City Commission still needs to learn parliamentary procedure

My shaping impression of St. Augustine City Commissioners upon first attending a meeting in 2005 (five years after moving here) was that our Commissioners were other-directed by the City Manager, WILLIAM B. HARRISS. As a result they choose to be hogtied by their own lack of knowledge of parliamentary procedure. I called out, "motion to table please" in frustration with their lack of political saavy in knowing how to conduct a meeting. (HARRISS later threatened me with arrest for it and Commissioner SUSAN BURK lied about it in an E-mail -- I already had an affidavit in hand from a lady who witnessed it, and an offer of a "bottle of liquor" to a public hearing witness by a developer).

Fully 4.5 years later, the current crop of Commissioners still don't know how to shape the ordinances and zoning approvals that they are asked to rubberstamp.

Last night, upon hearing excellent suggestions from local residents about how to improve the Harbor Management Plan, Commissioners adopted none of the suggestions.

NANCY SIKES-KLINE tried to amend the HMP to ban boat-based billboards, but her colleagues and HARRISS pushed her to pass the second-rate, half-baked HMP just to be passing it, with the intention of maybe refining it later.

The HMP and its Appendix (a contract of adhesion for boat owners) has many flaws, ably pointed out by residents last night. What Commissioners should have done was punt, setting another meeting to adopt amendments.

Instead, they passed it with flaws, which may get them sued.

First flaw among many: inflicting a mooring field on Salt Run, which borders the proposed St. Augustine National Historical Park, Seashore and Scenic Coastal Parkway (the part that is currently Anastasia State Park). Salt Run is a sensitive area, next to the marshes of a park. This is the route that Menendez took when he first arrived in St. Augustine in 1565. This is where the entrance to St. Augustine Harbor was for centuries.

Conclusion: our Commissioners need to take some of that $50 million we give them every year and use it for a course in parliamentary procedure, so that they can draft and make amendments to proposed City ordinances without being at the tender mercies of WILLIAM B. HARRISS and his sidekick, City Attorney RONALD WAYNE BROWN.

Parliamentary procedure is not rocket science. Please don't run for public office if you don't want to learn how to use it. Being an elected board member without knowing how to perfect and amend a law is like being a carpenter and not knowing how to use a hammer and saw.

What do you reckon?