The community is awash with gossip about the raids Tuesday on Plaza Extra’s three supermarkets: guns and plans to blow up Hovensa found in underground tunnels beneath Fathi Yusuf's home and/or the St. Croix store, millions of dollars found in a safe, hijackers who worked at the grocery stores prior to Sept. 11, money-laundering, and more.
There may be no truth in any of these rumors; there may be some truth in one or more of them. The point is, we don’t know.
As a community we are totally reliant on federal and local officials providing us with factual information about these raids.
The federal officials have weighed in with what is admittedly very little information. This, they say, is to avoid jeopardizing an ongoing investigation by showing their hand. We also assume they are trying not to undermine any future trial by prejudicing a potential jury.
But where are our local officials? Where is the governor?
He is never loathe to call a last-minute press conference to give good news about whatever he thinks is going to secure his re-election. So, why not call a news conference to tell an alarmed and confused public what these raids mean to us as a community, including what he and his administration will do to counter the inevitable bad publicity that is already resulting.
These are trying times for all of us. The Virgin Islands has now been caught up in the global fallout from the Sept. 11 attacks on our country. If ever this community needed strong, pro-active leadership, this is the time.

A volleyball tournament featuring St. Thomas girls' varsity teams will be held at Antilles School courts on the weekend. Teams from Charlotte Amalie High School, All Saints Cathedral School, Sts. Peter and Paul School, Antilles School, and an all-star Antilles JV team will compete.
The public is invited. Food, drinks and t-shirts will be on sale during the tournament, which starts at 2 p.m. Friday and continues at 8 a.m. Saturday, according to a release from Antilles School.
The 10th Annual Ocean Spray Volleyball Tournament, sponsored by B&D Wholesale, distributors of Ocean Spray products, was originally scheduled with visiting teams from St. Croix and Puerto Rico, and there was some talk of competition with some boys' teams as well. It has shaken down, however, to a competition among girls' teams from St. Thomas, said Antilles coach Dawn Wheatley. Eudora Kean School also dropped off the rosters.
Next year the 11th annual tournament will be held in the new Mark C. Marin Sports Center, currently under construction at Antilles School.

Oct. 24, 2001 – Two recently arrived pieces of equipment at the Myrah Keating Smith Community Health Center — a chemistry analyzer and a high-frequency radiology table — are part of the facility's ongoing improvement program, administrator Erica McDonald said Wednesday.
The addition of a Vitros 250 chemistry analyzer means the staff now can perform more than 30 tests — whereas it previously could conduct seven. "The majority of tests ordered by the doctor are done on the chemistry analyzer," McDonald said.
Previously, she said, tests for heart patients had to be conducted at Roy L. Schneider Hospital on St. Thomas. Now, they can be done at Myrah Keating Smith.
"In an emergency, the doctors can rely on getting critical results which they need to make a decision right away, instead of one to seven days later," medical technologist Jacqueline Rennie said in a news release.
The new machine also has speeded up the time typically needed to perform such tests, from about half an hour to less than 10 minutes.
To serve the community better, the health center has expanded its laboratory hours, which now are 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Friday. Previously, McDonald said, the laboratory was open about half the day.
A new high-frequency Del Medical radiology table is the other new addition. "This brings technology up to date. The old one was 15 years old," McDonald said.
The new machine works faster and uses less radiation, and the table can be moved into various positions to make it more comfortable for patients.
Each of the two pieces of equipment cost $55,000, paid for with federal grant money, McDonald said. The chemistry analyzer arrived two months ago and the radiology table, a month ago. McDonald said staff received training in their use before they went into service.

Oct. 23, 2001 – A volleyball tournament featuring St. Thomas girls' varsity teams will be held at Antilles School courts on the weekend. Teams from Charlotte Amalie High School, All Saints Cathedral School, Sts. Peter and Paul School, Antilles School, and an all-star Antilles JV team will compete.
The public is invited. Food, drinks and t-shirts will be on sale during the tournament, which starts at 2 p.m. Friday and continues at 8 a.m. Saturday, according to a release from Antilles School.
The 10th Annual Ocean Spray Volleyball Tournament, sponsored by B&D Wholesale, distributors of Ocean Spray products, was originally scheduled with visiting teams from St. Croix and Puerto Rico, and there was some talk of competition with some boys' teams as well. It has shaken down, however, to a competition among girls' teams from St. Thomas, said Antilles coach Dawn Wheatley. Eudora Kean School also dropped off the rosters.
Next year the 11th annual tournament will be held in the new Mark C. Marin Sports Center, currently under construction at Antilles School.

