When will the cleanup start? When will the coverup stop? When will there be indictments?
When our Nation’s Oldest City’s mismanaged government dumped the entire contents of our old illegal city landfill into the Old City Reservoir, City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS thought he would get away with it.
30,000,000 pounds of stuff -- enough to fill in six Olympic size swimming pools to a depth of six feet.
Enough to cover a football field to a depth of six feet.
That’s pretty large to coverup. Yet St. Augustine, Florida City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS has snickered every time I asked questions about his actions.
Now three top city employees have departed, apparently designated scapegoats (or javelin-catchers) for Mr. HARRISS.
The City Attorney, Public Works Director and City Utilities Director in office on February 27, 2006 are all gone now.
Will they blow the whistle on HARRISS and tell the truth to a federal or state grand jury?
Will this case be fixed?
Are Florida governments above the law when it comes to pollution, even of the Old City Reservoir?
Now the Florida Department of Environmental Protection has dropped the ball, refusing to prosecute criminally and taking its sweet time to effect a settlement that will begin the cleanup.
Meanwhile, is Florida’s largest law firm of AKERMAN SENTERFITT still billing us for legal "services" to continue the coverup, not aq cleanup?
When will DEP release the documents on its abortive criminal investigation?
We decline to pay DEP any money for records on its mismanagement -- having reported the illegal dumping, we’re entitled to be treated with courtesy, consideration and respect, and not bureaucratic disdain.
Will CAPTAIN STEWART ROMACK, attorney Tracy HARTMAN and spokesperson JILL JOHNSON, show us the documents we were promised in October?
We look forward to some actual action from DEP and CAPTAIN ROMACK, whose voicemail once bragged "it was a great day for putting criminals in jail" and that he was "out catching bad guys." Recently, CAPTAIN STEWART ROMACK has changed his voicemail message. Wonder why? Perhaps ROMACK realized it was false advertising by an agency that never prosecutes large organizations. As my friend David Thundershield Queen puts it best, DEP stands for "Don’t Expect Protection."
Last month, DEP Division attorney TRACY HARTMAN refused to waive some $80 in fees for the documents on the botched criminal case. HARTMAN claimed he was going to ask his boss, but never got back to us HARTMAN said we could save money by coming to Tallahassee to view the documents. Evidently, HARTMAN must think there’s a subway line between St. Augustine and Tallahassee. As my mother would say, TRACY HARTMAN "sounds like a man with a paper head."
To whom does HARTMAN think he’s talking?
In the words of the great American diplomat Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, "not one cent for tribute." DEP needs to post all documents on its putative criminal investigation of the City of St. Augustine on the website and make it free to all. We need transparency, not more coverups.
St. Augustine’s pollution-without-a-permit will cost over one million dollars in cleanup costs. DEP has not prosecuted. DEP proposed (after the election, see below) only
a trivial proposed fine of less than $48,000 (apparently being negotiated downward).
Is this case being fixed?
HARRISS recently celebrated (April 13) the ninth anniversary of his coronation as City Manager. He’s never had a performance appraisal. With millions wasted under his regime, it’s time for HARRISS to go.
So is the reason that Mr. HARRISS smirked all along that he knew he had Florida DEP and St. Augustine City Commissioners alike taken care of? Can HARRISS do anything with impunity (and immunity), with 350 more souls to use as cannon fodder, scapegoats and javelin-catchers, fearing retaliation because our Nation’s Oldest City has no whistleblower protection rule?
When will the autocratic Caudillo WILLIAM B. HARRISS’ misrule end?
When will democratic values be respect in St. Augustine?
What do you reckon?
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