Nov. 8, 2001 – You know what they say: There's no such thing as a free lunch.
Case in point: There'll be free pizza Sunday at Hull Bay Hideaway, but it comes with a price.
The beachfront restaurant and bar is hosting a Hull Bay beach cleanup Sunday from 7 a.m. "until," and the management needs all the help it can get. So, "Bring shovels, rakes and gloves," co-owner David Stuedell says. There'll be "a free pizza slice for those who turn in a bag of trash." The bags will be supplied.
And just to keep all the volunteers in motion, the Sun Kings will provide live music from 4 to 7 p.m.
For more information, call 777-1898 or e-mail to Hull Bay Hideaway.

Lecture series on international relations on St. Croix
Lecture series on international relations on St. Croix UVI's Social Sciences Division continues in the series of scholarly lectures in St. Croix at 5:30 p.m. Nov 9 in the Evans Center room 401. Lecturer Rafael M. Hernandez Rodriguez, who founded the Center for American Studies in Havana, Cuba and presently holds a position at the Institute of Caribbean Studies at the University of Puerto Rico will present the topic "U.S. Cuban Relations." Hernandez is an expert on Cuban-US relations, inter-American relations, international relations, international security, migration and Cuban culture and society. For more information please call Aletha Baumann at 692-4117.
Agriculture and Food Fair
The 20th Annual St. Thomas/St. John Agriculture and Food Fair will held starting at 9 a.m. Friday Nov. 16 until 1 p.m. and continuing at 10 a.m. Sat. Nov. 17 and Sun. Nov. 18 on the grounds of the Reichhold Center for the Arts. Friday will beh an agricultural day filled with free workshops and prizes . Saturday's events will include a variety of foods, door prizes and entertainment, including the P''Your Passion band and the opening ceremony. Sunday's entertainment will include the gospel group "Friends" the St. Andrew's church wind ensemble, the Rising Stars and contests such as the heaviest pumpkin and the heaviest turkey. Tickets are $2 for those 12 years and older and 50 cents for all others. For more information contact Carlos Robles at 693-1083 or 774-5182.
Jazz ensemble concert cancelled
Jazz ensemble concert The UVI Music Department regrets to inform the public that the Jazz ensemble concert scheduled for Saturday, Nov. 10, 2001 is cancelled. Ticket holders may call the music department at 693-1194 with any concerns.
SBA & SBDC seminar
The Small Business Administration and the Small Business Development Center will conduct a seminar entitled "What can we do for you" from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 14 in St. John and from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 15 on St. Thomas. Admission is free, but attendance is limited. To pre-register and for additional information call 776-3206.
A pumpkin extravaganza
UVI's Cooperative Extension Service will hold a free workshop on St. Croix entitled "Pumpkin Pie and Bread" from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 14 and 15 in the UVI Research and Extension center, Room 134. For further information call 692-4083 or 692-4094.
The UVI Little Theatre presents Sophocles' Oedipus
It is that time again! UVI Little Theatre time again! The UVI Theatre is staging a modern adaptation of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex by UVI Theatre Professor Michael Prenevost. The show opens at 8 p.m. Nov. 30 followed by a matinee at 2 p.m. Dec. 1. Additionally performances are scheduled for 8 p.m. Dec. 2 and 3 at. All performances will be staged in the UVI Little Theatre, second floor of the Classroom Administration building. General admission tickets for $10 and student tickets for $5 will go on sale Monday, Nov. 12 at Dockside Bookstore, Nisky Pharmacy, Humanities Building and the UVI Bookstore, in the Fitness Center.
Portraits by Hilda Joyce
The Reichhold Center for the Arts presents "Images in Charcoal," portraits presented in full range graphite texture on display in the Reichhold Gallery during the month of November. The Reichhold Gallery is open during each performance intermission and from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. For more information, call 693-1550.
For more on the University of the Virgin Islands, visit the website at www.uvi.edu.