Oct. 23, 2001 – Thursday will be an exceptional returning to her roots for St. John artist Janet Cook-Rutnik.
She will be opening an exhibition of recent work in Albany, N.Y., where she was born, grew up and pursued her art studies at the college level. She has not shown her work there since leaving in1969 to move to the Virgin Islands.
At the time, she recalls, "I was attending the State University of New York in Albany and studying with the well-known sculptor Richard Stankiewiez." Like her teacher and mentor, "I was making welded sculptures out of junk car parts and cast-off metal from the scrapyards in an airport hangar, where the forward-thinking professor held the graduate sculpture classes."
"On the Other Side of Dreams" is the title she has given her show that will open Thursday at the Rathbone Gallery of Sage College in Albany. The exhibition will feature more than 20 paintings on canvas and an installation entitled "The Muse and the Altar."
That will be the first stop of three for the show, which will next travel to the Fondo del Sol Visual Art Center in Washington, D.C., where it will hang in February 2002. Then it will move to the J. Proctor Gallery in the northwestern Florida planned community of Seaside, where it will be on exhibit in March.
The catalogue for the exhibition includes a commentary by Marc Zuver, director of Fondo del Sol. Zuver says Cook-Rutnik's work "adds to the body of an extremely interesting new form of feminism seen over the past 20 years in the works of four different Caribbean women, all of whom shared disjointed lives and identities between the U.S. [mainland] and the Caribbean." In addition to Cook-Rutnik, the others he cites are Cuban-born Ana Mendieta and María Lino and Grenadian-born Irma Talabi Francis.
All four artists have "dealt with their body as a temple, an altar, a link to the ageless, the ancestral, even to the great mother Goddess," Zuver writes. "Both Francis and Cook-Rutnik share in identification with Egyptian goddesses, but Janet adds also a psychic memory from the great Greek goddesses — Medusa and Demeter."
Each of the four "also shares a profound sense of dislocation, of fragmentation, of grief and memory of the sometimes eternal and feminine, yet subtlely tugging at their inner heartstrings of memory," he continues. "Janet's dreams and memories recovered link us to the great stream of the human subconscious and its own truths and realities."
For more information about the artist and her work, see the Cook-Rutnik Art web site.

Oct. 23, 2001 – Thursday will be an exceptional returning to her roots for St. John artist Janet Cook-Rutnik.
She will be opening an exhibition of recent work in Albany, N.Y., where she was born, grew up and pursued her art studies at the college level. She has not shown her work there since leaving in1969 to move to the Virgin Islands.
At the time, she recalls, "I was attending the State University of New York in Albany and studying with the well-known sculptor Richard Stankiewiez." Like her teacher and mentor, "I was making welded sculptures out of junk car parts and cast-off metal from the scrapyards in an airport hangar, where the forward-thinking professor held the graduate sculpture classes."
"On the Other Side of Dreams" is the title she has given her show that will open Thursday at the Rathbone Gallery of Sage College in Albany. The exhibition will feature more than 20 paintings on canvas and an installation entitled "The Muse and the Altar."
That will be the first stop of three for the show, which will next travel to the Fondo del Sol Visual Art Center in Washington, D.C., where it will hang in February 2002. Then it will move to the J. Proctor Gallery in the northwestern Florida planned community of Seaside, where it will be on exhibit in March.
The catalogue for the exhibition includes a commentary by Marc Zuver, director of Fondo del Sol. Zuver says Cook-Rutnik's work "adds to the body of an extremely interesting new form of feminism seen over the past 20 years in the works of four different Caribbean women, all of whom shared disjointed lives and identities between the U.S. [mainland] and the Caribbean." In addition to Cook-Rutnik, the others he cites are Cuban-born Ana Mendieta and María Lino and Grenadian-born Irma Talabi Francis.
All four artists have "dealt with their body as a temple, an altar, a link to the ageless, the ancestral, even to the great mother Goddess," Zuver writes. "Both Francis and Cook-Rutnik share in identification with Egyptian goddesses, but Janet adds also a psychic memory from the great Greek goddesses — Medusa and Demeter."
Each of the four "also shares a profound sense of dislocation, of fragmentation, of grief and memory of the sometimes eternal and feminine, yet subtlely tugging at their inner heartstrings of memory," he continues. "Janet's dreams and memories recovered link us to the great stream of the human subconscious and its own truths and realities."
For more information about the artist and her work, see the Cook-Rutnik Art web site.

