Activists Stopped 7-Eleven: Record Editorial Ignores Truth

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
(Attributed to Margaret Mead)

It was Nelmar Terrace, Fullerwood and other St. Augustine neighborhood activists -- including Melinda Rakoncacy, Gina Burrell, Skip Hutton, Matthew Shaffer, former Mayor George Gardner and other community leaders -- who helped stop the disastrous construction of a 7-Eleven at a failing intersection and coastal escape route in our historic district.
Not one word in The St. Augustine Record's editorial, below, which starts and stops at City Hall. Pity.
City Manager John Patrick Regan, P.E., called by his colleagues "The Minister of Propaganda" for nearly two decades, gets all the credit. Pitiful.
All John Regan has to do is pick up the phone or drive to the Record and he gets an editorial. Great technology.
It's called dictation, stenography or "spin."
It's not called journalism.
In the final analysis, City Hall's 7-Eleven decisions responded to the irrefragable factual and legal case made by neighborhood activists and their counsel, Ms. Jane West.
Editorial writers who never go to City meetings and show diffidence toward neighborhoods need to focus on the facts, not official hagiography.
Yes, Mr. Regan deserves credit, but respond to persuasion by Melnida Rakoncacy, Gina Burrell Skip Hutton, Matthew Shaffer, George Gardner and other community leaders.
Without Melnida Rakoncacy, Gina Burrell Skip Hutton, Matthew Shaffer, George Gardner and other community leaders delivering spinal and testicular implants, Mr. Regan and City Commission would probably not have been empowered to stand up to a Japanese multinational corporation and its influential law firm, St. Johns Law Group.
Who is St. Johns Law Group?
It is owned by DOUGLAS NELSON BURNETT, long the attorney for the Airport and the City of St. Augustine Beach (Burnett is the son of the former Florida National Guard Adjutant General, appointed by Governor RICHARD LYNN SCOTT to the boards of the St. Johns River Water Management District and two colleges).
This is a city of neighborhoods, whose activists saved our community from the devastating impact of a 7-Eleven at May and San Marco.
The Record once celebrated activists, but now ignores them, not quoting as and acting like we're invisible.
Our dozens of positive results speak for themselves, and we wear the Record's scorn as a badge of honor.
On, and by the way:
The Record did not run a page one correction of its page one error Tuesday, January 26, 2016: it said $200 M(illion), not $200,000.
The New York Times and other newspapers run prominent corrections daily, and correct stories online, showing their corrections.
Was the volunteer proofreader at The Record "on vacation," as one commenter alleged?
Whatever the etiology of the 4200,000,000 SNAFU, the Record owes us an explanation, an apology and higher standards of journalism.
A statistical error by a factor of 1000 in a page one headline does not give us trust and confidence in our local newspaper.


Editorial: 7-Eleven: We got what we paid for
Posted: January 27, 2016 - 7:10pm | Updated: January 28, 2016 - 12:00am

Is the 7-Eleven epilogue an outcome half-empty or half-full?

Our headline Tuesday told readers that the city looks to lose $200,000 in the 7-Eleven land sale.

It could have just as easily have read that the city looks to recoup $1.25 million from the land purchase.

Marcus Aurelius said “Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.”

Was the 7-Eleven deal a gain or a loss?

Certainly it was a plus for the neighborhoods just east of San Marco Avenue near May Street. Judging by letters to the editor and public comment during the process, the land purchase was also important to the fast-growing North Beach area both from a convenience standpoint of gridlock and, according to residents, from a safety slant in terms of evacuations in the face of hurricanes.

Then there were the detractors who were irked that the city was spending tax dollars to fix a problem it caused ... “Why did you permit it in the first place.” The truth all along was that the city had no say on who bought the private property, anymore than it had control over what the owner intended to do with it, under the existing zoning laws — which the convenience store giant did.

A city can’t “undo” zoning after the fact. That attempt would have simply brought an earlier lawsuit, and a shakier one. This is America, remember? A bastion of private property rights. And 7-Eleven’s got them too.

We don’t recall the issue of how to recoup the purchase price ever coming up in a meeting. We spoke with City Manager John Regan for an editorial subsequent to the sale in which he said (for the first time as far as we can determine) that he’d bet the DOT would buy the land in order to do the intersection project there. Even if the footprint of the project didn’t fall within the property line, he believed it would need additional property for drainage and the like.

At that time, we spoke with a FDOT spokesperson who told The Record that the current parameters of the intersection project “included no funding” for any purchase of the property — period.

That somehow changed, and rather quickly. A brand new “alternative” came up and became the new “plan.” And it included purchase of the bulk of the 7-Eleven land.

So, in the end, the availability of that property clearly allowed the FDOT to think outside earlier parameters in designing a better mouse trap for the May Street-San Marco intersection.

And with the sale of a second, smaller piece of land there, the city is $200,000 upside down.

But what did it get for the investment? It got a lot of happy neighbors. It got a better design for an important intersection that’s more fluid and safer than before, according to the FDOT.

The FDOT purchase did result in taking a piece of land off the tax roll, that’s true. But one has to wonder — and we did — what type of business might have been OK with the neighbors on that corner: understanding that any private enterprise would have to ensure sufficient traffic to compensate for the inflated selling price with which 7-Eleven boar-hogged the city in the settlement. Oh, thank heaven?

The buzz then was that something along the lines of a Starbucks would be a perfect fit for that intersection — low-key and fresh-roasted. The new Starbucks on County Road 210 has now become the peeve du jour of neighbors in the northwest, backing traffic up for blocks and snarling access roads. Be careful what you wish for.

Nothing on the 7-Eleven corner is preferable to any kind of commercial “something.” We ended up in the right place at the right time, after all.