Dec. 7, 2001 – Innovative Communications Corp. advises the public that all business offices will be closed Saturday, Dec. 8, with the exception of Innovative Cable TV St. Thomas-St. John.
The temporary closure is due to computer maintenance work that will be performed. Normal operating hours will resume Monday, Dec. 10.

Dec. 7, 2001 – Innovative Communications Corp. advises the public that business offices will be closed Saturday, Dec. 8, with the exception of Innovative Cable TV St. Thomas-St.John.
The temporary closure is due to computer maintenance work that will performed. Normal operating hours will resume Monday, Dec. 10.

Dec. 7, 2001 – Innovative Communications Corp. advises the public that business offices will be closed Saturday, Dec. 8, with the exception of Innovative Cable TV St. Thomas-St. John.
The temporary closure is due to computer maintenance work that will be performed. Normal operating hours will resume Monday, Dec. 10.

Dec. 6, 2001 – The Virgin Islanders for Democratic Action Club (VIDAC) will honor the V.I. Legislature's retired employees with a gala dinner dance at 6 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 23, at Palm Courts Harbor View Hotel.
Those who will be honored guests will be: Juanito Benjamin, Lydia Boynes, Samuel Daly, Raphael Farrington, Eunice Francis, Flavie Gunthorpe, Leola Hermon, Corinne King-Hodge, Gerald E. Hodge, Sr., Sharon Koppelman, Joseph Lambert, Jerome LaPlace, Gwendolyn Donovan-Lawrence, Theresa Mahoney, Randolph A. Phillips, Eric Quetel, Tomas Serrano, Vanley Smith, Ianthe Sprauve, Glaston Steele, Glencia Steele and Godfrey Thomas.
Music by Milo's Kings. Tickets are $35.
For information call J. Harrington at 693-3507.

Dear Source,
I have been reading the comments in the Source concerning Salomon Beach.
For the past six years I have been visiting St. John during the winter months. Each trip I take, my stay is usually for a month. My husband and I have spent all summer saving for our trip to St. John this winter and have been looking forward to it.
Further, we have bought property in the Fish Bay area. We love everything about St John, from the people to the beaches. There is a beach for everyone.
The people on Salomon Beach [who sunbathe nude or topless] do not bother anyone. To ticket these people who are spending a lot of money keeping your economy alive is crazy. It is a long hike to Salomon, and most people know what to expect when they get there. A couple of web sites cleary mark it as a nudist beach.
Now that we are in a crisis in the United States, people are going to be particular about where they vacation. St. John needs the business of the people who live in the States. Please pay attention to all the mail that you get on this subject. This is very serious. Many people will think twice about where they want to go on vacation. It is not right to be harassed by a park ranger. I really hope that this matter will be straighted out.
Michele Marchetti
Secane, Pa.

Editor's note: We welcome and encourage readers to keep the dialogue going by responding to Source commentary. Letters should be e-mailed with name and place of residence to source@viaccess.net.

