KING LEROY: MAYOR J.R. BOLES JOKED WHILE DENYING CITIZENS THE RIGHT TO SPEAK OUT AGAINST DESTRUCTION OF FISH ISLAND BY LANDRAPING SPECULATORS

MAYOR JOSEPH LEROY BOLES, JR. a/k/a "KING LEROY"
Photo credit: Greg Travous (and Hans Holbein the Younger)

St. Augustine Mayor JOSEPH LEROY BOLES, JR. is no defender of people's rights to speak out to their government. He frequently acts like he's in the former Soviet Union, presiding at a Politburo meeting.

At the City Commission meeting on Monday night, KING LEROY asked "how many are here for Fish Island?" Then, supposedly to be friendly to the citizens who turned out to oppose destruction of the beautiful marsh and City-owned bottomlands, he moved the Fish Island settlement to the beginning of the agenda. Then BOLES refused to allow any public comment. If the item were considered as originally scheduled, public comment time would have come first. BOLES wasn't being helpful. He was being slick and devious.

JOSEPH LEROY BOLES, JR. a/k/a KING LEROY is apparently working in tandem (and violating Sunshine Laws with) NANCY SIKES-KLINE, a/k/a THE QUEEN OF MEAN. The two were spotted a Zhanra's Monday night with three top city staff, celebrating their latest victory over environmentalists. How damning.

BOLES and his minions are not above redrawing the City's boundaries to kick out two activists.

BOLES and his minions are not above eliminating public comment at the end of meetings, giving himself the ability to ridicule, snipe and engage in rodomontade directed at activists, referring to B.J. Kalaidi with pejoratives when she can't answer.

BOLES is a toady and buddy to the developers and their tatterdemalion mouthpieces (like GEORGE McCLURE). BOLESS lets the crooked developer's mouthpieces shoot from the hip, making materially false and misleading claims that are not under oath, then allowing the developers to have the last word. Such procedural prostitution is definitely not helpful to protecting the environment and small town values -- it lets landrapers, wetland-killers and uglifiers get away with lying, with no chance for citizens to question the developer mouthpieces' putative authority.

BOLES has even acknowledged that corporate lawyers puff as his justification for not swearing them (or their clients) in as witnesses. BOLES regularly holds quasi-judicial "public hearings" where no testimony is sworn.

BOLES symbolizes the corruption of our government in the City of St. Augustine. One of the few things good to be said for BOLES is that he is the only City Commissioner who twice voted right on the Rainbow Flags in 2005. [BOLES' poltroonish colleagues were scared of homophobes on Talk of the Town, the St. Augustine Record's since-closed electronic free-for-all, where NANCY SIKES-KLINE reigned supreme as "bullg8rlady." The hate sites are now free of the Record's standards, casting aspersions and asparagus on all progressives, replete with racism, sexism, misogyny, homophobia and lies brought to you by MICHAEL GOLD, the bagman/fundraiser who raised some $250,000 for ex-SAPD Chief DAVID SHOAR (formerly known as DAVID HOAR), who is now our Republican Sheriff.]

Since becoming Mayor on a non-platform based on nothing but his supposed "sense of humor," BOLES has become just another mouse in the pocket of City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS a/k/a City Mangler for Life.

Making excuses for HARRISS, insulting activists, BOLES is full of himself.

BOLES and his fellow Commissioners were actually joking around on live TV Monday night while refusing to let citizens speak out against the Fish Island settlement -- saying "we're in the middle of a motion." We will remember that next year, when perhaps County Commissioner J. Kenneth Bryan might run for Mayor. We need a mayor who will stand up to crime, instead of tolerating it.

BOLES is sneakier than his predecessor, GEORGE GARDNER, who also pretended to be a "liberal." GARDNER was most noted for believing that "clean fill" had been dumped in our Old City Reservoir, a lie to which veteran EPA regulator John Marler replied, "there are no bedsprings in clean fill."

GARDNER's reward for his negative profile in courage, his failure to stand up to the HARRISS MACHINE, is what Ralph Nader would call "the deferred bribe." GARDNER is now paid more than $13,000/year as a putative "independent contractor" to write the City's dumb 'ole newsletter, as dubious a piece of cheerleader PR pap as ever hit your E-mail.

For a good laugh, read GARDNER's St. Augustine Report -- you paid for it.

Then read this blog, or better yet, get out of your easy chair and go to the City Commission and other City meetings and see how horribly run is the Nation's Oldest City. The City Mangler can't even get parking right, purchasing expensive machines that confuse and rip off tourists, reducing to a trickle the flow of commerce to once-thriving St. George Street.

Think "The Shame of our Cities" by Lincoln Steffens, only writ small, with a wannabee King Henry VIII (KING LEROY) presiding over it all as the shill and mouthpiece for the hateful City Manager (WILLIAM B. HARRISS) who is as lugubrious a goober as ever made a chair squeak.

We shall overcome.