Anyone Seen JOE BOLES?

It's been some 226 days since Mayor JOSEPH LESTER BOLES, Jr. slunk off into the December night, like a scared skunk.
Exposed by investigative reporters and rejected by the voters, BOLES is gone.

Before the election, BOLES met at the Dow Museum of Historic Homes for some two hours, with DAVID BARTON CORNEAL, a dodgy developer. CORNEAL then purchased the former Dow Museum of Historic Homes on Halloween and did not file the dirty deed in the Clerk's office until the day after the election. What promises did BOLES make to CORNEAL in those meetings? CORNEAL's proposal to put a hotel in the Old City South neighborhood goes before our Historic Architectural Review Board tomorrow (July 16) and City Commission at its next meeting (July 27).

Nancy Sikes-Kline took this photograph from her vantage point at the City Commission table: notice 100 people are standing, including our elders and persons with disabilities, because our City Hall staff refused to comply with the Americans with Disabilites Act).

Defeated for re-election, BOLES, an elder law attorney, abruptly left St. Augustine City Hall on December 1, 2014 refusing to shake the hand of our new Mayor, Nancy Shaver, at her inauguration, acting ungraciously in the presence of Florida Supreme Court Justice Peggy Quince and hundreds of citizens. BOLES' minions, led by JOHN PATRICK REGAN, P.E., City Manager, ignored and refused my repeated requests to provide enough chairs for all of Mayor Shaver's well-wishers at her inauguration by Florida Supreme Court Justice Peggy Quince.

Anyone seen JOE BOLES?

The longtime Chairman of the Council on Aging, BOLES told citizen Thomas F. Reynolds, Jr. last year that COA's Sunshine Bus Company was a "private company" and that it's records were private. BOLES lied. Now COA has hired a 228-lawyer Orlando corporate law firm's Jacksonville corporate law partner at $300/hour to resist Open Records requests on COA and Sunshine Bus Company. See below. Pitiful. Instead of talking to people about their concerns, COA arrogantly wastes tax money on WILLIAM H. ANDREWS' legal bills.

As former Massachusetts Governor Michael F. Dukakis once said, "a fish rots from the head." As Mayor, BOLES disrespected citizens, interrupted citizens, retaliated against citizens, favored developers, franchisees and government contractors and benefitted personally from a dodgy no-bid lease for city property at 81 St. George Street (refusing to answer Folio Weekly questions, which he referred to his partner, ex-Mayor CLAUDE LEONARD WEEKS, Jr.). Read Folio story here.

BOLES threatened last year to move back to his native North Carolina when he was defeated for re-election by Nancy Shaver, whom Record reporter Stuart Korfhage called an "upstart" in his August 27, 2014 article on the Primary election results.

Anyone seen JOE BOLES? Please report sightings to 904-377-4998 or share photographs with me at easlavin@aol.com