In secret, behind locked gates, our Nation's Oldest City dumped a landfill in a lake (Old City Reservoir), while emitting sewage in our rivers and salt marsh. Organized citizens exposed and defeated pollution, racism and cronyism. We elected a new Mayor. We're transforming our City -- advanced citizenship. Ask questions. Make disclosures. Demand answers. Be involved. Expect democracy. Report and expose corruption. Smile! Help enact a St. Augustine National Park and Seashore. We shall overcome!
Kevin Allen, Krista Joseph and Martin Pyszczymuka all ran campaigns that called for slowing St. Johns County's growth | Photos courtesy of the candidates
From Jacksonville Today:
Slow-the-growth candidates win big in St. Johns County
From the School Board to the County Commission, this month’s primary elections scored wins for St. Johns County candidates running on a common platform: Stop the county’s rapid growth.
It’s a message that resonated with voters in one of Florida’s fastest-growing counties.
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Martin Pyszczymuka handily defeated three other candidates to earn his seat on the Board of County Commissioners. His opponents included Heather Brofford, who received a late-in-the-game endorsement from Gov. Ron DeSantis and campaign support from the state Republican Party of Florida.
Speaking with Jacksonville Today on election night, standard bearer of the local slow-the-growth movement, County Commissioner Krista Joseph — who won her reelection bid by more than 6,000 votes — said the goal is to put a stop to the destruction of St. Johns’ environment and way of life.
“We’re gonna take back St. Johns County,” she said. “We’re finally going to make things happen.”
Growth pains in the school system
Winning a school board seat outright on primary night, political newcomer and slow-growth candidate Kevin Allen narrowly unseated Beverly Slough. With more than 20 years of experience on the School Board alone, Slough was first elected when Allen was just a teenager.
New-Yorker-turned-Floridian Allen does not have the typical resume of a school board member. The 35-year-old has spent no time leading a classroom or a school. Instead, he campaigned on his experience in the financial world.
“I think it’s been proven that we have some of the best teachers in the entire state, but we have a financial crisis problem going on with the debt and the budget deficit that we saw last year,” Allen says. “I think that just coming from a different background than the education space is something that is really needed at this point in time, because we’re seeing a lot of growth and we need to be able to have someone on the board that knows how to manage that and work to help us to get out of it.”
Once appointed to the board, Allen says one of his key priorities is finding money that would not have to be approved by voters to make teacher salary increases permanent. He also wants to see a more concerted lobbying effort in Tallahassee to increase public school funding.
“I think if all the governmental entities within the county work together, then we can actually make some change happen. We can take a stand,” Allen says. “We are the No. 1 school district, and we should have a lot of influence in how it gets managed throughout the state. If we can make a model for all the other counties, I’d really like to take that on.”
County Commission shake-up
The two County Commission races were also decided last week without any need for a November runoff election.
Winners Pyszczymuka and Joseph ran a joint campaign arguing that, if elected, they would form a three-person voting bloc with County Commissioner Ann Taylor on the five-person commission to slow down the county’s growth.
Pyszczymuka and his family moved to St. Johns from Hawaii four years ago. He first made a local name for himself addressing elected officials about his wife’s firing from her job with the county. She is suing the county, alleging she was wrongfully terminated.
After his decisive victory for the seat currently held by County Commissioner Sarah Arnold, Pyszczymuka says voters spoke loud and clear in wanting Joseph and him to “rein in this reckless development that’s been going on in the county for far too long.”
During that discussion, County Commissioner Clay Murphy — who similarly campaigned on slowing the growth two years ago — said he did not like the proposals in front of him, but that a new state law tied his hands.
“… what I discovered is that when you get into this position is, whether I’m happy or not is not the deciding issue,” Murphy said. “The deciding issue is ‘What does the law say?’”
Pyszczymuka says that kind of thinking is hurting St. Johns County.
“If it’s all predetermined, why do we even vote as county commissioners? Let’s just have the state ram things through, and there’s nothing we can even do about it,” he says. “As far as what’s going on at the state level, we need to have people with a backbone that are willing to fight for what’s gonna affect our county.”
Will that result in lawsuits from developers and other private property owners? Maybe, Pyszczymuka says, but that’s just part of the process.
