In secret, behind locked gates, our Nation's Oldest City dumped a landfill in a lake (Old City Reservoir), while emitting sewage in our rivers and salt marsh. Organized citizens exposed and defeated pollution, racism and cronyism. We elected a new Mayor. We're transforming our City -- advanced citizenship. Ask questions. Make disclosures. Demand answers. Be involved. Expect democracy. Report and expose corruption. Smile! Help enact a St. Augustine National Park and Seashore. We shall overcome!
Resignation in protest. Three cheers for Commissioner Martha Gleason, Anastasia Mosquito Control District of St. Johns County Commissioner elected in 2022. Wonderful woman. One of my heroes. Her business expertise and willingness to ask questions, demand answers and expect democracy made her own of the finest elected officials in St. Johns County. (Fun fact: she defeated me in the nonpartisan race. I called her immediately and congratulated her on her election. Defeating corruption in St. Johns County is not about elephants or donkeys. It is about right and wrong, true and false and about saving taxpayer money. We're all in this together, folks. It's our County, our Nation and our duty to speak out against wrongdoing. Enough waste, fraud, abuse, misfeasance, malfeasance, nonfeasance, flummery, dupery and nincompoopery. I visited our Supervisor of Elections office yesterday (March 12, 2025). I my March 4, 2025 paperwork filed to run for the job in 2026, the first candidate to file paperwork to run for local office in 2026.
The Anastasia Mosquito Control Board in St. Johns County is down one member as Martha Gleason tendered her resignation in a letter to Gov. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday.
Gleason, who was elected in 2022, says she is stepping away from the board because she believes the district is not being run well, nor is it transparent about how it spends money. She cites personal reasons for leaving, too.
“I really do want this thing fixed, but it has left a really bad taste in my mouth in terms of the lack of care,” Gleason told Jacksonville Today in an interview Thursday.
Specifically, Gleason says she wishes every member of the board would thoroughly research all of the issues the board votes on and ensure all of the district’s policies are followed to the letter.
She believes that isn’t happening now, and she says she would rather not be around when a future audit turns up potential wrongdoing.
“I really do want this thing fixed, but it has left a really bad taste in my mouth in terms of the lack of care,” Gleason told Jacksonville Today in an interview Thursday.
Specifically, Gleason says she wishes every member of the board would thoroughly research all of the issues the board votes on and ensure all of the district’s policies are followed to the letter.
She believes that isn’t happening now, and she says she would rather not be around when a future audit turns up potential wrongdoing.
“I’ve dug, and I’ve dug, and I’ve dug, and the more I dig, the more uncertain I get that we’re doing everything by the books,” Gleason says. “I have fiduciary responsibilities, and I’m not going to be sitting on a ticking bomb.”
She also questions St. Johns County’s model of using an elected, independent taxing authority to fund mosquito control and prevention at all. Only a handful of counties in Florida operate that way.
Last year, the district collected around $8 million in property taxes and spent $9 million, on everything from insecticide spraying to public education, including operating the disease vector museum. The elected board members receive $4,800 in base pay annually.
Ultimately, Gleason hopes her resignation will put a spotlight on small boards like the Mosquito Control District’s.
“Sometimes you need to start with a clean, fresh set of eyes, and open a white piece of paper and say, ‘Are we at a point where we need to look at this?’” Gleason says.
Still, Gleason says, she was proud of what she accomplished during her tenure on the board. Since 2022, the board has pursued transparency efforts like recording meetings and keeping videos archived online.
Gleason’s resignation is effective immediately, and her replacement will be selected by Florida Commissioner of Agriculture Wilton Simpson.
Below is the letter Gleason submitted to DeSantis and Simpson’s offices:
Gleason’s resignation comes after board members came under scrutiny last year for issuing themselves annual Christmas bonuses — a move that the district’s attorney said was likely in violation of the state law. Last year’s $1,000 bonuses were then canceled.
Noah HertzReporteremailNoah Hertz is a Jacksonville Today reporter focusing on St. Johns County.
The new Black History Museum should be run by a non-profit, and not by the St. Johns County Board of County Commissioners. Form the St. Augustine Record:
Bill supporting Black History Museum in St. Augustine passes unanimously in Senate committee
Senate Bill 466, which would establish a governing framework for the state's first Black History Museum in West Augustine, passed unanimously in a Florida Senate committee.
