Reject No-bid Yacht Club Lease of Salt Run Community Center

Dear Mayor Shaver and Commissioners:
1. This proposal is based upon greed, not need. Please reject this poorly-drafted special interest no-bid lease of our Salt Run Community Center as a violation of public policy. See Restatement of Contracts, 2d, Section 178 (Contract violation of public policy).
2. The Yacht Club lease proposal:
a. has a nondiscrimination clause that does not include sexual orientation or gender identification as protected classes;
b. lacks a security deposit requirement;
c. lacks proper due diligence or staff analysis (staff did not analyze finances or obtain the Yacht Club's 990, which I have requested);
d. is evidently unadorned by any neighborhood notice, charette or meeting;
e. was the result of a no-bid lease without an RFP or RFQ;
f. is a typical form book lease that fails to protect the public interest; and
g. involves reducing the rent from $1500 to $1000 per month, based upon assertions of declining membership, unadorned by any accounting records or financial analysis.
3. This proposal stinks. This is our Salt Run Community Center, which the Yacht Club agreed to run. Instead, it is being run as a private club, with little opportunity for residents to enjoy, as we could when it was a restaurant and community center.
4. The Yacht Club has not yet provided a list of dates when citizen groups were able to use it. Why?
5. In the year before the lease was approved, the Salt Run Community Center was used some 150 times (see below).
6. How often has it been used as a Community Center since then?
7. Where is the signage stating this is the "Salt Run Community Center?"
8. How are citizens notified that they can use our Salt Run Community Center without charge?
9. It was a lovely restaurant and community center before the Yacht Club got it, removing the name "Salt Run Community Center."
10. It should be open for breakfast, lunch and weddings, and not just Republican or neighborhood meetings.
11. Below are the minutes of the November 13, 2006 City Commission meeting where this no-bid lease was the result of clamorous cheering by 75 Yacht Club members.
12. Please reject the lease. Please do not begin our City of St. Augustine's 450th year by rubber-stamping another long-term lease of our Salt Run Community Center to wealthy yacht owners. Thank you.
With kindest regards, I am,
Sincerely yours,
Ed Slavin
www.fourowls.blogspot.com
www.cleanupcityofstaugustine.blogspot.com
904-377-4998

P.S. Record editorial January 16 endorses the Yacht Club deal.