The St. Thomas Association of Road Runners will hold their annual Father's Day Road Race at 7:30 a.m. Sunday, June 17, beginning at the Frenchtown ballpark.
Runners of all kinds are invited to participate in the two mile race that starts and finishes at the Frenchtown ballpark. Registration will begin at 7 a.m. The race will start promptly at 7:30 a.m.
Special prizes will be offered to top finishers, sponsored by the following businesses: Alexander's Cafe, Chickie's Place, Forever Flowers, Frenchtown Deli, The Grill, Hook, Line and Sinker, and The Look Spa.
Registration is $2.00 for STAR members, $4.00 for nonmembers.
For more information contact Jennie Wentworth at 776-8018.

June 13, 2001 — The St. Thomas Association of Road Runners will hold their annual Father's Day Road Race at 7:30 a.m. Sunday, beginning at the Frenchtown ballpark.
Runners of all kinds are invited to participate in this two mile race that starts and finishes at the Frenchtown ballpark.
Registration will begin at 7 a.m. The race will start promptly at 7:30 a.m.
Special prizes will be offered to top finishers, sponsored by the following businesses: Alexander's Cafe, Chickie's Place, Forever Flowers, Frenchtown Deli, The Grill, Hook, Line and Sinker, and The Look Spa.
Registration is $2.00 for STAR members, $4.00 for nonmembers.
For more information contact Jennie Wentworth at 776-8018.

The St.Thomas/St.John Red Cross Disaster Class, Damage Assessment, is scheduled from 6 to 9 p.m. on Saturday, June 23, 2001, at Palms Court Harborview.
All classes are available in Spanish as needed. To reserve your space call 774-0375.

The Government Employees Retirement System will hold a pre-retirement planning workshop, for members over 30 years of age, at 9 a.m. Wednesday, June 27, at the GERS Conference Room, 3005 Orange Grove, St. Croix.
Participants will learn about their social security benefits, legal rights, health insurance coverage, system benefits, securing their financial future, and more.
To pre-register or to obtain more information call Ann Forbes-Samuel at 773- 5480. Seating is limited so employees are asked to register early. Pre- registration deadline is Friday, June 22.

June 13, 2001 — The Government Employees Retirement System will hold a pre-retirement planning workshop, for members over 30 years of age, at 9 a.m. Wednesday, June 27, at the GERS Conference Room, 3005 Orange Grove, St.Croix.
Participants will learn about their social security benefits, legal rights, health insurance coverage, system benefits, securing their financial future, and more.
To pre-register or to obtain more information call Ann Forbes-Samuel at 773- 5480. Seating is limited so employees are asked to register early. Pre- registration deadline is Friday, June 22.

June 13, 2001 – Despite having the full support of the V.I. Port Authority planning staff, Paradigm Design's plan to beautify the waterfront apron was rejected by the VIPA board Wednesday. Instead the board awarded the contract to Yssis Group.
The plan was part of a design competition launched last summer that Paradigm won out of five local firms to rehabilitate the pockmarked, patchwork apron that now greets visitors to the Charlotte Amalie Harbor.
After winning the competition, Torgen Johnson, Paradigm president, said he asked Chaneel Callwood of Yssis Design Group to team up with his office to help put the project together. "I had seen Chaneel at a highway workshop where she was very outspoken against the plan for a waterfront highway," Johnson said Wednesday. He told the board he was "very impressed with Callwood's integrity." Callwood agreed and teamed up with Johnson's office.
The two groups worked together until this spring when they had a parting of the ways, creating the two presentations Wednesday.
In introducing the plans, VIPA Director Gordon Finch said, "Paradigm was successful in winning the competition, but unfortunately (after teaming up with Yssis) the two groups had a disagreement in principle, and it is up to us now to decide to whom we should give the contract."
In April the VIPA staff voted for the Paradigm design. However, VIPA's board voted Wednesday 5-1 for Yssis Group.
The remarkably similar design presentations lined either side of the large board room. Each side was given time for a presentation, with the other side waiting outside the room.
Johnson noted that in the past 50 years, the "urban fabric of Charlotte Amalie has become separate from the waterfront," a separation he wants to mend.
Johnson said he sees the waterfront as a linear park eventually extending from Frenchtown to the West Indian Co. He described how the color of the bricks of Fort Christian would be integrated in the waterfront walkways, thus stretching the Fort all along the waterfront with vital crosswalks, "oases," connecting town with the waterfront. The apron would be dotted with tall palms, planters, benches, shade pavilions and a revitalization of what was once a boathouse at Kings Wharf, commonly known as the Coast Guard Dock.
Paradigm designed the new Coral World, where Johnson said he got his feet wet encountering problems unique to the island. After Coral World, Paradigm renovated Emancipation Garden, and is currently completing Post Office Square.
Callwood and John Daniels of Yssis showed their design as essentially the same idea as Paradigm's. Callwood stressed "recapturing the character of the old waterfront" and said she wanted to restore "dignity" to the waterfront. Both sides' presentations included slides of the old waterfront dating back to the 1900s.
Yssis has a nine-year history, Daniels said. The firm is completing the new gymnasium and cafeteria at Bertha C. Boschulte Junior High School. It is also responsible for Café Amici in Riise's Alley and a large housing project in Fortuna.
When asked by board members about the group's falling out with Yssis, Johnson explained that he had shared his digital files of his own drawings with Yssis. "That's a fingerprint there," he said, indicating Yssis's presentation.
Johnson later said Yssis was asked to collaborate on project management and to organize the public participation process. "They did not contribute to the design; that was not their role," he said.
Johnson had nothing but the highest praise for VIPA's staff. "Coming forward with that competition was a miracle," he said.
Losing the bid was a blow, he added. "We've worked tirelessly since last May. We've worked around the clock at times, passionately, trying to do something for St. Thomas." But he was philosophical: "We're trying to get good things done for St. Thomas, and we'll continue."
In attendance and voting for the Yssis design were chairwoman Pamela Richards; Attorney General Iver Stridiron; Dean Plaskett, commissioner of the Department of Planning and Natural Resources; Hector Peguero; Kent Bernier; and Leslie A. Milliner. The sole vote for Paradigm came from former Sen. Robert O'Connor Jr., who said he was impressed with Paradigm's presentation and the work the group did at the new Coral World.
Earlier in the day, when questioned about Bernier's position on the board — he was appointed as a private-sector member but is now a government official — Stridiron said he needed to look into the legality of the matter. It was never mentioned it at the board meeting.

