Former SABPD Garage Should Return to Police Use

The former St. Augustine Beach Police (SABPD) Garage should be returned to police use. The city has several four wheel drive vehicles for beach emergencies. They're parked a mile away, at SAABPD HQ at City Hall.

Allowing a putative 501c4 to take over a government building for $1/year was a blatant conflict of interest, effected when the City Manager and four out of five City Commissioners were members of the St. Augustine Beach Civic Association, which acted as a pro-developer political action committee during the time of tawdry Mayor ANDREA SAMUELS, et ux, ROBERT SAMUELS.

The St. Augustine Beach Civic Association (SABCA) euchred four misguided, conflicted compliant Commissioners into awarding a no-bid, $1/year sweetheart lease was procured on the basis of SABCA running the Wednesday Market at the St. Johns County Ocean and Fishing Pier Park (Pier Park). Now that there's a new vendor for the Farmer's Market, now that SABCA founder ANDREA SAMUELS is no longer Mayor (and Republican Lord of All She Surveys), now that SABCA's unapproved subleases have been admitted, it's time for SABCA to go.

Certainly, City Commission SABPD could allow bocce equipment and materials for the Wednesday Market to be stored in the building, without charge.  There's room for two police vehicles and other uses.  But City rules require that property must be leased at market rates.  That's not what happened when ANDREA SAMUELS et ux, ROBERT SAMUELS, and a gaggle of misguided SABCA hecklers pressured Commissioners into breaching. their fiduciary duty (no civility rules enforced).

SABCA repeatedly violated First Amendment rights, bragged of procuring the false arrest of former SAB Code Enforcement Chair William Rosenstock, euchred excess fees and came in dead last, fourth of four applicants, when St. Johns County, in its wisdom, required Requests for Proposal (RFPs).

SABCA satraps have an online petition, misleading people to support a lease renewal, when the purpose of the lease no longer exists -- SABCA no longer has the Wednesday market.

There is no principled reason why the City of St. Augustine Beach should continue contraction with SABCA, a 501c4 that has functioned as a Political Action Committee for Sheriff DAVID SHOAR and dodgy developers.  (SHOAR endorsed ANDREAS SAMUELS for re-election in 2016, on Sheriff's letterhead -- the last five candidates SHOAR supported were defeated, ignominiously),

It's time for SABCA to go. Now,