Letter: City leaders set the tone
F.R. "Pete" Grant, president, Save the Ponce
St. Augustine
January 30, 2004
Editor: Dear Mayor and Commissioners: Eleven months ago over 3,000 citizens of St. Augustine, and almost 1,000 more visitors to the city, signed a petition asking you to not approve the current development plans for the Ponce de Leon property. Most of these signers do not play golf, but they saw the reasons not to allow 749 houses on 419 acres of pristine woodland and prime marshfront property. These signatures were collected in just two weeks. At the time we felt this was a sufficient number to show the will of the people of St. Augustine and discontinued efforts to collect signatures as a show of good faith toward the developer, whom we thought was negotiating in good faith with the city to find an equitable solution.
I can understand why Ponce Associates wants to place 89 lots along the sensitive marshfront. The golf course was profitable, but not as lucrative as selling 89 marshfront lots and leaving town with money. Eliminating the open space and putting in additional 200 houses is not the development plan that you approved for this property in 2001. Just because the developer wants to improve his profit margin, you are not required to allow such a drastic deviation from the PUD.
You are being called on to make a decision that will set the tone for what type of St. Augustine you want. Even though we only have a population of 12,000, millions of tourists visit yearly. You can only maintain this level of interest by carefully continuing to guard the scenic environment and the history that these visitors are searching for. They don't come to visit subdivisions! I am certain that those who crafted the tree ordinance never envisioned it being used to justify the stripping of the majority of all natural habitat and destruction of 4,000 mature trees.
From watching the news recently, it is apparent that the county is struggling with growth and the impact on taxes even as I write this. For example, Commissioner Marc Jacalone recently said he would never have approved a certain development if he had known all the details of what was required to make the land suitable for the approved development. It is not wise to approve development on land that is known to be arsenic contaminated when no one has seen the remediation plan. Next, there is the impact of the airport on local residents, and facing increased costs and ill-will from the public as the airport expands. Yet the city is contemplating adding residential units in the northern portion of the Ponce property which abuts Araquay Park -- in the same area where Director Ed Wuellner states that the airport will expand further in the future. This does not mention that actions which impact the airport may have significant negative impact on Northrop-Grumman. And, of course there is all the discussion of impact fees and how to make residential development pay its fair share. These same issues the county is attempting to address are the one imbedded in the Ponce development.
This piece of property represents a significant addition, greater than 10 percent, to the city, both in terms of land base and potential population increase. Thus, it also represents a significant addition to the infrastructure and service cost born by city and county taxpayers.
Making appropriate decisions on the proper use of this land should be the outcome of proper planning. This includes the Comprehensive Plan and the Planned Unit Development. Both of which are being violated by the current development plan. While the commission has made many important decisions, it is possible that the city may never again have to make a decision of this nature and magnitude. Don't shortcut the planning process, even under threat from a developer. While some would say that the city does not have the right to decide how property is utilized, on the contrary, it is clear from state and federal court decisions, as well as city ordinance and PUD guidelines, that the city is charged with protecting the rights of the property owner but also protecting the interest of all citizens of the city, and guiding land development to its best usage.
Residential development is, at best, a break-even proposition for the tax base and therefore, revenue increase is not a reason to approve this development, yet it is the only one I have heard from the city staff. The proposed residential development will only drain the city's coffers. Whereas historic and eco-tourism brings revenue (and jobs) to the city, with little cost of providing public services. Please carefully consider your decision
Friday, October 13, 2006
Nation's Oldest City: President Warren Harding enjoyed historic golf course
May 26, 2003
By SUSAN PARKER
Historian
When President Warren G. Harding vacationed in St. Augustine, the chief executive spent much of his time golfing at the St. Augustine Links (now Ponce de Leon Golf course). Harding spent 19 winter seasons in St. Augustine, first coming to our town before he was well known or held elective office.
With his election to the Presidency in 1920, Harding's presence here brought national news reporters and high government officials to our town for weeks at a time. In 1921 Harding stayed several weeks at the Hotel Ponce de Leon (now Flagler College). He formed his Cabinet at discussions both in the hotel and on the golf course. President-elect Harding left St. Augustine only a few days before his 1921 inauguration. In those days the ceremony was held in early March.
Wilfred Reid, pro at the course, hoped that Harding's enthusiasm would result in more attention for the sport of golf and perhaps a competition among national-level officials like the British Parliament had. Reid and his crew worked hard to make sure that Harding and his fellow golfers found "6,288 yards of green velvet carpet" when they arrived.
Harding golfed as much as possible, some days playing 36 holes. During one of those games, Lloyd Crichlow, father of City Commissioner Donald Crichlow, caddied for Harding. In 1923, when the yacht bringing Harding to St. Augustine arrived here about 6 p.m., Harding made sure that his golf clubs were the first thing taken off the boat. He went directly to the golf course and finished 10 holes before dark.
While Harding was playing his last games of golf in St. Augustine in March 1923, Donald Ross was completing plans for the expansion of the course to 36 holes. But Harding would not get to enjoy golf in St. Augustine again. He died in office four months later in August 1923.
By SUSAN PARKER
Historian
When President Warren G. Harding vacationed in St. Augustine, the chief executive spent much of his time golfing at the St. Augustine Links (now Ponce de Leon Golf course). Harding spent 19 winter seasons in St. Augustine, first coming to our town before he was well known or held elective office.
With his election to the Presidency in 1920, Harding's presence here brought national news reporters and high government officials to our town for weeks at a time. In 1921 Harding stayed several weeks at the Hotel Ponce de Leon (now Flagler College). He formed his Cabinet at discussions both in the hotel and on the golf course. President-elect Harding left St. Augustine only a few days before his 1921 inauguration. In those days the ceremony was held in early March.
Wilfred Reid, pro at the course, hoped that Harding's enthusiasm would result in more attention for the sport of golf and perhaps a competition among national-level officials like the British Parliament had. Reid and his crew worked hard to make sure that Harding and his fellow golfers found "6,288 yards of green velvet carpet" when they arrived.
Harding golfed as much as possible, some days playing 36 holes. During one of those games, Lloyd Crichlow, father of City Commissioner Donald Crichlow, caddied for Harding. In 1923, when the yacht bringing Harding to St. Augustine arrived here about 6 p.m., Harding made sure that his golf clubs were the first thing taken off the boat. He went directly to the golf course and finished 10 holes before dark.
While Harding was playing his last games of golf in St. Augustine in March 1923, Donald Ross was completing plans for the expansion of the course to 36 holes. But Harding would not get to enjoy golf in St. Augustine again. He died in office four months later in August 1923.
Letter: Golfing with nature
Letter: Golfing with nature
Gail H. Compton, Wildlife Discoveries
St. Augustine
Editor: More words on the Ponce de Leon Golf Course. I agree with George Jacunski's statement (March 3) that the Ponce Golf Course has never been marketed properly. Not only is this golf course rich in history, it's rich in natural beauty and wildlife.
In the past, I led nature walks for Elderhostel programs held at the Ponce Resort and we sighted wood storks, hawks, bald eagles, loggerhead shrike, rosette spoonbills, snowy egrets, great egrets, great blue heron, little green heron, quail, osprey, kestrels, great horned owls, ibis, fox, river otter and wildflowers. Space is too short here to name all the plants and animals seen on and around the Ponce golf course.
"Nature" golf courses are quite the rage around the country. Not only are they designed to be environmentally friendly, but golfers come from around the country to enjoy the side benefits of playing golf in beautiful natural settings. Several such golf courses close one day a week for maintenance and while the golfers are off for a day bring local naturalists in to conduct nature walks, encouraging programs for the public in nature observation. The resort itself would be ideal for state, regional and national conventions and symposiums for nature and environmental organizations. In fact, the resort is losing a bet if it is not already participating in the Nature Festival May 4-6.
It's about time the St. Augustine area recognizes that nature lovers also spend money on lodgings, meals, gifts, transportation, historic attractions. One of the new places to recognize nature's drawing power is the Alligator Farm which now boasts of "A native bird rookery" on its billboards, as many people visit the Alligator Farm to see birds as to see alligators.
I hate to see us lose an historic and nature-rich golf course just when St. Augustine is waking up to nature tourism. The Ponce Resort and Golf Course has many friends -- golfers and nature lovers.
Gail H. Compton, Wildlife Discoveries
St. Augustine
Editor: More words on the Ponce de Leon Golf Course. I agree with George Jacunski's statement (March 3) that the Ponce Golf Course has never been marketed properly. Not only is this golf course rich in history, it's rich in natural beauty and wildlife.
In the past, I led nature walks for Elderhostel programs held at the Ponce Resort and we sighted wood storks, hawks, bald eagles, loggerhead shrike, rosette spoonbills, snowy egrets, great egrets, great blue heron, little green heron, quail, osprey, kestrels, great horned owls, ibis, fox, river otter and wildflowers. Space is too short here to name all the plants and animals seen on and around the Ponce golf course.
"Nature" golf courses are quite the rage around the country. Not only are they designed to be environmentally friendly, but golfers come from around the country to enjoy the side benefits of playing golf in beautiful natural settings. Several such golf courses close one day a week for maintenance and while the golfers are off for a day bring local naturalists in to conduct nature walks, encouraging programs for the public in nature observation. The resort itself would be ideal for state, regional and national conventions and symposiums for nature and environmental organizations. In fact, the resort is losing a bet if it is not already participating in the Nature Festival May 4-6.
It's about time the St. Augustine area recognizes that nature lovers also spend money on lodgings, meals, gifts, transportation, historic attractions. One of the new places to recognize nature's drawing power is the Alligator Farm which now boasts of "A native bird rookery" on its billboards, as many people visit the Alligator Farm to see birds as to see alligators.
I hate to see us lose an historic and nature-rich golf course just when St. Augustine is waking up to nature tourism. The Ponce Resort and Golf Course has many friends -- golfers and nature lovers.
Sunday, September 24, 2006
"Arsenic and Old Lace," Developers and Desuetude
Why Did City of St. Augustine Rush to Annex Arsenic-Contaminated Land and Why Should We Designate It a "Brownfield" Now?
This is another beautiful day in a beautiful place, a small seaside city in Northeast Florida, one which we all love and seek to preserve, protect and defend against rapacious developers.
It now appears that our City government hastily annexed an arsenic-contaminated site for residential housing -- hundreds of acres -- ignoring citizen concerns and expert testimony by Dr. Alfred Hirsch, a geologist and expert on arsenic and pollution.
The contaminated site is the Old Ponce de Leon Golf Course, operated from 1916-2003. The major contaminant is arsenic, but other contaminants have not been adequately documented by the developer, CHESTER STOKES.
Where else in the world does a City annex a contaminated site, knowing it to be contaminated, planning to put housing on it (increasing the City population by 10%), without proper environmental studies?
You tell me.
Current City of St. Augustine City Commissioners ERROL JONES and DONALD CRICHLOW (and then-Commissioner WILLIAM LENNON), voted for the annexation and development of a contaminated site, knowing it was contaminated. Commissioners said they trusted federal and state regulators to do the right thing.
The contamination issue has been only partially addressed (due to lack of complete data from the developer). Read for yourself the report of the Florida Department of Health (DOH), working with the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) of the Center for Disease Control (CDC). http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/HAC/pha/Ponce%20de%20Leon%20Golf%20Course/PonceDeLeonGolfCoursePHA012606.pdf
State and federal environmental regulators
have waited several years for the developer's studies.
Those regulators
have found that the site has not yet been completely or properly studied, including January 23, 2006 DOH/ATSDR findings that:
1. The annexed property is an "indeterminate public health hazard." (Page 17).
2. "For purposes of public health assessment, site owners have not adequately characterized surface water quality." (Page 10).
3. "Future residents could theoretically breathe contaminated soil and sediment, if these media are not adequately characterized and remediated." (Page 18).
4. "...site developers have not adequately characterized the extent of contamination of environmental media... (page 18)
5. "DEP will not be able to accept a remedial action plan until the information requested for the Contamination Assessment Report has been provided." (Page 50).
6. The developer did not provide information on sample locations for all of its tests. (Pages 12, 54).
7. "The quality of these reports is not what DEP and DOH are accustomed to receiving." (Page 50).
