"You keep chipping away!": City Planning and Building Director DAVID BIRCHIM

After another victory over oppression at the St. Augustine Planning and Zoning Board on February 2, 2016 (Atlantic Storage warehouses at SR312 and A1A), I spoke with PZB member Cathy Brown, former Council on Aging Director, who joined me in asking DAVID BIRCHIM (a/k/a "I Don't Want to Overthink This") about putting all PZB agenda backup items on the City's website.

Estimable St. Augustine City Planning and Building Director DAVID BIRCHIM complained that it would be costly, without ever providing data, and complained that I had asked before.  I pointed out that prior Commissioners refused to provide their agenda backup materials, ALL of which are now on the City's website.

Bumptious BIRCHIM ululated, caterwauled and whined, "You keep chipping away!"

Yes, dear, for 40 years I have been "chipping away!"

It was 38 years ago this summer that we helped halt eminent domain for coal slurry pipelines.

It was 33 years ago this May that our Appalachian Observer newspaper won declassification of the largest mercury pollution event in world history.

It was 24 years ago today that The New York Times carried the story about my heroic Government Accountability Project client, Oak Ridge National Laboratory whistleblower C.D. Varnadore, which helped transform the oppressive nuclear weapons plants forever.

It was nearly eleven years ago that I attended my first St. Augustine City Commission meeting.

It was nearly eleven years ago, that a federal judge ordered Rainbow flags to fly in honor of Gay Pride, defeating bigots in the St. Augustine government who hated the First Amendment.

It was ten years ago this month that I reported the City's illegal dumping of a landfill in a lake. We won. The contaminated solid waste is now in a Class I Landfill.

It was some 1985 days ago, on September 2, 2010, that Michelle O'Connell was shot to death and state and local officials botched the investigation of her boyfriend, JEREMY BANKS.  The FBI is following in the footsteps of The New York Times and other news media.  The truth will set us free.

It was two years ago that Mayor JOE BOLES, once considered Mayor for Life, was defeated by voters after Folio Weekly ran a cover story about my challenge to BOLES' unethical lease of City property at below-makret rates, inter alia quoting my partner as stating in a recommendation letter to the University of Florida graduate environmental and land use planning law program, I'm "the pest who never rests."

Yes, DAVID, thank you, I do "keep chipping away!"

That's how God made me, my parents raised me and my mentors taught me.

That 's what We, The People have been doing in St. Augustine Florida since April 9, 2005.  That's when I attended my first City meeting and was threatened with arrest by tawdry tatterdemalion termagant City Manger WILLIAM BRUCE HARRISS in retaliation for my raising concerns about the City's violation of African-American voting rights and civil rights -- refusing to annex West Augustine, while annexing some fifty times since 1964, reducing minority voting strength inside the City limits from 25% to 12%.

DAVID BIRCHIM, don't be smug, dear.  You work for us.  We wear your scorn as a badge of honor.