Letter: End tyranny, waste in our Oldest City

Letter: End tyranny, waste in our Oldest City

David Brian Wallace
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 07/04/06

Editor: I strongly agree with Ed Slavin's June 25 column, "St. Augustine: We can make it much better."

Congratulations to The Record for its recent journalism prizes, particularly reporter Kati Bexley's investigative story on the New York City junket by five commissioners, the city manager and their spouses and significant others.

Our city of St. Augustine has so much to be proud of ñ our people, nature, beauty, schools, music, art, culture, scholars and history.

It's a tragedy that our city government so poorly serves our city's people. It discriminate against African-Americans and gays, while refusing to discuss a Living Wage Ordinance. It rubber-stamps sweetheart contracts and wastes money on junkets to New York City, Germany and Spain.

Since I moved to St. Augustine, I've noticed apathy is ending. It's about time.

A bit of our city's soul died earlier this year when our city manager and his cronies polluted our Old City Reservoir with the contents of the old illegal city landfill.

Ed Slavin blew the whistle on the pollution, reporting it to the U.S. government's National Response Center; which referred it to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection; which began a criminal investigation.

I've known Ed Slavin for 17 years. In 1983, as a young weekly newspaper editor, Ed obtained the Department of Energy's declassification of the world's largest mercury pollution event in Oak Ridge, Tenn. Ed has helped reform the nuclear weapons complex and other tyrannies, holding governments and corporations accountable and investigating abuses of power for three decades.

Ed has rightly been speaking out on St. Augustine city government issues.

We must protect the rights of our citizens and government employees and end the tyranny and waste at City Hall.

As Ed said in this column, we get to "overthrow" our city government "every two years."

Register and vote.

See www.cleanupcityof staugustine.blogspot.com.

Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/070406/opinions_3930124.shtml

© The St. Augustine Record