8. There may be more contamination, including "forgotten or buried dumps." (Page 12).
9. There may be a need for deed restrictive covenants against digging, shallow groundwater use and other actions that may expose people to arsenic. (Pages 5,
10. 800 tons of contaminated soil has already been removed, with more removal (and capping with dirt) likely to be required.
http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/HAC/pha/Ponce%20de%20Leon%20Golf%20Course/PonceDeLeonGolfCoursePHA012606.pdf
Large contaminated site now in City limits: Some 71% -- 284 of 400 acres -- may now be designated as a "brownfield," the St. Augustine Record reports, see below.
The City and developer have not explained what advantage there is for our City to designate the golf course as a "brownfield."
"Brownfield" designation could confer financial benefits on the developer, but efforts to learn why the City would want to make the "brownfield" designation have thus far been unavailing. We will quote CHESTER STOKES' answer here.
See straw public opinion poll, collection of St. Augustine Record articles and letters at http://www.staugustine.com/pageone/poncegolf.shtml (and City Commission minute excerpts, below).
Residents, children and pets could be at risk from this "indeterminate public health hazard," the Florida Department of Health says, with the developer not having done all of the testing that should have been done to date.
Current Commissioners ERROLL JONES and DONALD CRICHLOW fell meekly in line behind controversial City MANAGER WILLIAM B. HARRISS in support of the developer, CHESTER STOKES.
HARRISS and Commissioners should apologize and hold their heads in shame at the environmental hazard (five feet above sea level) which they have exacerbated and created by proposing to build some 749 homes on top of arsenic-contaminated soil, without due diligence before their annexation.
Dr. Alfred Hirsch, a geologist and expert on arsenic and pollution, testified before City Commissioners on October 13, 2003 -- excerpts from the City minutes appear below.
The "brownfield" issue is expected to be addressed at the September 25, 2006 St. Augustine City Commission meeting and at a meeting the developer is holding at Casa Monica Hotel on September 26, 2006.
Citizens are expected to closely question officials what benefit there is to our City from the "brownfield" designation and whether the area should be de-annexed from our City.
You've really got to hand it to the lackluster leadership of the municipal government of the City of St. Augustine, Florida.
Not only has our City government, behind closed doors, taken the entire contents of the old illegal city landfill
(30 million pounds of contaminants) and dumped it into the Old City Reservoir (with Mayor George Gardner erroneously told by City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRIS that it was "clean fill." (Of course, as a retired EPA regulator told me, "there are no bedsprings in clean fill." See below).
Perhaps even worse is our City government's documented insouciance about arsenic-contaminated land being used for hundreds of homes -- a plan to add 10% to our City's population.
What's going on here?
Does our Nation's Oldest City have the government our people and history deserve?
Is it time for EPA to take the lead on this site, with sampling and investigation by the EPA's SESD laboratory in Athens, Georgia -- instead of fox-in-charge-of-the-henhouse self-monitoring by the developer's hired guns, whose inaccurate data was blasted by DOH/ATSDR/CDC.
What do you think?
This is another beautiful day in a beautiful place, a small seaside city in Northeast Florida, one which we all love and seek to preserve, protect and defend against rapacious developers.
It now appears that our City government hastily annexed an arsenic-contaminated site for residential housing -- hundreds of acres -- ignoring citizen concerns and expert testimony by Dr. Alfred Hirsch, a geologist and expert on arsenic and pollution.
The contaminated site is the Old Ponce de Leon Golf Course, operated from 1916-2003. The major contaminant is arsenic, but other contaminants have not been adequately documented by the developer, CHESTER STOKES.
Where else in the world does a City annex a contaminated site, knowing it to be contaminated, planning to put housing on it (increasing the City population by 10%), without proper environmental studies?
You tell me.
Current City of St. Augustine City Commissioners ERROL JONES and DONALD CRICHLOW (and then-Commissioner WILLIAM LENNON), voted for the annexation and development of a contaminated site, knowing it was contaminated. Commissioners said they trusted federal and state regulators to do the right thing.
The contamination issue has been only partially addressed (due to lack of complete data from the developer). Read for yourself the report of the Florida Department of Health (DOH), working with the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) of the Center for Disease Control (CDC). http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/HAC/pha/Ponce%20de%20Leon%20Golf%20Course/PonceDeLeonGolfCoursePHA012606.pdf
State and federal environmental regulators
have waited several years for the developer's studies.
Those regulators
have found that the site has not yet been completely or properly studied, including January 23, 2006 DOH/ATSDR findings that:
1. The annexed property is an "indeterminate public health hazard." (Page 17).
2. "For purposes of public health assessment, site owners have not adequately characterized surface water quality." (Page 10).
3. "Future residents could theoretically breathe contaminated soil and sediment, if these media are not adequately characterized and remediated." (Page 18).
4. "...site developers have not adequately characterized the extent of contamination of environmental media... (page 18)
5. "DEP will not be able to accept a remedial action plan until the information requested for the Contamination Assessment Report has been provided." (Page 50).
6. The developer did not provide information on sample locations for all of its tests. (Pages 12, 54).
7. "The quality of these reports is not what DEP and DOH are accustomed to receiving." (Page 50).
8. There may be more contamination, including "forgotten or buried dumps." (Page 12).
9. There may be a need for deed restrictive covenants against digging, shallow groundwater use and other actions that may expose people to arsenic. (Pages 5,
10. 800 tons of contaminated soil has already been removed, with more removal (and capping with dirt) likely to be required.
http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/HAC/pha/Ponce%20de%20Leon%20Golf%20Course/PonceDeLeonGolfCoursePHA012606.pdf
Large contaminated site now in City limits: Some 71% -- 284 of 400 acres -- may now be designated as a "brownfield," the St. Augustine Record reports, see below.
The City and developer have not explained what advantage there is for our City to designate the golf course as a "brownfield."
"Brownfield" designation could confer financial benefits on the developer, but efforts to learn why the City would want to make the "brownfield" designation have thus far been unavailing. We will quote CHESTER STOKES' answer here.
See straw public opinion poll, collection of St. Augustine Record articles and letters at http://www.staugustine.com/pageone/poncegolf.shtml (and City Commission minute excerpts, below).
Residents, children and pets could be at risk from this "indeterminate public health hazard," the Florida Department of Health says, with the developer not having done all of the testing that should have been done to date.
Current Commissioners ERROLL JONES and DONALD CRICHLOW fell meekly in line behind controversial City MANAGER WILLIAM B. HARRISS in support of the developer, CHESTER STOKES.
HARRISS and Commissioners should apologize and hold their heads in shame at the environmental hazard (five feet above sea level) which they have exacerbated and created by proposing to build some 749 homes on top of arsenic-contaminated soil, without due diligence before their annexation.
Dr. Alfred Hirsch, a geologist and expert on arsenic and pollution, testified before City Commissioners on October 13, 2003 -- excerpts from the City minutes appear below.
The "brownfield" issue is expected to be addressed at the September 25, 2006 St. Augustine City Commission meeting and at a meeting the developer is holding at Casa Monica Hotel on September 26, 2006.
Citizens are expected to closely question officials what benefit there is to our City from the "brownfield" designation and whether the area should be de-annexed from our City.
You've really got to hand it to the lackluster leadership of the municipal government of the City of St. Augustine, Florida.
Not only has our City government, behind closed doors, taken the entire contents of the old illegal city landfill
(30 million pounds of contaminants) and dumped it into the Old City Reservoir (with Mayor George Gardner erroneously told by City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRIS that it was "clean fill." (Of course, as a retired EPA regulator told me, "there are no bedsprings in clean fill." See below).
Perhaps even worse is our City government's documented insouciance about arsenic-contaminated land being used for hundreds of homes -- a plan to add 10% to our City's population.
What's going on here?
Does our Nation's Oldest City have the government our people and history deserve?
Is it time for EPA to take the lead on this site, with sampling and investigation by the EPA's SESD laboratory in Athens, Georgia -- instead of fox-in-charge-of-the-henhouse self-monitoring by the developer's hired guns, whose inaccurate data was blasted by DOH/ATSDR/CDC.
What do you think?
An Inconvenient Truth -- City Knew of Arsenic Contamination of Old Ponce De Leon Golf Links, Approved Annexation and Housing Anyway
Rushing to judgment, our St. Augustine City Commissioners voted to annex and place 789 homes on top of land they knew to be contaminated with arsenic and other chemicals -- is this misfeasance, malfeasance allowing them to be recalled by the electorate? What do you think?
What did our St. Augustine City Commissioners know and when did they know it.
Read all about it.
What did our St. Augustine City Commissioners know and when did they know it.
Read all about it.
Commissioner DONALD CRICHLOW Says He's "Unopposed," Now Claims to Care About Neighborhoods, Treees
Preserving neighborhoods important, vital
DON CRICHLOW
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 09/24/06
In the midst of the campaigning this election season, I am privileged to be unopposed for re-election to the City Commission and look forward to serving the citizens of St. Augustine for another four years.
I want to thank you for your support and invite you to a Town Hall meeting to discuss some of the issues we have before us as a community. While you will not see my name on the ballot in November, you will see an initiative that I sponsored.
These past four years have seen improvement in the quality of life for residents and enhancement of the experience of St. Augustine for our many visitors. Inevitably, there is still more to be done.
I want to hear from you, the citizens of St. Augustine, and listen to your ideas, concerns or initiatives you might suggest for the next four years. Toward this end, I am holding a Town Hall meeting, on Wednesday, Oct. 4, at the Council on Aging, 180 Marine St., at 7 p.m. Please plan to attend and share your thoughts.
Among the issues we need to discuss is a growing threat to neighborhoods. Just in the past year, more of our neighborhoods have experienced troubling change. More houses are being torn down and replaced with as many as three new houses crammed together on the same land. We are seeing more new houses towering over neighboring houses and changing the character of our neighborhoods. We are seeing more loss of our magnificent tree canopy. The integrity of our unique neighborhoods is under attack, threatening to alter forever what is special about St. Augustine.
While I support and acknowledge the need for change and new development, I believe that change should adapt to St. Augustine, not the other way around.
The initiative that will appear on the general election ballot in November asks whether you would support an ordinance that would prevent crowding and overdevelopment in residential neighborhoods by eliminating the trend of "tear downs" and building two or three homes in place of the one that was demolished. I hope that you will support this important initiative so that we can begin to craft an ordinance or other measure to reduce this threat to traditional neighborhoods.
Once the density issue is solved, together we may decide to develop architectural overlay districts, or conservation districts, that will influence the character of new construction in our traditional neighborhoods.
There are, of course, other issues to discuss. I believe in enhancing the experience of our historic downtown area for tourists, but I passionately believe that we should make it more accessible and attractive to the residents of our city as well. Residents who live nearby and their guests shouldn't have to compete with tourists to park in front of their homes. People who live here should be able to shop downtown.
The full implementation of our parking plan will greatly improve the ability of residents and visitors to enjoy St. Augustine. The garage and shuttle system should ease parking for tourists, freeing up spaces downtown for residents who have been frustrated in their attempts to visit downtown for years.
In addition to other changes to improve downtown, including re-bricking streets, we must better manage our harbor, so that those who live on boats or simply moor their boats here are held responsible for their crafts.
We must remain especially vigilant of development in entry corridors. I will continue to press to improve new development like the Sebastian Inland Harbor project near King Street to meet residents' needs. We must revitalize and restore historic areas and enhance state funding of state-owned properties.
We do not know all the issues that will confront us over the next four years. But we will need to make decisions about them based upon a guiding principle. My principle is that the city commissioners are guardians of our city, a national treasure. St. Augustine has been protected for over four centuries and we must not abdicate our generation's responsibility.
Thank you again for your continued support as we move forward together, and I hope to see you on Oct. 4.
Don Crichlow is the city commissioner, district 4, for the city of St. Augustine and is an architect. He is running unopposed for re-election.
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/092406/opinions_4082385.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
DON CRICHLOW
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 09/24/06
In the midst of the campaigning this election season, I am privileged to be unopposed for re-election to the City Commission and look forward to serving the citizens of St. Augustine for another four years.
I want to thank you for your support and invite you to a Town Hall meeting to discuss some of the issues we have before us as a community. While you will not see my name on the ballot in November, you will see an initiative that I sponsored.
These past four years have seen improvement in the quality of life for residents and enhancement of the experience of St. Augustine for our many visitors. Inevitably, there is still more to be done.
