STATEMENT OF ED SLAVIN TO ST. JOHNS COUNTY LEGISLATIVE DELEGATION,
DECEMBER 10, 2010
Chairman Weinstein, Senators Hill, Thrasher and Wise and Representatives Proctor and Renuart:
I’m Ed Slavin and I’d like to request your support for the proposed St. Augustine National Historical Park, Seashore and Scenic Coastal Parkway. With your help, we can save more than $3 million a year for state and local governments; revive our economy; create better-paying jobs with real futures; protect our historic and environmental heritage; teach our children about history, beauty and nature; better preserve our beaches; protect homes from erosion; raise our property values; protect wildlife; and properly celebrate our City’s 450th Anniversary – and Spanish Florida’s 500th.
Want to take some $33 million off the state and local taxpayers’ backs over the next ten years? We can do it. As Exhibit A shows, we have vast tracts of government-owned land suitable for a National Park and Seashore – more than 120,000 acres. In Woodie Guthrie’s words, “This land is our land” already – it is our county beaches, state parks and forests and water management district land and as Exhibit A shows, it costs us more than $3 million a year. Combined with the Castillo San Marco and Fort Matanzas, this land will make one glorious National Park and Seashore that will make us all proud and properly celebrate our City’s 450th birthday.
We can save more than $33 million over ten years for state and local taxpayers. (Exhibit A).
At the same time, we can put people to work and draw environmental and historic tourists, who spend more and visit longer, putting more “heads in beds.” How? By empowering our National Park Service – America’s favorite federal agency – and implementing what Ken Burns’ PBS documentary rightly called “America’s Best Idea” – our National Parks.
We can help teach history and nature to future generations, with a National Civil Rights museum here in St. Augustine, celebrating our 11,000 years of indigenous Native American, African-American, Spanish, Minorcan, French, English, Civil War, Minorcan, Roman Catholic, Greek, Jewish, Protestant, nautical, military, Flagler-era and Civil Rights history.
We can preserve endangered species, including right whales (only 400 left), turtles, bald eagles, manatees, beach mice and butterflies. This National Park and Seashore will rival Cape Cod National Seashore, the Everglades, New Bedford, Philadelphia and other tourist “hot spots,” giving teachers and parents the tools to teach children lessons that will keep them coming back for more. Since our state’s economy has suffered so much since the Deepwater Horizon disaster, we look to BP to pay for it all as part of its economic and environmental remediation to the State of Florida.
The first step would be for the Governor and Legislature to agree to donate this land to the federal government. Let us combine this land into one “public park or pleasuring ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people,” as Congress said in 1872 in creating Yellowstone National Park.
Will you please help us celebrate 11,000 years of history and protect what deserves protecting forever inviolate? For more, please read www.staugustgreen.com, attached FAQs and Exhibits A&B (cost savings, draft legislation),
Will you please share your suggestions about how to improve the first draft of the legislation? Let us work together to accomplish something we can all be proud of, for future generations yet unborn who will thank you.
Ed Slavin
EASlavin@aol.com
Box 3084, St. Augustine, Florida 32085
904-829-3877 (o-direct)
215-554-1187 (cellular)
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