St. Augustine Votes to Grant Equal Pension Rights to Gay and Lesbian Employee Retirees and Their Survivors

Monday night, the St. Augustine City Commission voted unanimously on first reading to grant equal pension rights to the survivors of Gay and Lesbian employee retirees.

Commissioner Donald Crichlow made the motion, affirming the recommendation by Assistant City Manager Timothy A. Burchfield and the City's General Pension Board to end discrimination.

Commissioner Crichlow told me after the vote, "It's the right thing to do." Viva! Three cheers!

Our City of St. Augustine is healing, ending discrimination, including pension discrimination against Gays and Lesbians. Our City is far more progressive than redneck Jacksonville, the rebarbative State of Florida, and other surrounding jurisdictions, to include St. Johns County.

Evidently, the St. Augustine Record does not think it is news that our City is ending pension discrimination against Gays and Lesbians.

Why?

Morris Communications: please answer.

Despite the Record owners' Philistinism, we've made great progress in St. Augustine.

o First Amendment victories for visual artists selling their art, and for GLBT people to put Rainbow flags on the Bridge of Lions, by federal court order.
o Ending Sunshine and Open Records violations that ong afflicted our City government, from the secretive 1995 visioning process, to the First America Foundation, to the planned "business trip" to Spain by five Commissioners.
o Ending Environmental Racism, exposing 40,000 cubic yards of contaminated solid waste illegally dumped in the Old City Reservoir, preventing its being dumped at the south end of Lincolnville (at what is now being mistakenly called "Riberia Pointe") -- it is now in a Class I landfill.
o Working to end the War on the Poor and racism, as evidenced by the City's splendid "Journey" exhibit on 450 years of African-American history, now at the Visitor Information Center.