Rotten Fish, 7-Eleven, Monopolists, Cowards and "Anonymice" vs. City Commission and "We, The People"

My Polish-American grandmother often bought food from horse-drawn "huckster" carts selling fish, fruit and vegetable sellers in her Polish neighborhood in Port Richmond neighborhood of Philadelphia.

My skeptical Nanny would ask rhetorically when I was a six-year-old,"Ever hear a huckster holler rotten fish?" Nope.

The hucksters are Japanese multinational monopolist 7-Eleven Corporation, lawyers JAMES PATRICK WHITEHOUSE, DOUGLAS NELSON BURNETT (son of the former Commanding General of the Florida National Guard, namesake, whom Governor RICHARD LYNN SCOTT appointed to the St. Johns River Water Management District.

The rotten fish is a proposed 12-pump gasoline 7-Eleven station across from the Old Waterworks Building, a Nationally-registered Historic Place, adjoining the Main Branch St. Johns County Public Library, Davenport Children's Park and Carousel, Nationally-regisered Nelmar Terrace and Fullerwood neighborhoods, escape routes from the barrier beach, and the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind and badly-gridlocked failing intersection and roadways (San Marco Blvd. and May Street).

The monopolists are 7-Eleven and The St. Augustine Record, run by cowards, who never offend an advertiser or potential advertiser (like 7-Eleven). On December 1, 2014, the Record restored anonymous "anonymice" commenting, which is now in overdrive as 7-Eleven and law firm employees and lobbyists post materially false and misleading statements about the project.

The hucksters and monopolists pushing this rotten fish are aided and abetted by cowards and bullies like MARK KNIGHT, former City Planning and Building Director, the Judas Iscariot who billed 30 hours of "work" at $150/hour to give dodgy testimony deemed "unreliable" and untruthful by City Commissioner Leanna Freeman. Under cross-examination by Jane West, MARK KNIGHT admitted he "counseled" 7-Eleven when he was a city employee and falsely claimed he had been given a "traffic study" that does not exist in City files. MARK KNIGHT was fired and he and the City refuse to say why (his resignation agreement contains an illegal gag order violating the First Amendment and environmental whistleblower laws). MARK KNIGHT now works for 7-Eleven's former law firm, which he advised to file a permit application before the ban on San Marco Avenue gasoline stations became effective (despite the pending ordinance doctrine). MARK KNIGHT, who often seemingly practices law without a license in front of City staff, boards and the Commission, deserves to be hailed in front of a federal grand jury for his perfidy.

The City staff who wrongfully approved the permit refused to delay the permit for consideration of traffic and evacuation issues. They were impaired by Assistant S. Johns County ADMINISTRATOR JERRY CAMERON, who ordered the County's new Emergency Management Director NOT to cooperate with me on evacuation questions. Color CAMERON conceited and an enemy of our City's citizens and their rights. Likewise, 7-Eleven refused my request to consider moving its project two blocks away, to U.S. 1, putting safety last and greed first.

In January 16 and 18 news stories and a January 18, 2015 editorial, the St. Augustine Record once again failed to fulfill its "watchdog function" and onee again failed to inform its readers adequately, while acting as if there were any merit whatever to 7-Eleven's position. People unfamiliar with the facts and law should not write editorials, but that is apparently considered a bona fide occupational qualification at the rebarbative dull Republican Record.

The St. Augustine Record is known to local residents as "the mullet wrapper," the mullet being medium-size bait for sharks (like 7-Eleven and the ST. JOHNS LAW GROUP, DOUGLAS NELSON BURNETT and JAMES GEORGE WHITEHOUSE).

Everyone in the room Thursday supported the residents and opposed 7-Eleven.

Unknown people who hide behind anonymity should not be empowered to attack our leaders with libel and threats, but that is what the Record allowed people to do in threatening City leaders, including being rounded up and shot in the Slave Market Square (2013), before "anonymice" comments were abolished by Delinda Fogel, Publisher, who said the anonymous threatener had a "write (sic) to his opinion." How gauche. How louche. We suspect the pro-7-Eleven commenters are 7-Eleven lawyers, toadies and employees."

We, The People were heard and heeded in a six-hour hearing before City Commission on January 15, 2015. Watch it here, and don't take the St. Augustine Record's word for anything. This was the best-run and best-done quasi-judicial hearing I have seen in ten years of attending City Commission meetings, with stellar legal representation by Jane West and great work by Mayor Nancy Shaver, Commissioners Leanna Freeman, Todd Neville, Nancy Sikes-Kline and Roxanne Horvath. Their decision is well-nigh irrefragable, based upon public health and safety considerations and some eleven (1) independent legal grounds, including the pending ordinance doctrine in Florida law and some ten parts of the mandatory Entry Corridor Guidelines, which City staff erroneously felt was not mandatory legal authority.

Florida School for the Deaf and Blind President Dr. Jeanne Prickett, FSDB students, faculty and staff, and citizens George Gardner, Melinda Rakoncay, Matthew Shaffer, Skip Hutton, Gina Burrell, Lisa Loyd, Bonnie Patrick, Tom Reynolds, Wesley Scoviner, et al. deserve great credit for standing up to the ill-advised City staff. I pity the City staff, which was ill-advised on legal issues and not told of the pending ordinance doctrine and given low-quality advice by the City Attorneys. "What they need is leadership," Mr. Shaffer testified. Amen. We "band of brothers and sisters" conquered City Hall AND 7-Eleven Thursday, and the tatterdemalion St. Augustine Record is too money-hungry and advertising-addled to care.

For our 450th, let's give ourselves a birthday present: St. Augustine needs a REAL newspaper, not a "mullet wrapper," a prawn, a pawn for monopolists, a huckster for rotten fish, so run by monopolists and cowards, and printing errant nonsense from monopolists and "anonymice.