Outpost item removed from county meeting agenda. (SAR)

Why is tonight not like all other nights? We just learned that the secretive oligarchs' (GATE PETROLEUM's \Ponte Vedra CORPORATION) application to rezone The Outpost from conservation land to residential has been withdrawn from the Tuesday, September 17, 2019 St. Johns County Board of County Commissioners meeting.

We were all looking forward to the St. Johns County Commission's quasi-judicial hearing on billionaire ex-Mayor JOHN PEYTON's request to rezone 99 acres of conservation land to allow construction of 66 fancy-bears $750,000 homes adjoining Guana.

Oligarchical oligopolistic greedy billionaires and their stable of whores know how to count votes. So do we.

County Commission needs to vote down this project at their Monday, September 17, 2019 meeting. Enough flummery very, dupery and nincompoopery from corporate oligarchs. What do you reckon?

Congratulations, everyone, including Save Guana Now's incomparable leaders, including Ms. Nicole Crosby and Mr. Gary Roulette, their lawyer, Ralf Brookes, their experts, donors and the 400 people who showed up in white shirts at PZA on August 15, 2019, a date that will forever live in St. Johns County history.

It takes a village to save our village here in God's country.

The insipid, incompetent St. Augustine Record reporter wrote a story about the withdrawal, unadorned by any quote from the victors.

STUART KORFHAGE, developer fanboy, is up to his usual tricks.  Stewie reminds me of the Chain Gang Journalism reporter-distorters at the Knoxville News-Sentinel and Knoxville Journal who wrote pro-TVA stories, then got hired by TVA, part of a 40-person PR operation justifying strip-mining and nuclear power.  Prediction: GATE or some other oleaginous oligopolist will hire STUART KORFHAGE.  It's time for him to either go back to sports reporting or be taken off the "Development" beat at a putative newspaper that bas no environmental reporter. No adult supervision, either, inasmuch as GateHouse has 200 newspapers with one copy desk, located in Austin, Texas.

Here's a statement from Save Guana Now's website:

Greetings! It's been a roller coaster week....We just received word at end of the day today that the Sept. 17th hearing on the Outpost is absolutely, definitely cancelled. We won the battle, thanks to the pressure exerted by YOU with your thousands of emails, your incredible attendance at the PZA hearing and Gate's Open House, your public comments, Save Guana Now stickers on your cars, yard signs in your yards, letters to the editors, community organization endorsements, and many, many donations that brought us six experts, a great attorney, 7 full page ads in the St. Augustine Record, a 9-foot banner and thousands of mailers.  But the fight to conserve the Outpost is not nearly over. Above is the statement we posted on Facebook. The letter from Gate to the county that describes their next steps can be read here. Evidently, Gate was not interested in an encore of the PZA hearing with our record-setting attendance and our experts whose arguments were so strong, Gate's attorney's best strategy was to campaign to slash their time. Gate's latest strategy is not a viable one; they can't rezone the Outpost without a comp plan change. As we learn more, we'll keep you informed.  We received SO MANY EMAILS from our supporters planning to attend on Tuesday, there's no doubt the turnout would have been huge. We thank you for setting aside the afternoon (and the white shirt) to attend. Please help us spread the word that the hearing is cancelled. Have a wonderful weekend. Savor a hard-won semi-victory!

Nicole Crosby and Gary Roulette Co-founders, Save Guana Now

As I urged in my September 8, 2019 St. Augustine Record column, local officials must adopt the 7-generation test:

County, city should pass the seven-generation test


By Ed Slavin / St. Augustine
Posted Sep 7, 2019 at 9:42 PM
St. Augustine Record

On our City’s 454th anniversary, Sept. 8, let’s take stock of our past and future. There is much to be thankful for here:

• We saved 32 Grenada Street, 1880 Victorian by City Hall — preserved and protected as a local landmark.

• We saved 7 Bridge Street. There’s a conservation easement indoors/outdoors, and HP-1 zoning survives as a bulwark.

• We saved Fish Island. Vice-Mayor Leanna Freeman called it a “miracle.” The burial place of orange plantation and real estate buccaneer Jesse Fish and his slaves will now be a park, preserved forever. As playwright Tony Kushner wrote in “Angels in America,” miracles occur through politics.

What’s next?

Let’s preserve our 1955 Florida East Coast Railway station. Let’s save our 3,000- to 4,000-year-old Native American site north of SAHS.

Hurricanes are bigger. The ocean level is rising. Flooding of our neighborhoods and streets is becoming the “new normal.” We will survive, but we must act.

There are 31-plus St. Johns County neighborhoods with bad drainage due to poor planning — officials granting approval to destroy wetlands and clear-cut trees.

Before World War II, Sir Winston Churchill spoke against “appeasement,” stating that “The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences.”


St. Augustine just survived another hurricane, our third since 2016.

