SUE ELLEN AGRESTA (HCN)
Subject: Request No. 2015-73: Any Valid City Ordinance, Policy or Rule on Applause By City Meeting Attendees?; Please Cease and Desist All First Amendment Violations; Favoritism Must Stop Now
Good morning, Mayor Shaver, Chairwoman Agresta, Ms. Lopez, and Messrs. Regan and Burchfield:
1. Please send me a copy of any valid city ordinance, policy or rule banning applause by city meeting attendees. My information is that there is no such document, correct?
2. At the April [7], 2015 PZB meeting, Chairwoman Susan Agresta told meeting attendees from HP-1 not to applaud speakers on the second request for continuance on an ill-advised proposal to inflict a hotel upon HP-1, turning the Dow Museum of Historic Homes into a wealthy hotel complex. Our State of Florida invested $2 million in the Dow Museum, and Mr. Dow's legacy was for it to be a museum in perpetuity, not a hotel for the wealthy. Residents applauded speakers who expressed concerns about flummery, delay and possible efforts to construct hotel suites now, in order to present the PZB with a fait accompli.
3. Citizen activist Ms. B.J. Kalaidi rightly objected to Chairwoman Agresta's unctuous, unconstitutional, unseemly ukase on applause.
4. Residents proceeded to ignore Chairwoman Agresta's ukase and we applauded Ms. Kalaidi.
5. Similar illegal no-applause orders have been given by the Chair of the St. Johns County Commission and the Mayor of St. Augustine Beach. They are illegal and unseemly,
6. Please cease and desist from all First Amendment violations, including illegal no-applause orders and illegal no-trespass orders.
7. It is bad enough that organized lawbreakers have long had the ear of our City Hall. It is embarrassing that our City Manager told First Coast News on or about November 17 2014 that he was "thrilled" by the Dow Museum of Historic Homes being purchased by DAVID BARtON CORNEAL. Ms. Agresta's rudely ordering around citizens concerned about the Dow Museum's future that we can't express ourselves with applause was contrary to the genius of a free people. We have a civil and constitutional right to applaud. No more Jim Crow law in St. Augustine, please.
8. Ms. Agresta owes us all an apology: this is not the first time she has run afoul of reasonable expectations of probity -- her August 16, 2014 St. Augustine Record guest column identifying herself as PZB chair supporting a HARB demolition permit authorizing the destruction of Echo House was also unethical, unseemly and smacked of favoritism, if not actual corruption. http://staugustine.com/opinions/2014-08-16/guest-echo-house-impeding-commuity-growth
9. Ms. Agresta has also interrupted me several times when I point out the need to seek a legal opinion on MARK ALAN KNIGHT's possible unauthorized practice of law in representing corporations before City boards. Ms. Aresta does so despite her having told her colleagues not to interrupt public hearing speakers. Her reflexive favoritism toward KNIGHT and his developer clients is beginning to look programmed, and unseemly, as when the PZB unanimously supported two 60 foot tall hotels that were rightly rejected by City Commissioners on January 26, 2015.
10. Ms. Agresta must start acting like a neutral chair and not as developer shill from this day forward
11. Ms. Agresta must stop acting like a criminal defense lawyer for Mr. KNIGHT and developer corporations he represents, without any valid City ordinance cited allowing such lay representation. It is an appearance of impropriety.
12. If she will not conform to legal norms, she should resign as Chairman.
Thank you.
With kindest regards, I am,
Sincerely yours,
Ed
Ed Slavin
904-377-4998
www.cleanupcityofstaugustine.blogspot.com
www.fourowls.blogspot.com
Chilling Free Speech and its variants...
ReplyDeleteAcronyms are an expression of arrogance ...
It is amazing how those who wish to limit others Free Speech engage in the arrogance of speaking in acronyms, whereby they speak in a different language; ostensibly meant to save time but in reality that serves to express elitism and daze and confuse and make the head spin of the not so fluent newcomer trying to understand. Consider...
With the city now pitching overlay district zoning (ODZ) that seeks to create new layers of zoning regulations that augment and give to HARB and the PZB more options (other than PUD and its already onerous existing rules and regulations) to confuse and abuse the residents, I think we might need a new board to insure that this permeation of these new rules is all done tactfully and with caring and kindness towards residents. We need additional rules to insure that the new rules permeate and diffuse through the old rules gracefully.
So I suggest we create a new entity to administer these new rules and call it the Permeation Rules Incorporating Caring Kindness Board (PRICKB) board. Then when HARB or the PZB can't get its way with a PUD, it can pull its PUD, and utilizing its PRICKB, switch to an ODZ.
Even more amazing is how the public legitimizes and validates these government hijacking murderous gangster thugs with their attention.