Commissioner Calls for Discussion of Buying Back Sebastian Inland Harbor Project

On May 11, 2009, at the City Commission meeting, Commissioner ERROL JONES called for discussion of buying back the Sebastian Inland Harbor Project, which is in foreclosure.

EPA, our City and Atlanta Gas Light (which owned the plant) worked to clean up the former coal-to-gas plant site. Then our City of St. Augustine sold the project to a developer, who did not build the promised hotel. The project remains an eyesore.

The developer was the DEVLIN GROUP, successor to the problem-plagued original developer of the moribund Sebastian Inner Harbor site, whose lawyer GEORGE MCCLURE once publicly claims there is a "letter of intent" for a WESTIN HOTEL, sans any evidence or testimony presented at the August 13, 2007 public hearing on modifications to the Sebastian Inner Harbor Project.

When I asked MAYOR JOSEPH LEROY BOLES, Jr. to ask for a copy of the letter, he demurred. BOLES and McCLURE are big buddies. BOLES is now kicking himself that he did not do his due diligence on behalf of the City of St. Augustine.

The one main legacy of the project: illegal dumping of 40,000 cubic yards of solid waste into our Old City Reservoir, which exposed the racial fault lines, environmental racism and pollution on the part of our City of St. Augustine, resulting in fines and denial of stae and federal grants and earmarks for "documented environmental violations."

Due to the supposed urgency of starting the Sebastian Inland Harbor Project in 2005, our City Manager, WILLIAM B. HARRISS (a/k/a WILL HARASS) was in a hurry to construct artificial wetlands as "mitigation." He broke the law, illegally ordering solid waste to be moved illegally so that the artificial wetlands could be created.