I want to hear from you, the citizens of St. Augustine, and listen to your ideas, concerns or initiatives you might suggest for the next four years. Toward this end, I am holding a Town Hall meeting, on Wednesday, Oct. 4, at the Council on Aging, 180 Marine St., at 7 p.m. Please plan to attend and share your thoughts.
Among the issues we need to discuss is a growing threat to neighborhoods. Just in the past year, more of our neighborhoods have experienced troubling change. More houses are being torn down and replaced with as many as three new houses crammed together on the same land. We are seeing more new houses towering over neighboring houses and changing the character of our neighborhoods. We are seeing more loss of our magnificent tree canopy. The integrity of our unique neighborhoods is under attack, threatening to alter forever what is special about St. Augustine.
While I support and acknowledge the need for change and new development, I believe that change should adapt to St. Augustine, not the other way around.
The initiative that will appear on the general election ballot in November asks whether you would support an ordinance that would prevent crowding and overdevelopment in residential neighborhoods by eliminating the trend of "tear downs" and building two or three homes in place of the one that was demolished. I hope that you will support this important initiative so that we can begin to craft an ordinance or other measure to reduce this threat to traditional neighborhoods.
Once the density issue is solved, together we may decide to develop architectural overlay districts, or conservation districts, that will influence the character of new construction in our traditional neighborhoods.
There are, of course, other issues to discuss. I believe in enhancing the experience of our historic downtown area for tourists, but I passionately believe that we should make it more accessible and attractive to the residents of our city as well. Residents who live nearby and their guests shouldn't have to compete with tourists to park in front of their homes. People who live here should be able to shop downtown.
The full implementation of our parking plan will greatly improve the ability of residents and visitors to enjoy St. Augustine. The garage and shuttle system should ease parking for tourists, freeing up spaces downtown for residents who have been frustrated in their attempts to visit downtown for years.
In addition to other changes to improve downtown, including re-bricking streets, we must better manage our harbor, so that those who live on boats or simply moor their boats here are held responsible for their crafts.
We must remain especially vigilant of development in entry corridors. I will continue to press to improve new development like the Sebastian Inland Harbor project near King Street to meet residents' needs. We must revitalize and restore historic areas and enhance state funding of state-owned properties.
We do not know all the issues that will confront us over the next four years. But we will need to make decisions about them based upon a guiding principle. My principle is that the city commissioners are guardians of our city, a national treasure. St. Augustine has been protected for over four centuries and we must not abdicate our generation's responsibility.
Thank you again for your continued support as we move forward together, and I hope to see you on Oct. 4.
Don Crichlow is the city commissioner, district 4, for the city of St. Augustine and is an architect. He is running unopposed for re-election.
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/092406/opinions_4082385.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
Thursday, September 21, 2006
A Million Dollars a Minute -- City Commission Rubberstamps New Budget
With a 21% increase in the general fund budget, St. Augustine City Commissioners approved a record $50 million budget in record time -- less than one minute per $1 million at the second public hearing, held on September 21. That's an astounding amount of money considering the kind of government the City of St. Augustine has -- polluting and undemocratic. Among the questions our City refused to answer were the following:
1. What funds and line items in this budget are dedicated to protecting our environment, safety and health and the ability of St. Augustinians to afford to live here?
2. When will we follow zero based budgeting?
3. What savings can be achieved?
4. What economies and efficiencies were considered?
5. What reductions in fuel and electricity use are planned?
6. Can we reduce the number of FTEs by attrition (not hiring new people as employees retire or quit)?
7. What measures of performance justify the large expenditures in the budget?
8. What metrics are used to determine if a program is succeeding or failing?
9. When does our City Commission ever get to do oversight or program evaluation?
10. What measures are considered to determine whether City funds are allocated fairly between neighborhoods and precincts and can we see them?
11. Can you please ask the City staff to present four alternative budgets -- one at the current amounts, one with five and ten percent cuts, and one with a five percent increase?
12. What limitations have been considered on spending -- why should one man be allowed to spend $500,000 on his own say-so?
13. How can you justify having some 400 blanket purchase orders?
14. How does our budget compare with those of similarly sized cities in Florida and the Southeast?
15. What internal controls have been added to prevent waste, fraud and abuse?
16. Why is there no Inspector General and no Ombuds?
17. What principled reason is there for denying some of our citizens storm sewers, sidewalks, street cleaning, while y'all gallivant to Europe annually, using public funds?
18. What limitation is being placed on travel to prevent future abuse and Sunshine violations?
19. When are we going to institute performance appraisals for the City Manager, City Attorney and other managers?
20. When will we have an annual budget with realistic numbers, pegged to achievement of measurable performance standards, and not relying on large annual interfund transfers, anticipated by Mr. Harriss but not discussed?
21. What if the parking garage is a financial failure -- what will you do? Is there an option to privatize it and put it on the property tax rolls?
22. What can we do to generate more revenue and more historic tourism from city-owned properties like Lighthouse Restaurant and St. George Street, whether through sale or better negotiation of lease terms?
23. What about our budget process would you like to see improved or modified?
24. When will all city vehicles be equipped with GPS devices?
25. When will you post all City contracts and purchase orders on the Internet, as Orlando already does?
26. Do you deny that the City budget is gold-plated in a city that describes itself as a poor community to get cheaper state permits?
To be continued.
When I went to work for then-freshman U.S. Senator Jim Sasser in 1977, at age 20, he called the Senate Budget Committee "like re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic," comparing its work to "oral group therapy." St. Augustine's City Commission is not even that good. The smallest number the Senate Budget Committee ever discusses is .1 -- which is to say, $100 million.
St. Augustine Commissioners will waste time with the smallest minutiae, but never discuss the future and hopes of our City's residents, preferring to make developers happy. Their insouciant attitude is why two incumbent County Commissioners were defeated in the September 5 Republican Primary, and why more incumbents are headed to defeat, it would appear.
St. Augustine deserves a government as decent and compassionate as its residents.
Enough of unaccountable officials who create toxic hazards and smirk about it.
1. What funds and line items in this budget are dedicated to protecting our environment, safety and health and the ability of St. Augustinians to afford to live here?
2. When will we follow zero based budgeting?
3. What savings can be achieved?
4. What economies and efficiencies were considered?
5. What reductions in fuel and electricity use are planned?
6. Can we reduce the number of FTEs by attrition (not hiring new people as employees retire or quit)?
7. What measures of performance justify the large expenditures in the budget?
8. What metrics are used to determine if a program is succeeding or failing?
9. When does our City Commission ever get to do oversight or program evaluation?
10. What measures are considered to determine whether City funds are allocated fairly between neighborhoods and precincts and can we see them?
11. Can you please ask the City staff to present four alternative budgets -- one at the current amounts, one with five and ten percent cuts, and one with a five percent increase?
12. What limitations have been considered on spending -- why should one man be allowed to spend $500,000 on his own say-so?
13. How can you justify having some 400 blanket purchase orders?
14. How does our budget compare with those of similarly sized cities in Florida and the Southeast?
15. What internal controls have been added to prevent waste, fraud and abuse?
16. Why is there no Inspector General and no Ombuds?
17. What principled reason is there for denying some of our citizens storm sewers, sidewalks, street cleaning, while y'all gallivant to Europe annually, using public funds?
18. What limitation is being placed on travel to prevent future abuse and Sunshine violations?
19. When are we going to institute performance appraisals for the City Manager, City Attorney and other managers?
20. When will we have an annual budget with realistic numbers, pegged to achievement of measurable performance standards, and not relying on large annual interfund transfers, anticipated by Mr. Harriss but not discussed?
21. What if the parking garage is a financial failure -- what will you do? Is there an option to privatize it and put it on the property tax rolls?
22. What can we do to generate more revenue and more historic tourism from city-owned properties like Lighthouse Restaurant and St. George Street, whether through sale or better negotiation of lease terms?
23. What about our budget process would you like to see improved or modified?
24. When will all city vehicles be equipped with GPS devices?
25. When will you post all City contracts and purchase orders on the Internet, as Orlando already does?
26. Do you deny that the City budget is gold-plated in a city that describes itself as a poor community to get cheaper state permits?
To be continued.
When I went to work for then-freshman U.S. Senator Jim Sasser in 1977, at age 20, he called the Senate Budget Committee "like re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic," comparing its work to "oral group therapy." St. Augustine's City Commission is not even that good. The smallest number the Senate Budget Committee ever discusses is .1 -- which is to say, $100 million.
St. Augustine Commissioners will waste time with the smallest minutiae, but never discuss the future and hopes of our City's residents, preferring to make developers happy. Their insouciant attitude is why two incumbent County Commissioners were defeated in the September 5 Republican Primary, and why more incumbents are headed to defeat, it would appear.
St. Augustine deserves a government as decent and compassionate as its residents.
Enough of unaccountable officials who create toxic hazards and smirk about it.
Toxic Annexation of Golf Course, Refusal to Annex West Augustine
Toxic Annexation of Golf Course, Refusal to Annex West Augustine
Over citizens' objections, our City of St. Augustine annexed a former golf course for residential development, with citizens warning of eight decades of contamination. Now the developer is asking to treat most of the annexed property as brownfields. See article below.
Meanwhile, our mismanaged City refuses to annex West Augustine, an area without many amenities, such as paved streets and sewers, with our City having refused to apply for $4.5 million in grants, while charging 25% more for water and sewer service to West Augustine residents outside the city limits.
As Jeremy Dean's film, "Dare Not Walk Alone" eloquently shows, St. Augustine has Third World Living conditions, while our City's putative leaders are busily obliging developers.
Over citizens' objections, our City of St. Augustine annexed a former golf course for residential development, with citizens warning of eight decades of contamination. Now the developer is asking to treat most of the annexed property as brownfields. See article below.
Meanwhile, our mismanaged City refuses to annex West Augustine, an area without many amenities, such as paved streets and sewers, with our City having refused to apply for $4.5 million in grants, while charging 25% more for water and sewer service to West Augustine residents outside the city limits.
As Jeremy Dean's film, "Dare Not Walk Alone" eloquently shows, St. Augustine has Third World Living conditions, while our City's putative leaders are busily obliging developers.
Letter: St. Augustine risks losing its beauty
Letter: St. Augustine risks losing its beauty
John Aranza
Chicago, Ill.
Publication Date: 09/21/06
Editor: I've taken my last eight consecutive May vacations in St. Augustine, and the cumulative, recent changes depressed me this year. It's like Paradise Lost.
State Road 16 and 210 off Interstate 95 have been so built up that they resemble suburbia outside of Chicago, their virgin openness gone forever.
The bridge project from Ponce De Leon to St. Augustine Beach has only encouraged cars to race and speed like on the Dan Ryan Expressway here.
And slowing down on Ponce De Leon to turn off to a business brings instant horn blowing and finger gestures.
Progress, it seems, has also brought big-city nervousness and rudeness -- what my family goes to St. Augustine to leave behind.
I'm afraid that you're losing your historical and romantic charm. Condominiums are on the San Sebastian where a quaint fishing shed was. Gentrification is changing Lincolnville. Up-scaled hotels line Anastasia Boulevard.
This isn't a damnation, but a lament. The ocean, especially as a late night retreat, can't be breached. But can we even be sure of that?
Towns outside Chicago are limiting growth and subdivisions now. This is a nation-wide dilemma.
I just hope that you can imagine from outside of yourselves what you want and what you are actually creating.
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/092106/opinions_4077829a.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
John Aranza
Chicago, Ill.
Publication Date: 09/21/06
Editor: I've taken my last eight consecutive May vacations in St. Augustine, and the cumulative, recent changes depressed me this year. It's like Paradise Lost.
State Road 16 and 210 off Interstate 95 have been so built up that they resemble suburbia outside of Chicago, their virgin openness gone forever.
The bridge project from Ponce De Leon to St. Augustine Beach has only encouraged cars to race and speed like on the Dan Ryan Expressway here.
And slowing down on Ponce De Leon to turn off to a business brings instant horn blowing and finger gestures.
Progress, it seems, has also brought big-city nervousness and rudeness -- what my family goes to St. Augustine to leave behind.
I'm afraid that you're losing your historical and romantic charm. Condominiums are on the San Sebastian where a quaint fishing shed was. Gentrification is changing Lincolnville. Up-scaled hotels line Anastasia Boulevard.
