The non-bid contract of the St. Johns County Visitor and Convention Bureau, Inc. (VCB) with St. Johns County Board of County Commissioners SJC BCC) expired September 30, 2013. Good riddance. The Contract must be re-bid.
Meanwhile, bigoted, provincial VCB is still in business, and apparently still purporting to "represent" St. Johns County. It and its putative "partner," the St. Johns County Tourist Development Council (TDC), adamantly refuse to provide a list of GLBT-friendly accomodations to tourists (or me). There is no friendliness to GLBT people expressed by our Board of County Commissioners, which has no nondiscrimination policy.
Meanwhile, outside of our bigoted BCC, the following local government entities have non-discrimination policies:
1. Anastasia Mosquito Control District of St. Johns County (employment).
2. Sheriff David Shoar (employment)
3. State's Attorney Ralph Joseph Larizza (employment)
4. City of St. Augustine Beach (employment and housing)
5. City of St. Augustine (housing)
6. St. Johns County Schools (harassment, bullying and civility)
Meanwhile, the following entities are considering changes:
7. Town of Hastings
8. Supervisor of Elections
9. Tax Collector
On Monday, November 18th, the St. Johns County Commission will hold a joint workship, with public comment, with the St. Augustine City Commission. Ask questions. Demand answers. Ask County Commissioners why we're not advancing GLBT tourism. Bigotry is bad for business. Does the Ku Klux Klan still run St. Johns County Board of County Commissioners? Or do they need spinal and testicular implants to overcome their strange romance with the Tea Party and KKK?
Notably, VCB's inept tourism marketing is not doing enough to recruit Hispanic, African-American, Civil Rights, Historic, Environmental, Youth and GLBT tourists.
It's our money.
Let's cross-examine the bigoted burghers who won't protect GLBT rights and show ineptitude and decrepitude in tourism marketing, preferring to waste money on advertising in Reader's Digest and Better Homes and Garden, and eschewing advertisements in Miami, in African-American and GLBT publications.
St. Augustine is a cool hip place, which one would never figure out reading the dull-as-dishwater tourism brochures from the all-white VCB and TDC, which have no civil rights and antitrust compliance policies and produce tourist brochers unadorned by Rainbow flags, African-American history, Native Americans and any acknowledgement that this is the place where the first Hispanics, Catholics, Africans, Jews and families from Europe founded the first colony.
Why? It appears that the legacy of bigotry -- being extirpated in St. Augustine -- lives on in St. Johns County.
No comments:
Post a Comment