Dining in the Rain is NOT "Dining With Dignity." Homeless Meals Need to Move INDOORS.

1. It's time for "Dining with Dignity" a/k/a "Dining in the Rain" to move indoors, with proper sanitation.
2. City Commissioners voted to designate St. Augustine as a "Compassionate City," right?
3. Show us.
4. Prove it.
5. Now, BEFORE hurricanes and before winter.
6. "Dining in the Rain," without adequate sanitation, is a public nuisance and a public health hazard.
7. Remember the panhandling hearing? Remember the excellent scientific testimony at City Commission by Dr. Roy Hinman, M.D. concerning hazards of public urination and public defecation on St. George Street? It's still good science. It applies equally on Washington Street as on St. George Street.
8. The City's expert's scientific evidence on public health hazards would be admissible in a public nuisance proceeding challenging the City's insistence on "Dining in the Rain." To the detriment of public health, this irrefragable scientific evidence is being cruelly ignored by City burghers, and by misguided people who poo-pooh concerns about public elimination of bodily wastes without adequate sanitation.
9. Find a place indoors, please, worthy of the name, "Dining with Dignity." Find it now.
10. The influential tourist industry, wealthy corporations and rich people in St. Augustine need to direct their energies to empathy, not ignoring or defending nuisances.
11. Enough errant nonsense and withering, whispering attacks on Lincolnville resident Ms. Debra Valenti-Epstein. Her First Amendment protected activity about code violations will NOT be chilled or coerced by bullying or emotional appeals.
12. In 2007-8, Debra was there with us on the environmental health issue of our City dumping a landfill in a lake. We were not deterred by City bullying then, and will not be bullied now. Listen to her.