Photo credit: J.D. Pleasant
So City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS has created another crisis. He wasn't even here to enjoy it. What a card. What a self-aggrandizing narcissistic manipulator. He should be fired.
See below.
The Federal Court didn't order hot dog sellers (or anyone other than visual artists) be allowed to sell products in the Plaza de la Constitucion (a/k/a Slave Market Square).
Those orders were given by City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS.
He's counting on manipulating merchants to suppress artists.
In his absence Monday night, City Attorney RONALD WAYNE BROWN offered Commissioners a menu of way they could fee-grab, hornswoggle, cabin, corral, gull and diddle the artists and the people of the City of St. Augustine with another hare-brained scheme.
Just leave the artists alone, please, Mr. HARRISS. As revealed by your ample abdomen, it's obvious that all your taste is in your mouth. We don't need you or your Republican pals (ex-Mayor LEONARD WEEKS, self-appointed arts maven PHIL McDANIEL) deciding what "art" is.
And as for St. George Street, the notion of City Attorney RONALD WAYNE BROWN that St. George Street is still "protected" (from artists) is a joke. Our corrupt City Manager had a 78-year old woman frog-marched down St. George Street in handcuffs for painting. Our City of St. Augustine is an embarrassment in front of the entire Free World.
We need to be protected from Dumb and Dumber -- the City Manager and the City Attorney, as sebaceous a pair of fatties as ever made expensive chairs squeak (and break). (For that last line, hats off to Robert Penn Warren from All the King's Men).
We need to be protected from the formidable forces of fascism, who think government works for corporate landlords in downtown St. Augustine.
How bizarre that when merchants complained about high rents and non-compete clauses in their leases, not one City Commissioner asked them about it.
How odd that RONALD WAYNE BROWN, our estimable City Attorney, said he was going to request a transcript of the merchants' comments in support of the latest anti-artist ordinance that he's licking his chops to write.
Yet BROWN repeatedly mocks and orders Commissioners to ignore what he terms "the clamor of the crowd" whenever citizens exercise their constitutional right to give expert testimony on the destruction of our city by greedy developers.
Coincidentally, at least one of the merchants whose comments BROWN agreed with organized all the other merchants to oppose the ugly proposed building on Cathedral Place and St. George Street (which conflicted City Commissioner DONALD CRICHLOW designed).
So when the lady opposes BROWN's masters, the "clamor of the crowd" is invoked.
But when the lady agrees with BROWN, he directs the transcription of her talk.
RONALD WAYNE BROWN is the ex-law partner of GEOFFREY DOBSON, the former City Attorney for the City of St. Augustine and the City of St. Augustine Beach. The two of them represented for years speculator PIERRE THOMPSON (grandson of the founder of the St. Augustine Record).
PIERRE THOMPSON owns a real estate company that was most noted for being federally prosecuted in 2008 for THOMPSON's having ordered the cutting down of an eagle nest tree near Fish Island on October 8, 2001, in violation of three federal felony statutes. THOMPSON was only prosecuted in 2008 after the Collective Press reported in 2005 the Justice Department's refusal to prosecute.
GEOFFREY DOBSON nearly cost taxpayers $1.8 million with one act of legal malpractice, when he rubberstamped no-bid purchase of a luxury Textron Bell Jet Long Ranger helicopter (he said it was "sole source" and he was wrong). To its everlasting credit, the Anastasia Mosquito Control Commission of St. Johns County canceled the helicopter and got a full refund after BROWN (and two others lawyers) left (one of the second pair of malfeasant Mosquito Control District lawyers was involved in a Sunshine Law violation (which was videotaped, with six photos on the front page of the St. Augustine REcord).
WILLIAM B. HARRISS and RONALD WAYNE BROWN typify the ancien regime here in St. Augustine and St. Johns County. They vote the straight Republican ticket, they don't care about people, they sup with developers and they sap our public fisc.
Our City has been found guilty of First Amendment violations (resulting in orders to allow artists back in the Plaza and to allow Rainbow flags to be flown on our Bridge of Lions in honor of GLBT rights).
Our City has deposited 40,000 cubic yards of solid waste in our Old City Reservoir (then tried to bring it back to Linconville). Our City was fined.
Our City has polluted our saltwater marsh for years with semi-treated sewage effluent, Our City Manager and City Commissioners kept it secret from us.
Our City voted 4-1 to sell out to the Fish Island developer (in a Bert Harris Act case that involved a signature by none other than PIERRE THOMPSON, BROWN's former client. Joe LoPinto has rightly taken our City to Court.
Our ancien regime rips off taxpayers together, destroys our environment together, violates human rights together, suppresses and arrests artists together, and expects us to like it.
Nope. Not a chance. Not any longer. Corruption isn't cute and cuddly. This isn't Hollywood and WILLIAM B. HARRISS isn't "Boss Hogg" in the Dukes of Hazzard. This isn't Louisiana. We don't find our local rogues charming. Not in this economy. Not with what they keep trying to do to our environment(as with their Fish Island sellout).
St. Augustine City Commission should be packed August 24th when they try to raise our fire and trash collection fees, and talk about putting all the artists in the Slave Market, subject to illegal fees, unconstitutional regulations and illogical rules (like closing up at 9 PM).
City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS was hired in a Sunshine violation April 13, 1998, without public notice a decision would be made.
City Attorney RONALD WAYNE BROWN was hired in two Sunshine violations on October 13, 2006 (temporarily) and again in December 2006 (permanently), without public notice.
City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS (a/k/a "WILL HARASS") must be fired. His replacement must be picked from a national search. I don't care if the best candidate is from Kansas -- hire her!
City Attorney RONALD WAYNE BROWN (a/k/a "No Nickname Necessary")must be fired. BROWN's replacement must be picked from at least a statewide search. S/he needs to give legal advice (instead of counting to three, which is all that BROWN ever learned from GEOFFREY DOBSON).
No comments:
Post a Comment