Sharp Elbows at FSDB

Ray Charles, Florida School for the Deaf and Blind (FSDB) and the U.S. Postal SErvice have the page one story in this morning's St. Augustine Record.

An FSDB alumni, Ray Charles' postage stamp was unveiled at FSDB yesteray. Local residents and elected officials were excluded from FSDB's and USDS' invitation-only event, which kicked our City and County's joint meeting on West Augusting infrastructure off the front page (and out of the newspaper entirely). Our City and County officials were blindsided and uninvited, and the USPS-FSDB Ray Charles stamp unveiling conflicted with the time of their joint meeting yesterday.

That's bad advance work and bad PR work by USPS.

That bad advance work and bad PR work by USPS is the seqelae of FSDB's preferences and invitation to USPS, which brandishes a bad attitude by FSDB. See below. USPS says it will come back for a public event, with the City of St. Augustine, early next year.

FSDB has a bully mentality, as evidenced by its buying up neighborhoing properties nad engaging in real estate speculation, while facing declining enrollments.

FSDB and its longtime board chair, Flagler College Chancellor WILLIAM L. PROCTOR, our erstwhile State Representative, showed their feckless thuggery by seeking eminent domain and seeking to preempt city zoning and planning laws. Active citizens helped halt their efforts. FSDB got a Pyrrhic victory: while FSDB got eminent domain, eminent domain is forbidden by law from ever being used in the Nelmar Terrance and Fullerwood neighborhoods of our Nation's Oldest City -- it is in the statute, and FSDB recorded this covenant in every single deed in those two historic St. Augustine neighborhoods.