The bill would create a board of directors to oversee the museum's commission, construction, operation, and administration.
The bill will now move to the Senate Appropriations Committee on Agriculture, Environment, and General Government.
Senate Bill 466, which supports the efforts of St. Johns County to secure the state’s first Black History Museum in West Augustine has passed unanimously in a Florida Senate committee.
State Sen. Tom Leek, R-Ormond Beach, recently filed Senate Bill 466 to establish a governing framework for the museum. The bill passed the Senate committee on Community Affairs 7-0 on Tuesday.
Effective July 1, the bill establishes a board of directors to oversee the commission, construction, operation and administration of the museum. The Florida Museum of Black History Task Force selected St. Johns County – West Augustine – as the preferred location for the museum in June, voting 6-1 to formally transmit the recommendation to the Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Legislature.
According to a news release from the St. Johns County Office of Public Affairs, the bill will establish a Florida Museum of Black History board of directors, with a selection process for appointing board members who will oversee the commission, construction, operation and administration of the Black History Museum. The Foundation for the Museum of Black History Inc. and the St. Johns County Board of County Commissioners will collaborate to provide the board with administrative and staffing support for preconstruction activities.
The Senate Appropriations Committee on Agriculture, Environment, and General Government is next on the list to hear the bill.
A companion bill in the Florida House, HB 659, sponsored by Rep. Kiyan Michael, R-Jacksonville, has been referred to the House Government Operations Subcommittee. A hearing date has not been announced.
Residents of St. Johns County traveled to Tallahassee on March 11 to attend the Florida Senate Community Affairs Committee meeting.Supporters included leaders from West Augustine, the City of St. Augustine, and County Commissioners Sarah Arnold and Christian Whitehurst.
I am beyond excited about the decision by the Community Affairs Committee,” Arnold said in the release. “It is another step forward on our journey to make the dream of the Florida Museum of Black History in St. Johns County a reality. I praise the community for traveling with us to Tallahassee to demonstrate their ongoing support for this project.”
Here is the full text of Anastasia Mosquito Control Commission of St. Johns County Commissioner Martha Gleason's letter to Governor DeSantis, Florida Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson, with copy to Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd:
March 12, 2025
The Honorable Governor Ron DeSantis
The Honorable Wilton Simpson, Florida Commissioner of Agriculture
420 The Capitol
402 South Monroe Street
Tallahassee, FL 32399-1300
Dear Governor DeSantis and Commissioner Simpson,
It is with a heavy heart that I submit my resignation from the Anastasia Mosquito Control District
(AMCD) Board, effective immediately. While my decision has been expedited by a family medical
situation, the larger driving force is my concerns over financial and operational matters at AMCD. When I
was elected in 2022, I made a promise to the citizens of St. Johns County to prioritize transparency, fiscal
responsibility, and accountability within AMCD. I am proud to say that during my time on the Board, I
have worked tirelessly to uphold these values and bring about positive change.
I have fought to ensure that the citizens of St. Johns County who are taxed by AMCD have access to
important information by reinstating all Board meeting videos on the AMCD website. This allows the
public to view meetings and understand how their hard-earned tax dollars are being spent. Additionally, I
pushed for and successfully passed an investment policy to protect taxpayer money, as well as a legally
required auditor selection committee to ensure accountability within AMCD. Finally, I was able to pass a
resolution that disclosed how much had been spent on the mosquito museum (recently renamed education
center) and imposed a cap on the spending. As of this resignation, the education center project is nearly
40% over budget and a project that was to be closed on September 30, 2024, is yet to be closed.
Despite these accomplishments, I have come to the realization that there are deeper issues within AMCD
that require more than just policy updates or changes. I have witnessed financial and operational
mismanagement issues and have become aware of serious HR issues, including a culture of intimidation
and retribution that prevent employees from speaking out. It is clear to me that significant changes need to
be made to ensure the well-being of both employees and taxpayers.
In stepping down from the Board, I hope to bring positive scrutiny from the State on how AMCD is
managed. I also hope that in appointing my successor you consider someone with a strong business
background that will continue to safeguard St. Johns County tax dollars while fostering a work
environment free from fear of retribution.
