NEED FOR GREATER PUBLIC PARTICIPATION IN 450th COMMEMORATION AND NEED FOR GREATER CANDOR AND COURTESY FROM EX-MAYOR GEORGE GARDNER

Former St. Augustine Mayor GEORGE GARDNER is both right and wrong on the 450^th.

He is right that there is a need for greater public participation, as always, in our City.

He is wrong in assigning blame to his – and WILLIAM B. HARRISS's – successors as Mayor and City Manager of our Nation's Oldest City, St. Augustine, Florida.ne commenter on the Recored's website, “sour grapes.”

Full disclosure: I proudly voted for former Mayor GEORGE GARDNER when he ran for Mayor the first time, providing one of the ten votes in his original margin of victory. His service was disappointing, on many levels. But on February 14, 2012, I saw a different side, as I shared a van with GARDNER and some sixteen other city residents, including our city Manager John Regan: I was impressed with GARDNER's poise in testifying to the Senate K-12 Education Committee: he contributed to our community's efforts, which successfully winning permanent exemptions from Florida School for the Dear and Blind eminent domain legislation exempting the historic Fullerwood and Nelmar Terrace neighborhoods forever, and exempting the rest of the City of St. Augustine for ten years.

Ex-Mayor GEORGE GARDNER is a third-generation politician. He can be interesting to watch. “Like a rotten mackerel by moonlight, he both shines and stinks” (in the words of John Randolph of Roanoke).

This morning, GEORGE GARDNER shamelessly blasted St. Augustine's 450^th anniversary commemoration in quotations in an article published in the St. Augustine Record, asserting there was a lack of community participation. There could always be more, but, “What chutzpa!” That dog won't hunt. Since the Sunshine violating First America Foundation was abolished, our entire community, and all of its many groups, are participating in the 450^th – it is organic and a joy to watch it unfold.

GEORGE GARDNER conflated the 450^th with the Spanish Quarter Village, when former City History Director William Adams said our City's “business model has failed.” GARDNER then inaccurately accused the City of “divest[ing]” itself of the City's historic properties, which are now being administered by the University of Florida after enactment of state legislation the City supported, in a contract with former Philadelphia 76ers owner Pat Croce and his Colonial Quarter LLC. GARDNER was Mayor when the UF arrangement was first proposed. The City and UF are now partners in preserving St. Augustine historic properties, instead of allowing them to fall apart. Our City was involved in writing the RFQ and in picking Croce's company.

GEORGE GARDNER “doth protest too much.”

GEORGE GARDNER's 450^th critique would be taken much more seriously if he stuck to facts, and if he had more often practiced as Mayor what he now preaches.

On the one hand, Mayor GARDNER empowered neighborhood associations. He deserves credit.

But the “real” GEORGE GARDNER intensely disliked public participation, as when he, DONALD CRICHLOW and ERROL JONES all voted May 23, 2005 against flying Rainbow flags on our Bridge of Lions, violating the First Amendment and resulting in a Federal Court Order two weeks later (on June 7, 2005) that Rainbow flags fly on our Bridge in honor of Gay Pride, based on St. Augustine's 11,000 years of GLBT history (including the 1566 murder of a Gay French interpreter of the Guale Indian language, whom Pedro Menendez de Aviles called “a Sodomite and a Lutheran” – his brother-in-law wrote it down). Only Commissioner Joe Boles, now Mayor, voted in favor of GLBT free speech rights twice (Susan Burk supported it once, but was out of town the second time).  GARDNER twice voted for bigotry, costing our City and the National League of Cities insurance pool tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees.

First as Mayor and then as a Commissioner, GEORGE GARDNER was overtly hostile to public participation on Environmental Justice concerns, 2006-2008 when a group of us repeatedly raised concerns about illegal dumping of 40,000 cubic yards of solid waste in our Old City Reservoir – he called it “clean fill” on February 24, 2006, but as EPA regulator John Marler told me at the time , “there are no bedsprings (or toilets) in clean fill.” Every fortnight, when environmentalists spoke of the environmental crime by then-City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRIS, Mayor GARDNER bristled, insulting us, once even asking me, “Do you have lint in your pocket?” (That's apparently an ancient idiom from New England).

Then-Mayor GEORGE GARDNER used his valedictory speech as Mayor on November 13, 2006 to attack me personally, resulting in the St. Augustine Record's November 19, 2006 editorial defending my honor against Hizzoner. See November 19, 2006 Record editorial, here.  Thus, GARDNER reminds me of Ann Richards' 1988 remarks about George H.W. Bush: "Poor George. He can't help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth!"

GEORGE GARDNER never kept his campaign promise to do something about former City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS (e.g., make a motion to fire him). So HARRISS took advantage of GARDNER's human flaws to first co-opt and then control GARDNER.

It took community activists to expose HARRISS's flummery, dupery and nincompoopery, resulting in coverage by Folio Weekly and the St. Augustine Record and HARRISS' “retirement” in 2010, the same year that GARDNER “retired” as commissioner.

GEORGE GARDNER's existential unhappiness is not rooted in the 450^th. GARDNER feels badly that he did not do a better job as our Mayor, and that he disappointed so many of us by not keeping his campaign promises. We don't need ten word answers, Mr. GARDNER. We need ideas. We need solutions.

GEORGE GARDNER, a former GANNETT journalist, is a good writer. His newsletter, while sometimes inaccurate and skewed, is often more informative than the St. Augustine Record (although he omitted coverage of our Fair Housing ordinance victory for GLBT rights December 10, 2012).

GEORGE GARDNER should use his considerable talents to help, instead of acting like a cognitive miser from Left Field. GARDNER, author of “St. Augustine Bedtime Stories,” should write his own memoirs, and tell all about former City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS, the ancien regime, and its dictatorial ways.

That would be quite a gift to future generations, perhaps rivaling Lincoln Steffens.

What do you reckon?