“They [the residents] don’t want somebody who’s going to roll over,” he says. “If a lawsuit comes, that’s fine. We’ll deal with it.”
Whether he is sworn in in December or sooner (pending the governor’s potential removal of two commissioners charged with fraud), Pyszczymuka says his top priority is to bring transparency and accountability to a board that has been rocked by controversy.
“I will assure you that transparency will be coming to our government,” he says, “and we’re definitely going to do everything we can to limit the outside influences on our elected officials and on everybody else within the county government.”
Looking ahead
One more St. Johns County School Board race remains up for grabs. None of the three candidates in that race managed to earn more than 50% support from voters on Aug. 18, so two candidates, Tammie McClafferty and Jillian Tozer, will move on to a runoff vote in November.
Voters will also have a say in a number of other races, including a seat on the St. Augustine City Commission — Ashleigh Barnes won one of the two seats up for grabs last week — and for their representatives in Tallahassee and Washington, D.C.
Noah HertzReporteremailNoah Hertz is an award-winning reporter focusing on St. Johns County. Noah got his start reporting in Tallahassee and in Wakulla County, covering local government and community issues. He went on to work for three years as a general assignment reporter and editor for The West Volusia Beacon in his Central Florida hometown of DeLand, where he helped the Beacon take home awards from the Florida Press Association.
It was August 28, 1974, the Feast of Saint Augustine), I heard Ralph Nader speak at Gaston Hall at Georgetown University:
The next day, on August 29, 1974), I went to work for the office of U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy, on the morning before my first class at Georgetown University.
Thanks to the Navy SEAL Terrence McShane, Georgetown University Resident Assistant, Vietnam, veteran, son of a Philadelphia Inquirer classified ad department workplace friend of my Aunt Helen, I was in like the proverbial Flynn
Like the character played by Robert Morse in the musical comedy "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying," I started in the mailroom.
It was around the corner from Senator Kennedy's main office. In fact, it was formerly and formally one of five rooms assigned to progressive Democratic Senator "Fritz" Hollings of S.C., which he had lent (permanently, it turns out) to Senator Kennedy after RFK was murdered, to handle the overflow of mail, which never abated.
For 2.5 days/week, as a freshman and sophomore (Tuesday, Thursday and Friday afternoon), I worked as an intern, first free, then paid ($53/week for up to 30 hours of work).
I opened and stapled mail, read mail, assigned mail to other people to read, auto-pennned and stuffed response letters, ran errands, did research, helped with casework, and quickly earned a mafia-sounding nickname. My widely-used nickname in Senator Ted Kennedy's office was "Fast Eddie."
Because if you needed to send something somewhere quickly (this was 1974), there was no Internet, no E-mail and only slow cumbersome fax machines, which took 4-6 minutes per page (and emitted fumes that could make you dizzy).
You put it in an envelope, you called the mailroom, and you asked for an intern. Any intern.
Or, if it was Tuesday, Thursday or Friday afternoon, you would say, "Is Fast Eddie there?" Fast Eddie (the EMK staff gave me that nickname) had survived rheumatic fever and arthritis. I was (and still am) a klutz. I did not drive (still don't and you should be glad I don't).
But Fast Eddie moved swiftly, got things done quickly, and did not tarry, unlike your typical undergraduate interns, who moved like molasses going uphill in Vermont in January.
I got to meet and talk and laugh with phenomenal staffers and superlative secretaries, including legislative director Carey W. Parker (a Rhodes scholar, one of several in that big room, and his secretary Shannon McDonald), Mary Murtagh and Melody Miller, and people who went on to be Ambassador to NATO (Robert Hunter), first Jewish director of the Peace Corps (Marc Schneider), and be appointed on EMK's death to the U.S. Senate (Paul Kirk). I learned how to answer a telephone, how to solve problems, how to use the telephone, and how to persuade government officials to do their jobs.
I would walk several times a day and take the subway (a/k/a the Toonerville trolley in Tom Wicker's novel, Facing the Lions) from the Richard Brevard Russell, Jr. U.S. Senate Office Building (a/k/a "OLD S.O.B.) to the Capitol, dropping freshly mimeographed speeches and press releases to the three Senate press galleries (newspaper, tv and periodical), sometimes to eye-rolling from journalists who were amazed to see so many EMK press releases.
