RUMOR CONTROL: Who is misleading "Native St. Augustine residents" about DOW MUSEUM Property Being Turned Into a Parking Lot by "City" if CORNEAL Does Not Get His HP-1 Hotel?

Factory-made sign, one of three different signs being distributed by DAVID BARTON CORNEAL, some displayed by non-"St. Augustine Natives"

Several dozen misguided "St. Augustine Natives," mostly non-city residents from Elkton or other rural areas, showed up as a gaggle supporting DAVID BARTON CORNEAL's hey-boy, MICHAEL CONROY, at the July 16, 2015 meeting of the City of St. Augustine Historic Architectural Review Board.

The "St. Augustine Natives" were wearing tacky pro-CORNEAL t-shirts, ornery, uninformed, misled, misguided and loudly cheering, applauding and booing, but no one bothered to gavel them to order when they heckled me or cheered lustily for the pro-CORNEAL speakers. There was no policeman present, although there are officers assigned to City Commission meetings that are far less contentious. During the HARB Meeting, Assistant City Manager TIMOTHY BURCHFIELD (R-Elkton) and City General Services Director JAMES PIGGOT lurked briefly at different times.

A near-riot of mean-spirited people who want to cram a hotel into other people's neighborhood? People giving me hate stares? At other meetings, a gaggle of people surrounding and cursing at other hotel opponents? A man yelling at me, without being properly introduced? Mr. CORNEAL stomach-bumping, cursing and insulting me outside the May 21, 2015 HARB meeting?

What's going on here? What accounts for these noisy, noisome bullies?

Rumors were spread that if a hotel is not allowed, the former DOW MUSEUM OF HISTORIC HOMES will be bulldozed by "the city" for a parking garage. Who spread those rumors? Obviously not truthful hotel opponents, who have already suffered libel at the behest of CORNEAL in the Record, where stenographer/developer toady STUART KORFHAGE "reported" a misbegotten story (not retracted) implying that neighbors opposed to the project "slashed tires." What stands out that CORNEAL and his entourage are perennial prevaricators without principles.

That's about as bizarre a rumor as I've heard -- except for the fact that our City Managers are really arrogant, CORNEAL seems to own them, and Messrs. CORNEAL and CONROY have already bulldozed CARPENTER"s HOUSE without waiting for appeal time to expire, after snow-jobbing what's left of the Historic Architectural Review Board.

(Last year, chair LEN WEEKS, ex-Mayor, was forced to resign after he illegally destroyed DON PEDRO FORNELLS HOUSE, fined only $3600. Vice Chair PAUL M. WEAVER, III is representing CORNEAL and testified before the Planning and Zoning Board, and has recused himself from CORNEAL-related items. Former member JEREMY MARQUIS resigned; he is also representing CORNEAL).

Rumors are also being spread about CORNEAL renting out the homes if he does not get his HP-1 hotel: the rumors are so blatantly racist that I was loudly booed when I happened to mention that I was wearing one of KKK-buster Stetson Kennedy's jackets. (Tough mean crowd of "St. Augustine Natives": some of their in-bred parents probably threw bricks at black people in the Slave Market Square in 1964). Those rumors came directly from CORNEAL's lips at the May 5, 2015 PZB meeting: thus, I have filed a Fair Housing Act complaint against CORNEAL pursuant to 42 U.S.C. 3604c.

It speaks volumes that HARB was so terrorized by a gaggle of noisy t-shirt wearers, as was tatterdemalion City Attorney ISABELLE LOPEZ, who did nothing to add any legal advice to the proceedings (except to try to cut off my rebuttal of CONLEY's remarks about the "sense of place" by saying that we preserve that with the St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore.

Between the "expert" test-i-liars and the maladroit bullies, DAVID BARTON CORNEAL has assembled a motley crew of the uninformed trying to achieve the impossible -- a hotel in what CORNEAL calls "the heart" of St. Augustine -- the DOW MUSEUM OF HISTORIC HOMES.