John Muir would have called them Temple Destroyers.
"Temple Destroyers," louche lobbyists and Benedict Arnold Corporations abound in St. Johns County and St. Augustine.
Wealthy corporate interests are so institutionalized that County Commission voted 5-0 March 21, 2023 to put the Chamber of Commerce on a committee deciding which artistic, cultural and heritage groups to fund! Watch the video and see facile explanations believed by five somnambulistic Commissioners, asleep at the switch1
Contemplating the ongoing corruption at St. Johns County on its failure to preserve and protect our Cultural Resources and vindicate employee whistleblower rights.
Anticipating the upcoming decision on hiring a new City Manager in St. Augustine, Florida, looking back to a time when corruption afflicted City mismanagement of a 3000-4000 year old Native American history, just north of St. Augustine High School.
Enough dilettantes in government, catering to lugubrious goobers who want to destroy history.
There was no national search for the City Manager in 2010: it shows.
My grandmother would call our maladministered City government what it is: it is run by second-raters who she would have called "hopelessly provincial."
Read 2020 blog post below. Check out what our Nation's Oldest and Oddest City allowed a New York developer and his corrupt corporate attorney to do to Red House Bluff on January 9, 2006. Never forget. Always speak out against corruption, mediocrity and mendacity.
Wealthy Dull Republicans are destroying this magical place.
On issue after issue, our local leaders get away with clearcutting and destruction of our precious cultural heritage. St. Augustine is a national treasure. We must preserve and protect it, consistent with the "Seven Generation Test" that Native Americans taught us.
Our City and County law enforcement, endorsed by wealthy Dull Republicans, tolerate criminality: SAPD told me August 1, 2020 they "can't charge a corporation with a crime." St. Johns County Clerk of Courts and Comptroller Brandon J. Patty had a one-person Inspector General office, but fired IG Nilsa Arissa for doing her job "too well," never bothering to inform the County Commission or County Attorney of the firing.
There is a spirit stalking St. Johns County, a spirit of corruption, of desuetude, of waste, fraud, abuse, mismanagement, misfeasance, malfeasance, nonfeasance, flummery, dupery and nincompoopery.
These are not "good 'ole boys."
"Good 'ole boys" like to hunt and fish.
Son of the former County Emergency Operations Director, feculent former City Manager WILLIAM BARRY HARRISS dumped a landfill in a lake, a prime bass fishin' spot, which was a sin, a crime against nature and a tort.
The City Commission gave him accolades and a plaque and praise while he was under criminal investigation by DEP and FDEP.
HARRISS's fiendish environmental crime was characterized in 2006 by a City Commission candidate, now-Mayor NANCY SIKES-KLINE, this way:
"Oh, it was a mistake."
It is a mistake to ignore criminality by government officials who could't be bothered to require background checks of developers, while approving without considering other candidates the other-directed, unctuous and unqualified HUNTER SINCLAIR CONRAD as County Administrator, a man alleged by a Chicago federal grand jury to have taken $8000 "intended as a bribe" from government contractor PENN CREDIT CORP. and DONALD DONAGHER, JR.
As Attorney General Robert Francis Kennedy said, "If we do not, on a national scale, attack organized criminals with weapons and techniques as effective as their own, they will destroy us."
As William. Lloyd Garrison, the greet abolitionist publisher said, "I will be heard."
* Footnote: Thanks to activists who were finally heard and heeded, our Old City Reservoir has been finally cleaned up, but HARRISS was never arrested and never went to jail. The 82.5 acre Old City Reservoir site is under consideration for affordable housing, with a charette held on March 20, 2023,
From this blog:
Sunday, January 08, 2023
January 9, 2006 Was A Night To Remember: Annals of Local Corruption
January 9, 2006 was the night I first met my future mentors, Diane and Jerry Mills, who died in 2020.
Mr. and Mrs. Mills hired a Ponte Vedra lawyer to oppose a misguided project of scheming cynical real estate speculator ROBERT MICHAEL GRAUBARD.
Instead of preserving our 3000-4000 year old Native American history, just north of St. Augustine High School, then-disbarred lawyer GRAUBARD and his ROGERS TOWERS lawyer, the late GEORGE MORRIS McCLURE had their way with our history and nature, with connivance of corrupt City officials, including City Manager WILLIAM BARRY HARRIS and City Planning and Building Director MARK ALAN KNIGHT.
Ethically challenged KNIGHT hid and suppressed a contractor archaeological report and kept it from our esteemed City Archaeologist, Carl Halbirt.
(KNIGHT was later fired by HARRISS's successor as City Manager, John Patrick Regan, P.E. Neither would ever tell me why KNIGHT was fired).
January 9, 2006 was the night that archaeology lost to corruption.
Devious real estate speculator/developer ROBERT MICHAEL GRAUBARD, then a disbarred New York lawyer, real estate speculator, alleged boyfriend of then-Commissioner SUSAN BURK, won 3-2 vote allowing him to destroy Red House Bluff property on Red House Branch for condos and a strip mall.
GRAUBARD was represented by notoriously corrupt ROGERS TOWERS partner GEORGE MORRIS McCLURE, since deceased, whose presence in the room led me to stick around after non-agenda public comment. Three of five corpulent, complacent, incurious compromised City Commissioners approved the project.
Commissioners rubber-stamped the proposal. They did so despite the presence of 3000-4000 year old Native American archaeology. They did so despite serpentine raised mounds surrounding Red House Branch waters -- believed by UF anthropologist who examined suppressed Environmental Sciences, Inc. They did so without requesting any more information, or asking that Phase I be completed and Phase II be done.
We never did get to view the 50 cm leg bone or learn whether it was human -- the UF anthropologist reading the ESI report at my request, thought a leg bone that big, found buried deep in sand, was likely human and wrapped and preserved to survive 3000-4000 years..
Despite the facts we later learned, the insensitive anti-factual ignoramuses then mismanaging our itty-bitty City refused to reconsider.
Corrupt City Planning and Zoning Director MARK ALAN KNIGHT suppressed ESI's half-baked Phase I report, which found a 50 cm legbone, likely human, amidst a likely burial place for a cacicque, shaman or chief. Although Native American activist David Thundershield Queen and I repeatedly asked reconsideration, corpulent Commissioners did not give a fig about their staff's misfeasance, malfeasance and nonfeasance.
Sadly, our local goverments are too often insensitive to citizen concerns, including concerns abougt protecting Native American archaeology. "Temple Destroyers" is what John Muir called them -- they are "frozen in the ice of their own indifference," as FDR said, quoting Dante.
Take former Mayor CLAUDE LEONARD WEEKS, JR. who on September 25, 2014 destroyed a 211 year old Spanish colonial building, working without permits, ignoring advice from his own architect and engineer and our City officials. WEEKS was only fined $3700 by the callow, shallow Code Enforcement Board, whose snaky proceeding was neither videotaped nor archived.
1 comment:
Also, lest we forget the phenomenal work you did in exposing Billy the Bamboozler McClure...an ongoing issue because of the unresolved matter with the pill mill, the attempted theft of employees and breach of contract AkA breaching agreements, and having everything in his momma's name which I guess is so that his assets can't be confiscated as a result of being sued. Dead beat dad and Trojan Trolley Bill McFraud Dog will live in infamy. I don't think we've heard the last of Billy the Bamboozler.
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