FRED HALBACK
www.halback.com
Margo Pope wrote an excellent editorial (below).
The term “Amateur Hour” came to mind Monday night as City Chief Operations Officer John Regan described how the required skate park berm was deleted by local architect FRED HALBACK without talking to anyone.
Architect FRED HALBACK should notify his professional liability insurance carrier that the City may have a claim. FRED HALBACK is Chair of the City's Historic Architectural Review Board (HARB). FRED HALACK has his fingers in a number of projects of questionable taste, several of which would destroy our history and environment.
Sounds like HALBACK goofed on the skate park berms. City Chief Operations Officer JOHN REGAN made clear that it was HALBACK who failed to include berms in the design, despite clear instructions from the PZB and City Commission,
Rather than taking tax money to pay for the construction of a berm, FRED HALBACK (or his insurance company) must pay.
"Fair is fair," as MARGO POPE's editorial about the Plaza de la Constitucion artists put it.
When MARGO POPE is allowed to research she tends to do a good job.
It seems that when WRecKord Publisher DEREK MAY gives MARGO POPE unreasonable assignments, her editorials ring hollow – they read like something the cat dragged in, as if they were written under duress.
Therefore, my comments yesterday (below) about MARGO POPE may have been too harsh and hasty.
When you have a 30-something Publisher (he comes from an IT and advertising background), it’s natural that he will be overbearing and attempt to tell experienced journalists what to do.
Does DEREK MAY somehow think that marrying into the MORRIS COMMUNICATIONS family suddenly makes him an expert on St. Augustine or Florida or politics or editorials or investigative journalism?
There is precious little investigative journalism now the WrecKord now that it only has two full-time reporters. This is the direct and proximate result of the financial mismanagement, which Folio Weekly reported in 2007.
Extending Record Editorial Page Editor MARGO POPE the benefit of the doubt, it occurs to me that being obliged to obey overbearing instructions from DEREK MAY may be exactly what happened when the WRecKord:
1. Endorsed turkeys like JOHN LUIGI MICA, ERROL JONES, NANCY SIKES-KLINE and RANDY BRUNSON for Congress and for City and County Commission.
2. Heaped praise on outgoing U.S. Senator Mel Martinez.
3. Endorsed violating artists’ God-given First Amendment rights in the Plaza de la Constitucion and St. George Street.
4. Fired political cartoonist Ed Hall for a cartoon it had approved (lampooning a fungible Florida School Superintendent), based on spurious whining from School Superintendent JOSEPH JOYNER and acolytes including PHIL McDANIEL.
That’s why I hereby apologize to MARGO POPE and hope that she stands up to DEREK MAY in the future and insists on printing only editorials that are well-researched and factually based. We have no patience with editorials based on flummery and dupery, like those that give aid and comfort to “KKK Lite.”
"KKK Lite" is the precise technical term for dangerously demagogic homophobic Senator MEL MARTINEZ, who used illegal campaign contributions, naked appeals to prejudice and falsehoods to steal two elections in 2004 (Primary and General Election), making MARTINEZ a stench in the nostrils of the Nation).
FBI agents refer to their last year on the job as their "go to hell year," because they can stand up to bad managers, inspect and criticize investigations, and speak their minds without fear or favor. That's why I hope MARGO POPE does now until she retires, secure in the knowledge that she knows more about journalism than DEREK MAY.
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