This isn't a damnation, but a lament. The ocean, especially as a late night retreat, can't be breached. But can we even be sure of that?
Towns outside Chicago are limiting growth and subdivisions now. This is a nation-wide dilemma.
I just hope that you can imagine from outside of yourselves what you want and what you are actually creating.
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/092106/opinions_4077829a.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
Letter: Broudy's block rich in history
Letter: Broudy's block rich in history
David Nolan
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 09/18/06
Editor: The Broudy's Foodway block includes not only the grocery store, but also the most endangered historic building in St. Augustine.
The Clark-Worley House at 212 West King Street is located just west of the market. A century and a quarter old, it was the residence of railroad pioneer F. M. Clark (for whom nearby Clark Street is named). It was later the home of Dr. Samuel Worley who ran an adjacent hospital that was once visited by the president of the United States.
I think we still have some citizens who can boast of having been born in the Worley hospital.
This wonderful ñ and rare ñ example of Queen Anne-style Victorian architecture, topped with a distinctive tower, has long been recognized as one of the visual and historical treasures of the Ancient City, as well as the gateway to West Augustine.
Developers are always coming and asking us to do favors for them. We should ask them to do something for us as well. Any plan to develop this property should include the restoration of the landmark Clark-Worley House.
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/091806/opinions_4077692.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
David Nolan
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 09/18/06
Editor: The Broudy's Foodway block includes not only the grocery store, but also the most endangered historic building in St. Augustine.
The Clark-Worley House at 212 West King Street is located just west of the market. A century and a quarter old, it was the residence of railroad pioneer F. M. Clark (for whom nearby Clark Street is named). It was later the home of Dr. Samuel Worley who ran an adjacent hospital that was once visited by the president of the United States.
I think we still have some citizens who can boast of having been born in the Worley hospital.
This wonderful ñ and rare ñ example of Queen Anne-style Victorian architecture, topped with a distinctive tower, has long been recognized as one of the visual and historical treasures of the Ancient City, as well as the gateway to West Augustine.
Developers are always coming and asking us to do favors for them. We should ask them to do something for us as well. Any plan to develop this property should include the restoration of the landmark Clark-Worley House.
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/091806/opinions_4077692.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
Letter: Send remaining incumbents packing
Letter: Send remaining incumbents packing
Thomas Smith
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 09/18/06
Editor: I recently noted Commissioner Jim Bryant's outcry of "foul" and threats of a lawsuit against Commissioner Ben Rich. Doubtless, this will be funded by the developers and builders that have so generously contributed to his campaign and well -being. I am sure he feels that if he can stop Mr. Rich, he and all his contributors will continue to profit. Don't bet on it Mr. Bryant.
You have become transparent in this county, just as your defeated companions. You will be next.
For my part I would think it more reasonable to lay low and be quiet less the people of this county rise up and write enough letters to the attorney general and the IRS to have you all scrutinized very closely!
In my time, what appears to have been going on here would have been called racketeering ; but I wonder what they call it now?
Now comes the new test. If the new commissioners can reject meetings and promises and gifts from the developers and really vote the will of the people of this county, we actually have a chance to take back our county and have the commissioners work for us and not big development!
If this happens then we can set a high mark for the new commissioners to be elected and send the remaining ones packing. After all, they have not worked for us in a long time.
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/091806/opinions_4077741.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
Thomas Smith
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 09/18/06
Editor: I recently noted Commissioner Jim Bryant's outcry of "foul" and threats of a lawsuit against Commissioner Ben Rich. Doubtless, this will be funded by the developers and builders that have so generously contributed to his campaign and well -being. I am sure he feels that if he can stop Mr. Rich, he and all his contributors will continue to profit. Don't bet on it Mr. Bryant.
You have become transparent in this county, just as your defeated companions. You will be next.
For my part I would think it more reasonable to lay low and be quiet less the people of this county rise up and write enough letters to the attorney general and the IRS to have you all scrutinized very closely!
In my time, what appears to have been going on here would have been called racketeering ; but I wonder what they call it now?
Now comes the new test. If the new commissioners can reject meetings and promises and gifts from the developers and really vote the will of the people of this county, we actually have a chance to take back our county and have the commissioners work for us and not big development!
If this happens then we can set a high mark for the new commissioners to be elected and send the remaining ones packing. After all, they have not worked for us in a long time.
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/091806/opinions_4077741.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
Friday, September 15, 2006
Letter: County swept clean; City needs the same
Letter: County swept clean; City needs the same
David Brian Wallace
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 09/14/06
Editor: Hallelujah! Voters agree: developers are ruining our quality of life. Majorities support protecting and preserving Paradise.
Primary voters defeated two Republican County Commissioners, denying reelection to Bruce Maguire, who spent $16.10/vote (defeated by Tom Manuel, who spent $0.92/vote) and Karen Stern, who spent $25.70/vote (defeated by Ronald Sanchez, who spent $0.91/vote).
In righteous wrath, real people spoke louder than developers' moneybags.
Reverberations are continuing. Real reforms require real reformers.
That's why I support Democrat Ken Bryan against Sanchez on Nov. 7. A Justice Department retiree and upholsterer-businessman, Ken does not cower to power. He will represent all the people and stand up to lawbreakers (like Ashland's polluting SR 207 asphalt plant).
Ugliness/waste will metastasize until citizens are heard and heeded. Our small city proposes a $50 million budget and 21 percent general fund increase, without web-posting spending information.
City Commissioner Donald Crichlow typifies the caste of cold, chauvinistic, condescending corporation-coddling incumbents. He's an architect for developers (representing clients before HARB). On Sept. 2, Crichlow (claiming 1599 ancestry) publicly played Governor Pedro Menendez.
Crichlow once compared gays to birds/dogs (referring to Menendez's 1566 order to murder a gay man for being a "Sodomite and a Lutheran," mocking legal efforts to fly Rainbow flags on our Bridge of Lions).(5/31/2005 Folio). Bigotry?
On Sept. 2, what the city Web site calls "our royalty" bestowed 400 pieces of cake.
As Marie Antoinette said, "Let ëem eat cake."
City Commissioners and developers are not "royalty." Hold them accountable.
Who destroys nature and pollutes our environment, tolerates waste, records withholding, cronyism and rubberstamp-approval of large, ugly projects/buildings? Five incumbent St. Augustine commissioners.
Time to vote to recall them for misfeasance/malfeasance (illegal dumping of illegal Riberia Street city dumps' contents into the Old City Reservoir; First Amendment and Sunshine violations, waste and junkets)?
Keep on voting.
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/091406/opinions_opi0914c.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
David Brian Wallace
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 09/14/06
Editor: Hallelujah! Voters agree: developers are ruining our quality of life. Majorities support protecting and preserving Paradise.
Primary voters defeated two Republican County Commissioners, denying reelection to Bruce Maguire, who spent $16.10/vote (defeated by Tom Manuel, who spent $0.92/vote) and Karen Stern, who spent $25.70/vote (defeated by Ronald Sanchez, who spent $0.91/vote).
In righteous wrath, real people spoke louder than developers' moneybags.
Reverberations are continuing. Real reforms require real reformers.
That's why I support Democrat Ken Bryan against Sanchez on Nov. 7. A Justice Department retiree and upholsterer-businessman, Ken does not cower to power. He will represent all the people and stand up to lawbreakers (like Ashland's polluting SR 207 asphalt plant).
Ugliness/waste will metastasize until citizens are heard and heeded. Our small city proposes a $50 million budget and 21 percent general fund increase, without web-posting spending information.
City Commissioner Donald Crichlow typifies the caste of cold, chauvinistic, condescending corporation-coddling incumbents. He's an architect for developers (representing clients before HARB). On Sept. 2, Crichlow (claiming 1599 ancestry) publicly played Governor Pedro Menendez.
Crichlow once compared gays to birds/dogs (referring to Menendez's 1566 order to murder a gay man for being a "Sodomite and a Lutheran," mocking legal efforts to fly Rainbow flags on our Bridge of Lions).(5/31/2005 Folio). Bigotry?
On Sept. 2, what the city Web site calls "our royalty" bestowed 400 pieces of cake.
As Marie Antoinette said, "Let ëem eat cake."
City Commissioners and developers are not "royalty." Hold them accountable.
Who destroys nature and pollutes our environment, tolerates waste, records withholding, cronyism and rubberstamp-approval of large, ugly projects/buildings? Five incumbent St. Augustine commissioners.
Time to vote to recall them for misfeasance/malfeasance (illegal dumping of illegal Riberia Street city dumps' contents into the Old City Reservoir; First Amendment and Sunshine violations, waste and junkets)?
Keep on voting.
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/091406/opinions_opi0914c.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
City of St. Augustine Safety Hazards Persist -- Workers on Visitor Information Center Roof Without Fall Protection, OSHA Investigates City Contractor
City of St. Augustine Safety Hazards Persist -- Workers on Visitor Information Center Roof Without Fall Protection
Several years ago, after eating with visiting friends at the city-owned Lighthouse Restaurant (now-closed), we saw several workers on the roof with no fall protection.
I telephoned and reported it to the City of St. Augustine's Public Works office, which told me that it would remedy the situation and order fall protection for the city employees immediately. I took the City at its word.
Last Monday, August 28, photographer/documentary J.D. Pleasant and I were checking out our City's new parking garage (more later). We observed two contractor roofing workers on the roof of the Visitor Information Center (VIC). Neither had any fall protection. One of the workers may have been underage.
I reported the situation to OSHA The two workers could have died from fatal falls on the roof of our VIC. I also reported the situation to the DOL Wage-Hour Division, which did not return calls.
J.D. Pleasant took color photographs, documenting the date and time (also showing a construction supervisor with a white hardhat was within sight of the unprotected workers. J.D. provided his color photographs to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) of the United States Department of Labor in Jacksonville, Florida.
OSHA has inspected and will issue a report, with possible fines. The contractor has a right to appeal fines to the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission, which will consider whether any violations were willful and life-threatening..
Ironically, if the two workers had been City employees, OSHA could do nothing to protect them -- city, county and state workers are not covered by the OSH Act. A Florida agency that protected city, county and state workers was dismantled by Governor Jeb Bush. As an OSHA official has said, city, county and state workers could "hang from the roof by a string" and there would be nothing that OSHA could do.
If hindsight is 20/20, we should find it all the more unreasonable that our City of St. Augustine is still risking workers' lives and that our federal and Florida governments do nothing little protect city, county and state workers.
When former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neil became CEO of ALCOA aluminum, he instituted a program that virtually eliminated workplace deaths and injuries in aluminum production, one of the hottest processes in American industry. How did he do it? He evaluated every executive on their efforts to make the workplace safer. He worked with unions, instead of against them. He made safety everyone's job at ALCOA. He was fired by the second President Bush for being too outspoken, writing a book about it.
Safety was evidently not "everyone's job" at the Department of Labor on July 19, 1989. Anyone enjoying the view of the Capitol and Mall from DOL's sixth floor cafeteria -- and Washingtonians and visitors passing by -- could see that there was an ATV on the roof and roofing workers working with no fall protection.
At the Department of Labor's own headquarters in 1989, a 23 year old roofer was killed, falling off the roof, due to government and contractor negligence.
Several millennia of construction experience teaches that falls (and lack of fall protections) kill workers, the most experienced of whom need fall protection on roofs. So obvious is the proposition about falls and fall protections that a 1990 DOL Monthly Labor Review article begun by quoting a nursery rhyme:
..... When the bough breaks the cradle will fall,
Down will come baby, cradle and all.
Mother' Goose's Melody (c. 1765).
In nursery rhymes and real life, falls sound an ominous note of human fragility, which if unheeded, can lead to serious injury. Yet, despite the imminent danger, working at heights without adequate fall protection is fairly commonplace today, especially in the construction industry and, in particular, in roofing and sheet metal work. This risky work practice goes far to explain why falls are the leading type of injury and illness in the roofing industry, constituting roughly three-tenths of all its serious cases of injury and illness reported.
According to safety and health experts, most accidents in roof work, as in other industrial settings, are preventable if employers and employees follow safe work procedures.Martin E. Personick, "Profiles in safety and health: roofing and sheet metal work," 113 Monthly Labor Review No. 9 (September 1990), on the Internet at http://www.bls. gov/opub/mlr/1990/09/art4full.pdf.
