Progress on African-American Tourism Marketing; More Work Remains to Reform TDC and VCB

Another sign of progress; more work remains to change TDC After years of Apartheid-style marketing, the new marketing plans of the St. Johns County Visitor and Convention Bureau for FY '2014 now includes marketing to African-Americans and honoring our Civil Rights heroes and sheroes here in St. Augustine. Bravo!
Local activists are celebrating the victory, announced yesterday by Glenn Hastings, Executive Director of the St. Johns County Tourist Development Council (TDC).
The St. Johns County Cultural Council will also reach out to African-Americans, whose heroism here led to the adoption of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and whose courage defended the Castillo San Marco – the first freed African-American settlement wasc here, at Fort Mose.
Thank you, TDC, for correcting this imbalance – VCB literature has long excluded African-Americans and Native Americans and GLBT people and youth from its focus. St. Augustine was the first cultural melting pot, and that is our "brand." St. Augustine is America's “most diverse city and its first diverse city,” as St. Augustine Mayor Joseph Boles says. The first Hispanic, Catholic, Jewish, African-American and European women settlers arrived here on September 8, 1565. As Dr. Michael Gannon says, "St. Augustine was up for urban renewal" by the time Jamestown was (briefly) settled in 1607 and Englishment arrived in 1620. We must celebrate our cultural diversity and never again suffer or permit our county government contractors to write off entire demographic groups, as VCB hsve done for years, at the behest of cognitive miser consultants. More work remains to be done:
1. TDC must adopt a Sunshine and Open Records policy and make it binding on VCB as a modification to its contract today – VCB is wrongfully withholding records and keeping secrets, and it's going to get itself sued if it does not repent. 2. "Every contract, combination or conspiracy in restraint of trade is hereby declared to be illegal.” That's Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act. Price-fixing is a per se violation, and a crime. On May 14, 2013, VCB's Ph.D. outside consultant Peter Yesawich, Vice Chair of MMGY, urged 100 VCB members to raise prices. I reported this overt act to the Justice Department. The criminal section of the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department told me yesterday morning, “He should never have said that” and that this was “an invitation to collusion.” TDC and VCB must report any possible past or ongoing pricefixing activity to the Justice Department under the voluntary disclosure program. It's our tax money. From this day forward, let's agree: we won't pay competitors our tax money to collude in this county. The business of St. Johns County does not include committing crimes and torts.
3. VCB's contract must be revised immediately to require adoption of Antitrust and Civil Rights compliance policies – after two months, we've learned that VCB has no Antitrust or Civil Rights compliance policies. Why? And why did it take two months to say so? To whom do they think they're talking? This is contrary to the genius of a free people. Enough misfeasance, malfeasance and nonfeasance by this dodgy government contractor.
4. VCB's contract must be re-bid – it expires on September 30, 2013. This is not a sole-source contract and competition must be required, now. VCB's annual budget is several times the no-bid luxury Bell Jet helicopter a bipartisan group of St. Johns Countians defeated in 2007. That helicopter was a one-shot $1.8 million no-bid contract for our Mosquito Control District. Despite rumors of a contract renewal, our County would be ill-advised to think of a multi-million contract renewal for VCB – that wnould be a contract violation of public policy and illegal. Rest. 2nd of contracts, Sec. 178. I defer to the public record on that.
5. TDC must spend more on public relations and less on unfocused, addlepated advertising in Reader's Digest and Better Homes and Gardens. We need to reach out to Miami, Hispanic, African-American, Catholic, Jewish, GLBT and youth markets.
6. TDC must research, discuss, debate and report to BCC on the proposed St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore, first proposed in 1939. www.staugustgreen.com On November 1, 2011, in a negative profile in courage, St. Johns Commissioners -- unadorned by the custormay staff and legal analysis -- heard our presentation on the Park and Seashore and voted against supporting the Park and Seashore. Why?
Some of our One-Party Rule St. Johns County Commissioners all too easily allowed themselves to be cowed by false local Tea Party apparatchik rhetoric (starting with high dudgeon accusations that a "yes" vote would be "treason").
After years, any rational County Commission debate of the St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore was contaminated by its refusal to enforce its own civility rules.
The local Tea Party's noisome, noisy, obnoxious distractions of gun noises, gun gestures and hurled accusations that Park and Seashore supporters were Nazis, Communists, Hitler, Goebbels and Stalin.
Sometimes I feel like an opposum -- every day I wake up in a new world.
Sunday's gutsy St. Augustine Record ediorial on the local Tea Party ("Laughing in the face of the local Tea Party") empowers our local officals to do the right thing, and not give in to bullies.
Meanwhile, I've spoken to Tea Party members since that time -- they like National Parks, too. Come on in, the water's fine.
7. Finally, from this day forward, TDC must stand for “Times Demand Change. In secret, the VCB spends millions of bed tax dollars in a manner that may violate not only antitrust laws, but Fair Housing and Civil Rights laws and the Fourteenth Amendment.
We must do better and we can do better and we will do better, and working together, our county will start this reform today. Thank you!