On March 8, 2013, I requested the City of St. Augustine and its PR man (PAUL WILLIAMSON, whose department gets $500,000/year), to kindly justify its policy of providing "free parking" for "Bike Week" motorcycle owners, who get free parking around our Plaza and Cathedral Basilica. I asked for documents and asked questions. A week has elapsed. The City has nothing to offer in response.There is no justification.
No cost-benefit analysis.
No memos.
No environmental impact statements.
No historic preservationist opinions.
No City Attorney opinions.
No lost parking revenue calculations.
No policy consideration of Fourteenth Amendment violations -- why grant free parking to the Wild Bunch?.
No discussion of the disquieting, noisy cheapening and of our Historic Preservation districts with rampant noise for four percent (4%) of each year -- in March and October. During two weeks annually we and our St. Augustine visitors are deprived the peaceful quiet enjoyment of our historic downtown. Why?
No written justification, memos, cost-benefit-analysis or thoughtful policy consideration. None. Zilch. Nada.
None.
The "Bike Week" free motorcycle parking decision was made without much thought, circa 2005. It was was apparently based upon then-Commissioners' subjective preferences. This was typical of the discredited, disrespectful decrepit good-ole-boy decision-making style during the Reign of Error of our former City Manager, WILLIAM B. HARRISS.
HARRISS is gone. Yet is he still influencing events?
Our estimable City of St. Augustine spokesman PAUL WILLIAMSON was present at the creation of HARRISS' free parking policy. PAUL WILLIAMSON is not talking. He has the right to remain silent under the Fifth Amendment.
For the past week, PAUL WILLIAMSON has ducked written questions and documents about Bike Week, providing no answers and no documents whatsoever. PAUL WILLIAMSON provided no information and no answers whatever -- while simultaneously offending democracy by emitting a snippy E-mail he blames on City Attorney RONALD WAYNE BROWN, who claims the E-mail was "legally required." (BROWN still has never had a performance evaluation, after five years on the job and despite pledges that he would be evaluated).
Earlier today, WILLIAMSON stated in our CIty's weekly "News and Notes E-mail, stating it was a "tradition" to have free parking for "Bike Week."
That's one hideous "tradition."
Bike Week in st. Augustine's Historic Preservation neighborhoods is hellish for the non-bikers -- loud, obnoxious, ugly, trashy and crass -- a noisy "Wild Bunch"invasion of our "sense of place" in our Nation's Oldest City. They're noisy and they scare horses, dogs and people (both children and adults).
Tradition? People dying from malaria, yellow fever and smallpox due to government inactions were once "traditions," as once were people subjected to genocide, slavery, segregation and lynchings. But we don't want those "traditions" back, either. Do we? We wouldn't listen to anyone rationalizing those plagues as desirable. Would we?
Calling something "traditional" is no substitute for thought. In the words of the late United States Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., it is "disgusting" to have no other reason or a rule or law that it was "laid down during the reign of Henry IV." But the reign of WILLIAM B. HARRISS? How narcissistic.
Having Bike Week during two weeks each year in St. Augustine is like inviting ants to a picnic. Noisy ants.
Rich guys who never asked for free parking and don't need it.
Listen to the rumble and grumble of hundreds of noisy motorcycles during the twice-annual Bike Week and contemplate the words of the poet: "The world is too much with us, late and soon. Getting and spending we lay waste our powers. We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon."
Let our muffler-impaired, often helmet-less motorcyclist guests enter and leave this quiet town the back way, using the parking garage.
Let us not invite our noisy "Bike Week" guests to vroom-vroom-vroom their way around our historic downtown all day without helmets, making walking and driving hazardous, sometimes getting killed and killing themselves (and others) as occurs so often and forseeably in Daytona Beach, Florida and other "Bike Week" venues across America and in St. Johns County earlier this month.
Let the "Bike Week" guests show respect Let the bikers kindly walk, saunter or sashay down St. George Street (and adjacent streets) like everyone else. They don't need to have the rent-free use of our Plaza de la Constitucion, in front of our Cathedral Basilica to hawk their wares or show off their possessions. How crass.
WILLIAMSON wrote the "tradition" includes an "unofficial display of a wide variety of motorcycles from around the county (sic) making it an attraction (sic) for visitors." That's spin, not data.
