Ex-Mayor GEORGE GARDNER's City-funded PR Propaganda Newsletter on City Tax Increases

Deeply insensitive, St. Augustine City Commissioners hold budget "workshops" during the day, when people are working, where no questions can be asked by citizens. How rude. Then when they hold budget hearings, they're not televised.

Ex-Mayor GEORGE GARDNER,who is becoming more than ever a lapdog and a lickpsittle for the rich and powerful, wrote his odd, taxpayer-funded newsletter mocking those who did not attend the workshops, and claiming only six people spoke out against tax increases. In the immortal private words of Senator Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii) regardnig John Erlichman's testimony during the Watergate hearings, "what a liar."

Twelve people spoke against the fire tax increase and five spoke against the electricity tax increase. Here's pertinent excerpts from GARDNER's half-truths, just for laughs:

City Commission in tax and vending crosshairs
Increases pass, vending advances to public hearing
A half dozen residents spoke against proposed fee increases before our City Commission Monday night -six times the number who attended last week's commission budget workshop, where the needs were explained.
And more than twice that number spoke for and against a proposed new ordinance regulating vending in our Plaza de la Constitución, as the two hot button issues dominated Monday's City Commission meeting.
In the end, the city's fire assessment fee was raised from two to four cents on both property taxed and non-taxed buildings, the electric utility tax rate was changed from ten percent of the first $100 on electric bills and one percent thereafter to a flat eight percent, and commissioners advanced to public hearing and final action at its September 14 meeting three ordinances regulating vending in public areas.

Commission hears pain of fee increases
"I could lose my home," "No time to be raising taxes," "Stop piling on the burdens," echoed through the Alcazar Room.
"There was one resident at our workshop meeting," Commissioner Nancy Sikes-Kline responded at one point. "We went through the budget line by line. No one's (city employees) getting raises, but they're still providing the same level of service (sic)."
Commissioner Don Crichlow noted that both the fire assessment and utility increases "best spread the burden" of balancing a budget already trimmed more than $3 million from two years ago. Both increases apply to the estimated 36 percent of properties in the city that are non-taxed as well as taxed properties.