One year after the death on it's own rooftop, DOL recited a nursery rhyme to begin a fall protection Monthly Labor Review.
It's not funny: falls from lack of fall protection kill American workers and hurt families.
The father of U.S. Attorney General. Alberto Gonzales, died in 1982 from what was called an "industrial accident" -- a fall from atop a rice mill.
(C-SPAN interview of Hon. Alberto Gonzales, March 16, 2001, rebroadcast November 10, 2004).
Worker deaths and injuries cause pain and suffeirng to millions around the world -- 2.3 million workers die in the workplace or from occupational diseases annually.
The presence of the two unprotected workers on the roof of the VIC is symptomatic of the nonenforcement of worker protection laws in America and in St. Augustine. Call it "desuetude" because that's what it is -- worker proteciton laws are not being enforced adequately.
Our City of St. Augustine tempts fate, apparently failing to protect contractor employees.
Efforts to obtain comment from the City's Chief Operating Officer (John Regan) and Public Relations Director (Paul Williamson) were unsuccessful to date. Our City has a $500,000 annual budget for Public Relations -- what do you get for it? We have a $50 million annual budget -- what do we get for that?
What can our City do to protect workers and our environment? It can start by having a City manager or supervisor present at all city government construction jobs, monitoring compliance with safety, health and environmental laws. Is that too much to ask? The lives we save are precious.
It's our VIC roof, it's our City and it's our country. We have a right to governments that work for the people and not against us. What do you think?
Several years ago, after eating with visiting friends at the city-owned Lighthouse Restaurant (now-closed), we saw several workers on the roof with no fall protection.
I telephoned and reported it to the City of St. Augustine's Public Works office, which told me that it would remedy the situation and order fall protection for the city employees immediately. I took the City at its word.
Last Monday, August 28, photographer/documentary J.D. Pleasant and I were checking out our City's new parking garage (more later). We observed two contractor roofing workers on the roof of the Visitor Information Center (VIC). Neither had any fall protection. One of the workers may have been underage.
I reported the situation to OSHA The two workers could have died from fatal falls on the roof of our VIC. I also reported the situation to the DOL Wage-Hour Division, which did not return calls.
J.D. Pleasant took color photographs, documenting the date and time (also showing a construction supervisor with a white hardhat was within sight of the unprotected workers. J.D. provided his color photographs to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) of the United States Department of Labor in Jacksonville, Florida.
OSHA has inspected and will issue a report, with possible fines. The contractor has a right to appeal fines to the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission, which will consider whether any violations were willful and life-threatening..
Ironically, if the two workers had been City employees, OSHA could do nothing to protect them -- city, county and state workers are not covered by the OSH Act. A Florida agency that protected city, county and state workers was dismantled by Governor Jeb Bush. As an OSHA official has said, city, county and state workers could "hang from the roof by a string" and there would be nothing that OSHA could do.
If hindsight is 20/20, we should find it all the more unreasonable that our City of St. Augustine is still risking workers' lives and that our federal and Florida governments do nothing little protect city, county and state workers.
When former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neil became CEO of ALCOA aluminum, he instituted a program that virtually eliminated workplace deaths and injuries in aluminum production, one of the hottest processes in American industry. How did he do it? He evaluated every executive on their efforts to make the workplace safer. He worked with unions, instead of against them. He made safety everyone's job at ALCOA. He was fired by the second President Bush for being too outspoken, writing a book about it.
Safety was evidently not "everyone's job" at the Department of Labor on July 19, 1989. Anyone enjoying the view of the Capitol and Mall from DOL's sixth floor cafeteria -- and Washingtonians and visitors passing by -- could see that there was an ATV on the roof and roofing workers working with no fall protection.
At the Department of Labor's own headquarters in 1989, a 23 year old roofer was killed, falling off the roof, due to government and contractor negligence.
Several millennia of construction experience teaches that falls (and lack of fall protections) kill workers, the most experienced of whom need fall protection on roofs. So obvious is the proposition about falls and fall protections that a 1990 DOL Monthly Labor Review article begun by quoting a nursery rhyme:
..... When the bough breaks the cradle will fall,
Down will come baby, cradle and all.
Mother' Goose's Melody (c. 1765).
In nursery rhymes and real life, falls sound an ominous note of human fragility, which if unheeded, can lead to serious injury. Yet, despite the imminent danger, working at heights without adequate fall protection is fairly commonplace today, especially in the construction industry and, in particular, in roofing and sheet metal work. This risky work practice goes far to explain why falls are the leading type of injury and illness in the roofing industry, constituting roughly three-tenths of all its serious cases of injury and illness reported.
According to safety and health experts, most accidents in roof work, as in other industrial settings, are preventable if employers and employees follow safe work procedures.Martin E. Personick, "Profiles in safety and health: roofing and sheet metal work," 113 Monthly Labor Review No. 9 (September 1990), on the Internet at http://www.bls. gov/opub/mlr/1990/09/art4full.pdf.
One year after the death on it's own rooftop, DOL recited a nursery rhyme to begin a fall protection Monthly Labor Review.
It's not funny: falls from lack of fall protection kill American workers and hurt families.
The father of U.S. Attorney General. Alberto Gonzales, died in 1982 from what was called an "industrial accident" -- a fall from atop a rice mill.
(C-SPAN interview of Hon. Alberto Gonzales, March 16, 2001, rebroadcast November 10, 2004).
Worker deaths and injuries cause pain and suffeirng to millions around the world -- 2.3 million workers die in the workplace or from occupational diseases annually.
The presence of the two unprotected workers on the roof of the VIC is symptomatic of the nonenforcement of worker protection laws in America and in St. Augustine. Call it "desuetude" because that's what it is -- worker proteciton laws are not being enforced adequately.
Our City of St. Augustine tempts fate, apparently failing to protect contractor employees.
Efforts to obtain comment from the City's Chief Operating Officer (John Regan) and Public Relations Director (Paul Williamson) were unsuccessful to date. Our City has a $500,000 annual budget for Public Relations -- what do you get for it? We have a $50 million annual budget -- what do we get for that?
What can our City do to protect workers and our environment? It can start by having a City manager or supervisor present at all city government construction jobs, monitoring compliance with safety, health and environmental laws. Is that too much to ask? The lives we save are precious.
It's our VIC roof, it's our City and it's our country. We have a right to governments that work for the people and not against us. What do you think?
Sunday, August 13, 2006
Did City Of St. Augustine and Lawyer William Pence Brag Too Soon?
I learned a new word last week thanks to the City of St. Augustine. It is "de micromis," which is a smaller size than "de minimis," which is what the City's environmental crime defense lawyer, William Pence (photo below) had called our City's illegal dumping.
The Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP)) rejected our City's "de minimis" excuse." Now our City asserts the Old City Reservoir is actually a mining operation and that the City intends to resume mining operations (although it also claims it seeks to fill in the Old City Reservoir). Under each, our City asserts it need not comply strictly with environmental laws, as FDEP orders.
"De micromis" may also describes the thought that went into our City's illegal dumping, in the wake of indictments in Clay County for similar actions by unaccountable public officials.
Mr. Pence and City officials evidently bragged too soon last year about their fine accomplishments at the Sebastian Inner Harbor project. See http://proceedings.swix.ws/2005_10_09_Brownfields/content/pdf/Pence.pdf
The Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP)) rejected our City's "de minimis" excuse." Now our City asserts the Old City Reservoir is actually a mining operation and that the City intends to resume mining operations (although it also claims it seeks to fill in the Old City Reservoir). Under each, our City asserts it need not comply strictly with environmental laws, as FDEP orders.
"De micromis" may also describes the thought that went into our City's illegal dumping, in the wake of indictments in Clay County for similar actions by unaccountable public officials.
Mr. Pence and City officials evidently bragged too soon last year about their fine accomplishments at the Sebastian Inner Harbor project. See http://proceedings.swix.ws/2005_10_09_Brownfields/content/pdf/Pence.pdf
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
WHY NOT THE BEST? -- A ST. AUGUSTINE LABOR DAY JAZZ/MUSIC FESTIVAL
My friend J.D. Pleasant, the documentary producer, videographer and community activist, had a brilliant inspiration after this morning's Council on Aging candidates' forum: a St. Augustine Jazz/Music Festival. Why not?
Newport, Rhode Island, Jacksonville, Florida and other cities already have Jazz Festivals.
It has been reported that St. Augustine has more retired jazz musicians per capita than any other place in America.
St. Augustine needs its own St. Augustine Jazz Festival (perhaps also featuring some stages for classical, reggae and country music for those who might prefer a change of pace -- variety is the spice of life, whether jazz, bluegrass, Charpentier or Mozart).
To show our City's appreciation for working people -- and to underline our desire to protect worker rights and help working people live where they work -- why not make our St. Augustine Jazz Festival correspond with Labor Day Weekend, targeting the first St, Augustine Jazz Festival for Labor Day 2007?
Proceeds from advertising would help make St. Augustine more liveable for everyone, perhaps benefitting the Habitat for Humanity.
We could have multiple venues across town, from the Amphitheatre to the Plaza de la Constitucion (a/k/a Slave Market Square). We could have a big revival-style tent on top of the new parking garage and another stage at the Special Events Field. Flagler College could volunteer its auditorium. Restaurants and bars could join in the fun, hosting jazz musicians to play in their indoor and outdoor venues.
Our City can build on its strengths, build community and grow a national reputation as a force for good and a fun place to visit for music.
Our City Manager, WILLIAM B. HARRISS, gave our City a black eye by working to eject the musicians, artists and entertainers from St. George Street. What better way to empower this vibrant community than by commencing a jazz festival and doing it every Labor Day Weekend.
Let freedom ring.
Let's do it.
What do you think?
Newport, Rhode Island, Jacksonville, Florida and other cities already have Jazz Festivals.
It has been reported that St. Augustine has more retired jazz musicians per capita than any other place in America.
St. Augustine needs its own St. Augustine Jazz Festival (perhaps also featuring some stages for classical, reggae and country music for those who might prefer a change of pace -- variety is the spice of life, whether jazz, bluegrass, Charpentier or Mozart).
To show our City's appreciation for working people -- and to underline our desire to protect worker rights and help working people live where they work -- why not make our St. Augustine Jazz Festival correspond with Labor Day Weekend, targeting the first St, Augustine Jazz Festival for Labor Day 2007?
Proceeds from advertising would help make St. Augustine more liveable for everyone, perhaps benefitting the Habitat for Humanity.
We could have multiple venues across town, from the Amphitheatre to the Plaza de la Constitucion (a/k/a Slave Market Square). We could have a big revival-style tent on top of the new parking garage and another stage at the Special Events Field. Flagler College could volunteer its auditorium. Restaurants and bars could join in the fun, hosting jazz musicians to play in their indoor and outdoor venues.
Our City can build on its strengths, build community and grow a national reputation as a force for good and a fun place to visit for music.
Our City Manager, WILLIAM B. HARRISS, gave our City a black eye by working to eject the musicians, artists and entertainers from St. George Street. What better way to empower this vibrant community than by commencing a jazz festival and doing it every Labor Day Weekend.
Let freedom ring.
Let's do it.
What do you think?
COUNCIL ON AGING HEARS CANDIDATES
This morning I was honored to speak to some 80 people at the Council on Aging (COA) at their first candidates' forum, addressing what we need more of from our City of St. Augustine government -- Listening, Openness and Thought, talking about just a few of the issues outlined below in this blog.
I was inspired by the people I met and spoke to at the COA. I would be honored to serve as a St. Augustine City Commissioner. Incumbent District Four City Commissioner Donald Crichlow did not attend and his spokesman did not speak in rebuttal.
This year's election is about "consequences," as Sir Winston Churchill so aptly said. (See below). Incumbent County Commissioner Bruce Maguire received no applause when he stepped up to defend his pro-developer record, and reform County and City Coommission candidates Ken Bryan, Peter Romano, et al. were warmly received.
Our City of St. Augustine is worth saving. It is being ruined faster than a speeding developer's dump truck.
As Robert Kennedy said 39 years ago, "it is not enough to allow dissent, we must demand it, for there is much to dissent from."
We dissent from illegal dumping of the entire contents of the old illegal city landfill in the Old city Reservoir.
We dissent from mismanaged growth and overdevelopment (without roads, parks, schools and services).
