Congresswoman Stacey Plaskett voted to pass H.R. 2471, government funding legislation. She announced in an interview that “the bill’s transformative investment will help working families with the cost of living, create American jobs and support the vulnerable who work hard” as reported on the St. Croix Source (read full article here).
“The investments in this package address some of our nation’s biggest challenges while providing much-needed support to Virgin Islanders” the Congresswoman said, and explained that the provisions will be “investing in the Virgin Islands middle class”. The bill:
Averts the Medicaid funding cliff in the Virgin Islands by extending the increased rate of federal funding (83%) for Medicaid in the Virgin Islands through Dec. 13, 2022, averting a sharp decline in the rate of federal Medicaid funding to the Virgin Islands.
Contains the negotiated bipartisan agreement for federal government funding over the remainder of fiscal year 2022, which includes a $6.5 million increase in Department of the Interior assistance to territories.
Contains funding for House-approved community projects requested for the Virgin Islands (read more details here)
This is great story about giving back to the community! With students coming out of the pandemic and back school in person, local school libraries could use some new books. Altona Lagoon Book Club in St. Croix tried to “pay their love of books forward” to a local elementary school. Members selected Juanita Gardine K-8 school as the recipient of their donation. The school librarian came up with a list of books the students would like to read. With the help of the book club along with former Juanita Gardine student Keith O’Neale of O’Neale’s Transport, Inc., all the books on the list were purchased at Undercover Books & Gifts in Gallows Bay and given to the school.
Question: What are your favorite places on St. Croix?
Christie’s Answer: There’s a beach on the eastern end of St. Croix near Point Udall called Brown Bay. We call it “Straight 6 Beach” because there is an old straight 6 engine block rusting away in the brush half way down the path! Apparently, you could drive down to the beach many years ago. Now walking down the trail is the only way to the beach. It’s our favorite place to go with the dogs. We usually have that beach all to ourselves.
The St. George Village Botanical Garden is a delight! We love to go there just to walk around admiring plants, shop their garden area, and attend the different events. If you want more information about the garden, their website is https://sgvbg.org/.
Every Saturday we go to the Southgate Corner Farmers Market for local produce and plants. We love talking with the farmers! You can join the Market’s Facebook Group if you want, click here for the link.
Our home is our very favorite place. It’s half-way up a hill on a dead end road. The views are beautiful, it’s quiet and pastoral. We do love being home with our 2 dogs and 2 cats.
Chris’ Answer: St. Croix has moderate temperatures year ‘round. It doesn’t vary much more than 10 degrees from high to low on any given day. Currently, it’s between 72 – 82 degrees. As a holiday present to myself, I bought a weather station. We’ll be adding a weather page to our website in March and we’ll share the details with you next month. At any given time I can check the temperature, rainfall, wind speed and direction. As we watch the cold and snowy weather on TV, we realize that after 18 years in this moderate climate, we would be SO cold in the states! When the temperature dips into the low 70’s, we’re reaching for our light sweatshirts. We don’t even want to talk about what happens when it gets down into the high 60’s! Brrrrr!
International Coastal Cleanup is combining cleanup efforts in the territory with data collection. They use data to support natural resource management and different policies and frameworks. More than 30 volunteers participated in the recent Hull Beach cleanup event (read the VI Daily News article here).
Volunteers including members of the Black in Marine Science group also participated in the Salt Water Bay cleanup in St. Croix. According to the organization’s mission statement, it “aims to celebrate Black marine scientists, spread environmental awareness and inspire the next generation of scientific thought leaders.” According to one of the BIMS volunteers’ tweet, the group “in 50 minutes we collected 55 POUNDS of trash.”