Dec. 7, 2001 – Planning and Natural Resources Department officials may have struck an acceptable balance between economic development and protection of historical and environmental resources by recommending a zoning variance that would allow the resort development at Botany Bay to move forward.
The variance recommended by DPNR to the Senate Committee of the Whole on Thursday night would allow Botany Bay Partners to move forward with plans for a $165 million resort development on the pristine land at the far West End of St. Thomas, but would bind them to plans that they say are sensitive to environmental and cultural issues.
The developers have promised to build with low density, to use construction methods that will prevent run-off that could damage the healthy coral reefs offshore, and to preserve archeological sites as an education center.
Many critics of the project expressed support for the variance option; Botany Bay Partners officials said they believe they could work within that framework; and several senators said they believe the variance could be a good option.
"We want to achieve a win-win for both sides," said Marjorie Hendricksen-Emmanuel, acting director of comprehensive and coastal zone planning for DPNR, who recommended the variance option at the hearing.
"I think the uses they [Botany Bay Partners] have proposed are reasonable," Hendricksen-Emmanuel said. "It's not a public property; the owners should be allowed some uses. But this addresses concerns and keeps a level of control."
Botany Bay Partners had sought a zoning change that would allow them or any other developer the option of nearly 40 different kinds of uses.
Opponents to that rezoning noted that a variance would allow the developers to go forward with the plans they have presented but would prevent them from drastically changing those plans or selling the property with new zoning to other developers.
About 80 people attended the hearing, which lasted well past midnight, with more than 25 persons testifying and senators taking two hours to offer their own views on the project. Most of the senators present expressed support for the Botany Bay development project, with only Sen. Adlah "Foncie" Donastorg saying he was adamantly opposed.
Sens. Lorraine Berry, Douglas Canton, Donald "Ducks" Cole, Adlah "Foncie" Donastorg, Carlton Dowe, Norma Pickard-Samuel and Celestino White attended the meeting, along with Senate President Almando "Rocky" Liburd, who chaired the Committee of the Whole.
Pickard-Samuel said she could not support a zoning change that would allow development of land containing archeological sites, artifacts and other important cultural resources. Too often, she said, the V.I. government has allowed developers to carry through their plans unchecked, without regard for the culture of the Virgin Islands.
"As much as I like development," she said, "I like my history and my islands too much to vote for any rezoning of Botany Bay. Our history is embedded in that property." She added that she would support the project if the developers followed strict guidelines. "If you agree to a variance, I will work with you," she said. "You have the right to build on your property, but there have to be restrictions."
Other senators offered strong support for the project, citing the need for jobs and economic growth in the territory. Several chastised the project's opponents, saying they were against development of any kind, at the expense of working people who need economic opportunities.
"What about humans?" asked Sen. David Jones, accusing opponents of caring more about protecting crabs and corals than protecting people.
Jones offered to get out his shovel and hard hat to help with the construction of the Botany Bay resort.
While some opponents said a variance could address their concerns, others took the stand that no development is appropriate or needed at Botany Bay, whether the government places restrictions on it or not.
"We need to say 'Enough is enough.' We already have enough resorts," former Bordeaux resident Julia Lanclos said. "We do not need on this island another resort. It's not going to benefit us; it's not going to benefit our children."
Lanclos recalled her history teacher, now Gov. Charles W. Turnbull, telling her and her classmates that they needed to work to preserve the culture of the Virgin Islands for the children. She said she did not see that happening with the Botany Bay proposal.
Alain Longatte, chief operating officer of Botany Bay Partners, said the developers would meet with DPNR officials to try to work out acceptable conditions for a variance. He said if those conditions allow for the current plans to move forward, it could be a workable arrangement.
"We all want to have a superior project," Longatte said. "When you build a resort like this, there's a large element of pride." He added that the developers want to preserve the environment and cultural resources as much as anyone else.
The full Senate is expected to vote on the rezoning issue later this month.

Dear Source,
Approximately 10 years ago, then-Education Commissioner Linda Creque failed to file a report on the expenditure of federal funds in a timely manner, which resulted in the return of approximately $100,000 to the federal government.
Fast forwarding 10 years into the new millennium, Education Commissioner Ruby Simmons explains that the loss of accreditation to the territory's high schools was due to her failure to sort her mail carefully, which caused her department to not respond to the Middle States Association accreditation committee in a timely manner.
How long are the people of the Virgin Islands are going to accept these ludicrous and comical excuses!
Administration after administration, the children of the Virgin Islands continue to suffer from an inept, outdated, and poorly managed public educational system.
To add insult to injury, our students continue to rank near last on every national standardized science, math and reading test. The lack of accreditation only confirms that the entire educational system, and its body, has not only hit rock bottom but has begun the process of disintegrating.
The warranty on excuses has expired. As Lee Iacoca, former Chrysler Corp. chairman, once stated in a popular advertising campaign, "It's time to lead, follow or get out of the way."
Eric Pena
Brooklyn, NY

Editor's note: We welcome and encourage readers to keep the dialogue going by responding to Source commentary. Letters should be e-mailed with name and place of residence to source@viaccess.net.