Page 1 of 2AMCD Commissioner Martha Gleason Resignation
I will continue to advocate for transparency, accountability, and fiscal responsibility in any way that I can,
and hope that the citizens of St. Johns County will continue to hold the Board accountable for the
decisions they make.
Finally, I want to thank the citizens of St. Johns County for the opportunity to serve them, and I hope that
my resignation will bring much-needed attention to AMCD that will result in positive changes.
"Joy cometh in the morning" the scripture says. This morning I noticed that my blog had its six millionth measured hit,
It all began in 2006, when one of our friends caught our Nation's Oldest City of St. Augustine dumped a landfill in a lake, the Old City Reservoir My friend Sherry Badger had video. So I wrote about it. People shared information with me. We, the People filed complaints. We spoke out at government meetings. We inspired people to seek environmental justice. We did not take "no" for an answer.The Old City Reservoir has been cleaned up. The City-owned site, in the county, ioff Holmes Blvd. Extended, is proposed for affordable housing now. At least six million hits on this blog. Ten years ago, a St. Augustine Record reporter covering a County Commission meeting told me that my blog had more readers than the St. Augustine Record. Thanks to all of the good people who believe in speaking truth to power. Yes we can! Yes we will!
This morning, I visited our St. Johns County Supervisor of Elections office. I signed up to run for the Anastasia Mosquito Control District of St. Johns County.
The evisceration of Florida's bear population under color of law and pretext is "a disgrace to the human race," using Jimmy Carter's phrase about the Internal Revenue Code. Fun fact: during the 1970s, one of our Georgetown University School of Foreign Service professors had a bumper stick on his office door: "I support the right to arm bears." Craig Pittman column from Florida Phoenix:
Push for new Florida bear hunt ignores real source of problems: Humans
The bear population hasn’t grown in the past decade, but the human population sure has.
The population of the Florida black bear is about what it was a decade ago, yet there are calls for hunting them again. (Photo via FWC)
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is once again considering holding a bear hunt. To me, this is like saying, “The captain of the Titanic in interested in sailing straight toward the nearest iceberg, because it went SO well last time.”
The last bear hunt was a decade ago. I was there, so trust me when I tell you it was a disaster for both the bears and the FWC. James Cameron didn’t direct a movie about it, the way he did for the Titanic, but he could have.
The hunt was supposed to last a whole week. Instead, after hunters killed 304 bears in just two days, the wildlife commission’s executive director shut it down early. Of that number, 36 lactating mama bears were slain, meaning there were probably some cubs left orphaned.
Chuck O’Neal via Speak Up Wekiva
One critic of the hunt, Chuck O’Neal of Speak Up Wekiva, said it was as challenging as hunting dairy cows. The bears were that laid back and easy to target.
I am hopeful that this latest attempt to let people shoot at Florida’s fairly rare bears can be blocked before a single gun is cocked. The wildlife commission is soliciting public opinion by holding an online hearing on the issue tonight (Thursday). The agency is also collecting feedback via email through BearComments@MyFWC.com.
A good question to ask them might be: “Commissioners, how can you hold a hunt to kill bears when you can’t even say for sure how many bears there are?”
That question is one that even bothers the pro-hunting folks.
‘Warranted but precluded’
Every day, about 900 new people move to Florida. Most of them have no idea we have bears here — or that the new home they just bought was built in what probably used to be bear habitat.
Florida’s bears are smaller than grizzlies, reaching a maximum of only 750 pounds (compared to more than 1,000 for their Western relatives). Their diet mostly consists of berries, acorns, and insects. That means they usually have no interest in gobbling up you or your little dog too.
They once roamed all over the state, but between hunting and rampant development of their habitat, their population dwindled to just a few hundred by the 1970s. That’s when the state listed them as threatened.
There was talk of putting them on the federal endangered list too. But in 1992, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said listing the Florida black bear was “warranted but precluded” under the Endangered Species Act.
What that meant was that other species needed protection more urgently and the government simply didn’t have enough dough to cover the bears too.
Six years later, though, the federal agency decided the bears did not need protecting after all. Agency officials said they were confident Florida’s bears had a “stable” future, thanks to the state’s strict land management rules created by the 1985 Growth Management Act.
