"INCOMPETENCE" OR WILLFUL ENVIRONMENTAL CRIMES BY YOUR CITY OF ST. AUGUSTINE "CITY MANGLER" (f/k/a MANAGER) WILLIAM B. HARRISS & CO.?
Seldom do top government officials confess to "incompetence" on the front page.
Ours finally did last week. This has been an exciting time in St. Augustine's history -- the Emperor has no clothes. HARRISS also has no more public support.
No one now says that WILLIAM HARRISS is doing a great job and should be City- Manager-for-Life.
October 23, 2007 was the day when St. Augustinians awoke to read on the front page of the Record that our City Manager, WILLIAM B. HARRISS, pled "incompetence" as a defense to the environmental crimes the State of Florida refused to prosecute. HARRISS finally admitted it was wrong to dump the contents of the old city dump into the old city Reservoir.
Does being WILLIAM B. HARRISS mean never having to say you're sorry?
Yes.
WILLIAM B. HARRISS did not apologize.
WILLIAM B. HARRISS did not explain.
Instead, HARRISS bashed, blacklisted and blasted as "incompetent" two licensed Professional Engineers who (until last year) both worked for our City.
Was HARRISS "incompetent" for hiring them?
Were City Managers incompetent for hiring HARRISS?
Why does HARRIS claim the two scapegoats were "incompetent?" For giving HARRISS bum legal advice. Of course, the two Professional Engineers whom HARRISS lambastes were not just any Professional Engineers. Both were Managers -- Masters of the Universe in City Hall -- part of HARRISS' all-white, all-male Inner Circle.
Like every other employee in City Hall, the two P.E./Managers served at HARRIS' "pleasure." One was over Utilities and the other was over Public Works. Both were respected, hard-working civil servants. Both probably never did anything without HARRISS's approval.
Both feared HARRISS' disapproval, down to something so insignificant as to which street gets a speed hump. HARRISS reminds me of former Tennessee Governor Ray Blanton said, "there's politics in everything I do." Yet HARRISS pushes Commissioners not to do "political" things (like honoring U.S. soldiers by flying a flag or endorsing the scrub jay as state bird).
HARRISS's contention about relying on Professional Engineers for legal advice is poppycock.
Neither P.E. is a licensed attorney, so blaming them for their legal advice is a bit weak (like a quarterback blaming a sports writer for suggesting bad plays). City Mangler (f/k/a City Manager) WILLIAM B. HARRISS, had a full- time City Attorney, a full-time Assistant City Attorney and a paralegal working on the same floor as him.
If HARRISS was confused about orders not to dump without a permit, HARRISS had only to ask them.
HARRISS also had on- call WILLIAM PENCE, an environmental attorney with Akerman, Senterfitt, biggest corporate law firm in the State of Florida (pictured infra wearing colonial finery).
Were Akerman Senterfitt and the St. Augustine City Attorney and Assistant City Attorney ever consulted? Or did HARRISS keep these three lawyers kept out of the loop intentionally, preferring to save money than ask the right questions?
HARRISS does not say.
HARRISS has not criticized any of his attorneys. HARRISS signals that his own "defense" is bunk.
Of course HARRISS did not tell the attorneys he was planning to dump in violation of SJRWMD orders. HARRISS claims/admits relying on legal advice from two Professional Engineers (but not a third, still with the City, the City's Chief Operating Officer, and presumably also kept out of the loop).
What makes WILLIAM B. HARRISS think that it was in his job description to ask two Professional Engineers whether something is legal when our City of St. Augustine has a City Attorney? What part of the City Charter says to call upon P.E.s for legal advice? We have a City Attorney, appointed by the Commissioners. His office is right down the hall from HARRISS's office.
Who asks P.E.s for legal advice (unless they also happen to be lawyers)?
If HARRISS ever really thought the two P.E.s "incompetent," did HARRISS report them to state licensing officials?
Has HARRISS committed the tort of libel against the two Professional Engineers? Read HARRISS' latest hick City Mangler tricks (below). HARRISS' is so typical bad bosses everywhere -- like a Dilbert cartoon -- one who uses subordinate managers as bullets in his gun, as fallguys, as designated javelin-catchers.
Not only does City Mangler WILLIAM HARRISS blame the two Professional Engineers. HARRISS blames me. (see below). HARRISS obsesses upon me, saying I just want HARRISS to be charged with a crime and that I'm the only one who's "not happy" with the incompetence defense and coverup.
We'll just see about that. I wear HARRISS' scorn as a badge of honor. I have since first attending a City meeting in April 2005 (over 4.5 years after we moved here).
Of course, HARRISS has threatened me and other activists with criminal prosecution, sometimes on attending the first meeting (he did it to me).
HARRISS takes credit for every good thing that happens in our City and is noted for being a hands-on manager (whose face is never carried on television and whose voice is unidentified in City Commission meetings).
HARRISS is the go-to guy whom all the Commissioners fear.
Has HARRISS played fast and loose with the truth, once again?
Yes.
You've really got to hand it to City of St. Augustine City Mangler WILLIAM B. HARRISS.
He was hired without Sunshine notice on April 13, 1998. He's never had a performance appraisal as City Manager. Not once in nearly ten years. Commissioners voted in 1998 not to give him performance appraisals. Other public officials, from School Superintendents to Mosquito Control Commissioners, receive performance appraisals. HARRISS is exempt. He's special.
