Entrance to Madeira, once the Ponce de Leon Golf Course, hotel and conference center, destroyed by greedy developer CHESTER STOKES with support of $1.5 million in tax deductions (tax expenditures) as a result of City Commission's brownfield designation due to arsenic contamination
DAVID BIRCHIM
Planning and Zoning Director
Does Not Present Objective Information to Commissioners
It was Definitely. Not. "Business As Usual."
The people were heard and heeded.
The greedy maladroit developer of "Madeira" lost, 3-2 on its effort to extend completion of its misbegotten PUD until 2023, some 21 years after it was authorized and 19 years after the litigation was settled.
Expecting to have his way again, maladroit City Planning and Building Director DAVID BIRCHIM, a/k/a "Don't Overthink This" asked City Commissioners Monday night, January 25, 2016 to grant a five year extension to a controversial Planned Unit Development called "Madeira," claiming that the project was "the victim of the Global Recession."
I challenged the lack of data supporting BIRCHIM's unctuous unscholarly ukase, inasmuch as the Great Recession was in 2008 and this is 2016. The extension proposal was the subject of an excuse-making St. Augustine Record editorial last year.
Despite the editorial and its staff's recommendation and veiled threats from corporate lawyers, St/. Augustine City Commissioners voted 3-2 to deny the Madeira Planned Unit development extension.
Three cheers!
Three cheers for Commissioners Leanna Freeman and Nancy Sikes-Kline, who joined with Mayor Nancy Shaver, citizen B.J. Kalaidi and me (Ed Slavin) in questioning:
o the somnolent pro-developer staff's lack of objectivity;
o its habitual failure to provide neutral policy advice;
o its constant advocacy for whatever developers want; and
o its utter failure to consider the cumulative effect of previously approved bad decisions in urging new bad decisions.
Representing the speculator/developer was robotic ROGERS TOWERS partner ELLEN AVERY SMITH. ELLEN AVERY SMITH was aided, abetted and assisted by febrile fired former Planning and Building Director (1998-2014) MARK ALAN KNIGHT, the former boss of estimable Planning and Building Director DAVID BIRCHIM, a/k/a "Don't Overthink This""
The misguided, mellifluously named "Madeira" development was speculator CHESTER STOKES' pipe dream and our City of St. Augustine's nightmare, like a long running train wreck. STOKES, supported by Commissioners ERROL JONES, JOSEPH BOLES and DONALD CRICHLOW and then City Planning and Building Director MARK ALAN KNIGHT was a man on a mission, backed by the ROGERS TOWERS corporate law firm, first corrupt lawyer GEORGE McCLURE, and now ELLEN AVERY SMITH.
The mission: destroy a beautiful 1916 Donald Ross designed golf course, annex it into the city and build nearly 800 houses on top of contaminated soil containing arsenic and other poisons used as pesticides, fungicides and rodenticides. Only 74 houses have been built since the PUD was approved in 2001 and finalized through litigation settlement in 2004. In 2006, the City Commission unwisely voted 3-2 and authorized the PUD to become a "brownfield" site, allowing tax deductions (tax expenditures) to subsidize cleaning up the arsenic and other poisons used as pesticides.
Commissioner Leanna Freeman said it was a "bad development" and Commissioner Nancy Sikes-Kline agreed. On a motion to approve a "housekeeping" comprehensive plan amendment, the vote was 3-2 in favor. On a second vote to extend the PUD until 2023, the vote was 3-2 against. Observers were pleasantly surprised.
Mayor Nancy Shaver said the logic behind the "phasing," with all three phases having begun at once, was "slightly nonsensical," asking whether the applicant would agree to workforce affordable housing or other modifications to obtain an extension. The developer refused.
Commissioner Freeman called for a "second look" at PUDs when they ask for extensions or modifications. She said the "timeframe" in the PUD was a "complete deal," and saw no reason for extending it.
Mayor Shaver agreed with me (Ed Slavin) that the City staff must present balanced information, with "pros and cons," not just pro-developer excuses ("victim of the Great Recession).
Mayor Shaver said the City staff was trying to "caution" Commissioners about a no vote, "without any basis."
Mayor Shaver said we had a right to ask a developer asking for a PUD extension how things have gone so far, and the answer is "not really well."
About the bizarre "phasing" proposal, Mayor Shaver asked, "Does any of this reflect reality?"
BIRCHIM conceded the deadlines were "artificial."
Yet BIRCHIM vaguely threatened that there would be "consequences" of a denial, while saying that was "not … a threat." Throughout much of the questioning, BIRCHIM's white face turned pink and nearly red, all the way to the top of his bald head.
For their part, SMITH and KNIGHT could not answer simple questions and repeatedly repeated themselves, while SMITH kept droning on like a robot, using phrases that once carried the day for the ruling classes represented by GEORGE McCLURE and ROGERS TOWERS ("vested property rights," "reasonable investment-backed expectations").
No one ever answered my concerns about the secrecy of LLC beneficial ownership, an issue raised by Stephanie Saul, et al. in The New York Times. (And thank you, Ms. Kalaidi, but no, sunbiz.org only provides the names of managers and executives, not all LLC beneficial owners, which are often foreigners -- how can we know if Commissioners have conflicts of interest if all LLC beneficial owners are not disclosed?)
Once upon a time, CHESTER STOKES was on November 13, 2006 aided and abetted by the likes of local businessmen HERBIE WILES and BRUCE MAGUIRE, who vocally supported the "brownfield" designation that resulted in taxpayers subsidizing CHESTER STOKES' folly of destroying a contaminated golf course for housing.
