City of St. Augustine Establishment Hates Reform, Demands to Make Mayor a "Team Player," and No Longer Elected by People. This is Freighted With Anti-Reform Agenda, Animus.

1. It is equivalent to a confession when misguided people who would erase your rights to vote for Mayor of St. Augustine prattle on about the need to end "turbulence" and pick a "team player" for Mayor.
2. "Team player" is not a bona fide occupational qualification for elected officials.  The term "team player" is deeply offensive and wholly inappropriate, implying as it does keeping secrets.  When President RICHARD MILHOUS NIXON ordered the firing of Pentagon cost analyst A. Ernest Fitzgerald in retaliation for his truthful Congressional testimony and candid answers about C-5A cargo aircraft cost overruns, President NIXON gave tape-recorded orders to fire Mr. Fitzgerald because he was not a "team player."  Case law is replete with examples of "team players" participating in and covering up crimes.  We don't want any of our elected officials to be "team players."  We want honest representation, not an oath of omertà.

3. Corrupt officials have often stigmatized people disclosing wrongdoing as "not team players," or worse. 

4. On March 13, 2006, after I reported to EPA and DEP our City government for dumping a landfill in a lake, Vice Mayor SUSAN BURK, Commissioners DONALD CRICHLOW, JOSEPH BOLES and ERROL JONES publicly proclaimed their undying admiration of  HARRISS, with the four defending him against what they claimed were my unwarranted criticisms. (Our City eventually paid a fine of more than $31,000 for the illegal dumping of 40,000 cubic yards of contaminated solid waste in our Old City Reservoir, a coquina pit  lake that former EPA Region 4 Regional Administrator John Henry Hankinson told me was "an open sore going straight down to our aquifer and groundwater"). Then and there, on March 13, 2006, Commissioner BOLES (later that year elected to the first of four terms as our Mayor) said regarding my illegal dumping questions, without irony, that he was "tired" of me "trashing" City Manager WILLIAM BARRY HARRISS.  I was lambasted by BURK as a "disgruntled citizen," (e.g. for asking questions about pollution of the Old City Reservoir).  I wear their scorn as a badge of honor: the consent decree speaks for itself -- the City was wrong and never apologized for its chilling our free speech rights and winking at criminal wrongdoing.  (Does being the City of St. Augustine mean "never having to say you're sorry?"

5. History repeats itself, as Commissioner LEANNA FREEMAN (ex-partner of BURK's in a law firm that was known as "FREEMAN & BURK") moves to take away your right to vote for Mayor.  FREEMAN looks at the ceiling when I speak to Commissioners, yawns without covering her mouth when other Commissioners speak, showed her rudeness toward Mayor Nancy Shaver, and helped create a hostile working environment, ending in Mayor Shaver's stroke and resignation.
6. Of course, this country was founded by "disgruntled citizens."  Few of us are "full gruntled," in the words of the late Andy Rooney. BURK's abusive use of the adjective "disgruntled" is a common semantic tactic of people retaliating against protected activity.  

7. St. Augustine City Commissioners have in the past publicly used words like "team player" as a complement, while insisting that their City Managers are doing a perfect job. In Abrams v. Baylor College of Medicine, 581 F.Supp. 1570, 1574 (S.D. Texas 1984), affirmed in relevant part, 805 F.2d 528 (5th Cir. 1986), the Court rejected pretexts for discrimination in refusing to send Jewish physicians to a program in Saudi Arabia, including a "team player" requirement. A "team player" does not blow the whistle or criticize management. "Team player" is freighted with the speech-chilling implication that one is willing to "go along to get along," say what management wants to hear, and do what one is told by managers, no matter what the ethics or legality of the situation. In the political corruption case of United States v. Salvatti, 451 F.Supp. 195, 197-98 (E.D. Pa. 1978), one witness testified that "when she complained to the Mayor about Mr. Carroll's pressure, and advised him that the proposed payment to the Sylks would be totally improper and probably illegal, the Mayor chided her for not being a team player." See also Fitzgerald v. Seamans, 384 F.Supp. 688,697n7 (D.D.C. 1974), affirmed, 553 F.2d 220, 224 (D.C. Cir. 1977), reversed, Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800 (1982); Nixon v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 731 (1982) (remarks of President Nixon et al. on need to fire Department of Defense whistleblower A. Ernest Fitzgerald after he testified before Congress on C-5A transport cost overruns); Broderick v. Ruder, 685 F.Supp. 1269 (D.D.C. 1988)(sexual harassment at Securities and Exchange Commission); Tomsic v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co, 85 F.3d 1472, 1474 (10th Cir. 1996); Geddes v. Benefits Review Board, 735 F.2d 1412, 1416, 1420 (D.C. Cir. 1984) (Washington Metropolitan Transportation Authority considered workers' compensation claimant not a "team player"); Davis v. California, 1996 WL 271001 (E.D.Cal.1996); Schloesser v. Kansas Dept. of Health & Environment, 766 F.Supp. 984 (D. Kansas 1991); Stradford v. Rockwell International, 48 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. (BNA) 697, 49 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 38,828,1988 WL 159939 (S.D.Ohio); Seymour M. Hersh, "Annals of National Security: The Intelligence Gap -- How the digital age left our spies out in the cold," The New Yorker, December 6, 1999 at 58, 62.

8.  Thus, in 2015, I objected to $1950 spent on "training" of Commissioners in how to be "team players" to be insulting, unnecessary, contrary to the genius of a free people and yet another example of waste, fraud and abuse in City Hall.  

9. Thus, in 2019, I oppose demands to erase your right to vote for Mayor. 
10. Tell City Hall to increase accountability, not eliminate it.  Come speak on November 12, 2019. City Commission meets at 5 PM at City Hall, 75 King Street, Commission meeting room, 1st Floor.  Decisions are made by people who show up. Show up in favor of your voting rights.