Island isn't beginning to look a lot like Christmas

The photos of Wisteria Island in Tom Oosterhoudt's Conch Color newspaper should outrage anyone who cares about the last undeveloped places here in the Keys.

Mountains of trash, beer bottles, boat engines? This circle of Navy landfill, also known as Christmas Tree Island, is obviously no wildlife sanctuary or marine park.

The point is that it could be and should be. With sound planning and a modest public investment, water sport operators could make this place a convenient staging area. Flats guides and their customers could take lunch breaks there. Couples could get married in front of stunning sunset views of the fabled West of Key West backcountry. Eco-tourists could stroll on nature trails.

The implication of Oosterhoudt's two-page spread is that the only solution to the trash problem is to develop the island. Making that link is almost as outrageous as the trash itself.

If public authorities won't bother to provide law enforcement, or a property owner won't maintain his property, the reward should not be to plop down condominiums or McMansions to raise more dollars for the people who shirked their responsibilities in the first place.

There's another way to clean up the island, and that's to convert it into a marine park. Private businesses could pay rent to utilize it. Locals would take their relatives there. We'd be lauded in the national media for our foresight.

Would the City of Key West, Monroe County or whoever ends up with the island get rich? Richer is a more accurate term, given the burgeoning 100K salary club. No. The revenues would never match the tract-mansion tax dollars. But since when is making money the reason we set up governments, local or otherwise?

We pay planning departments and we elect commissioners to plan our collective future. They work for us whether we're wealthy, struggling or destitute. One person, one vote. That, unfortunately, is not how our community is working at the moment.

While average citizens scurry from work to get their tree-removal applications in before the permit department closes, the developers and their lawyers feel no such pressure. They hobnob with staff members and elected officials. They know their secret nicknames and possibly their secrets.

Can't get someone to pay your $500-an-hour lawyer fee to come to a public meeting? Just have your government pal read your litigation threat into the record. And the lawyers. They're certain they know who is qualified for public service and who is not, and they are not afraid to say so.

Behind this bitter portrayal of the current morass is faith, possibly naive, that reason will prevail and not every patch of sand, rock or invasive trees will inevitably be tossed to the highest bidder. Some land can and should be set aside to improve the place we live, with reasonable taxpayer investments and regulations on property owners.

Even members of the gated-community crowd are spotted now and then strolling on the sand of Smathers Beach or the wooden walkway of the Key West Bight. Why not among the trees of Christmas Tree Island Marine Park?

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist — a Republican of the National Public Radio rather than Rush Limbaugh ilk — gets it. The Florida Keys are a respite from the coconut-palm-manicured-lawn-gated-condo-super-highway-shopping-mall madness of mainland Florida.

Thank goodness for Crist's Department of Community Affairs for coming down on the right side of our identity crisis.

It's this identity crisis that underscores most of the public issues that confront us today. Some residents would like to go far beyond the laudable and long-overdue goal of cleaning up after ourselves. They drive down U.S. 1 and see not one of America's wild treasures with a rich history, but boring mangroves and weathered, old buildings. Why not sod, palm trees and fresh stucco? They ask this quite literally.

There is no law or passage in the U.S. Constitution that will tell us who is right in this identity crisis. That's because there is no right or wrong. The decisions are a matter of choice. Are we Michael Bolton or The Rolling Stones, loveably rough around the edges?

Maybe the stature of the Stones ought to point the way. We need some satisfaction, and a good place to start might be Christmas Tree Island.

Ben Iannotta is a freelance journalist and flats fishing guide. He can be reached at biannotta@aol.com.