Nov. 8, 2001 – The Senate spent Wednesday afternoon — Day 2 of its three-day session — approving bills to honor nine Virgin Islanders and measures to encourage commercial aquaculture, regulate relations between student athletes and their agents, and require that real people answer government office telephones.
The session did not convene until 1:30 p.m. so as to allow members to attend a funeral on St. Croix.
Although Senate President Almando "Rocky" Liburd tried to move the legislation quickly, his efforts were thwarted by senators who kept popping up from off the floor to get in their allotted three minutes praising the honorees, all of whose honorific bills received unanimous approval.
Some senators couldn't resist using a part of their time to take digs at one another and the administration of Gov. Charles W. Turnbull. The governor's recently announced mammoth pay raises for top administration officials proved to be a favorite topic.
Approved were bills to:
– Name the Office of Veterans Affairs building on St. Croix for Eryle Rohlsen, a 30-year member of the American Legion and government director of Veterans Affairs for more than 20 years.
– Name the Agriculture Department's St. Croix headquarters for Rudolph Shulterbrandt, former Agriculture commissioner during two administrations, who is credited with establishing the annual agriculture and food fairs on St. Thomas and St. Croix which have become popular traditions.
– Honor Michael Rodriquez, a former Territorial Court and District Court reporter and local entrepreneur who is now a reporter in a District Court in Virginia. Senators praised his community contributions, which have included providing thousands of dollars for the Michael Rodriquez Scholarship, which has been awarded to 12 students since 1986. Sen. Donald "Ducks" Cole, the bill's sponsor, noted Rodriquez is ranked as the sixth-fastest typist in the world.
– Honor Glen "Kimble" O. Williams for his accomplishments in basketball and his induction into the 1999 St. John's University Athletic Hall of Fame.
– Honor attorney Wilma A. Lewis for her contributions to the U.S. legal profession and for being an inspiration to all African-Americans. Lewis has held several prestigious legal positions in the federal government including inspector general of the Department of the Interior and U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia.
– Honor Georgia Francis for her contributions to music in the territory. Francis formerly taught music at Lockhart Elementary School, Bertha C. Boschulte Junior High School and the University of the Virgin Islands and for many years has directed the instrumental music program at Charlotte Amalie High School. She has received many service awards from community organizations.
– Name the ballpark opposite Fort Frederik in Frederiksted the Midre Almeric Cummings Recreational and Youth Facility. Cummings is a member of the 2001 World Series champion Arizona Diamondbacks. He scored the tying run in the seventh game of the series as a pinch runner.
– Honor former Lt. Gov. Henry Millin for his outstanding service and contributions through the V.I. Housing Authority. As executive director of VIHA, Millin was honored by President John F. Kennedy for administering one of the best of 1,300 housing authorities under the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Sen. Lorraine Berry and seven of her colleagues added a last-minute bill to the agenda to honor the late Mark C. Marin, headmaster of Antilles School until his death on July 25, and to create a "Mark C. Marin Donor Identification Card" to register people as organ donors with the Health Department. Marin was an avid proponent of organ donation and, in keeping with his wishes, family members arranged for the donation of his eyes, heart, lungs and kidneys.
The senators were as one in their praise of Marin. Sen. David Jones said, "This is a great gesture. He gave of his time and talent to his community." Cole added, "Mark Marin believed in children and their future. He believed in nurturing the whole child. Antilles will sorely miss him."
The lawmakers also passed bills to:
– Create a Commission on Aquaculture and Mariculture to study and develop a comprehensive plan for aquaculture in the Virgin Islands, a measure sponsored by Cole and Liburd. The commission would work with federal agencies and have 18 months to develop a plan to promote aquaculture and mariculture.
Liburd said, "I hope we can develop a whelks farm, so that we can grow it as a delicacy. We need to start branching out and using our innovative ideas."
Sen. Emmett Hansen II agreed. "We need more innovative economic stimuli legislation," he said. "For far too long, we've done the same things and complained that we have gotten the same results."
Sen. Norman Jn. Baptiste took a somewhat different tack. "Agriculture is a big business across this nation," he said. "However, in five years' time it will not move, because of the lethargic administration." His own suggestion was that the Virgin Islands "look into canning. We can build a canning factory to export our food. This is good revenue for the territory." He did not mention what the territory could can for export.
– Create a Uniform Athletes Agents Act, which would regulate contracts between student athletes and their agents in negotiations with professional athletic organizations or for product endorsements. The bill would protect the rights of young athletes.
– Require government offices to have their telephones answered by real people instead of the automated systems used by many agencies. Sen. Celestino A. White Sr., who sponsored the legislation, said, "It's time for a living, breathing human being to answer government phones."
When he introduced the bill in committee last month, White illustrated his point by playing a tape of what it is like trying to reach someone at the Housing Authority. "If she was wearing red on Wednesday, use button four. That's no way to run an agency," he said at the time.
All senators attended Wednesday's meeting. The third day of the session was to convene at 10 a.m. Thursday, with two leases and 11 more bills on the agenda.

The presentation of the Class of 2002's Introductory Night, "A Burst of Pride Sprinkled with Glamour," will be held in the Ruth E. Thomas Auditorium.
Over 200 seniors will be formally introduced to the community.
For more information contact the school at774-0780.

The Class of 2002 Introductory Night presentation, "A Burst of Prde Sprinkled with Glamour," will be held at 7 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 17, at the Ruth E. Thomas Auditorium.
Over 200 seniors will be formally intoduced to the community.
For more information contact the school at 774-0780.