Oct. 24, 2001 – A rezoning request involving plans to build a Plaza Extra supermarket at Nelson Mandela Circle that had been scheduled to be heard at Tuesday night's Senate Committee of the Whole meeting was taken off the agenda at the last minute.
Engineer Alton Adams Jr. of Alton Adams and Associates sent a letter to Senate President Almando "Rocky" Liburd requesting the rezoning be "removed from the agenda of this date for future consideration." Rochelle Corneiro, Liburd's chief of staff, said the letter arrived about a half hour before the 6 p.m. scheduled start of the session on St. Thomas.
Adams told the Source on Wednesday that he couldn't comment on whether the decision to remove the matter from the agenda was connected with federal agents' raids conducted Tuesday on the existing Plaza Extra stores on St. Thomas and St. Croix.
Agents of the FBI and several other federal agencies conducted raids on the three stores Tuesday morning in what federal agents have referred to as "part of an ongoing investigation" involving illegal aliens.
There is no listed telephone for Plessen Enterprises. Adams suggested calling Plaza Extra to contact the firm. Calls to Willy Hamed, St. Thomas Plaza Extra general manager, were not returned.

Oct. 24, 2001 – The Senate Committee of the Whole approved six zoning requests Tuesday night, sending them on to the full Senate, but it wasn't smooth sailing for one dealing with new development in the Old Tutu area of St. Thomas. Another zoning request, concerning a proposed new Plaza Extra supermarket on St. Thomas, was deferred at the applicant's request.
That request, by the Harthman family on St. Thomas to rezone a 27-acre parcel from agriculture to commercial, was being considered at its third public hearing. Located behind the Tutu Park Mall, the land is adjacent to the Old Tutu residential area.
The Harthman family, represented by Arthur, Edgar, Albert, Sammy and Austin Harthman, said that commercial rezoning would attract potential developers and could possibly include a tie-in with Tutu Park Mall.
Former senator Stephanie Scott-Williams, who has voiced concerns at the previous hearings on the matter, said, "The Harthman family needs to state what the plans are for the area. We do not need another concrete slab in the area under the guise of growing the economy."
Erva Denham, president of the League of Women Voters, said the League realizes that the property is an obvious area for future commercial development. But, she said, "Without even a rough sketch to indicate the type of commercial development envisioned for it by the property owners, there is little or no reason for the residents of the area to support this zoning change application."
The Planning and Natural Resources Department had given the request a favorable recommendation. However, Susan Higgins, Coastal Zone Management senior planner, testified that "having visited the site [and] listened to previous testimony at a public hearing," DPNR "concludes that a recommendation for approval subject to specific conditions to protect the environment and quality of life in the Old Tutu residential district is not unreasonable."
The other rezonings approved were:
– A request from Cheryl Boynes-Jackson, Michael Jackson Sr., Noel Boynes Sr. and Bernice Boynes to rezone a parcel of land at Enighed Bay, St. John, from residential to business to use an existing building for cargo storage for their barge business.
– A request from Frank Powell to rezone a one-acre parcel on St. Thomas to create four separate parcels for his children. Attorney Mark Hillman, representing the Boatman Point Property Owners Association on St. John, objected, saying the rezoning "would distort the rural character of the area, and the boundary lines would be hard to stop." The senators strongly endorsed Powell's desire to pass the property on to his children.
– A request from Oliver Delingy to rezone a parcel in Estate Havensight, St. Thomas, from low to high density residential so he can build a bed-and-breakfast inn on the property.
– A request from John Fredricks to rezone a parcel of land in Estate Adrian, St. John, from residential to light industry so he can manufacture and sell concrete products. DPNR approved the rezoning with the stipulation that Fredricks operate his business between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. Monday through Friday; however, a DPNR officer said the agency would be willing to make modifications in this regard.
– A request by Kenneth Marsh to rezone a parcel of land in Estate Carolina, St. John, from residential to business so that he can operate a small grocery store.
The request by Plessen Enterprises to rezone a parcel in Estate Thomas, St. Thomas, from commercial to business-central business district so as to allow greater lot coverage for a proposed supermarket and related activities was taken off the agenda at Plessen's request. Alton Adams Jr. of the Alton Adams and Associates engineering firm, said information about Plessen, his client, would need to come from the Plaza Extra management.
The existing three Plaza Extra stores on St. Thomas and St. Croix were raided early Tuesday by federal agents in what authorities described as an investigation concerning illegal aliens.

