On January 25, 2022, some 67 witnesses spoke at the St. Johns County growth management workshop, expressing righteous indignation at too-fast development and its severe effects on safety, livability and our environmental heritage.
We must view every developer project with a gimlet eye, particularly those large projects like SilverLeaf, sponsored by dodgy undisclosed domestic and foreign investors or State Senator TRAVIS HUTSON, a developer who chairs the State Senate Regulated Industries Committee.
HUTSON is a ruthless, reckless, feckless walking conflict of interest bullying local governments to do his bidding, constantly advancing legislation to erode our rights to self-government (home rule).
We must vet candidates and referenda carefully. We must be vigilant against all noisome nostrums advanced by special interests, and not be fooled again.
In 2015, a pitifully tiny turnout of St. Johns County voters voted to tax themselves and to relieve developers of some $150 million to $200 million in impact fees and property taxes
In 2015, an off-year election, with only the sales tax on the ballot and no other issue or candidates, voters approved an emergency half penny sales tax for schools for ten years.
That's an ROI for developer interests of at least some 33,200% on the investment of $189,000 in campaign.
County taxpayers also paid some $200,000 for our SJC SoE to run one-issue election. Will we be fooled again?
In 2017, County Administrator MICHAEL DAVID WANCHECK hired Dr. JAMES C. NICHOLAS, Ph.D. who recommended giving developers "credit" on impact fees or the sales tax. The County blocked seventeen document requests. Dr. NICHOLAS refused an interview. Questions on his methodology were never answered. We were snookered.
Yet Dr. NICHOLAS is again advising the County now, under County Administrator HUNTER SINCLAR CONRAD.
No peer review ever on the hokey work of a conflicted economist who has repeatedly worked/whored for developers and property owners, but who claims to be working "pro bono" for us now.
VOTERS: reject any tax referendum proposal that doesn't internalize the external costs of overdevelopment.
We, the People have spoken.
Speak out against foreign-funded feckless reckless developers who won't disclose their ownership.
Speak out against their stable of whores.
Hint: if a Commissioner nearly always votes in favor of overdevelopment, is indebted to State Senator TRAVIS HUTSON and his destructive devious developer family, s/he is not to be trusted.
This is doubly true if the suspect's name is "JEREMIAH RAY BLOCKER" and he got an advanced degree in real estate development law from the University of Miami, and works for the Douglas Law Firm, which represents both developers and governments.
Vote out all betrayers, Pétains, Judases, Quislings, Aaron Burrs, Donald Trumps, double-crossers, dupes, frontmen, phonies, pretenders, defectors, double-dealers, double-crossers, TRAVIS HUTSON, JEREMIAH BLOCKER and other DAVID SHOAR cronies.
Speak out against crooked consultants who help build constantly flooding "developments," some 33 of which in our county are flood zones already.
Speak out bad planning, other-directed lawmaking and against other-directed orotund politician-prostitutes.
One-party Dull Republican oligarchs have since 1998 voted against the public interest. They were mostly recruited to run for office by the developers' ISSUES GROUP (run by SYD PERRY, spouse of former Sheriff NEIL PERRY), and by dupey disgraced former Sheriff DAVID SHOAR, who legally changed his name from "HOAR" in 1994.
Cynical corrupt SHOAR told us at a June 2, 2017 League of Women Voters program at St. Augustine Beach that developers are "pretty nice people."
Who is SHOAR/HOAR to lecture us about the developers who bought him and other Dull Republican politicians?
This superficial, patronizing pompous porcine political prostitute was recorded on FBI surveillance tapes discussing with the late corrupt developer lawyer GEORGE MORRIS McCLURE their overweening desire that County Commissioners mind their place and not ask questions.
Read about the FBI tape of Sheriff SHOAR plotting with developer mouthpiece GEORGE McCLURE to subvert democracy here and read full transcript here.
Say no to to fast-buck overdevelopment and its devastating effects: neighborhood flooding and the land-raping, multinational corporations' Butcher's Bill of dead wildlife, dead trees, forest clearcutting, wetland-filling, wildlife-killing, road-clogging, flooding, ugliness, portable classrooms, bad planning, waste, fraud, abuse, misfeasance, malfeasance, nonfeasance, flummery, dupery and nincompoopery.
These are among the results of undisclosed developer money contaminating our political campaigns, with craven, for-sale politicians "selling their wares" to developers.
We deserve a government as decent and as caring as the good people in our county.
For better government, I support a referendum for a County Charter to limit the ability of corporate oligarchs to run St. Johns County. We need more watchdogs, an end to cronyism, greater transparency, and an independent ombudsman.
We need lobbyist registration, blocked by PATRICK FRANCIS McCORMACK, the former County Attorney and the "stakeholders" (or stakeholders) -- lobbyists he enlisted to work with former Commissioner JAY MORRIS to block this needed reform.
Do we need an Ethics Board and an Environmental Regulation Commission?
You tell me.
It is up to us.
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