At last night's City of St. Augustine Commission meeting, there was discussion of short-term rental regulations. Promising policy development ahead. Let all the facts be known.
Commissioner, JOHN OTHA VALDES mentioned his garage apartment would be eligible for exemption from possible Orlando-style regulations limiting such rentals to properties where the owner or a full-time tenant is on-site.
It was a bit off-putting.
BILL HARRIS is gone. JOE BOLES is gone. TODD NEVILLE is gone.
Straighten up and fly right, dammit.
We the People are watching. And listening. And learning.
I'm happy to see "ODD TODD" NEVILLE is done gone with the ghosts of windbags past.
No more self-serving, self-seeking flummery, dupery and nincompoopery in his place, please.
On November 6, 2014, the good people of St. Augustine elected Mayor Nancy Shaver.
We defeated Mayor JOE BOLES.
JOSEPH LESTER BOLES, Jr.
(St. Augustine Mayor, 2006-2014)
Art by Greg Travous and Hans Holbein the Younger)
Ever since, City Commissioners' selfish, solipsistic, self-indulgent self-referential discussion of how government regulations can benefit the officeholder (or his.her clients) has been largely limited to the narrow confines of that other itty-bitty-city, St. Augustine Beach.
St. Augustine Beach is the place where Commissioners multiple mendacious mayors have been swathed, smeared, bleared and smeared in self-interest, from restaurant owners blocking food trucks to disgraced ex-Mayor ANDREA SAMUElS' sibilant SABCA subsidies to hotelier and ex-Mayor RICHARD O'BRIEN's legislative attack on short-term rentals and obtaining loopholes for two McMansions (which he violated with impunity and seeming immunity until Commissioner Margaret England noticed O'BRIEN was literally over the agreed-to setback line (O'BREIN was fined only $25,000 for it and not ordered to tear it down).
I object to SAMUELS, O'BRIEN and other dull louche local Commissioners acting like Republican Lords of All They Survey -- greedheads who see"the government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs," in FDR's words. (October 31, 1936 Madison Square Garden speech.)
Commissioners are elected to represent the people, not their own deep pockets.
"Ask not," JFK said, "what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country.
At the December 10, 2018 meeting, I also found it remarkable that before attending his first regular Commission meeting, new Commissioner JOHN OTHA VALDES cracked a joke with a city director at the back of the meeting room about how he could use his briefcase to collect "kickbacks."
It's not funny, Commissioner.
And I heard it.
The Temple of Democracy is not mocked.
I did tell Valdes the late legendary lobbyist Larry Tucker line about the difference between Democrats and Republicans in Tallahassee: "Democrats want the money in a paper sack and Republicans want the money in a briefcase."
After Valdes destroyed a building without a permit, I told him -- quoting what I said to St. Johns County Commission Chairman Thomas G. Manuel after his arrest for bribery -- "Don't do it again."
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