Optimists founded our town Sept. 8, 1565 — 454 years ago. Some 22 generations of St. Augustine residents survived hurricanes, European religious wars fought on our shores, pirates, wars against Native Americans — having our town repeatedly burned to the ground, more hurricanes, the Civil War, tourists, scammers, monopolists, Henry Flagler, slavery, exploitation, racism, segregation, lynchings, corruption, and organized “crimes against nature” by developers (which former St. Johns County Commission Chair Ben Rich Sr. once called “worse than any carpetbagger”).


Minorcans and Africans in generations before us endured oppression and bondage, surviving slavery and indentured slavery-by-contract, mosquito-borne diseases and starvation.

Our Nation’s Oldest City has the Nation’s oldest town plan (1573). It was drawn for the generations, and still guides us today.

Let’s apply the “seven-generation test” to all who would modify this magical place. How would each proposal affect our quality of life, our precious historic, cultural and environmental heritage in seven generations?

Let’s finally enact the St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore, first proposed 80 years ago by Mayor Walter Fraser, Sens. Charles Andrews and Claude Pepper and Rep. Joseph Hendricks. Let’s protect 130,000 acres of land our governments already own, in two counties, preventing it from being bulldozed, polluted or hornswoggled away from us.

Let’s enact stronger state and local laws protecting the environment. Let’s plant trees, including mangroves as part of natural shorelines. Let’s restore wetlands and oyster beds to protect us from hurricanes.


Let’s enact a legal moratorium on big developments and comprehensive plan changes.

Let’s stop secretive developers’ devastating destruction of forests and wetlands, flora and fauna. As John Muir wrote, “These temple destroyers, devotees of ravaging commercialism, seem to have a perfect contempt for Nature, and, instead of lifting their eyes to the God of the mountains, lift them to the Almighty Dollar.”

Let’s adopt countywide lobbying registration and ethics ordinances.

Mayor Nancy Shaver refused to meet with zoning applicants, except on one occasion. Too many officials meet secretly “ex parte” with developers. Enough. Let’s require officials to videotape their conversations with developers. If they don’t, who can ever trust them?

Let’s eject money-changers from the temple of our democracy. Let’s show “temple destroyers” the door — they won’t destroy our town and God’s country.



Here's the news story from the St. Augustine Record:







Outpost item removed from county meeting agenda


A sign opposing the proposed development of 99 acres at the end of Neck Road in Ponte Vedra Beach is posted in front of the gates of the property on Thursday, June 27, 2019. [PETER WILLOTT/THE RECORD]

By Stuart Korfhage
Posted at 6:26 PM
St. Augustine Record

In a situation that has seen a couple of major turns in recent days, the proposed Outpost development will not go before the St. Johns County Commission Tuesday as previously scheduled.

Ponte Vedra Corporation, a subsidiary of GATE Petroleum Company, is the owner of about 100 acres of land surrounded by the Guana River Wildlife Management Area in northeast St. Johns County. It has been listed as Conservation on the county’s Comprehensive Plan, the owner argues incorrectly, and PVC is trying to change that to Residential in order to build a maximum of 66 homes on the upland portion of the property.

The development would be called Vista Tranquilla.

Last month, the Planning and Zoning Agency voted 3-2 to recommend transmittal of the PVC request for a comp plan amendment, and Tuesday’s County Commission would have been the next step in the approval process.

However, the PZA meeting was a contentious one as every seat in the county auditorium was filled due to the hundreds of residents opposed to the Vista Tranquilla project. The opponents claim the development is incompatible with the area and that it will harm wildlife and other natural resources.

Despite the affirmative vote by the PZA, there was no guarantee the Commission was going to vote in favor of transmittal to the state for its review.

Unlike PZA members, who are volunteers appointed by the Commission, commissioners have to face the voters, and there doesn’t appear to be much support among residents.

It’s likely GATE came to the same conclusion and pulled the agenda item in its current form.

However, a letter to the Commission from GATE Lands president Drew Frick on Friday made it clear that the company has not given up on the development despite the removal of the agenda item. GATE reserves the right to ask for a hearing before the Commission as a later date.

The letter states, in part: ”... recent discussions have implied that PVC is requesting to remove conservation protections from the property. PVC absolutely rejects this notion, as the company maintains that the proposed low-density residential use is consistent with the Comprehensive Plan and that an amendment to the Comprehensive Plan is not required for the proposed development on its private property.”

If given approval for the development, GATE has proposed that it will agree on a three-year stay on work in order to allow conservation groups to come up with funds to purchase the property. The company made that offer public on Sept. 6.

The North Florida Land Trust has expressed interest in purchasing the land, possibly with the assistance of some funds from the Florida Forever program. However, the land would certainly be worth more as a parcel that could contain 66 homes expected to sell for at least $500,000 than it would as it currently is.