At City Commission Monday, July 14, 2014, BOLES said the lease deal was the best public private partnership that ever was.
For him.
For ex-Mayor LEONARD CLAUDE WEEKS, JR.
We deserve an audit after 25 years.
We need outside counsel, not the law partner of the former City Attorney who drafted the crafty and concessionary lease.
This is what international oil economic experts call "the obsolescing bargain."
For us.
BOLES is as happy as a pig in slop, and talks like the cat who ate the canary.
At the forum, Mayor BOLES was asked how he would be a model of ethics. He eschewed answers by Nancy Shaver (Transparency and Listening to People) and Ken Bryan (Integrity, Honesty).
BOLES' emetic answer: he is ethical in every way. His response was elliptical and defensive. It was very disappointing to those who like him. BOLES said, "You know me," noting that he was the guy who once as a sixteen year old rode a horse down St. George Street playing Ponce de Leon, wrote their wills, estates and trusts and see him in church and chaired the Council on Aging. "You can tell if I'm ethical or not." "I've never had anybody offer me any money for my vote," he said. "You'll be the judge. You see me at parties." "Not many of you have seen me dance."
Yes we can. We read the lease. We've watched you for ten years in public office.
BOLES' statements were lacking in substance, although it was revealing when he rambled on at City Commission about he was duked in to the deal by St. Augustine's then-City Manager in 1989 (husband of longtime St. Johns County Election Supervisor Penny Halyburton).
"The law is the law," BOLES said.
How trite.
BOLES made that statement in the context of his vote to allow Flagler College to destroy Cuna Street with a too-big classroom building that was built as a Planned Unit Development, a vote that former Commissioner William Leary regrets to this day.
Mayor BOLES did not address his $1332.21/month lease and the Restatement of Contracts, 2d, Section 178 (Contract Violation of Public Policy), under which We, The People persuaded our government officials to cancel, halt and reverse a no-bid helicopter purchase contract for a $1.8 million Anastasia Mosquito Control District of St. Johns County luxury Textron/Bell Long Ranger Jet Helicopter incapable of killing a single skeeter.
By vote of City Commission, soon to be ex-Mayor BOLES' and ex-Mayor WEEKS' no-bid lease should be attached to a declaratory judgment action, filed in Circuit Court, and put before a judge.
A court must rule about whether there is an unconscionable lease that disfavors the City and its residents.
A court must decide, not Mayor JOSEPH LESTER BOLES, Sr.
Yes we can!
In being asked about ethics, BOLES talked baby talk, talking down to the assembled residents, disappointing those of us waiting for some moral reasoning from our Mayor of eight years.
Enough condescension.
All of that rhetoric and LBJ-style goofiness begs the questions:
Why in the name of all that's holy do you have to renew a five-year lease when you've already been repaid many times over for your initial investment (whether $177,000 or $350,000)?
Why are you latched onto the City of St. Augustine lick a tick on a coon dog, sucking out $100,000 to $200,000 annually in rent payments, when you don't own the restaurant and candy store any longer?
Why do you act like you hung the moon because a prior City Manager, Mayor and Commissioners gave you and renewed a no-bid lease to build a building on what should have been a city park?
Why not just give it up before it is renewed for another 25 years on July 25, 2014?
Why do you hang on to it for dear life while our City streets need paving, Echo House is falling apart, City pipes deliver red water to homes and businesses and all because of your rent-seeking behavior, and that of your pals?
Why won't you show us your sublease and tell us how much you are making on it?
Is this a case of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell?"
Do tell us, because we're going to keep asking.
Everyone in our Nation's Oldest City wants to know.
We have a right to know.
Ask questions.
Demand answers.
Expect democracy.
It's our town and our time.
If BOLES won't answer our questions, don't even think about voting for him.
So far, all we have from BOLES is a "non-denial denial," in the immortal words of Benjamin Crowninshield Bradlee, JFK protege and Managing Editor of the Washington Post during Watergate.
Make no mistake about it -- the lease for 81 St. George Street is a scandal,
We deserve answers.
Former Mayor George Gardner's newsletter estimates that Messrs BOLES and LEN WEEKS make $100,000 to $200,000 annually from subleasing the property, with no gainful economic activity on their part. "Sweet deal."
Where else in the world but in a foreign kleptocracy do government officials get to lease valuable property from their own government, make a profit on it, and not get questioned about it by law enforcement? It's our money. It's our property. Enough flummery, dupery and nincompoopery.
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