Oct. 23, 2001 – The Cruz Bay block that runs from the post office through the Morris deCastro Clinic will soon be seeing some changes.
For starters, the U.S. Postal Service plans to open up the west wall of its building to accommodate a large trailer which will be attached to expand the work space. Postmaster Louis Jackson said the approach is similar to the process of making house trailers into permanent structures. He had no date for construction to start.
The post office now uses a stand-alone trailer in its small parking lot adjacent to the building to distribute packages. The main facility, which was enlarged in the early 1990s, has been short of space since soon after that because of the increasing volume of mail processed and distributed on St. John.
Various plans to expand the post office have been advanced over the last several years. The most recent one called for extending the existing building into the small park located between the existing structure and the old Tourism office. This met with protests from residents who feared the expansion would harm the park's existing trees, although officials said the trees would be preserved in a courtyard, rather than be destroyed. This plan, however, appears to have been scrapped.
The Tourism office, which had been located in a cottage in the small park, was moved in the spring to a waterfront site at the front of the Morris deCastro Clinic building. St. John Administrator Julien Harley said the U.S. Postal Service had planned to use the cottage to distribute packages. But "it was too small," Jackson said.
Harley said the Tourism office will return to its former location in the cottage by December. But first, he said, the building needs refurbishment, including painting and repairs to the air conditioning and the restroom.
Several years ago, Postal Service authorities held a series of public meetings to discuss plans for building a new post office facility outside of the immediate downtown Cruz Bay area. Proposed locations were considered and rejected. There does not appear to have been any recent action on putting the plan into effect.
Postmaster Louis Jackson referred questions on the matter to Tom Pino, the Postal Service official in charge of facility expansion. Pino could not be reached for comment.

Oct. 23, 2001 – The Environmental Association of St. Thomas-St. John brought about 25 of its members together Tuesday evening to go over concerns about the resort and timeshare development proposed for Botany Bay.
Carla Joseph, the president of EAST, said the group's position is not that it necessarily opposes development along the bay at the far western tip of St. Thomas. But, she said, it is concerned that the development plans are moving forward without the information needed to make good decisions — and that government officials seem to be bending over backwards to accommodate the developers.
"The EAST opposition is based on lack of information," said Dayle Barry, chair of the group's Issues Committee. "We don't know if that land is suitable for this type of development."
Botany Bay Partners is proposing to develop an upscale 100-room resort along with dozens of condominium units, timeshare units and 40 residential properties. By law, the $169 million project must go through rezoning and an approval process before it can become a reality.
Preservation advocates have raised concerns about what will happen to archeological features of the land, including pre-Columbian remains and the only petroglyphs on St. Thomas. They also have reservations about the potential environmental on what has been called the last large undeveloped area on the island.
At the meeting, several noted that Botany Bay has been designated an "area of particular concern" for its pristine environment, and that a government study has recommended that it become "the cornerstone of a territorial park system."
As a resort, the property would pump tens of millions of dollars into the community, the developers have stated. Ira Mills, director of the Office of Management and Budget, has cited the anticipated fiscal benefits of the proposal as an indicator of the territory' s economic recovery.
About 25 people attended the EAST meeting, which included a slide show of the scenic shoreline and undeveloped hillsides and a timeline of events as the Botany Bay project has unfolded.
Public hearings on the project have been postponed at least twice in recent months as the developers asked for time to compile reports on the potential impacts. The hearings have not yet been rescheduled.
The EAST members said they have been trying to meet with representatives of Botany Bay Partners to discuss their concerns.
Benita Martin-Samuel, a Bordeaux resident and a member of the We Grow Food agricultural cooperative, said many area residents believe the development will go through but want to see certain conditions imposed.
She said she would like to see public access to the historical resources of the area and that farmers in the area have been promised access to water from a new desalination plant that would be part of the development. She also said she believes most West End residents do not want to see the area become a commercial zone.