City sophists at it again --

City sophists at it again --

We still don’t have the agenda for our City’s and and state’s portions of Thursday night’s meeting at 6 PM at the St. Paul’s A.M.E. Church in Lincolnville at 85 Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd.
The City’s defense lawyers are left sputtering as a result of two pounds of paperwork that seven local residents served on our City of St. Augustine and FDEP on December 27 and 31, 2007.
Our City government has not exactly been forthcoming.
It has lied to, insulted, and mocked questioners. Every time we’ve asked questions in City Commission meetings, there’s laughter from City apparatchiks at the back of the Commission meeting room – and smirks from smug City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS, who apparently thinks it’s funny. We don’t find it funny that our Florida Aquifer and groundwater are threatened by 35,000 cubic yards of illegal dumping into the Old City Reservoir, a place with pure water, where ten pound bass have been caught, which former EPA Region 4 Regional Administrator John Henry Hankinson has called “an open sore going right down to the aquifer and the groundwater.”
Egged on by the AKERMAN SENTERFITT law firm, FDEP has perpetrated a coverup of major proportions, first refusing to prosecute environmental crimes based upon such non sequiturs as our City sending two professional engineers (John Regan and Bob Leetch) to “training,” which is to say a three day seminar in Marco Island, Florida July 19-21, 2006, presented by the Florida Chamber of Commerce. Then FDEP delayed the news of the fine until after the November 2006 election. Then FDEP knuckled under to AKERMAN SENTERFITT in secret dealmaking allowing the contaminated material to be brought back to Lincolnville.
WILLIAM B. HARRISS, the City of St. Augustine City Manager and other officials responsible for the dumping must be held personally liable, with a Grand Jury to consider criminal indictments and a final FDEP order to pay fines out of their own pockets, instead of with our money.
FDEP and City officials impudently act like they’re doing the public a favor by shipping solid waste back to Lincolnville, with the airy notion of creating a “park.”
We’re still waiting on answers to questions we asked in 2006 and 2007.
We’re still appalled that St. Augustine burghers (like the tobacco company) “would rather fight than switch.”
Now the City of St. Augustine and the Florida DEP are spinning sophistry spiderwebs, starting with their claim that concerned citizens have “stymied’ the City’s plan to bring the waste back to Lincolnville for 150 days. We’ve asked for a March 10, 2008 trial date.
Assistant City Manager John Regan – the “heyboy” for City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS – actually told the St. Augustine Record that “Outside from a few individuals, we’re not hearing from the public on this…”
(see story below) Oh, please.
Citizens were invited to speak at the November 13, 2007 meeting by St. Augustine Record editorial of November 11th. The City of St. Augustine Commissioners who bothered to attend heard from no one before voting the controversial Consent Order.
Every measure of public opinion indicates that people are furious, including some 80 citizens who attended the meeting at the St. Paul’s A.M.E. Church December 13th.
When City Hall treats citizens disrespectfully, threatening arrests, removing public comment opportunities and generally acting like maniacal monomaniacs, even removing one resident from the City boundaries, we’re facing a dictatorship, one with contempt for democracy and nature.
The solid waste in the Old City Reservoir must be removed to a Class I landfill, as FDEP ordered March 15, 2006. It is the City that has “stymied” cleanup, not people who reject FDEP’s taking a dive on this one. It is the City and the AKERMAN SENTERFITT law firm that have refused to comply with FDEP’s orders, with the City’s negotiating position revealed in a City document (Petitioners’ Exhibit PX-1) that “Under no circumstances, except for a final non-appealable court order, will the City agree to remove the fill material in a Class I landfill.”
Perhaps City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS will deign to attend the January 10, 2007 meeting and answer questions. Doubt it – he’s too busy shredding the Constitution.
One of the likely questioners Thursday night will be my friend, Dee Lovell, a former editor of the Baltimore Sun, former columnist for the Washington Post and longtime companion of the late Pulitzer Prize winning Washington Post political cartoonist Herblock (Herbert Block). See Dee’s column below. See you Thursday a6 6PM at the St. Paul's A.M.E. Church at 85 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd. in Lincolnville.