothing we can do to stop them but to rest assured that they do no represent CPS.

We also discussed some complaints that the City has recently received. All were in agreement that it is thought that they are coming from within CPS since they never leave a name or number to confirm with. We understand that we have some discontent within the organization and we are trying to get a handle on it and get things moving in the right direction. We can’t always make everyone happy all of the time. But, things are getting better.

We discussed our set up spaces and have set up a meeting with Myra to review them again. We all understand we are not in compliance with our lease and want to correct that problem. We have a number of problems we are currently working on and there is resistance from a few, but we will continue to make strides for a better union with the City. We talked about our Pier Manager and the Board controlling what takes place at Mallory. It is our responsibility to manage all of our participants and performers and they must work with us so we will not self destruct our organization. The Board will discuss this further and advise the Pier Manager to tighten up and get things running like they should.

Raymond and Myra agreed that our guidelines need a lot of work on them. We want to prevent law suits where possible and yet keep our spirit on sunset alive. We will begin working on revisions and Myra has some things that the City would like included in them. A suggestion was made to change the heading of the guidelines to “Operating Procedures”. Since these are a part of the lease and adopted by the City Commission they are actually law. We must adhere to them. That is another reason to work on them and get them cleaned up and more up to date with today’s society.

We will be working with Myra to submit a Plan A and a Plan B for set up spaces.

Plan A will be a set up diagram we will use when there are no ships in port. This will be in accordance with our lease and we will have the pier manager follow it.

Plan B will be a set up diagram we will use when there is a ship tied up at Mallory. This will give us some leeway from the lease since we lose spaces up on the pier due to the barricades. This diagram will only be used when ships are in. No exceptions.

Isaac and the other Board members believed this was a very good meeting and look forward to continuing a close working relationship with our City personnel.