We dissent from harassment of artists and entertainers, running them off St. George Street.
We dissent from document withholding. We dissent from Sunshine violations and junkets. We dissent from white elephants and waste in a $45 million annual budget, while persistent drainage problems persist, threatening inundation, while our city mindlessly allows developers to build underground parking garages, threatening flooding and subsidence in a future hurricane.
Shouldn't new development result in repaving of bumpy streets? Do our cars have to "shake, rattle and roll" like a 1970s garage band on wheels?
Shouldn't our City be accessible for persons with disabilities, as required by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)? Shouldn't there be sidewalks that can traversed by wheelchairs, as the late Robert Jones eloquently and diligently sought?
Mayor Gardner and City Commissioners Crichlow, Jones, Burk and Boles, why are our streets so bumpy? Why are there still dirt streets in some of our neighborhoods?
This is a beautiful city and we're going to make it a better place for all of our citizens.
We dissent from City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS refusing to pay for a civil rights monument after what our city did to its citizens in 1964. -- these are the works of our City Manager, WILLIAM B. HARRISS. Mr. HARRISS is routinely rubberstamped by our Commissioners.
We dissent from City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS obstructing Gay Pride flags on the Bridge of Lions (resulting in federal court judgment against our City for its First Amendment violations).
We dissent from our City's sweetheart contract with Time-Warner (ten year franchise) against the express wishes of every single one of the public hearing speakers, refusing to provide adequate public access (and refusing to carry local low power Channel 22), refusing to hold a promised workshop or revise TWC's unconscionable form contract.
We dissent from discriminatory levels of services provided to communities, without accountability, particularly in Lincolnville and West Augustine and North City.
We dissent from discrimination against our citizens, including police abuses and unequal services.
We dissent from incumbents who said they were reformers and who have reformed nothing and who have become the rubberstamps for WILLIAM B. HARRISS that they campaigned against when they were elected (see bellow).
Mayor George Gardner, descended from upstate New York city government reformers, had our support in 2002 when he ran for Mayor of St. Augustine. He and the current crew of St. Augustine Commissioners have reformed nothing. Worse, they can't stand criticism. As Harry S Truman said, "if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen."
Robert Kennedy was right 39 years ago and right today: "It is not enough to allow dissent, we must demand it, for there is much to dissent from."
I was inspired by the people I met and spoke to at the COA. I would be honored to serve as a St. Augustine City Commissioner. Incumbent District Four City Commissioner Donald Crichlow did not attend and his spokesman did not speak in rebuttal.
This year's election is about "consequences," as Sir Winston Churchill so aptly said. (See below). Incumbent County Commissioner Bruce Maguire received no applause when he stepped up to defend his pro-developer record, and reform County and City Coommission candidates Ken Bryan, Peter Romano, et al. were warmly received.
Our City of St. Augustine is worth saving. It is being ruined faster than a speeding developer's dump truck.
As Robert Kennedy said 39 years ago, "it is not enough to allow dissent, we must demand it, for there is much to dissent from."
We dissent from illegal dumping of the entire contents of the old illegal city landfill in the Old city Reservoir.
We dissent from mismanaged growth and overdevelopment (without roads, parks, schools and services).
We dissent from harassment of artists and entertainers, running them off St. George Street.
We dissent from document withholding. We dissent from Sunshine violations and junkets. We dissent from white elephants and waste in a $45 million annual budget, while persistent drainage problems persist, threatening inundation, while our city mindlessly allows developers to build underground parking garages, threatening flooding and subsidence in a future hurricane.
Shouldn't new development result in repaving of bumpy streets? Do our cars have to "shake, rattle and roll" like a 1970s garage band on wheels?
Shouldn't our City be accessible for persons with disabilities, as required by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)? Shouldn't there be sidewalks that can traversed by wheelchairs, as the late Robert Jones eloquently and diligently sought?
Mayor Gardner and City Commissioners Crichlow, Jones, Burk and Boles, why are our streets so bumpy? Why are there still dirt streets in some of our neighborhoods?
This is a beautiful city and we're going to make it a better place for all of our citizens.
We dissent from City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS refusing to pay for a civil rights monument after what our city did to its citizens in 1964. -- these are the works of our City Manager, WILLIAM B. HARRISS. Mr. HARRISS is routinely rubberstamped by our Commissioners.
We dissent from City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS obstructing Gay Pride flags on the Bridge of Lions (resulting in federal court judgment against our City for its First Amendment violations).
We dissent from our City's sweetheart contract with Time-Warner (ten year franchise) against the express wishes of every single one of the public hearing speakers, refusing to provide adequate public access (and refusing to carry local low power Channel 22), refusing to hold a promised workshop or revise TWC's unconscionable form contract.
We dissent from discriminatory levels of services provided to communities, without accountability, particularly in Lincolnville and West Augustine and North City.
We dissent from discrimination against our citizens, including police abuses and unequal services.
We dissent from incumbents who said they were reformers and who have reformed nothing and who have become the rubberstamps for WILLIAM B. HARRISS that they campaigned against when they were elected (see bellow).
Mayor George Gardner, descended from upstate New York city government reformers, had our support in 2002 when he ran for Mayor of St. Augustine. He and the current crew of St. Augustine Commissioners have reformed nothing. Worse, they can't stand criticism. As Harry S Truman said, "if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen."
Robert Kennedy was right 39 years ago and right today: "It is not enough to allow dissent, we must demand it, for there is much to dissent from."
BETTER HEALTH CARE FOR NORTHEAST FLORIDA
BETTER HEALTH CARE
Our local health care system can be improved.
I was up until 2 AM this morning (and woke up before 7 AM), helping friends cope with the local health care system and a cancer diagnosis. I spoke to the Council on Aging this morning and then had to leave before lunch. At noon today, I called up a friend who is a cancer expert in another state, obtaining his kind assistance in helping the local family find answers and treatment. Some North Florida doctors were pushing the family into hospice, instead of providing and researching standard of care cancer therapies like monoclonal antibodies.
Albert Camus once said, :"we must first posit denial and absurdity because that is what our generation has encountered."
President Harry S Truman called for national health care in the 1940s. Every other industrialized country has health care as a right, except the United States. As a result we squander vast sums on corporate insurance bureaucracies, while doctors are turned into serfs, reporting to corporate oligarchs. Lives are lost needlessly as a result.
On Cape Cod, Massachusetts, doctors, hospitals, patients, employers and the Chamber of Commerce all agree -- there should be a single payer system, at the county level, protecting doctors and patients and saving money and providing care for everyone
For up-to-date information on Cape Cost's efforts to end the system of "mangled care" that kills Americans daily, see www.capecare.info
Our local health care system can be improved.
I was up until 2 AM this morning (and woke up before 7 AM), helping friends cope with the local health care system and a cancer diagnosis. I spoke to the Council on Aging this morning and then had to leave before lunch. At noon today, I called up a friend who is a cancer expert in another state, obtaining his kind assistance in helping the local family find answers and treatment. Some North Florida doctors were pushing the family into hospice, instead of providing and researching standard of care cancer therapies like monoclonal antibodies.
Albert Camus once said, :"we must first posit denial and absurdity because that is what our generation has encountered."
President Harry S Truman called for national health care in the 1940s. Every other industrialized country has health care as a right, except the United States. As a result we squander vast sums on corporate insurance bureaucracies, while doctors are turned into serfs, reporting to corporate oligarchs. Lives are lost needlessly as a result.
On Cape Cod, Massachusetts, doctors, hospitals, patients, employers and the Chamber of Commerce all agree -- there should be a single payer system, at the county level, protecting doctors and patients and saving money and providing care for everyone
For up-to-date information on Cape Cost's efforts to end the system of "mangled care" that kills Americans daily, see www.capecare.info
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
OPEN RECORDS VICTORY: City of St. Augustine Provides 45 Pounds of Documents They Swore Did Not Exist
This afternoon in the third floor of our St. Johns County Courthouse was one of those great shining moments that vindicates American democracy and freedom and our judicial system.
Shortly before 3 PM, in Judge Watson's courtroom, lawyers for the City of St. Augustine provided 45 pounds of documents to the lawyer for investigative journalist (and retired university) Dr. Dwight Hines' lawyer, Mr. Tanner Andrews of Volusia County (a recent law graduate with 20 years' work experience and expertise in computers).
Two large boxes of documents, weighing 45 pounds, embody some of the records that Dr. Hines is seeking -- records on the City's use of City vehicles.
St. Augustine City officials rudely refused to provide the records when requested by Dr. Hines.
St. Augustine City officials filed affidavits claiming the records don't exist.
St. Augustine City officials refused to mediate with Dr. Hines, even when the State Attorney General's office offered to provide a mediator.
St. Augustine City officials angrily reacted to Dr. Hines' lawsuit when filed in April.
St. Augustine City Attorney JAMES PATRICK WILSON threatened Dr. Hines and Ed Slavin with arrest in connection with purchasing record document requests. (See below.
In response to Dr. Hines' lawsuit, St. Augustine City Commissioners showed their animus to open government.
In fact, Commissioner and Mayor candidate Joseph Boles (a lawyer) made a motion, seconded by Vice Mayor Susan Burk (a lawyer) to seek attorney fees from Dr. Hines, falsely claiming that Dr. Hines had filed a frivolous lawsuit, with Boles saying Dr. Hines should be made to "pay the piper" to discourage such lawsuits from being filed. The motion passed.
The St. Augustine City Clerk's office later revealed that City Commissioners were not provided a copy of Dr. Hines' lawsuit in their agenda packet for that meeting. This makes the meretricious effort to seek fees no more than a SLAPP lawsuit (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation), which Dr. Hines contends violates Florida law.
To their credit, the City outside defense lawyers evidently thought better of it -- no such SLAPP motion has been filed by the City's defense lawyer, Sid Ansbacher of Upchuch, Bailey and Upchurch. City Commissioners showed their defensiveness of Mr. HARRISS once again by passing an in terrorem motion, attempting to intimidate Dr. Hines (then representing himself pro se).
Some St. Augustine Commissioners would rather shoot first and ask questions later.
Some St. Augustine Commissioners would rather fight than switch -- fighting to protect the ancien regime of WILLIAM B. HARRISS, City Manager, from citizens' request.
45 pounds of documents proves that the City of St. Augustine's affidavits were untrue, its refusal to mediate was in bad faith and St. Augustine City Commissioners' kneejerk effort to seek attorney fees from an inquiring reporter was morally and legally wrong.
Our City of St. Augustine is at a crossroads -- will we practice listening, openness and thought -- or will we continue electing leaders who back controversial St. Augustine City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS and his unaccountable $45 million/year machine, which spends $4300 for every adult and child in St. Augustine?
It's your money.
They're your documents.
They're your trucks.
Some of the records said not to exist may touch upon the City's illegal dumping, under investigation by the FDEP.
Tonight, Dr. Dwight Hines is reading 45 pounds of records -- records our City previously claimed to be nonexistent.
How sweet it is.
Like President Richard Nixon's estimable spokesperson Ronald Ziegler, our City's contention is now "inoperative." 45 pounds of records do exist. "You ain't seen nothin' yet."
My hat is off to Dr. Dwight Hines and lawyer Tanner Andrews, true patriots.
There is cause for jubilation tonight. Good and decent people love this beautiful town. They want our government to work for the people, not against them. Like any good diplomats, they're not taking no for an answer.
Shortly before 3 PM, in Judge Watson's courtroom, lawyers for the City of St. Augustine provided 45 pounds of documents to the lawyer for investigative journalist (and retired university) Dr. Dwight Hines' lawyer, Mr. Tanner Andrews of Volusia County (a recent law graduate with 20 years' work experience and expertise in computers).
Two large boxes of documents, weighing 45 pounds, embody some of the records that Dr. Hines is seeking -- records on the City's use of City vehicles.
St. Augustine City officials rudely refused to provide the records when requested by Dr. Hines.
St. Augustine City officials filed affidavits claiming the records don't exist.
St. Augustine City officials refused to mediate with Dr. Hines, even when the State Attorney General's office offered to provide a mediator.
St. Augustine City officials angrily reacted to Dr. Hines' lawsuit when filed in April.
St. Augustine City Attorney JAMES PATRICK WILSON threatened Dr. Hines and Ed Slavin with arrest in connection with purchasing record document requests. (See below.
