Ed's Guest Column: 7-Eleven rebuff just a beginning in St. Augustine

Sunday St. Augustine Record Guest Column: 7-Eleven rebuff just a beginning in St. Augustine
Posted: January 24, 2015 - 4:16pm


By ED SLAVIN
St. Augustine
We, the people, in St. Augustine just stopped 7-Eleven from erecting a 12-pump gasoline station across the street from our historic, protected Waterworks building, carousel, library and the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind — at an “F” failing intersection. Its building permit was canceled.

We shall overcome!

Two well-organized communities (Nelmar Terrace and Fullerwood), represented by zealous counsel, Jane West, testified through exquisitely-well-spoken witnesses, before five attentive city commissioners, who arrived at the correct legal decision. They overturned, on 11 unassailable legal grounds, a building permit that would have wrecked our Nation’s Oldest City.

“We band of brothers and sisters” made history [January 15th], while preserving our city’s history forever.

As astronomer Carl Sagan told our American Bar Association meeting in Atlanta in 1991, our Constitution, like the scientific method, is based upon self-correcting mechanisms to arrive at truth and a correct decision.

The city staff’s issuance of a permit was corrected by the city commission, after hearing all of the evidence.

Now we move forward to even greater heights, knowing that developers no longer own our city government, as in years past.

What’s next?

■ Enacting the St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore. www.staugustgreen.com Let’s preserve and protect forever what we love and cherish here in St. Augustine. Let’s honor this magical place with a “St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore,” first proposed in 1939 (making for better, clearer, more succinct “branding” than sesquipedalianisms like “Guana-Tolomato-Matanazas-National-Estuarine-Research-Reserve,” “Anastasia State Park,” etc.)

Visitors love National Parks (“America’s Best Idea”). Congress just enacted seven new national parks, expanded nine and directed studies of eight more possibilities. Where’s ours? St. Augustine and St. Johns and Flagler counties’ natural beauty must be preserved and protected. It deserves more NPS stewardship, for our 11,000 years of history and incomparable endangered vistas/nature. It’s up to us.

■ Let’s not wait for Congress. Let us act now to preserve and protect St. Augustine’s Historic Preservation (HP) Districts. Let’s ban HP-unsuitable activities. Here are 10 activities to consider banning permanently from HP Districts. These include: Adult bookstores, casinos/gambling, chain restaurants and chain stores, classrooms, discos, dormitories, fortune-tellers, pawnshops, routine daytime 18-wheeler truck deliveries and tattoo-parlors.

■ Saint Augustine wrote, “an unjust law is no law at all.” St. Augustine city commissioners, please repeal/amend dysfunctional “unjust laws” that purport to criminalize singing, painting, acting, music or dancing. Several successive anti-artist, Nuremberg-style laws were ruled unconstitutional — a blot on our escutcheon (loony laws probably rendered unconstitutional by the Supreme Court’s June 26 Massachusetts abortion law picketing First Amendment case).

Barbaric, Obsolete, Negative, Anti-Busker Ordinances (BONABO) wasted millions of dollars oppressing artists. A few commercial landlords (campaign contributors) demanded police enforce their prejudices, rolling out the “Unwelcome Wagon” with hundreds of artist, musician and entertainer arrests — all in our name. These Jim Crow-style arrests injured reputations of our talented tourism workers and damaged our image. These were self-inflicted wounds, bringing shame upon our city and making St. George Street much less intriguing. Enough cruelty and barbarism.

Everyone misses buskers. Let’s welcome them with rational, fair regulations developed with mutual respect and understanding. Let’s re-open our locked, gated Spanish Garden after 14 years.

Diversity, healing ancient wounds and respecting human rights are vital 450th legacies.

Nine languages were spoken in St. Augustine within a few years of its founding by Europeans, Africans, Catholics, Jews, workers, soldiers and sailors.

Diversity is our strength. Our Nation’s Oldest City’s best years are ahead of us. Let us dedicate ourselves to making this a more vibrant economy and a happier, greener place — a “shining city on a hill.”