I read the press releases and speeches, and learned from the scholarly style of Carey Parker, et al.
On November 21, 1974, by vote of 65-27, the United States Senate overrode President Ford's veto of the Freedom of Information Act -- urged by then-youthful Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Antonin Scalia. After the historic veto override, I carried the triumphant Ted Kennedy speech and press release to the press galleries. To get there, I took the subway to the Capitol Building, took the elevator to the second floor, walking up the marble steps to the third floor, past this venerable painting of Lincoln signing the Emancipation Proclamation: Less than nine years later, I became the "pest who never rests," using FOIA to win declassification of the largest mercury pollution event in Earth history, in Oak Ridge, Tennessee on May 17, 1983, as Appalachian Observer editor.
We also helped empower Sheriff's deputies to blow the whistle. Result: the FBI arrested and incarcerate a corrupt Anderson County Sheriff (two-time Tennessee Sheriff of the Year Dennis O. Trotter).
We also helped run off a corrupt school superintendent, Paul Eugene Bostic, Jr., a "school dictator" of the sort documented by Harry Caudill in Night Comes to the Cumberlands.
After spending much of eighth, ninth and tenth grades on my back, my health became more robust as I walked several times a day, learning the corridors of power on Capitol Hill, walking by beautiful U.S. Capitol Hill artwork, paintings, sculptures and frescoes, and through secret corridors and hidden basement corridors, to obscure places like the Capitol basement, the Senate Folding and Stapling Room, the Senate Carpentry Shop, and the Russell Building Attic.
I would watch committee hearings and Senate sessions, pre-CSPAN. I would watch the legislative assistants in the Dance of Legislation (as Eric Redman called it), and the warp and woof of constituent correspondence and casework.
I would hang out with the likes of Mary Murtagh, press secretary Dick Drayne and the case workers, and by sophomore year even had a tiny 2x3 table-desk between press and case operations, complete with tiny chair and, of course, a telephone.
I found that saying "This is Ed Slavin in Ted Kennedy's office" got your calls returned, and that we could perform minor miracles.
It's like Harris Wofford said on January 20, 1961: "You can do anything with these phones!" (After calling to desegregate the Coast Guard, after JFK complained there were no blacks in the Coast Guard contingent at his Inaugural Parade.
In Senator Kennedy's office, I learned the power of positive thinking, knowing that with a keyboard, a telephone and a democracy, we could do anything to make the world a better place. EMK staffer Mary Murtagh and I helped to end sperm whaling with our research on jojoba, an oil seed that is an exact chemical duplicate for the oil of the endangered sperm whale, of which there were 20,000 killed in the world back then -- 2/3 of all the world's whales murdered then, saved by the wonders of the market system and a replacement product that nature created and we promoted. Google® jojoba and see what happened!
I was inspired by hearing Ralph Nader speak in Gaston Hall at Georgetown University the evening of August 28, 1974 (Feast of St. Augustine). (It was also the eleventh anniversary of the "I have a dream speech" by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at the 1963 Civil Rights March on Washington, at Lincoln Memorial, and also the anniversary of the 1955 kidnapping and murder of Emmett Till.)
In 2008, Folio Weekly (Anne Schindler, editor, now with First Coast News) would call me an "environmental hero" for detecting and remedying the City of St. Augustine's dumping a landfill in a lake. There have been threats, but nevertheless I have persisted.
Be not afraid.
My political theory professor, Jose Sorzano, said "Ideas have consequences." (He was later Deputy UN Ambassador under President Reagan, working under Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick, another GU professor whose class on "Personality & Politics" I never took, only because it was only offered on Tuesdays and Thursdays, my work days).
Yes, hearing Ralph Nader's speech in 1974 had consequences.
It led to life in, around and surrounded by, investigative reporting, government service and working to improve the lot of others.
It led to work for EMK and in two other Senate offices (Gary Hart and Jim Sasser), investigative reporting, two judicial clerkships at the Department of Labor (Charles P. Rippey and Chief Judge Nahum Litt), work at the AFL-CIO Occupational Safety and Health Legal Rights Foundation and the Government Accountability Project and privately, representing whistleblowers around America.