June 13, 2001 — The Virgin Islands Media Project is accepting applications from students, ages 12 to 17, for a seven-week summer program in video production scheduled from Monday, June 25, until Friday, August 10.
The project is a mass communications training program for youth sponsored by the Law Enforcement Planning Commission.
The program will be held at Jubilation! Christian Channel TV, located at 26A Contant. Students will learn how to operate video equipment for studio and location productions, edit video projects digitally, and produce a public service announcement for television.
The fee for each student is $400 and scholarships are available to those who qualify.
For more information call Gloria Gumbs at 776-7635.

June 13, 2001 — The Charlotte Amalie High School piano lab student recital, held on Tuesday evening at the Ritz Carlton ballroom, was a lively affair. Fifty music students, of varying levels of accomplishment, under the direction of locally renowned piano player and CAHS music teacher John Cahill played a range of classics, show tunes, and folk songs.
A memorable portion of the evening were two rap songs "Hot Fyah" and "No Love" performed by Lenea Industrious and John Antoine.
Cahill commented that each generation is baffled by the music of the other and the C.A.H.S. music program is joining the 21st century by including this popular music in their performances.
Also included in the recital were two horn solos. Dion Van Holten performed a trumpet solo,"Prayer of Saint Gregory" by Alan Hovaness and Deshawn Hendricks played "Adante and Allegro" by Andre Chailleaux.
Detra Davis and Jevaun Jones, former C.A.H.S. students, now attending the University of the Virgin Islands added a vocal dimension to the evening. Davis sang "I Believe in You and Me" accompanied by Jones on piano.

Neighbors of the Harthman family in Tutu want to know what kind of businesses would go into an area behind Tutu Park Mall if it is rezoned for commercial development.
But Arthur Harthman and his representative, Brian Turnbull, said they couldn't discuss what kind of businesses might locate in the area behind Tutu Park Mall until the rezoning from A-1 (agricultural) to C (commercial) is approved.
"Until it is rezoned," said Turnbull, who used to be a planner with the Department of Planning and Natural Resources, "everything we present…is speculative."
He called it a "philosophical" rezoning because of the "appropriateness of the development."
However Harthman said he'd been approached by "people who want to initiate commercial businesses in the V.I." He never said who or what the businesses were.
Most people at Wednesday's public hearing of the Zoning Committee of DPNR thought it was not unreasonable to consider the already heavily commercialized area for further commercial use. But almost to a person, witnesses wanted specifics on what kinds of businesses would go into the 27-plus acre area.
Community activist and former senator Stephanie Scott-Williams, who said she has lived in New Tutu for 30 years, made an impassioned plea to DPNR not to let the property be covered in concrete, and to keep its eye on what kinds of businesses are allowed to go into the development.
"We don't need any more gas stations, or laundromats or dry cleaners," she said.
She admonished the V.I. government for its lack of planning in the area as she brandished an aerial photo showing a variety of malls, homes and buildings surrounding the green area that Harthman wants zoned for commercial use.
And despite Harthman's assurances that he lives in Tutu and wouldn't put a "dump" in his neighborhood, Scott-Williams said that once the area was rezoned, the Harthmans, through death or for other reasons, might not always have control of the area.
Turnbull also reminded the committee several times that the government has the ability to control development.
But committee member Brent Blyden said, "Things imbedded in the land are the responsibility of the land owner."
Part of the area's appropriateness is that the Public Works Department is already running a sewage line through the property that will feed into already existing sewage lines in the area. The development would also be able to use the existing access road into Tutu Park Mall, along with developing the Harthman's private road that would feed onto the Weymouth Rhymer Highway near the Edith Williams Elementary School.
Erva Denham, president of the League of Women Voters of the Virgin Islands, said in a prepared statement read into the record by League board member Colette Monroe that the property "is an obvious area for future commercial development. However, without even a rough sketch to indicate the type of commercial development envisioned by the property owners, there is little or no reason for the area residents to support this zoning change."
Harthman maintained, however, "We do not develop commercial property."
Toward the end of the meeting committee chairwoman Sue Higgins asked Harthman if he would consider a zoning variance — which would specify what types of businesses could be developed — in place of rezoning. Though hedging the question, it seemed clear that was not what Harthman was looking for.

June 13, 2001 — The St. John Property Tax Office will be closed on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays beginning Tuesday. The office will be open on Mondays and Wednesdays.
The change was announced in a press release from the Lt. Governor's office and it called the change a temporary situation, with assurances to the public that the efficiency of the office and the assistance to St. John residents won't be compromised.