Best-selling author and journalist Beverly Donofrio is portrayed with great care and complexity by Drew Barrymore in "Riding in Cars With Boys," the recent Columbia pictures release based on Donfrio's memoir of the same name.
New York Times reviewer Stephen Holden called Barrymore's "tough-but-tender" portrayal of the "hardened New York journalist" further proof that the actress "has what it takes to stretch her talents into large, complex portrayals."
The story spans two decades of Donofrio's life from the writer as a 15-year-old pregnant high school student, who hastily marries the father Ray Hasek, played by Steve Zahn, only to divorce him when he becomes absorbed by his drug addiction, to Donofrio as the not-so-great single mother of teen-aged son Jason, played by Adam Garcia.
The movie, despite some flaws, moves back and forth in time with "an impressive cut-and-paste agility, skillfully interweaving humor and drama without tipping over into farce or soap opera," according to Holden.
Directed by Penny Marshall, the film avoids the typical Hollywood pitfalls, ending up, with the help of screenplay author Morgan Upton Ward, as a highly believable portrayal of the real-life humor and pathos of a woman-child faced with the desire to pursue her dreams while raising a child alone, from an inappropriately early age.
Zahn holds his own next to Barrymore in his sympathetic role as Ray, the adolescent father turned drug addict.
Despite the defects of the main characters, their basic grace and ability to love shines through, in this skillful portrayal of the life of an original woman.
The film also stars James Woods as Donofrio's police-officer father, Lorraine Bracco, as her bingo-addicted mother, and Brittany Murphy as Donofrio's life-long best friend.
The movie's development was closely monitored by Donofrio, who met with writer-director-producer James L. Brooks ("Terms of Endearment," "As Good As It Gets") shortly after the book was optioned, " according to a review in the L.A. Times.
It is currently playing at Market Square cinemas.

Dec. 7, 2001 – Just days after late-season storm Olga finally dissipated east of the Bahamas, Colorado State University professor William Gray is out with his first 2002 forecast.
Gray is predicting 13 named storms, with eight growing into hurricanes. He and his team expect four to be major hurricanes with winds of 111 mph or more.
"This upcoming hurricane season appears to have to potential for continued above-average hurricane activity," Gray said in a news release. "We foresee an increased level of hurricanes forming in the deep tropics in 2002 and hurricane activity coming earlier than it did this year."
For 2001, Gray and his team of scientists predicted a dozen named storms, with seven of them becoming hurricanes. Three were expected to be intense. And the season ramped up rather late.
While storms usually start wending their way across the Atlantic in late July and August, most of activity happened this year in September through November. The first hurricane did not form until Sept. 8, which Gray said in his Nov. 20 2001 season wrap-up, was the latest forming hurricane since 1984. When he sent out his season assessment on Nov. 20, 10 days before the official end of the June 1 to Nov. 30 hurricane season, Mother Nature had one more surprise in store. Olga formed Nov. 24, and meandered around the Atlantic Ocean as a depression, tropical storm and hurricane before finally giving up on Dec. 4.
This brought the total for 2001 to 15 named storms, nine hurricanes and four intense hurricanes. None hit the territory, but some sent stormy weather to the islands.
Gray said an average season has 10 named storms, six hurricanes and two intense hurricanes.
He said the years 1995 to 2001 have been the seven consecutively most active on record.
During that time, 94 named storms, 58 hurricanes and 27 major hurricanes developed.
"It has been remarkable," he said.
Now in his 19th year of predicting storms, Gray said his team is using a new way to develop forecasts. It places more emphasis on circulation features of the middle latitudes while eliminating the African rainfall information because it has not proven to be a reliable forecast tool in recent years. The new forecast scheme continues to use the Quasi-biennial Oscillation, which is the equatorial east-west stratospheric winds that vary during a period of 26 to 30 months, measurement of the Atlantic sea surface temperature, and the 2002 El Nino prediction.
Gray said that over time, he has found that there are indeed meaningful multi- month and multi-season precursor signals that can be used to estimate future Atlantic basin hurricane activity and United States landfall probability. "We have always believed that the atmosphere will act in the future as it has in the past," Gray said. "This assumption can fail in some years, but when applied over a period of several years, we find that the atmosphere and ocean do indeed have a long period memory in most years."
He said he expects ongoing forecast research will continue to improve the team's prediction skills.
Gray said global warming has no impact on storm development. He said that major hurricanes account for only about one-quarter of all storms, but cause about 85 percent of all tropical cyclone-spawned destruction.
He said that although the United States has been lucky because only three major hurricanes hit the mainland, he expects a great increase in landfalls in the coming years.
"With such large coastal population growth in the United States in recent decades, it is inevitable that we will see hurricane-spawned destruction in coming years on a scale many times greater than what we have seen in the past."
While Gray does not predict the probability of a hurricane hitting a Caribbean island, he said that there is an 86 percent chance that one will hit the U.S. coastline in 2002. By comparison, he said that in the 1900s, the average probability stood at 52 percent. For the U.S. Gulf of Mexico coast, he put the probability at 43 percent, up 12 percent over the last century.
For the Florida Peninsula and the East Coast, the 2002 probability sits at 58 percent. In the 1900s, the number was 31 percent.
Gray and his team will reevaluate their 2002 predications in April, May and August. And for the first time, the team will issue monthly forecasts for August and September, usually the busiest months in the hurricane season.