It led me to stand up for equal rights and honest government here, in the City of St. Augustine, where for years, we band of brothers and sisters have worked to transform our City government, from one of the worst to one of the first in North Florida on human rights, winning Rainbow flags on the Bridge of Lions, respect for GLBT rights, respect for Environmental Justice, and transforming our town (electing the incomparable Nancy Shaver, the first woman Mayor elected by vote of all of the people as such, on November 4, 2014)(see Folio Weekly article here).
We enjoyed beating numerous demolition permits before the Historic Architectural Review Board and watching as yet another federal court victory in Bates v. City of St. Augustine (Bates II), by U.S. District Judge Brian J. Davis (fine visual artists harassed by 32 years of Jim Crow law ordinances and oppression by City).
In 2016, votes were counted in four fixed county races, including the fixed Sheriff's election, one of four illegally closed primaries, with two shills (one of them the Sheriff's own massage therapist, a former jailer) claiming "write-in" status, violating the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and Article VI, Section 5(b) of Florida's Constitution, denying us the universal primary to which we're legally entitled. I asked the Justice Department Civil Rights Division to bring a lawsuit. A resolution was passed by the St. Augustine City Commission, calling for an end to such illegally closed primary shenanigans.
In 2017, activists and tourism business owners and managers united, with eight of us convincing the St. Johns County Visitors and Convention Bureau, Inc. to reverse the illegal firing of CEO Richard Goldman. In all my years of labor law, I'd never won reinstatement of a CEO before, or any victory nearly that quickly.
We won.
People are uniting and listening, and we're making St. Augustine a better place. No longer do developers and millionaires and billionaires and racists throw their weight around here quite like they did in 2005, when I first spoke at a City meeting, or in 2006, when the City Manager WILLIAM BARRY HARRISS dumped a landfill in a lake, and thought it was cute.
In 2022, developer puppet County Commissioner JEREMIAH RAY BLOCKER lost his bid for re-election to Gold Star Mother Krista Keating-Joseph, who opposes overdevelopment. BLOCKER was exposed as receiving a 100% exemption of his Ponte Vedra mason from property taxes, supposedly because VA considers him 100% permanently and totally disabled, yet he's a $81,000+/year County Commissioner, paid $110,000/year to be Executive Director of a dodgy non-profit, while working as a law firm partner, and (drum roll), a Major with the Florida National Guard J.A.G. Corps, which could not possibly consider him deployable if it knew of his 100% disability rating.
Ms. Keating-Joseph defeated BLOCKER by 175 votes. prodigal developer puppet JEREMIAH RAY BLOCKER's campaign spent fifteen times as much money, spending $15.64 for every vote he got. BLOCKER lost. The people won.
As Alexander Hamilton said, "Here, sir, the people govern."
Activists helped save The Outpost and Fish Island, which has remains of eight slave cabins, slave graves and the mansion and graves of Jesse Fish, Florida's first crooked realtor, and founder of the citrus agricultural industry here. We've stopped a proposed Planned Unit Development by developer DONALD R. HORTON and look forward to buying the land for a park -- part of a future St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore.
We need more archaeology and greater National Park Service status here. We need more history commemoration, not less, here in St. Augustine, including:
Enactment of the St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore, first proposed by Mayor Walter Fraser, Senator Claude Pepper, et al. in 1939.
Monument at Emancipation Park (where locals heard the Emancipation Proclamation read in January 1863);
Monuments to documented local lynching sites;
Monument to St. Augustine's Union Civil War veterans;
Seated sculpture honoring slavery victims, showing a family being split for auction;
Seated sculpture of civil rights heroes and sheroes Dr. Robert S. Hayling, D.D.S., Stetson Kennedy and Barbara Vickers, engaged in conversation, perhaps looking at the slavery sculpture and one of the other Civil War monuments (like the one honoring General William Wing Loring);
A large civil rights and African-American history museum honoring St. Augustine's pivotal role in adoption of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, not unlike the ones in Memphis, Atlanta and elsewhere, putting everything in perspective;
A new Florida law requiring K-12 civil rights education, like in Mississippi;
Florida fourth graders trekking to St. Augustine to learn history and empathy, with National Park Service rangers explaining to them and millions of other visitors the places here where Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, Andrew Young, Ralph David Abernathy, Dr. Robert Hayling, et al. helped change history for the better, making America truly a shining "City on a Hill" for the world.