WILLIAMSON's assumptions are contrary to the historic character of our downtown.
We don't consider noisy metal objects in our Nation's Oldest City's Historic Downtown to be the least bit "attract[ive]."
We don't consider dozens of imotorcyles parked at the Plaza to be compliant with Department of the Interior standards, or the reasonable expectations of an historic city.
Does anyone else?
The city has again created yet another problem at the Plaza. Now it is with excessive noisy visitor parking -- that's why we have a $25 million Visitor Information Center parking garage (and the interest bills to show for it). Let's look to motorcycle enthusiasts to pay their fair share from now, instead of giving them any more "free rides" and uglification and nois-ification of our downtown.
Enough "gaming the system" to grant government favors for owners of noisy vehicles.
Let us not invite noisy and even noisome nuisances to drive and park in our narrow historic streets. And let us not give those nuisances them free parking by our historic Cathedral Basilica!
On Wednesday, March 13, 2013, the night Pope Francis was named, anyone wanting to pray in and enjoy our 1797 St. Augustine Roman catholic Cathedral Basilica had to breathe hog-smoke and step around $25,000 motorcycles to do so. How distracting. How unnecessary. How gauche. How inauthentic.
After a week without any data or answers, PAUL WILLIAMSON asserts vague public benefits from free parking for noisy machines, doing so in the City's March 15, 2013 "News and Notes." In response to my March 8, 2013 E-mail, WILLIAMSON has had no documents, no answers and no data.
I reckon PAUL WILLIAMSON suffers from both: (A) a surfeit of logical fallacies and (B) acalculia (an inability to perform mathematical functions), both of which are not uncommon ailments. It sounds like WILLIAMSON sorta thinks he's still working for WILLIAM B. HARRISS and the Chamber of Commerce, unable to process information for our City leaders and citizens. HARRISS and WILLIAMSON used Jim Crow Law to outlaw painting and singing on St. George Street, hating creativity, basing their law-breaking lawmaking on "obstruction of traffic." At the same time, they welcomed traffic-obstructing motorcyclists. Expecting HARRISS and WILLIAMSON to make logical sense is asking too much, I reckon -- what do you expect from a pig but a grunt?.
WILLIAMSON is kinda stuck on himself, writing on his Linked-in page that he is "An effective communicator in both the written word and all public speaking forums. Especially skilled in issue development and information delivery and marketing through print, the electronic media and face-to-face meetings; special project management, from concept to completion, including those involving meeting management, marketing of issues, products or programs, and all aspects of public relations." Except he can't answer questions or provide documents on Bike Week.
We in the "reality-based community" reject nonsense, cant and flummery from government. This is our government. It does not belong to PAUL WILLIAMSON or motorcycle riders (or groups or gangs of them). It is up to us, not them.
Let's insist our leaders base City of St. Augustine public policy on real facts and good science. OK?
Let's reject and be done with oleaginous PAUL WILLIAMSON's rote invocation of "tradition," one without factual foundation. If it were ever to be deemed by some to be a "tradition" it is one that is only eight (8) years old, in a City that is more than 447 years old! That's not much of a "tradition." But do remember the words of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: how "disgusting!"
Let the ostentatious "idle rich" and their noisy machines violate eardrums and aesthetics elsewhere. Not in our Historic District, please.
Let the visiting motorcycle enthusiasts park somewhere besides the Plaza. Let them pay like everyone else. They can afford it. There is no public benefit, only burdens on the rest of us to endure their nasty noise. In the words of Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, "Not one penny for tribute."
No more free riders, please. Our Nation's Oldest City is about history and authenticity -- not trashy Bike Week. Let Bike Week patrons park away from our Cathedral Basilica from now on, please!
Photo credit: J.D. Pleasant (and a cast of thousands). Former City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS (a/k/a "WILL HARASS") is gone -- so why does PAUL WILLIAMSON still act like he's City Manager, blocking Open Records requests and arrogantly insisting that "Bike Week" free parking is good for our community? It's long past time for PAUL WILLIAMSON to go, and with him his slothful work habits and bad attitude toward democracy. Like BAGHDAD BOB and SADDAM HUSSEIN, PAUL WILLIAMSON and WILLIAM B. HARRISS were two of a kind -- HARRISS is gone. PAUL WILLIAMSON needs to be gone, too.
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