Those are the rules that developers persuaded then-Gov. Rick Scott and the Legislature to ditch in 2011. They dumped them in favor of our current system, which is based on approving development wherever developers want to build it, no matter what problems may result.
Meanwhile, the FWC took bears off the state’s own imperiled wildlife list in 2012. The trouble started the following year.
Swiping berries from the bears
With so many people moving into the bears’ habitat, conflicts were bound to happen. Sure enough, bears made a series of violent attacks on humans between 2013 and 2015.
The bears were hungry and had wandered into areas where they found loose garbage can lids and the people who owned the cans. One Central Florida man, claiming he was “the Bear Whisperer,” had even been feeding them by hand. At least, he did so until one of his neighbors was attacked.
Why were the bears rooting in garbage cans? It was the state’s own fault.
In its infinite wisdom, the state Agriculture Department was letting people harvest unlimited amounts of saw palmetto berries from Florida’s 37 state forests. The berry-pickers paid $10 for the right to collect an unlimited amount of berries. Then they would sell them to companies marketing them as a questionable cure for men’s sexual problems.
No, I am not making that up. Erectile dysfunction led to ecosystem dysfunction.
Once the link between the berry collectors and the bear attacks became clear, the state halted the unlimited berry-picking in state forests. But by then, some members of the FWC had decided the best solution was to shoot a lot of bears for the first time in 21 years.
Tens of thousands of people wrote in to urge the commissioners not to do it. When I asked the commission’s pro-hunting chairman, Tampa mall developer Richard Corbett, why the board was ignoring the public’s wishes, he about chewed my head off.
“Those people don’t know what they’re talking about,” Corbett barked at me. “Most of those people have never been in the woods. They think we’re talking about teddy bears: ‘Oh Lord, don’t hurt my little teddy bear!’ Well, these bears are dangerous.” (Amid the subsequent uproar over Corbett’s rant, he resigned.)
Of course, the hunt showed which animal in Florida is the more dangerous one. Proposals for a follow-up hunt the next year were, pardon the pun, shot down.
Yet ever since then, we’ve continued killing the bears — sometimes via poaching but more commonly by hitting them with our cars. About 300 died on Florida’s roadways last year.
Then came the December wildlife commission meeting.
‘Very succinct’
The commissioners, meeting in Lakeland, had a lot to talk about — gopher tortoise management, manatee protection zones, stone crabs, and so forth. But before they got to that stuff, they had scheduled “a 5-year update on implementation of the 2019 Florida Black Bear Management Plan.”
Mike Orlando via screengrab
The update, delivered by a well-respected state bear expert named Mike Orlando, included, according to the agenda, “an overview of bear management efforts and current research activities.” The subject of hunting was not on the agenda, but it came up anyway.
First comes Orlando’s extensive and factual report on all that the scientists are doing, which includes his comment that they are not recommending any changes right now to what the commission is doing.
Katrina Shadix via screengrab
Then comes a long line of public commenters, some of whom say they believe it’s time for another hunt and some of whom say no new hunt is needed or wanted. One speaker, Katrina Shadix of Bear Warriors United, told the commissioners the state’s human population was the one that had exceeded its carrying capacity, not the bear population.
One thing both sides said, over and over, is that they’d like to see an updated, statewide population figure for the bears. Orlando said the scientists were working on it, but that such a number would not be ready until 2029.
“I’ll be very succinct,” he said. “I would like to see a proposal from staff for a bear hunt.”
That slippery sound you hear is the commission’s skids being greased.
“For the FWC to even consider a hunt before these [population] studies are complete is outrageously irresponsible, dangerous and just plain WRONG!” Shadix told me via email.
The alligator wrestler
One of the people I talked to about this was a former wildlife commissioner, Ronald “Alligator Ron” Bergeron.
Bergeron got his nickname because he once tried to wrestle an alligator. It nearly drowned him before he punched it in the snout and made it turn loose of his hand.
He counseled his colleagues to slow down their unseemly rush to approve a hunt for a creature he first saw from his grandfather’s airboat at age 5. Bears are an icon of the Florida wild and should be given respect, he contended.
