Woefully shallower than usual coverage of local elections by The St. Augustine Record for 2018.
Pitiful. Democracy dies in darkness.
But prevaricating Political Tourist BILL McCLURE (BM) and angry absentee European vacation candidate JACKIE ROCK (JR) come off looking like fools, out of their league, in pretending to run for Mayor.
Against our beloved reform Mayor Nancy Shaver?
Both opponents are other-directed extremists, with extremely limited ideas.
Amateur Hour.
I support the re-election of Mayor Nancy Shaver.
Two challenge mayor for St. Augustine Commission seat By Sheldon Gardner
Posted at 8:53 PM
Updated at 8:53 PM
St. Augustine’s mayoral contest could be decided this month.
Three candidates — incumbent Mayor Nancy Shaver, former County Commissioner Bill McClure and mosquito board member Jackie Rock — will vie for the two-year Commission seat on Aug. 28. A candidate must get 50 percent of the votes cast plus one vote to win the election. Otherwise, the top two candidates will face each other in the general election.
Tourism and congestion and homelessness and vagrancy are among the top issues the city has faced recently, and the candidates have different approaches to dealing with those topics.
Bill McClure said he doesn’t think the city has sufficiently improved during Shaver’s tenure on key issues such as vagrancy. One mailer from his campaign says that under her watch “vagrants now overrun our downtown” and “people feel unsafe to go there.”
St. Augustine city officials decided to stop enforcing panhandling restrictions in 2016 because a court case in Tampa found panhandling to be protected speech.
The Commission didn’t make the call to stop enforcing local laws, but Shaver and other commissioners voted to adopt and enforce new panhandling regulations in 2018 that an outside attorney advised them would be stronger legally.
Still, McClure wrote that he believes the city isn’t fully enforcing a number of laws that could help alleviate the problem, he wrote in an email to The Record. He didn’t clarify what laws he meant.
“Most vagrants have committed multiple misdemeanor offenses such as trespassing, drug paraphernalia, public intoxication or harassment,” he wrote. “After committing multiple offenses, they can spend a long time in jail. Once the word gets out that we are enforcing the laws, the vagrants will move on, and the people who want help will get help,” according to McClure.
As for dealing with congestion, he supports spending money on “infrastructure, technology and engineering to speed the flow of traffic.” He didn’t provide more details on that proposal. He also supports having tourists pay to use park-and-ride shuttles, he wrote.
McClure touted his work as a county commissioner, including having “held the line on taxes.” While he ultimately voted against a St. Johns County sales tax increase in 2015, during discussions on the issue he suggested sharing proceeds of a county sales tax increase with the St. Johns County School District. The county’s sales tax push failed, and the School District got its own sales tax increase.
McClure has been criticized for moving to the city shortly before he filed to run for mayor, but he said he’s lived in the area and had ties to the community for years.
He’s also been the subject of controversy.
Officials from Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi’s office searched and took items from two St. Johns County Medi M.D. offices — of which McClure was part owner at the time — in 2014 as part of an investigation into possible Medicare fraud and other concerns. McClure said that he did nothing illegal, and no charges have been announced. He sold his part of the clinics in 2015.
A couple of month’s ago, a press secretary for Bondi wrote in an email to The Record that the “the matter is ongoing,” and declined further comment on the investigation.
Jackie Rock’s campaign signs describe her as “a mayor for all.” She said one of her focuses as mayor would be to and represent minorities and marginalized groups, including people who are homeless, black or LGBTQ.
The artists and illustrator has served on the Anastasia Mosquito Control Board after being elected in 2016, and she has lived in the city since 2009, she said. She is a U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders supporter and was a Sanders delegate during his presidential campaign, and she has a number of ideas in mind for dealing with the city’s biggest issues.
To help deal with vagrancy and homelessness, she said she would bring forward proposals to the city for rezoning land to build multi-family housing. She said she would also talk with homeless people and put pressure on officials to plan and act on behalf of those in need.
She said the city should continue to support the construction of State Road 313 as an alternative to U.S. 1. The road, which is in the Florida Department of Transportation’s plans but still needs funding, would be like an extension of State Road 312 that would connect to S.R. 16 and then U.S. 1 North. The city should put pressure on the county to help find traffic solutions, she said.
She said some residents feel dismissed by city government, she said, and she would bring to the table time to hear their concerns.
“If they really want to see somebody who gets in there and actively works for them, communicates for them, represents them. ... I really feel like this is it for a having a chance to do that, especially for a marginalized community,” she said.
Shaver has lived in the city since 2009 and is in her second term as mayor.
When Shaver talked about vagrancy and mobility, she described the complexity of homelessness and touted what the city has already done for mobility.
Complaints about vagrancy are now mostly from a “small group of people” connected to the the St. Augustine Vagrant Watch Group Facebook page, she said. Group members monitor vagrancy and homelessness and post reports and photos on the page.
Shaver said she’s not proposing new projects for dealing with vagrancy and homelessness, but she said educating the community about homeless is a focus.
“Homelessness is not a crime, and vagrancy is not a crime. Aggressive panhandling is, and we are enforcing [laws against] it,” she said.