Yes we can!
My parents, both union organizers, were my first teachers. It took them twelve years to have their only child -- the result of my father having malaria in Sicily and my mother being subjected to unethical x-ray experiments at age 11. They taught me about right and wrong and standing up to power and oppression, something they were both adept at doing during most of their lives.
My aunt Bunny was a Franciscan nun in South Korea -- I did not meet her until I was ten, and I was impressed with her dedication to human rights. She said if she said anything against the South Korean dictator on a bus, she'd be overheard and bounced out of the country as persona non grata in 48 hours. South Korea is now a democracy.
History is complicated, I've learned. One of my professors, Holocaust hero Jan Karski, is memorialized with this monument on the Georgetown campus, NYC, Israel and three places in Poland:
True to the standards of my first boss, Senator Edward M. Kennedy and his two murdered brothers, remember EMK's words at the 1980 Democratic National Convention: may it be said of us, both in dark passages and in bright days, in the words of Tennyson that my brothers quoted and loved, and that have special meaning for me now: "I am a part of all that I have met To [Tho] much is taken, much abides That which we are, we are -- One equal temper of heroic hearts Strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." .... For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.
On September 2, 2010, Sheriff's Deputy JEREMY BANKS shot Ms. Michelle O'Connell with his service weapon. Two shots. Before the sun had even risen that, it was called a "suicide" by controversial St. Johns County Sheriff DAVID BERNARD SHOAR, who legally changed his name from "HOAR" in 1994. In 2024, SHOAR ran for State Senate and was roundly defeated in a closed Republican Primary.
September 2, 2026: Sixeenth Anniversary of murder of Michelle O'Connell -- Justice for Michelle O'Connell! Justice for Eli Washtock! Say their names. On the anniversary last year, Tom Reynolds and I both spoke in non-agenda public comment about the anniversary at the commencement of the September 2, 2010 St. Johns County Commission meeting.
Homicide suspect JEREMY BANKS is still a St. Johns County Sheriff's Deputy, never having been taken before a grand jury to answer for homicide charges in the September 2, 2010 murder of his girlfriend, Michelle O'Connell, with his service weapon, in his home. Neighbors recalled that there was an argument, a scream and a shot, then an argument, a scream and another shot. "Suicide," the Sheriff's office proclaimed, before the sun had even risen the next day. A coverup ensued, orchestrated by Sheriff DAVID SHOAR. Justice for Michelle O'Conell. Justice for Eli Washtock. Now.
It has been 5816 days, as of August 5, 2026. Fifteen years, eleven months and three days. 191 months, three days.
There is no statute of limitations for homicide.
Following in the footsteps of Anne Schindler from Folio Weekly (now with NPR affiliate WJCT, host of First Coast Connect) Walt Bogdanich and The New York Times reported the Michelle O'Connell homicide coverup story in 2013 and 2017, Working with Glenn Silber and Frank Koughan, Walt's story appeared in The New York Times and on PBS Frontline, later confirmed by NBC News Dateline, ABC News 20/20, Dr. Phil, the Guardian and other investigators confirmed it.
These journalists did the work that the St. Augustine Record did not do. The Record once again proved itself a lapdog, not a watchog, in the days that it was owned by Morris Communications, before mendacious monopolistic GANNETT bought the property.
An independent autopsy confirmed Michelle O'Connell's jaw was broken, something that was missed by the 23rd District Medical Examiner's office. Sheriff SHOAR issued a middle of the night public statement, freighted with animus, questioning the need for another autopsy, angrily accusing the family of "molesting" her body. Meanwhile, McLEOD and the Sheriff have sent me hate e-mails, with McLEOD comparing me to a "toothless dog."
Special prosecutor Bradley King was not appointed to the Supreme Court, the Florida Judicial Nominating Commission having questioned him about his coverup, with King coldly turning to a tab in a notebook and reading smarmy lines to Chairman Jason Unger.