Dec. 7, 2001 — The Federal Communications Commission has told St. Thomas-St. John Cable TV it must unscramble its basic cable service, rejecting the company's argument that the scrambling is a means of thwarting cable pirates and saving hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
Caribbean Cable Corp., the name under which St. Thomas-St. John Cable TV is licensed, filed a petition for special relief asking the FCC to waive its rule against scrambling basic-service cable signals. It was a move 510 petitioners on St. Thomas and St. John, the Public Services Commission and the Attorney General's Office opposed.
The company contended that the theft of basic-tier service and costs associated with eliminating signal leakages caused by illegal connections warranted waiving the FCC rules. But in a decision a week ago the FCC's Cable Services Bureau denied the waiver.
FCC law dating from 1992 requires that cable providers refrain from scrambling basic-service signals, so as to "significantly advance compatibility by ensuring that all subscribers are able to receive basic-tier signals 'in the clear' and that basic-only subscribers with cable-ready televisions will not need set-top [unscrambling] devices." But the law also provides for waivers of the scrambling prohibition upon showing of "either a substantial problem with theft of basic-tier service or a strong need to scramble basic signals for other reasons."
The cable company stated that prior to the upgrade of its system following Hurricane Hugo in 1989, when it carried all signals on a single, unscrambled service tier, "theft was a serious problem." Before the cable company began to scramble its signal, there were 523 illegal connections and 13,754 legal subscribers, it said.
Since the upgrade, the company said, theft of service has ceased. But it contended that if it were required to unscramble its 21-channel basic-tier service, it likely would once again be "victimized by large numbers of cable pirates," resulting in annual costs of more than $200,000 plus $80,000 for equipment. That additional expense, the company argued, would prevent it from providing the lowest-cost service to its subscribers.
However, at present, basic-tier subscribers must pay a monthly fee of $3.05 for a converter box, plus a refundable deposit of $45. No such converter will be needed if the signal is unscrambled.
The PSC noted that prior to the upgrade and conversion of the cable system, unauthorized users would have had access to the company's single service tier. That service has now been separated into basic and cable-tier programming, it noted. Since the FCC requires a showing of basic-tier theft to consider a waiver, the PSC said, the company's request was inadequate because it was not based solely on theft from its basic tier.
The PSC also pointed out that the company said just 6 percent of its subscribers are on basic service today. Thus, the incentive to create unauthorized connections to an unscrambled basic-only service would be "radically different" from what existed when the system offered only a single, 33-channel tier, the PSC said.
The Attorney General's Office said the cable company has a theft-of-service rate of 2.66 percent, whereas the industry average for similar-sized systems is about 10 percent. The AG's Office also said that the company had pursued legal remedies in only seven of the 523 reported incidents of unauthorized connections, two of which involved company employees. That, it argued, did not represent the type of problem that would warrant a waiver of FCC rules.
The cable company responded that the AG's Office understated the rate of theft, which the company placed at about 4.15 percent with "probably closer to 747 instances." It also said its pursuit of remedies through the Attorney General's Office were unsuccessful.
However, the FCC noted that even with the company's figures, its theft rate was still "less than half the national average." Also, it said, since the company rebuilt its distribution system at the same time it began scrambling its signal, the leaks prior to that might have been "due to the old distribution plant."