1. Please respond to 1/19 e-mail (below).
2. Please provide all data requested, today. Your nine (9) day delay and desuetude is inculpatory; it further exemplifies our City's lack of customer service standards.
3. Our City is again in violation of Article I, Section 24 of our Florida Constitution and our Open Records law and is in bad faith by refusing to communicate.
4. I hereby respectfully request you agree to mediation by Pat Gleason in the AG's office. Your unjustified, vague threat to charge me for these records is retaliatory.
5. Who gets free gala tickets, who authorized, who paid, how and why?
6. We, The People, have a sacred right to KNOW. Please don't be dismissive or condescending again, Mark: Just because it's in our budget doesn't mean you get to spend it or that it creates an "entitlement."
7. What makes upper City managers think citizens should buy them and their spouses free tickets to galas? The Florida League of Cities says no other Florida city has any galas: St. Augustine has two (2) of them, one for lights and one for the birthday of a perpetrator of genocide and murder. Free tickets for well-paid employees adds insult.
8. Please explain it to me like i was a six year old. Does any policy reason exist for free tickets for the richest employees? Where does all the money go? Please provide records.
9. I see no job requirement, no legal duty and no public benefit for anyone ever attending any gala at public expense. The public perceives errant self-indulgence by privileged managers who think they are the elite. Please pay for your own tickets and encourage your colleagues to do the same. It is "perks" like this that create mistrust in our government. Enough.
10. I strongly counsel and urge you and every other City upper management employee who thinks their household "deserves" or is "entitled" to free gala tickets to get ready for this: You don't deserve them. You didn't earn them. It is not a bona fide occupational benefit.
11. MY SUGGESTION TO CITY HALL: Buy your own tickets for the February 28, 2015 Noche de Gala in honor of Pedro Menendez de Aviles, AND be prepared to explain to investigators, forensic auditors and reporters your breach of fiduciary duty these many years in billing taxpayers for all of your parties.
Thank you.
With kindest regards,
Ed Slavin
Points are valid.
ReplyDeleteQuestions demand answers in writing.
I concur!
Three Commissioners rejecting free tickets. Others will do so soon. If this is a "benefit," cui bono? (Who benefits?) Will well-fed, well-paid City management employees agree to buy their own tickets? Where else in the USA does a city sponsor multiple galas and give its highest paid managers fancy-bears $195 tickets. Unearned. Undeserved. Undignified. Unethical. Unctuous. Usurpation of power of We, The People, who never voted for anyone on a platform of narcissism, no-bid contracts, antitrust violations, exploitation of homeowners and subsidies and favoritism for hoteliers. Immoral, illegal and fattening.
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