In response to Dr. Hines' lawsuit, St. Augustine City Commissioners showed their animus to open government.
In fact, Commissioner and Mayor candidate Joseph Boles (a lawyer) made a motion, seconded by Vice Mayor Susan Burk (a lawyer) to seek attorney fees from Dr. Hines, falsely claiming that Dr. Hines had filed a frivolous lawsuit, with Boles saying Dr. Hines should be made to "pay the piper" to discourage such lawsuits from being filed. The motion passed.
The St. Augustine City Clerk's office later revealed that City Commissioners were not provided a copy of Dr. Hines' lawsuit in their agenda packet for that meeting. This makes the meretricious effort to seek fees no more than a SLAPP lawsuit (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation), which Dr. Hines contends violates Florida law.
To their credit, the City outside defense lawyers evidently thought better of it -- no such SLAPP motion has been filed by the City's defense lawyer, Sid Ansbacher of Upchuch, Bailey and Upchurch. City Commissioners showed their defensiveness of Mr. HARRISS once again by passing an in terrorem motion, attempting to intimidate Dr. Hines (then representing himself pro se).
Some St. Augustine Commissioners would rather shoot first and ask questions later.
Some St. Augustine Commissioners would rather fight than switch -- fighting to protect the ancien regime of WILLIAM B. HARRISS, City Manager, from citizens' request.
45 pounds of documents proves that the City of St. Augustine's affidavits were untrue, its refusal to mediate was in bad faith and St. Augustine City Commissioners' kneejerk effort to seek attorney fees from an inquiring reporter was morally and legally wrong.
Our City of St. Augustine is at a crossroads -- will we practice listening, openness and thought -- or will we continue electing leaders who back controversial St. Augustine City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS and his unaccountable $45 million/year machine, which spends $4300 for every adult and child in St. Augustine?
It's your money.
They're your documents.
They're your trucks.
Some of the records said not to exist may touch upon the City's illegal dumping, under investigation by the FDEP.
Tonight, Dr. Dwight Hines is reading 45 pounds of records -- records our City previously claimed to be nonexistent.
How sweet it is.
Like President Richard Nixon's estimable spokesperson Ronald Ziegler, our City's contention is now "inoperative." 45 pounds of records do exist. "You ain't seen nothin' yet."
My hat is off to Dr. Dwight Hines and lawyer Tanner Andrews, true patriots.
There is cause for jubilation tonight. Good and decent people love this beautiful town. They want our government to work for the people, not against them. Like any good diplomats, they're not taking no for an answer.
Letters: Seeks leadership change
Letters: Seeks leadership change
Publication Date: 08/06/06
Editor: I voted for George Gardner for mayor in 2002. He was elected mayor by 10 votes. Today, George Gardner's out of touch. (July 27 Record column).
I don't think St. Augustine is moving in the right direction. Crime is up 8.2 percent, our budget is rising 21 percent, FECI is leaving, workers can't afford to live here.
An iron triangle misrules: Commissioners, developers and City Manager Harriss.
In 2001, Harriss said St. George Street protesters had "no valid purpose," claiming "the (ir) only purpose ... is to bring shame on the city." (March 20, 2001 Record).
Harriss habitually brings "shame" on our city: ordering illegal dumping of the old illegal city landfill into the Old City Reservoir, engineering Sunshine violations (including a three-day, over $8,100 trip for 12 to NYC in 2005 and earlier "class trips"), while ejecting musicians and "buskers" from St. George Street.
Commissioners wrongfully revoked rights to speak both at the beginning and end of the meetings: people were questioning our city's illegal dumping and its attempted ruination of the 3000-4000 year old Indian village for condos and strip malls.
Now, some commissioners seek to terminate our rights to elect our mayor. Come speak on August 14. Better bring food. Commissioners have started interrupting meetings by hunkering down and hiding on City Hall's fourth floor, taking dinner breaks, with no "place (for citizens) at (that) table."
We're wasting money on white elephants and junkets, with uncompetitive contracts and selective franchise favoritism (like Time Warner's lucrative 10 year cable franchise).
Secretive officials can't/won't answer questions. Gardner admits "there's no dialogue here."
Our city deserves informed, mature, inquisitive, intelligent, ethical, compassionate and caring leadership.
That's why I support Peter Romano of Lincolnville for both commissioner and mayor. Vote twice.
David Brian Wallace
St. Augustine
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/080606/opinions_yy7654.shtml
Publication Date: 08/06/06
Editor: I voted for George Gardner for mayor in 2002. He was elected mayor by 10 votes. Today, George Gardner's out of touch. (July 27 Record column).
I don't think St. Augustine is moving in the right direction. Crime is up 8.2 percent, our budget is rising 21 percent, FECI is leaving, workers can't afford to live here.
An iron triangle misrules: Commissioners, developers and City Manager Harriss.
In 2001, Harriss said St. George Street protesters had "no valid purpose," claiming "the (ir) only purpose ... is to bring shame on the city." (March 20, 2001 Record).
Harriss habitually brings "shame" on our city: ordering illegal dumping of the old illegal city landfill into the Old City Reservoir, engineering Sunshine violations (including a three-day, over $8,100 trip for 12 to NYC in 2005 and earlier "class trips"), while ejecting musicians and "buskers" from St. George Street.
Commissioners wrongfully revoked rights to speak both at the beginning and end of the meetings: people were questioning our city's illegal dumping and its attempted ruination of the 3000-4000 year old Indian village for condos and strip malls.
Now, some commissioners seek to terminate our rights to elect our mayor. Come speak on August 14. Better bring food. Commissioners have started interrupting meetings by hunkering down and hiding on City Hall's fourth floor, taking dinner breaks, with no "place (for citizens) at (that) table."
We're wasting money on white elephants and junkets, with uncompetitive contracts and selective franchise favoritism (like Time Warner's lucrative 10 year cable franchise).
Secretive officials can't/won't answer questions. Gardner admits "there's no dialogue here."
Our city deserves informed, mature, inquisitive, intelligent, ethical, compassionate and caring leadership.
That's why I support Peter Romano of Lincolnville for both commissioner and mayor. Vote twice.
David Brian Wallace
St. Augustine
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/080606/opinions_yy7654.shtml
Letters: Competent leadership needed for St. Augustine
Letters: Competent leadership needed for St. Augustine
Publication Date: 08/06/06
Editor: After 111 years, Florida East Coast Industries is moving its corporate headquarters out of St. Augustine.
What has our city government done to persuade FECI to stay, to keep good-paying jobs (and other local jobs that depend on them)?
Whenever employers plan to move headquarters or close plants, motivated local governments mobilize, taking action. As a result, both Ring Power and Tree of Life stayed in our county. Likewise, when New York Stock Exchange and other employers contemplated leaving NYC, mayors persuaded them to stay.
To paraphrase H. Ross Perot, "that gigantic sucking sound you hear" is good jobs leaving this beautiful town. Loss of FEC is devastating to our economy, another symptom of a rudderless government.
Some misguided Commissioners seek to revoke your legal right to vote for mayor -- come speak August 14 to protect your right to elect your mayor.
Commissioners took possible Sunshine violation trips to NYC in 2005 and 2002 (under criminal investigation by FDLE). Commissioners haven't explained why managers dumped the contents of our old illegal city landfill into the Old City Reservoir (under criminal investigation by FDEP).
Our historic area is now threatened with chain t-shirt shops.
All current commissioner were elected as "reformers." They've reformed nothing.
Illegal dumping and FECI leaving town show them to be unjust stewards.
We need competent leaders who care about our city, people and future.
www.cleanupcityof staugustine.blogspot.com
I'm supporting Peter Romano for City Commissioner (vs. Commissioner Gardner) and for mayor (vs. Commissioner Boles).
Lincolnville community leader Peter Romano is a former CFO and a forensic accountant, an expert in detecting fraud. No current commissioner has expertise in finance/accounting (and it shows). Peter Romano champions "new urbanism" planning to restore the beauty, peace and tranquility of the Nation's Oldest City.
Ed Slavin
St. Augustine
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/080606/opinions_yy5679.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
Publication Date: 08/06/06
Editor: After 111 years, Florida East Coast Industries is moving its corporate headquarters out of St. Augustine.
What has our city government done to persuade FECI to stay, to keep good-paying jobs (and other local jobs that depend on them)?
Whenever employers plan to move headquarters or close plants, motivated local governments mobilize, taking action. As a result, both Ring Power and Tree of Life stayed in our county. Likewise, when New York Stock Exchange and other employers contemplated leaving NYC, mayors persuaded them to stay.
To paraphrase H. Ross Perot, "that gigantic sucking sound you hear" is good jobs leaving this beautiful town. Loss of FEC is devastating to our economy, another symptom of a rudderless government.
Some misguided Commissioners seek to revoke your legal right to vote for mayor -- come speak August 14 to protect your right to elect your mayor.
Commissioners took possible Sunshine violation trips to NYC in 2005 and 2002 (under criminal investigation by FDLE). Commissioners haven't explained why managers dumped the contents of our old illegal city landfill into the Old City Reservoir (under criminal investigation by FDEP).
Our historic area is now threatened with chain t-shirt shops.
All current commissioner were elected as "reformers." They've reformed nothing.
Illegal dumping and FECI leaving town show them to be unjust stewards.
We need competent leaders who care about our city, people and future.
www.cleanupcityof staugustine.blogspot.com
I'm supporting Peter Romano for City Commissioner (vs. Commissioner Gardner) and for mayor (vs. Commissioner Boles).
Lincolnville community leader Peter Romano is a former CFO and a forensic accountant, an expert in detecting fraud. No current commissioner has expertise in finance/accounting (and it shows). Peter Romano champions "new urbanism" planning to restore the beauty, peace and tranquility of the Nation's Oldest City.
Ed Slavin
St. Augustine
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/080606/opinions_yy5679.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
City's Response to FDEP Due Today: Will There Be Indictments of St. Augustine City Government Officials?
Our Ancient City's latest response to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection is due today.
St. Augustine city officials and outside counsel William Pence unsuccessfully tried to provide a defective sampling plan unadorned by water testing or other meaningful tests, while claiming that it was "de minimis" to dump 30 million pounds of materials on ten acres of land and refusing to clean up the Old City Reservoir as ordered.
The ancient Latin maxim is "de minimis non curat lex" -- the law does not worry about trifles.
Our City's bankrupt leadership trifles with DEP and SJRWMD, polluting our water and land, risking our groundwater and aquifer. St. Augustine city Manager WILIAM B. HARRISS and his minions continued their illegal dumping two days after criminal investigators arrived February 27, after three months of iolating SJRWMD orders not to dump (never answering SJRWMD's questions about a questionable permit application, dumping illegal instead). Our City is now guilty of wasting over six months on flummery and dupery, instead of cleaning up their mess as ordered.
Meanwhile, our City government continues trifling with open records requesters, requiring retired university professor Dr. Dwight Hines to go to court today seeking truck use and other computer and paper records that have been superciliously withheld by City officials (who provided over 100 pages of such records to FDEP in its investigation of illegal dumping).
A Grand Jury investigation is desired and required, as after Clay County's illegal dumping. There must be consequences for the environmental crimes in our community.
No more coverups. We have a right to Environmental Justice now.
St. Augustine city officials and outside counsel William Pence unsuccessfully tried to provide a defective sampling plan unadorned by water testing or other meaningful tests, while claiming that it was "de minimis" to dump 30 million pounds of materials on ten acres of land and refusing to clean up the Old City Reservoir as ordered.
The ancient Latin maxim is "de minimis non curat lex" -- the law does not worry about trifles.
Our City's bankrupt leadership trifles with DEP and SJRWMD, polluting our water and land, risking our groundwater and aquifer. St. Augustine city Manager WILIAM B. HARRISS and his minions continued their illegal dumping two days after criminal investigators arrived February 27, after three months of iolating SJRWMD orders not to dump (never answering SJRWMD's questions about a questionable permit application, dumping illegal instead). Our City is now guilty of wasting over six months on flummery and dupery, instead of cleaning up their mess as ordered.
Meanwhile, our City government continues trifling with open records requesters, requiring retired university professor Dr. Dwight Hines to go to court today seeking truck use and other computer and paper records that have been superciliously withheld by City officials (who provided over 100 pages of such records to FDEP in its investigation of illegal dumping).
