Another precedent: PZB requests Public Works examine Pelican Reef drainage system; What's next? PUD Evaluation & Oversight?

On Tuesday, September 5, 2017, St. Augustine's Planning and Zoning Board set a new precedent.  In response to concerns about a proposed tree-cutting permit in the Pelican Reef gated community, PZB requested that the City Public Works Department examine the gated Pelican Reef subdivision's drainage system.   The move came as Category 5 Hurricane Irma was bearing down on Florida.

PIERRE THOMPSON

Background: Developed with lots of fill on wetlands -- just like Davis Shores -- Pelican Reef was platted circa 1993 and developed with lots of pressure and influence by spiteful speculator PIERRE THOMPSON, the grandson of the founder of the St. Augustine Record.  Naturally, under MORRIS COMMUNICATIONS reign of error (1982-2017), no one was going to investigate or cover anything domineering landlord PIERRE THOMPSON did.  THOMPSON typifies the genre of arrogant "good-ole-boys" who threw their weight around the City of St. Augustine for too long.  At the very first meeting of the Pelican Reef Homeowners Association, chaired by J. Kenneth Bryan, later County Commissioner, THOMPSON's lawyer demanded that the Association waive any liability for anything that THOMPSON had ever done.  Mr. Bryan and the other initial HOA board members rejected this one-sided demand and told THOMPSON where to go and what to do when he got there.

PIERRE THOMPSON's longtime lawyers were GEOFFREY DOBSON and RONALD WAYNE BROWN.  DOBSON and BROWN served as City Attorney for the itty-bitty cities of St. Augustine and St. Augustine Beach and Town Attorney for the Town of Hastings, also representing several constitutional officers in St. Johns County -- they also represented not just THOMPSON, but other developers.

Not so-subtle corruption of our local governments by dual representation of such governments and developers by the same lawyers (the "Titanic Trio" of DOBSON, RONALD WAYNE BROWN and DOUGLAS NELSON BURNETT) is indefensible and must be ended at once.

St. Augustine City Attorney JAMES PATRICK WILSON quit in 2006 after fourteen years because "the City dumped a landfill in a lake and it didn't ask me and it didn't tell me, so I figured it was time to move on."  Before he winds up in the same filthy contaminated quagmire of ethical dilemmas as the "Titanic Trio" (Messrs. DOBSON, BROWN and BURNETT), St. Augustine Beach City Attorney JAMES PATRICK WILSON and his COQUINA LAW GROUP need to fire BRYAN GREINER and his Comares Avenue project, which is now literally under water after Hurricane Irma, after having been rejected September 5th by PZB for an incomplete application (erroneously reported by developer fanboy STUART KORFHAGE in the St. Augustine Record as "granting a continuance."  See story here)

Program evaluation and oversight are two essential functions of government, and sorely lacking in the City of St. Augustine.

What's next?  

We need a systematic evaluation of every single Planned Unit Development (PUD).  As PZB member Cathy Brown says, "PUDs are a sneaky way of getting around zoning."  Other than the PUD for the Council on Aging Building (Brown's former job was as CoA Director) and the PUD for the elevator at the Columbia Restaurant, please identify any PUD that has served the public interest?  Last year, I asked for a list of all PUDs, and louche lackey DAVID BIRCHIM lied and said there was NONE.  Whereupon, longtime local government watchdog Barbara Jean Kalaidi went to the elevator, punched 4, went to Planning and Building and got me the list.

There's still way too much lying going on in City Hall -- in many ways, it is as if controversial developer-driven City Manager WILLIAM BARRY HARRIS never left.

In fact, here's a text message he sent to Commissioner ROXANNE HORVATH demanding her support for KANTI PATEL's ill-starred, misbegotten SAN MARCO HOTEL project, which is as big a turkey as ever approved 4-1 by the Gang of Four (Mayor Nancy Shaver dissenting).