Sick of prevaricating speculators' promises, not one St. Augustine resident supported the proposed five year extension of the PUD (not even Messrs. WILES and MAGUIRE).
Not one.
While admitting that "eighteen years is a pretty long time," Commissioner Roxanne Horvath, an architect who has too often sided with developers and is up for re-election this year and likely to benefit from developer campaign ca$h, voted for the PUD extension.
Also voting for the PUD extension was Commissioner Todd Neville, as predictable, reliable and arrogant a pro-speculator vote as ever greased a chair in St. Augustine's 450+ year history.
After the thrilling 79 minute debate, a recess was taken, and speculator mouthpiece ELLEN AVERY SMITH immediately huddled with City Manager JOHN PATRICK REGAN, P.E., long regarded as the developers' hey-boy and accomplice. SMITH rasped, "Mr. Slavin is eavesdropping on us." I reminded her that there is "no reasonable expectation of privacy in a public place" and that her obese client, DAVID BARTON CORNEAL, had stomach-bumped me and accused me of eavesdropping before a HARB hearing on April 21, 2015.
Shaking with rage, ROGERS TOWERS partner ELLEN AVERY SMITH then walked south to the back of the room in an attempt "spin" Record reporter Sheldon Gardner, then whining with the same affected rasp, "Mr. Slavin is eavesdropping on me."
(Smug, snooty Ms. SMITH was long an understudy to corrupt developer lawyer GEORGE McCLURE, who, with Sheriff DAVID BERNERD SHOAR f/k/a "HOAR," refused to answer then-Editor Peter Ellis' questions about the Thomas Manuel criminal prosecution, in which McCLURE wore a wire for the FBI after his ROGERS TOWERS law partners allegedly kicked him out of their law firm after learning he took a fee without sharing it with them.)
I told Ms. Gardner that this 3-2 vote denying the PUD extension was "a great victory" for those of us concerned about turning St. Augustine into an unreasonable facsimile of Richardson, Texas or Broward County, Florida. SMITH stalked off. I pointed out that SMITH "hates me" and has "emotional problems with protected activity." SMITH gave me an evil eye (malocchio) and uttered nattering imprecations to herself.
The history-making debate -- nearly 79 minutes of it -- was all but omitted from The St. Augustine Record's shallow story with an inaccurate headline about "$200 million" loss on with a statistic that was 1000 . Watch the debate for yourself (item 8B1 & 8B2, at http://staugustinefl.swagit.com/play/01252016-909).
The Record's front page was filled with "successos menudos," Spanish for trifling events: a developer's plans for a lagoon in a long-delayed project at the north end of the county, a gas leak at a middle school that hurt no one, and an event that happened elsewhere.
Then the mucked-up lede of the City Commission story, with an erroneous headline, was about how the cost of the 7-Eleven property purchase would likely exceed what the City is getting from the State of Florida Department of Transportation and whoever purchases a home on the property. The story said $200,000. The headline said $200 Million.
These bad editorial decisions left little room -- only 188 words compared to more than 1700 words on this blog -- for reporter Sheldon Gardner to report on the Madeira PUD.
This is extraordinary. The Madeira PUD was the subject of page one articles and community controversies for years, with tens of thousands of words of articles in the Record, which neglected to cover Monday's denouement -- Commissioners actually listening to the people, questioning speculators' mouthpieces, and voting against rubber-stamping staff demands. Perhaps a "Mr. Morris" in Augusta, Georgia gave orders not to provide adequate coverage of CHESTER STOKES' PUD extension being denied (STOKES' operations extend from Florida to North Carolina, and real estate advertisements provide an unhealthy amount of revenue and influence for MORRIS COMMUNCATIONS).
So much for the notion of "local" coverage. The Record cuts off the news at its source, depriving We, the People of accurate information, again and again and again.
Once again, the Record covered for developers. That's why people go to www.edslavin.com and why they watch meetings for themselves.
It takes a village to save "our village" (as environmental lawyer Henry Dean said of our neighboring itty-bitty City of St. Augustine Beach in 2014 concerning a charter amendment on height limits).
This time last year, "We the People" defeated 7-Eleven, a Japanese multinational corporation without scruples, represented by the law firm of City of St. Augustine Beach City Attorney DOUGLAS NELSON BURNETT, forever halting and putting the kibosh on a dangerous effort to put twelve gasoline pumps next to the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind, across from the carousel, and astride a failing intersection at May Street & San Marco Avenue, which would have destroyed our historic district. The vote was unanimous
There is no limit to what "We, the People" can achieve when we speak out against injustice and evil and corruption.
To the Republican wrecking crew of rapacious, and-raping history-destroying developers: your days of dominating our governments are over. The era of dodgy developer and Ku Klux Klan domination of our local governments is Done Gone With the Wind.
The 3-2 rejection of the PUD amendment is a fitting conclusion to the saga of the City's massive, corrupt and misguided developer-driven annexation of the former Ponce de Leon golf course.
The annexation was a probable violation of the Fifteenth Amendment that would have had the effect of diminishing African-American voting strength, except no one is buying homes there. Now, if the developer wants to request a PUD extension, it had better include affordable workforce housing and other concessions to our community values.
Developer map misplaces location of "HISTORIC DOWNTOWN ST. AUGUSTINE," somewhere west of I-95.
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