LEN WEEKS BUILDING DESTRUCTION UNDER INVESTIGATION: Department of Business and Professional Regulation (DBPR) Case No. 2014048144

Two local residents, including Thomas F. Reynolds, Jr., have filed complaints against the construction license of LEN WEEKS a/k/a "CLAUDE LEONARD WEEKS, JR., St. Augustine's ex-Mayor.

The complaints center on the September 25, 2014 destruction of DON PEDRO FORNELLS HOUSE, 62A Spanish Street, a 211-year old Spanish colonial building that has survived wars, hurricanes but not WEEKS' greed. "Everybody needs to obey the rules and laws in order to have a civil society," Mr. Reynolds said upon receiving DBPR's acknowledgement of the complaint on July 3, 2015.

Another unnamed citizen had already filed a complaint, and the two are combined under the same DPBR case number, No. 2014048144.

Other citizens can complain by filing with DBPR on its form, here.

As I wrote on this blog on November 12, 2014, before the Code Enforcement hearing:

"It is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error." Those are the words of Justice Robert Houghwot Jackson, America's prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials.

Today the St. Augustine Code Enforcement Board will hear an appeal by CLAUDE LEONARD WEEKS, Jr. from more than $10,000 in fines for his illegally destroying a 210-year old Spanish colonial building at 62A Spanish Street, without permits…. The facts are as follows:

1. LEN WEEKS owns -- and as his own contractor destroyed -- a 210-year old historic building and putting workers' lives at risk by trenching all the way around the building, violating City of St. Augustine ordinances by working without any permits. 
2. A City report finds that LEN WEEKS admittedly disobeyed instructions and requirements of City employees, including City Planning and Building Director David Birchim, City Historic Preservation Planner Jennifer Wolfe, City Archaeologist Carl Halbirt, City Building Inspector Inspector William Franke. 
3. LEN WEEKS also failed to follow the advice of his own engineer, William Freeman and his own architect Jerry Dixon.
4. This is not the first time that LEN WEEKS has worked without a permit in the historic area of Our Nation's Oldest City.
5. LEN WEEKS chairs the City of St. Augustine Historic Architectural Review Board (HARB).
6. LEN WEEKS also chairs the City of St. Augustine Parking and Traffic Committee.
7. LEN WEEKS also serves on the all-white St. Augustine Visioning Committee.
8. LEN WEEKS is partner with Mayor JOSEPH LESTER BOLES, JR. in a no-bid lease from the City of St. Augustine for 81 St. George Street, at 1/5 to 1/10 of market rates, sublet without City permission to the current owners of FLORIDA CRACKER CAFE and SAVANNAH SWEETS.
9. MAYOR JOE BOLES IS LEN WEEKS' ATTORNEY AND BUSINESS PARTNER.
10. LEN WEEKS has a Master's degree in Construction from the University of Florida, has been a licensed general contractor since 1977, chairs the Historic Area Council of tbe Chamber of Commerce and has long demanded arrests and criminal prosecution of artists and musicians and entertainers on St. George Street, while seeking special rights for property owners.

As Justice Robert Jackson began his prosecution at the Nuremberg Trial, "The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated."

"Let justice be done though the heavens fall" is the ancient equitable maxim.