WILLIAM B. HARRISS, City of St. Augustine City Manager
Photo credit: J.D. Pleasant
Making a pig's breakfast of our history and nature, the Manager of our City of St. Augustine would now like to disinvite the University of Florida from the 500th anniversary of Florida (2013) and the 450th anniversary of St. Augustine (2015).
How rude. How shallow. How disgustingly transparent.
Following HARRISS like five unthinking shills, our City of St. Augustine City Commissioners voted last night to ask the Florida state legislature to remove the University of Florida from plans to celebrate the 450th anniversary of St. Augustine.
They don't have a plan. They don't have a clue. All they know is that the City Manager wants "control" and they voted to give it to him.
What charitable foundation or self-respecting rich guy is going to give money to a foundation that our City of St. Augustine controls?
The City Manager and the government of the City of St. Augustine is crooked, racist and incompetent, engaged in systematic pollution, environmental racism, discrimination and First Amendment voilations.
Congress and the federal government won't give the City of St. Augustine grants or earmarks because the secret is out -- our City of St. Augustine is guilty of environmental racism, wastes money, put 40,000 cubic yards of solid waste in our Old City Reservoir, and emitted 611,000 gallons of raw sewage in San Sebastian River.
These are preventable disasters, brought to you by City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS.
We have a National Park Service that can lead the way to a St. Augustine National Seashore, Historical Park and Scenic Coastal Highway Act. www.staugustgreen.com
NPS can build a visitor center for all of St. Augustine (not just the Csstillo or the Spanish Quarter Village. It can do so at the Sebastian Inland Harbor site, where only the boat docks have been built. It can do so incorporating a working waterfront, where shrimp and fishing boats can tie up for our visitors to admire (just as in Tarpon Springs, where the sponge divers are a huge tourist draw).
We can't trust WILLIAM B. HARRISS and his cronies to throw a party worthy of inviting the Pope and the President to attend.
We need a St. Augustine National Historical Park, Seashore and Scenic Coastal Parkway, which will help grow our economy and attract historic and environmental tourists (who stay more days and spend more money than day-trippers, of whom it is often said they arrive with $20 and a t-shirt, and change neither).
At the same time as last night's desultory City Commission meeting, we watched an encouraging presentation by Flagler College environmental science minors, in the first class graduating Flagler College with an environmental science minor.
The presentations included two endangered species, the Anastasia Island Beach Mouse and the Loggerhead Turtle, which are adversely affected by beach renourishment and what passes for "development," e.g., ugly condos destroying nature.
People come to see our nature, and we're not preserving it adequately. The Flagler College students and their professors and advisors show the way -- we need to embrace the natural beauty of our area, understand it, and preserve it.
To do that, we need the University of Florida more than we need WILLIAM B. HARRISS, whose maladministration has made a pig's breakfast of natural beauty and history.
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