Former Assistant County Administrator JERRY THOMAS CAMERON was rejected by Republicans, by a seven-vote margin, for a County Commission seat in 2016. He was defeated by Paul Waldron.
Two malfeasant autopsy physicians, Dr. PREDRAG BULIC, M.D. and Dr. JAMES HOBAN, M.D. were censured by the Florida Board of Medical Examiners.
Reputable forensic experts rebutted BULIC's cockamamie theory -- explained to three-time Pulitzer Prize winner Walt Bogdanich in his PBS Frontline interview -- suggesting that Ms. O'Connell committed suicide, based on a crackpot theory that a gun recoiled backwards and caused the injury to her eyelid.
The St. Johns County Board of County Commissioners allowed the County Attorney to defend the two malfeasant autopsy physicians, even though the charges were personal to the individuals, like Bar complaints.
Complicit County Attorney PATRICK FRANCIS McCORMACK has resigned, but was replaced by another incompetent lawyer, former Assistant County Attorney 2011-2016, DAVID MICHAEL MIGUT.
DAVID MIGUT was copied on numerous e-mails involving my Open Records requests attempting to uncover the truth about the coverup of 4700 Sherlock Place water use records from the County's Johnson Controls, Inc. smart water meter system.
We're all sixteen years older today,
Our new Sheriff is Robert Hardwick, former Chief Investigator for State's Attorney Ralph Joseph Larizza.
Hardwick and his deputy both believed Jeremy Banks committed homicide. Hardwick wanted an autopsy, but was foiled when he went to the FBI Training Academy earlier than expected, and Larizza belatedly recused himself. Hardwick said in a deposition, "we're all tainted."
Courageous FDLE Special Agent Rusty Ray Rodgers believed Banks committed homicide. He did his job, but too well for local burgher DAVID SHOAR.
In retaliation, Sheriff DAVID SHOAR procured a harassing lawsuit, filed by louche lawyer ROBERT LESTER "MACK" McLEOD II. The suit was dismissed, after being held over Special Agent Rodgers' head for five years.
Two respected jurists -- County Court Judge Charles Tinlin and U.S. District Court Judge Brian J. Davis, both found that there was probable cause that Deputy JEREMY BANKS murdered Michelle O'Connell.
Heroic County Court Judge Charles Tinlin signed the search warrants, finding probable cause that BANKS murdered Michelle.
Judge Tinlin was later questioned by BANKS' lawyers, who tried to get him to say that Rodgers suggested Sheriff DAVID SHOAR had obstructed justice. Judge Tinlin replied that he -- Judge TInlin -- was the one who raised the issue of obstruction of justice, not Agent Rodgers.
Defective detectives remain on the job, and UnderSheriff JOEL BOLANTE has been made head of the Public Administration program at Flagler College, after avoiding a trial on Title IX retaliation charges over alleged sexual harassment
MATTEW CLINE has been demoted, and is no longer UnderSheriff, remaining as Sheriff's General Counsel.
Eli Washtock, a brilliant man who was investigating Michelle's murder was himself murdered, but unethical satrap Sheriff SHOAR offshored the case to neighboring Putnam County, without an order from the Governor or any court. Eli is buried in San Lorenzo Catholic Cemetery, a few years from Michelle.
If hindsight is 20/20, we should find it all the more unreasonable that a corrupt political machine remains in power.
Is Governor RONALD DION DeSANTIS, culpable for having ignored requests to remove Sheriff SHOAR pursuant to Article IV, Section 7 of our Florida Constitution? He removed to State's Attorneys for being liberal, but refused to answer inquiries about SHOAR, another Republican,.
This case must be heard by federal and state grand juries. There can be no other just outcome.
Justice for Michelle O'Connell. Say her name.
Justice for Eli Washtock. Say his name.
Never give up.
It is up to us.
"Let justice be done though the heavens fall." (Fiat justitia rust caelum.)
DeSantis Administration Misspent $10 Million, Grand Jury Says
A charity tied to Gov. Ron DeSantis’s wife received the money from a state Medicaid settlement and diverted it to political committees supporting a cause favored by the governor.
Listen · 7:27 min
Casey DeSantis, Florida’s first lady, started the Hope Florida charity in 2021 and made it central to her public persona.Credit...Chris O'Meara/Associated Press