“I believe that we need to evaluate, take our time a little bit here,” he told them. They ignored him.
A year later, his was the loudest voice calling for the commission not to repeat that debacle. That time, his colleagues listened to him.
Ron and Diamond Bergeron via subjects
When we talked this week, Bergeron introduced me to his daughter, Diamond, who is taking over his Bergeron Everglades Foundation. She was at the December wildlife commission meeting and noticed the same thing I did.
Before holding the hunt in 2015, the FWC’s scientists estimated there were about 4,300 bears, but they were still counting at that point. The commission pushed ahead with the hunt anyway.
The most recent numbers from FWC’s scientists are still an estimate, not a precise count. And the latest estimate, 10 years after that botched hunt, is that there are 4,050 bears. No gains, just a dip from a decade ago.
“I don’t think they know how many bears there are in the state,” Diamond Bergeron said. “I’m still trying to wrap my head around that.”
The key to allowing humans to hunt wild animals is sustainability, the former wildlife commissioner told me. If you don’t know how many bears there are, how can you be sure we won’t kill too many in a hunt? How can you guarantee this important species will remain a part of wild Florida?
Considering there have been no further incidents in which bears mauled people, as there were before the last hunt, what’s supposed to be the goal of holding a new hunt?
That’s why, Bergeron said, “I don’t think any different than I thought in 2015. I don’t believe [a hunt] is necessary.”
And his daughter pointed out another figure, one that I had missed. In 2024, Orlando and his staff fielded the fewest number of human complaints about bears in the past five years, she said.
So, if there are fewer conflicts between humans and bears, and no recent attacks by bears, and fewer bears than there were 10 years ago, then what’s the point of hunting them?
There are signs that this is part of a long game by a small group that’s been planning for a long time to push the state into another hunt. And they fooled the voters on this last fall.
Florida bears are attracted to unsecured garbage. (Photo via FWC)
Who’s inundating whom
Last year, some of the same people who want a bear hunt pushed through a vote on a strange state constitutional amendment that said hunting and fishing are recognized as rights under the law.
It seemed like a pointless exercise, because no one was calling for a ban on either hunting or fishing. But some people — I was one — opposed this amendment because it also said that hunting and fishing would become the “preferred method” of wildlife management in Florida.
Hunting and fishing did not save the manatee or any other creature, including the bear. To give those practices preference in wildlife management seemed like an effort to tie the hands of scientists.
The measure passed anyway. Several of the folks who spoke in December in favor of a new bear hunt cited that constitutional amendment as a reason to hold a new hunt, contending the voters wanted one.
These claims are about as valid as those of Rep. Jason Shoaf, R-Shoot-em-up, who apparently saw a movie called “Cocaine Bear” and believed it to be a documentary. He claimed last year that bears on drugs were wreaking havoc in Florida.
“We’re talking about the ones that are on crack, and they break your door down, and they’re standing in your living room growling and tearing your house apart,” Shoaf told a House committee considering an anti-bear bill he was pushing.
Florida’s bears are, unlike some Florida politicians, drug-free. Yet Shoaf’s dopey bill allowing poachers to claim they were standing their ground against drugged-up bears passed both houses and was signed into law.
Shoaf, by the way, has been calling for a new bear hunt since 2023.
“We really need a bear hunt,” he told the News Service of Florida two years ago. “It’s what we need here in North Florida. We’re inundated. We’ve got way too many.”
I think we need to send Rep. Shoaf, Commissioner Lester, and several other folks to some remedial math courses. That way maybe they can understand that what we’re “inundated” with is humans, not bears. Our growing population is crowding the bears, not the other way around.
I’d also like to require them all to watch something — no, not the movie “Titanic,” but another boating related entertainment. It’s one of the earliest TV shows about Florida, which starred Dennis Weaver as an airboat-piloting game warden whose son had a pet bear.
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Craig Pittman is a native Floridian. In 30 years at the Tampa Bay Times, he won numerous state and national awards for his environmental reporting. He is the author of six books. In 2020 the Florida Heritage Book Festival named him a Florida Literary Legend. Craig is co-host of the "Welcome to Florida" podcast. He lives in St. Petersburg with his wife and children.
Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
CRAIG PITTMAN