President George Bush: "It's not the job of the government to bail out speculators." St. Augustine Commissioners Need to Heed His Words, Stop Bailout

President George Bush: "It's not the job of the government to bail out speculators."

Remember how three of five members of the St. Augusitne City Commission voted to grant "brownfield" designation to the former Ponce de Leon Golf Course, bailing out speculator CHESTER STOKES with tax credits -- tax expenditures by reducing the speculator's tax bills?

Remember how controversial St. Augustine City Commissioners DONALD CRICHLOW, JOSEPH LEROY BOLES, JR. and ERROL JONES voted for the bailout for speculator CHESTER STOKS?

MAYOR BOLES is a putative Democrat who is more of a mugwump[ and a compliant cozy corporate-coddling captive of real estate speculators, many of them foreigners invested in LLCs that are not required to disclose their beneficial ownership. Commissionsers DONALD CRICHLOW and ERROL JONES are both registered Republicans. Democrat GEORGE GARDNER and sometime progressive City Commissioner SUSAN BURK rightly voted against the STOKES bailout. STOKES' bailout is a stench in the nostrils of our Nation: "brownfield" status to tear up an historic Donald Ross golf course for the benefit of foreign real estate speculators, led by Jacksonvillian CHESTER STOKES.

St. Augustine City Commissioners were recently told that there is no action on STOKES' MADEIRA, being built atop the contaminated former PONCE DE LEON GOLF COURSE.
Promises of 1200 homes on the property taxes won't be met in the forseeable future.

Environmental regulators must issue a shutdown order on MADEIRA. Then the land can be acquired at a fair price for the proposed St. Augustine National Historical Park, National Seashore and National Coastal Scenic Highway. Enough coddling of speculators by the City of St. Augustine.

As President George Bush said about mortgage pirates: many of them foreign investors, "It's not the job of the government to bail out speculators."For decades around here in St. Augustine and St. Johns County, that's all that governments have done for real estate speculators, many of them foreign investors.

We're sure that local politicians will wake up, hear President Bush's quote about speculators on the news, and re-think their commitment to being doormats for foreign real estate speculators.