HARRISS works not for you and me, but for five Commissioners and
land-raping, wetland- killing foreign investors and their local shills. HARRISS insults his own former top aides as "incompetent." Wonder why the position of Public Works Director has been open for so long? Would you want to take the job of one of the two Professional Engineers, knowing you could lose your license from being asked to commit illegal acts like filling in the Old City Reservoir, then thrown under the bus?
Off-camera, HARRISS makes dismissively condescending wicked hand gestures at City staff who are speaking to City Commissioners.
HARRISS thinks he hung the moon. HARRISS should hang his head in shame.
Dumping the entire contents of the old city dump into the Old City Reservoir was wicked, not merely stupid.
What a bully.
HARRISS and his captivated City Commissioners ran the artists and entertainers off St. George Street, insulting the ACLU and protesters for bringing dishonor on our city.
HARRISS helped orchestrate refund of a $15,000 tree-killing fine against tree-killing speculator ROBERT MICHAEL GRAUBARD.
In secret, from December 2005 through February 2006, HARRISS had our Nation's Oldest (European-founded) City dump 30,000,000 cubic yards of contaminated dump contents into our Old City Reservoir -- enough stuff to fill in six Olympic sized swimming pools to a depth of six feet or to cover a football field to a depth of 11.2 feet.
Don't call HARRISS a "good ole boy." "Good ole boys" like to hunt and fish. HARRISS destroyed a prime bass fishing spot.
HARRISS has never explained why HARRISS thought the toxic contents of the old city dump would be better disturbed, trucked and removed to the Old City Reservoir, a prime- bass-fishing spot, a place where generations had fished and swam for years, a manmade coquina pit lake that is a "an open sore going right down to the aquifer," according to former EPA Region 4 Regional Administrator John Henry Hankinson, a former The St. Johns River Water Management District (SJRWMD) official.
SJRWMD warned HARRISS not to dump and HARRISS had no permits to dump. SJRWMD told HARRISS not to dump.
HARRISS dumped anyway. That's not "incompetence." That's arrogance, with a heaping dose of the "criminal intent" that HARRISS demurely claims not to have had (see below).
"Willful blindness" is enough to trigger criminal prosecution under environmental laws. See EPA’s policy statement published in the Federal Register, Voluntary Environmental Self-Policing and Self-Disclosure, 60 Fed. Reg. at 66,711 (1995) about how EPA may refrain from criminal referral IF violations are not due to willful blindness or official complicity. See also, William S. Duffey, Jr. & Phyllis B. Sumner, Collective Knowledge and Willful Blindness New Liability Under Old Law, South Carolina Lawyer, Jan./Feb. 1994, at 32. Even Bushites know what "willful blindness" is and have used the term. See also statement of Vice President Cheney about willful blindness in Elizabeth Bumiller & James Dao, Cheney Says Peril of a Nuclear Iraq Justifies Attack, NY Times, August 26, 2002.
Under that standard, City Commissioners might be prosecuted, too.
The City of St. Augustine's mandatory duty to obey SJRWMD orders and DEP and EPA laws was violated.
City Commissioners have been indifferent to it.
That duty to obey environmental laws cannot be passed off to top managers who worked directly for HARRISS & Co. HARRISS must resign or be fired. HARRISS's actions took place after Clay County's illegal dumping. It's not as if HARRISS didn't know HARRISS could not dump without a permit. HARRISS did it anyway. Upon learning of his actions, City Commissioners gave HARRISS a plaque, public praise and conferred pariah status on those questioning their illegal dumping. Then-Mayor GEORGE GARDNER told me February 24th that only "clean fill" was being dumped into the Old City Reservoir. HARRISS lied to GARDNER and Commissioners.
Commissioners behaved weirdly when publicly asked about illegal dumping, recently moving to revoke retroactively my city residency and to revoke citizens' rights to public comment at the beginning of meetings. Commissioners and HARRISS can't handle the truth about their illegal dumping and want any questions to be after 10 PM.
In a Commission meeting last year, then- Mayor
GARDNER asked me if there was "lint" in my "pocket."
Commissioner ERROL JONES said he was tired of me "whipping" Commissioners and HARRISS. Commissioner SUSAN BURK displayed a "Flat Elmo" and said it was "better behaved" than unruly citizens (e.g., those asking about St. Augustine's contempt for the rule of law).
Commissioner JOE BOLES (now our Archie Bunker-like Mayor) showed more solicitude for our City's "$30,000 podium" than for the fact that coquina pits rapidly spread contaminants due to porosity of the material.
Using the St. Augustine Record's Talk of the Town website as a platform, government employees lambasted and personally attacked those questioning our City's polluting and developer-coddling.
Our City and FDEP have fiddled since February 2006 -- 20 months.
DEP coverup artists,
City Manager HARRISS and City Commissioners must be investigated by the FBI and a Federal Grand Jury for obstruction of justice and conspiracy to commit environmental crimes.
Otherwise, every government polluter will feel free to dump anytime, anywhere.
Will those who let us down be protected by Governor Crist and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP)(my friend David Thundershield Queen says DEP stands for "Don't Expect Protection").
Will the DEP Inspector General and the Chief Inspector General get to the bottom of DEP's coverup?
Will this case be fixed?
You're an IDIOT!
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