"Recused" SAB Mayor ANDREA SAMUELS Still Corruptly Presides and Bosses and Bullies St. Augustine Beach Commission Into 3-1 Vote Approving 5-Year Sweetheart Contract -- No-Bid $1/Year Lease With St. Augustine Beach Civic Association

Two hours of St. Augustine Beach City Commission time for one corrupt vote: no-bid $1/year renewal of a no-bid lease.

I thought Republicans claimed to be "fiscal conservatives!"

Not this bunch.

Flori-DUH Republicans, are such pusillanimous pompous pestiferous pretenders to protecting the public fisc.

PERFECT EXAMPLE: false flag, pathetic pusillanimous pompous pestiferous pretenders to protecting the public disc at St. Augustine Beach City Commission. Repulsive Republicans run the table: all five Commissioners are Republicans.

Disgusting: Two hour display of disjointed uninformed speakers, emitting emotions and canards and non sequiturs -- most financially interested in St. Augustine Beach Civic Association farmer's market or concerts as vendors or musicians.

Not one (1) speaker and not one (1) of four (4) enabler Commissioners -- ANDREA SAMUELS, Vice Mayor RICHARD O'BRIEN, Commissioners MARGARET ENGLAND and SHERMAN GARY SNODGRASS -- justified another five-year fiefdom $1/year lease to the St. Augustine Beach Civic Association, at eight cents per month.

Privileged SABCA openly and notoriously discriminates in membership, violates First Amendment rights at its events, fails to comply with state charitable solicitation laws, and has sufficient income and resources to pay more than eight cents a month for a former police garage.

Thanks to Commissioner Undine Pawlowski-George for standing up to oppression by Mayor ANDREA SAMUELS and her carping harpies.

Thanks to Commissioner SNODGRASS for at least moving to compel City to add sexual orientation and gender identity to paragraph 21 of the lease and to Commissioner Pawlowski-George for asking that the motion be amended to require compliance with other laws (e.g., charitable solicitation). No thanks to unofficially acting City Attorney JAMES GEORGE WHITEHOUSE for his lackadaisical "negotiation" of a "standard" lease with his boss, in effect, and his rambling incoherent answers to questions (saying "um" more than 36 times).

Every single one of the St. Augustine Beach City Commissioners is a registered Republican, including several who changed from Democrat to Republican for amoral political purposes. Not one representative of the tatterdemalion St. Johns County Democratic Executive Committee was heard to speak against the breach of fiduciary duty in giving a $1/year lease to an organization that owns property, has money market accounts, and can afford to pay reasonable rent and utilities.

How gauche and louche. But a precedent has been set -- we band of brothers will no longer permit local governments to put on any dumb 'ole consent agenda sleazy no-bid contracts -- expect to have the public heard and heeded. Ex-Mayors CLAUDE LEONARD WEEKS, JR. and JOSEPH LESTER BOLES, JR. thought their no-bid lease for 81 St. George Street (Florida Cracker Cafe) was cute. It's one of many reasons why BOLES is now ex-Mayor, thanks to Folio Weekly and prize-winning investigative reporter Susan Cooper Eastman's cover story.

No more coverups, please. No more no-bid contracts, please. The whole world is watching. Sousveillance, as the New York Times Magazine once put it -- We the People are watching our elected officials.

Thanks to Messrs. Thomas F. Reynolds, Jr., William Rosenstock, Robert Kahler, Ms. Ann Palmquist, and Dr. Michele S. Pawlowski, Ph.D. for speaking out, and thanks too to all the Congressmen and U.S. Senators I watched in my youth stand up to waste, fraud and abuse, misfeasance, malfeasance, nonfeasance, flummery, dupery, nincompoopery, tomfoolery, no-bid contracts and no-bid leases and other giveaways, including H.R. Gross (R-Iowa), John Culver (D-Iowa), George Stanley McGovern (D-S.D.), James Aboresk (D-S.D.), Dale Bumpers (D-Ark.), Howard Metzenbaum (D-Ohio) and my first three government employers, Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), Gary Warren Hart (D-Colo.) and James R. Sasser (D-Tenn.), and their incomparable staffs, as well as my first full-time journalistic employers, Ann & Ernie Phillips, owners of the Appalachian Observer, which helped bring truth, justice and the American Way to Central Appalachia. We SHALL overcome, as LBJ said after Selma.

PREDICTION: SAMUELS runs for County Commission next year, defeated by J. Kenneth Bryan.