Nov. 8, 2001 — U.S. Department of Interior officials are ready to move forward with plans to build a new fire station, construct a small sewage disposal system and dredge out a dock area near the Flamingo Bay section of Water Island.
The federal officials, along with St. Thomas/Water Island Administrator Louis Hill and Planning and Natural Resources Department officials, outlined the plans Wednesday afternoon at a public meeting at Honeymoon Beach on Water Island.
About 45 people attended the meeting and, speaking over the waves crashing on the white sand of the beach, discussed details of the plans. Officials of the Interior Department's Bureau of Reclamation are ready to put the work out for bid, and construction could begin as early as January, they said. The work will take three to six months to complete, according to Bill Beller, the field engineer for the bureau who will oversee the undertaking.
The plan is the second phase of an overall project which also included demolition of the old Sea Cliff Hotel, cleanup of hazardous materials and reconstruction of the deep-water dock at Flamingo Bay. That work was completed in 1998.
The phase now beginning calls for the demolition of eight villas within the hotel complex which were largely destroyed in hurricanes. The demolition work will leave one of the foundations intact, and that's where the new fire station will be built.
The structure will include sleeping quarters, a kitchen and an office area in addition to housing for a pumper truck, and four full-time firefighters eventually will be based at there. Firefighters have never been stationed on the island before, according to Deputy Fire Chief Ira Williams. The station will not be staffed right away, he said, because personnel needs at the Dorothea and Bordeaux fire stations have a higher priority.
The planned on-site sewage disposal system will serve four of the hotel complex villas that are currently occupied plus seven other lots that could be developed in the future, according to Reclamation Bureau plans. The system will have no effluent discharge into the environment, according to David Paul, a bureau civil engineer.
The dredging work, to allow safer passage for boats in the area, will cover an area of about 500 cubic yards in front of the deep-water dock. The silt dredged up will be used as cover for the materials taken from the demolition project.
All of the work is being undertaken as part of a plan for the Department of Interior to turn its remaining land on Water Island over to the government of the Virgin Islands. The island was transferred by Interior to the local government in the Schneider administration, but certain areas remained under federal jurisdiction.
Before the transfer of the remaining land moves forward, the U.S. Army must determine whether, because of past military activity in the area, any action is needed to bring the land up to federal Environmental Protection Agency standards, according to Edgar Johnson, the desk officer for Interior's Office of Insular Affairs, which oversees actions on federal land on Water Island.
Johnson said he did not know when the Army would be making that assessment.
At Wednesday's meeting, Water Island residents asked questions and offered comments on a wide range of issues. Among them were the need for a working cistern at the fire station, concern about the reliability of the proposed sewage system, and the need to use specialized equipment to dredge out enough silt from the area in front of the dock.

The Casino Control Commission will meet at its offices at #5 Orange Grove, Christiansted.
Items on the agenda include consideration of proposed bingo regulations and ratification of casino employee and casino servicing entity licenses.

The Casino Control Commission will meet at 9:30 a.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 13, at its offices at #5 Orange Grove, Christiansted. Items on the agenda include consideration of proposed bingo regulations and ratification of casino employee and casino servicing entity licenses.

Dear Source,
The secret is out! The VI Government is flush with cash.
What else could explain the most recent Executive Order by the governor increasing salaries of administrators, commissioners, et. al.? In most jurisdictions, the chief executive gets a budgetary appropriation to pay for proposed salary increases. As these increases seem to come as a surprise to the Legislative branch, I can only assume that no such funding was included in the most recently passed budget.
But then again, who needs an appropriation? Who even needs a Legislature to approve a budget? When the Territory is flush with cash, attention need not be paid to such inconveniences.
Former Sen. Allan Paul Shatkin
Los Angeles, Calif.