As for dealing with congestion and traffic issues, the city launched a big “mobility” effort more than two years ago, she noted.
She supports looking into changing the price of parking both at the city garage and other city spaces to get the most use out of them. She also wants the city to consider taking control of King Street, which would include its maintenance, from the Florida Department of Transportation. That would give the city control of traffic design, she said.
She also supports creating a new fee to help pay for the cost of traffic.
She said people can trust her to do her homework, listen and do the right thing.
“I don’t make shallow promises,” she said.
She didn’t have a comment about McClure’s mailers.
Shaver has had to deal with controversy recently over ties to Historic City News Editor Michael Gold.
Gold was accused of sending a racially charged email to someone who criticized his news website, and he hasn’t responded to the accusation. The email, sent to a black man, referred to black people as “colored” and called a black man “lazy and shiftless” and “niggardly.” After being criticized on social media and after initially declining to distance herself from Gold, Shaver decided to pull her advertising from Gold’s website. McClure also dropped his advertising from the site.
COMMENTS
1. Are controversial St. Johns County Clerk of Courts HUNTER CONRAD and chief administrative officer and in-house counsel BRADLEY J. BRADLEY concealing documents from McCLURE’s messy divorce case and concealing the search warrant affidavits and returns from the October 9, 2014 Statewide Prosecutor search of MEDI-M.D. (where a Circuit Court judge found probable cause McCLURE and his mother committed felonies)? More here: http://cleanupcityofstaugustine.blogspot.com/2018/08/bill-mcclure-deadbeat-dad-contempt-of.html 2. Are HUNTER CONRAD and BRADLEY J. BRADLEY committing possible crimes to benefit his fellow Republican, WILLIAM ANTHONY McCLURE? You tell me.
3. Clerk of Courts HUNTER CONRAD and his satellite, BRADLEY J. BRADLEY, are both unjust stewards. Time for them to go.
3. Clerk of Courts HUNTER CONRAD and his satellite, BRADLEY J. BRADLEY, are both unjust stewards. Time for them to go.
St. Augustine mayoral candidate JACKIE ROCK defamed a journalist, for activism eleven years ago that killed an illegal, no-bid contract for a $1.8 million Bell Luxury Jet Helicopter incapable of killing a single skeeter. Shameful demagogic politician. http://cleanupcityofstaugustine.blogspot.com/2018/05/who-is-jackie-rock-other-directed-st.html
1. Why does faux phony Mayoral "candidate" JACKIE ROCK support SR313?
2. Not environmentally sensitive -- yet another pork barrel project. Proposed SR313 threatens SJRWMD's Twelve Mile Swamp.
3. JACKIE ROCK is the mendacious mewling cat's paw of racist Rev. RON RAWLS, who demands to remove two historic monuments, on property owned by the City of St. Augustine and the State of Florida.
4. JACKIE ROCK has spent three (3) months in Europe while on the public payroll. It's our money.
5. During her time in Europe, JACKIE ROCK insists upon being paid $500/month as a member of the Anastasia Mosquito Control Commission.
6. Waste, fraud, abuse, misfeasance, malfeasance, nonfeasance, flummery, dupery and nincompoopery? (Or all nine?")
7. It's our money. What do you reckon? JACKIE ROCK is an unjust steward and profligate spender of our tax dollars.
8. ROCK was obligated to resign to run, effective December 1, 2018, under Florida's resign-to-run law. She's so disorganized she did not know she had to resign from AMCD to run for Mayor.
9. I supported JACIE ROCK when she ran for AMCD,. But ROCK is off her rocker running for Mayor -- what a waste of talent for a former Bernie Sanders delegate to the Democratic National Convention to throw away her AMCD seat at the behest of a racist..
10. How foolish to mount an absentee "European Vacation" campaign for Mayor, running against Nancy Shaver. Pitiful. « less
2. Not environmentally sensitive -- yet another pork barrel project. Proposed SR313 threatens SJRWMD's Twelve Mile Swamp.
3. JACKIE ROCK is the mendacious mewling cat's paw of racist Rev. RON RAWLS, who demands to remove two historic monuments, on property owned by the City of St. Augustine and the State of Florida.
4. JACKIE ROCK has spent three (3) months in Europe while on the public payroll. It's our money.
5. During her time in Europe, JACKIE ROCK insists upon being paid $500/month as a member of the Anastasia Mosquito Control Commission.
6. Waste, fraud, abuse, misfeasance, malfeasance, nonfeasance, flummery, dupery and nincompoopery? (Or all nine?")
7. It's our money. What do you reckon? JACKIE ROCK is an unjust steward and profligate spender of our tax dollars.
8. ROCK was obligated to resign to run, effective December 1, 2018, under Florida's resign-to-run law. She's so disorganized she did not know she had to resign from AMCD to run for Mayor.
9. I supported JACIE ROCK when she ran for AMCD,. But ROCK is off her rocker running for Mayor -- what a waste of talent for a former Bernie Sanders delegate to the Democratic National Convention to throw away her AMCD seat at the behest of a racist..
10. How foolish to mount an absentee "European Vacation" campaign for Mayor, running against Nancy Shaver. Pitiful. « less
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