Nov. l7, 2001 – Among the many provisions of the federal economic stimulus and recovery package put together by the Finance Committee of the U.S. Senate is one that could be a cash windfall for thousands of Virgin Islanders: a 2001 tax credit payment, regardless of whether they are owed a similar credit by the V.I. government.
The Finance Committee is expected to vote on the measure Thursday.
The provision would authorize the cash payout of federal income tax credits for 2001 to taxpayers across the nation who did not qualify for such credits under the terms of President George W. Bush's tax-cut package that became law last summer.
Initially, the idea was to get credit checks to people whose taxable income was too low to qualify for the payments that started going out last summer. But it has been extended now to cover every taxpayer who filed a 2000 tax return but didn't get a federal tax-credit check, including all taxpayers in the U.S. territories that have a mirror tax system — in which the same regulations apply but payment is made to the local government, not the IRS.
On Wednesday afternoon, Government House distributed a release stating that the provision would authorize "federal income tax rebates to all Virgin Islands taxpayers regardless of whether they paid or incurred any federal income tax liability," provided that they filed a Virgin Islands income tax return for 2000.
It is unclear what extending federal tax credits to the territory would mean with regard to the current Internal Revenue Bureau liability for the 2001 V.I. tax credits mandated by the law enacted last summer.
"That is one of the technical issues that the Senate Finance Committee has yet to address," attorney Peter Hebert of the V.I. government's Washington, D.C., law firm, Winston and Strawn, said Wednesday.
The law enacted last summer provided for payments of $300 to individuals, $500 to heads of household and $600 to married couples who filed a joint tax return for 2000, provided that those taxpayers had taxable incomes last year of at least $6,000, $10,000 or $12,000, respectively. (For background, see the July Source story "For Virgin Islanders, checks are not in the mail".)
According to information from the Washington office of Delegate Donna Christian Christensen, the bill before the Finance Committee calls for "a second round of rebates to further stimulate the economy and is intended to go primarily to those 'tax flyers' who didn't get the first round of rebates," either because they didn't have enough taxable income or because they only paid "payroll taxes" — Social Security and Medicare.
The idea behind the measure, espoused by Senate Democrats, is that the benefit in the president's tax-cut measure wasn't equally available to low-income working persons who were hardest hit by the nation's economic decline, especially after Sept. 11. "There have been many layoffs in the service industries, and the unions have been lobbying hard," a tax-law expert said.
Gov. Charles W. Turnbull said in the Government House release that, "In addition to providing important financial relief to hard-pressed Virgin Islands taxpayers, the federal rebates will provide an estimated $20 million in much-needed federal economic stimulus to recharge our local economy."
Extension of higher rum tax return rate
The measure before the Senate committee "also extends the increase in the federal rum tax cover-over rate for a year," the Government House release noted. Turnbull said that this provision, if approved, would generate "an additional $18 million to $20 million" for the V.I. treasury.
The House economic stimulus package passed last month provides for "a two-year extension of the current rum tax cover-over formula, which returns to the local treasury $13.25 for every proof gallon of Virgin Islands rum shipped to the U.S. mainland," the release stated. "Without the extension, the rum tax cover-over rate will revert back to its old rate of $10.50 per proof gallon at the end of this year."
The idea of extending the 2001 tax credits to the territories with mirror tax systems was discussed in Finance Committee staff meetings and in majority caucuses. A supporting argument, the tax expert said, was that "if there was no special rule for the Virgin Islands, it could have a negative stimulus effect, because under the mirror system, the Virgin Islands government would have to pay the full amount of these rebates — and might be taking more money out of the local economy that it would be injecting into that economy."
IRB director Louis Willis said last summer that his agency did not have the money or the staff to send out checks and instead would extend an on-paper credit to be taken by 2000 taxpayers at the time of filing their 2001 tax returns next year.
The way the Senate Finance Committee provision is worded now, there could be a double benefit for Virgin Islands taxpayers. In the interest of fairness, the federal tax expert said, Congress might decide to limit eligibility to those 2000 taxpayers who didn't quality for benefits last summer.
According to information provided by Christensen's office, extending the federal tax credits would have "no effect" on the local process. But, noting Willis's contention that the territory can't afford to pay out the tax credits, Christensen aide Brian Modeste said, "It is because of this that we sought to have the feds pay for this second round."
New Medicaid funds for laid-off workers
In a release later Wednesday, Christensen said the Senate economic stimulus bill also would make federal funds available to the territory through the Medicaid program to provide medical coverage for workers who were laid off as a result of the Sept. 11 attacks. "These new Medicaid funds will be provided outside of our Medicaid cap," she said.
"The extension of this second round of tax rebates to the residents of the territories in the Senate stimulus bill was the result of very careful work done by all the Congressional delegates and governors," Christensen said. "If these provisions survive and are included in the final economic stimulus bill, it will mean tremendous good news for our citizens and economy who are struggling with the aftermath of the Sept. 11 tragedy."
Turnbull expressed thanks to the Finance Committee chair, Sen. Max Baucus (D., Mont.), and to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D., S.D.) "for their critical support in including the federal rebate and rum tax provisions in the stimulus bill."
The Government House release stated that Turnbull wrote two weeks ago to Baucus and to the ranking minority member of the committee, Sen. Charles Grassley (R., Ia.) to urge that any rebate proposal "be drafted in a way to provide fiscal stimulus for the territory's economy, which has also been hard hit in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks … while not burdening the local treasury as a result of the interplay between the federal tax code and the territory's mirror tax code."
The release also noted that Turnbull had met earlier this year with Daschle and the Senate Finance Committee leadership "to secure their support for the extension of the rum tax cover-over provision."
If the tax credit provision wins Finance Committee approval, it will almost certainly face opposition on the Senate floor from Republicans, who favor a more business-oriented stimulus approach. And whatever version is finally passed by the Senate must be reconciled with the House version passed last month.