A Grand Jury investigation is desired and required, as after Clay County's illegal dumping. There must be consequences for the environmental crimes in our community.
No more coverups. We have a right to Environmental Justice now.
Friday, July 28, 2006
E-mail to Bill Pence, Akerman Senterfitt (City's defense lawyer in illegal dumping case, wearing hat below)
http://staugustine.com/images/031703/soc4.jpg
http://staugustine.com/stories/031703/com_social.shtml
Dear Mr. Pence:
Still have not heard back from you on St. Augustine's illegal dumping. John Regan told me in March that you would answer questions. Is the costumed photo at the url above of you? Of what materials is your costume constructed? Who made it? Do you still own and wear it?
Did you advise the City of St. Augustine to dump the entire contents of the old illegal city landfill into the Old City Reservoir? Did you advise the City not to do so?
Is that why you're remaining silent?
Do your law partners and family know about what happened here and why?
Have you notified your malpractice insurance carrier?
Does the City Manager have a criminal defense lawyer?
Thank you.
With kindest regards,
Ed Slavin
www.cleanupcityofstaugustine.blogspot.com
904-471-7023
City Deadline Extended on Illegal Dumping Response
The City of St. Augustine's time to respond to FDEP's expressed dissatisfaction with oru City's flummery and dupery has been extended until August 8, 2006. FDEP has rejected St. Augustine's claim that the illegal dumping was "de minimis," along with St. Augustine's sampling plan, failure to remove the contaminants and failure to address its water pollution. Another expensive stay by City of St. Augustine counsel Bill Pence at the Casa Monica is in order, with tapxyaers paying for it. Meanwhile, the FDEP's criminal investigation of St. Augustine's illegal dumping continues.
Is democracy dying in St. Augustine, Florida?
On August 14, 2006, City of St. Augustine Commissioners will discuss taking away citizens' rights to elect our Mayor, by referendum.
As Henry Kissinger once responded to a bad football call by standing up and exclaiming, "on vot theory?"
Come speak out at the City Commission at 5 PM at the Lightner Museum and City Hall, 75 King Street. Fill out a speaker card. Democracy cannot a spectator sport any longer.
The measure is opposed by Mayor George Gardner but supported by several other Commissioners unlikely to be elected Mayor. Are they effete and insensitive elitists who think the gavel belongs in front of them? Do they think the people of our City are as unenlightened as those who burned the Declaration of Independence here in 1776 (along with effigies of John Hancock and John Adams)?
Are the developers, herders and controllers responding to the election of the putative reformer, George Gardner, in hopes of preventing a reformer from ever becoming Mayor again?
What do you think? Speak out.
As Henry Kissinger once responded to a bad football call by standing up and exclaiming, "on vot theory?"
Come speak out at the City Commission at 5 PM at the Lightner Museum and City Hall, 75 King Street. Fill out a speaker card. Democracy cannot a spectator sport any longer.
The measure is opposed by Mayor George Gardner but supported by several other Commissioners unlikely to be elected Mayor. Are they effete and insensitive elitists who think the gavel belongs in front of them? Do they think the people of our City are as unenlightened as those who burned the Declaration of Independence here in 1776 (along with effigies of John Hancock and John Adams)?
Are the developers, herders and controllers responding to the election of the putative reformer, George Gardner, in hopes of preventing a reformer from ever becoming Mayor again?
What do you think? Speak out.
Sunday, July 09, 2006
Letter: St. Augustine guilty of pollution crimes?
Letter: St. Augustine guilty of pollution crimes?
Edwin L. Bricker; Olympia, Washington
Publication Date: 07/06/06
Editor: As a long-time environmental regulator for the state of Washington, I know from viewing Florida Department of Environmental Protection photographs that the city of St. Augustine and its officials possibly could be prosecuted for environmental crimes.
City managers must take personal responsibility.
It is mind-boggling to imagine what city officials were thinking when they took the contents of St. Augustine's old illegal dump and deposited it into the Old City Reservoir.
They owe you answers.
Ed Slavin represented me in my whistle-blower cases against two Department of Energy contractors, Westinghouse Hanford Company and Rockwell International. They involved retaliation against me for reporting nuclear safety concerns at the Hanford, Wash., nuclear weapons plants; the world's largest and dirtiest polluted site.
I worked undercover for Congressman John Dingell and was profiled in Ralph Nader's 1997 book, "No Contest."
Our Founding Fathers pledged "our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor" for liberty. I am grateful for Ed Slavin's work in my community and in yours.
If Ed had not reported the city of St. Augustine's immoral, illegal pollution, there is no telling how much damage might have been done to your aquifer and groundwater.
I hope that the good people of St. Augustine will rise up in righteous wrath, working to change their government to protect your beautiful environment.
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/070606/opinions_opi76b.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
Edwin L. Bricker; Olympia, Washington
Publication Date: 07/06/06
Editor: As a long-time environmental regulator for the state of Washington, I know from viewing Florida Department of Environmental Protection photographs that the city of St. Augustine and its officials possibly could be prosecuted for environmental crimes.
City managers must take personal responsibility.
It is mind-boggling to imagine what city officials were thinking when they took the contents of St. Augustine's old illegal dump and deposited it into the Old City Reservoir.
They owe you answers.
Ed Slavin represented me in my whistle-blower cases against two Department of Energy contractors, Westinghouse Hanford Company and Rockwell International. They involved retaliation against me for reporting nuclear safety concerns at the Hanford, Wash., nuclear weapons plants; the world's largest and dirtiest polluted site.
I worked undercover for Congressman John Dingell and was profiled in Ralph Nader's 1997 book, "No Contest."
Our Founding Fathers pledged "our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor" for liberty. I am grateful for Ed Slavin's work in my community and in yours.
If Ed had not reported the city of St. Augustine's immoral, illegal pollution, there is no telling how much damage might have been done to your aquifer and groundwater.
I hope that the good people of St. Augustine will rise up in righteous wrath, working to change their government to protect your beautiful environment.
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/070606/opinions_opi76b.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
Letter: End tyranny, waste in our Oldest City
Letter: End tyranny, waste in our Oldest City
David Brian Wallace
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 07/04/06
Editor: I strongly agree with Ed Slavin's June 25 column, "St. Augustine: We can make it much better."
Congratulations to The Record for its recent journalism prizes, particularly reporter Kati Bexley's investigative story on the New York City junket by five commissioners, the city manager and their spouses and significant others.
Our city of St. Augustine has so much to be proud of ñ our people, nature, beauty, schools, music, art, culture, scholars and history.
It's a tragedy that our city government so poorly serves our city's people. It discriminate against African-Americans and gays, while refusing to discuss a Living Wage Ordinance. It rubber-stamps sweetheart contracts and wastes money on junkets to New York City, Germany and Spain.
Since I moved to St. Augustine, I've noticed apathy is ending. It's about time.
A bit of our city's soul died earlier this year when our city manager and his cronies polluted our Old City Reservoir with the contents of the old illegal city landfill.
Ed Slavin blew the whistle on the pollution, reporting it to the U.S. government's National Response Center; which referred it to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection; which began a criminal investigation.
I've known Ed Slavin for 17 years. In 1983, as a young weekly newspaper editor, Ed obtained the Department of Energy's declassification of the world's largest mercury pollution event in Oak Ridge, Tenn. Ed has helped reform the nuclear weapons complex and other tyrannies, holding governments and corporations accountable and investigating abuses of power for three decades.
Ed has rightly been speaking out on St. Augustine city government issues.
We must protect the rights of our citizens and government employees and end the tyranny and waste at City Hall.
As Ed said in this column, we get to "overthrow" our city government "every two years."
Register and vote.
See www.cleanupcityof staugustine.blogspot.com.
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/070406/opinions_3930124.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
David Brian Wallace
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 07/04/06
Editor: I strongly agree with Ed Slavin's June 25 column, "St. Augustine: We can make it much better."
Congratulations to The Record for its recent journalism prizes, particularly reporter Kati Bexley's investigative story on the New York City junket by five commissioners, the city manager and their spouses and significant others.
Our city of St. Augustine has so much to be proud of ñ our people, nature, beauty, schools, music, art, culture, scholars and history.
It's a tragedy that our city government so poorly serves our city's people. It discriminate against African-Americans and gays, while refusing to discuss a Living Wage Ordinance. It rubber-stamps sweetheart contracts and wastes money on junkets to New York City, Germany and Spain.
Since I moved to St. Augustine, I've noticed apathy is ending. It's about time.
A bit of our city's soul died earlier this year when our city manager and his cronies polluted our Old City Reservoir with the contents of the old illegal city landfill.
Ed Slavin blew the whistle on the pollution, reporting it to the U.S. government's National Response Center; which referred it to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection; which began a criminal investigation.
I've known Ed Slavin for 17 years. In 1983, as a young weekly newspaper editor, Ed obtained the Department of Energy's declassification of the world's largest mercury pollution event in Oak Ridge, Tenn. Ed has helped reform the nuclear weapons complex and other tyrannies, holding governments and corporations accountable and investigating abuses of power for three decades.
Ed has rightly been speaking out on St. Augustine city government issues.
We must protect the rights of our citizens and government employees and end the tyranny and waste at City Hall.
As Ed said in this column, we get to "overthrow" our city government "every two years."
Register and vote.
See www.cleanupcityof staugustine.blogspot.com.
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/070406/opinions_3930124.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
St. Augustinians Rightfully Expect A LOT From Our City Government -- Listening, Openness and Thought (LOT):
As St. Augustine Record columnist Peter Guinta wrote in Editor & Publisher magazine, this is a "small but cosmopolitan city." Our City has all of the colors of the Rainbow and we celebrate our diversity. We love St. Augustine "thattaway," whether we're born here or moved here.
Our City government must be made more responsive to our diverse citizenry and its reasonable expectations of fairness.
230 years ago, our American Founders dedicated their lives, fortunes and sacred honor to the cause of Liberty. Those values have been neglected by City leaders who are indifferent to public opinion and wasteful of public funds.
Our City has taken too many major actions without adequate planning and thought. We have a right to expect a LOT from our government -- Listening, Openness and Thought (LOT). Instead, Commissioners don't listen well, our government lacks openness and our leaders are lacking in thoughtfulness. Every neighborhood has seemingly shared the same experience -- citizens too often being treated disrespectfully by their City Commissioners whenever citizens speak out on neighborhood concerns. Commissioners have been noticed rolling their eyes and looking at their watches while they prevent citizens from sharing facts to counter developers and even frustrating the use of photos and videotapes on the City-controlled cable TV broadcasts.
Our 440 year old City's government has grown too big for its britches. City officials are too often cynical and TIRED, full of Timidity, Irritability, Rejection, Excuses and Delays (TIRED).
St. Augustine needs fresh ideas and a new start.
Faster than a speeding developer's dump truck, our Ancient City is losing its character. Are we losing our right to enjoy our City's peaceful, quiet beauty?
As several Commissioners said in the past, as candidates, our Commission is a "rubberstamp." Is our Nation's Oldest City's future decided in secret?
Is our City's future t-shirts and chain stores in our historic downtown? Can the future of St. Augustine be made nobler and more faithful to peoples' traditions and small town values (learning from the example of Colonial Williamsburg)?
St. Augustine stands at a crossroads. Please see below.
Our City government must be made more responsive to our diverse citizenry and its reasonable expectations of fairness.
230 years ago, our American Founders dedicated their lives, fortunes and sacred honor to the cause of Liberty. Those values have been neglected by City leaders who are indifferent to public opinion and wasteful of public funds.
Our City has taken too many major actions without adequate planning and thought. We have a right to expect a LOT from our government -- Listening, Openness and Thought (LOT). Instead, Commissioners don't listen well, our government lacks openness and our leaders are lacking in thoughtfulness. Every neighborhood has seemingly shared the same experience -- citizens too often being treated disrespectfully by their City Commissioners whenever citizens speak out on neighborhood concerns. Commissioners have been noticed rolling their eyes and looking at their watches while they prevent citizens from sharing facts to counter developers and even frustrating the use of photos and videotapes on the City-controlled cable TV broadcasts.
Our 440 year old City's government has grown too big for its britches. City officials are too often cynical and TIRED, full of Timidity, Irritability, Rejection, Excuses and Delays (TIRED).
St. Augustine needs fresh ideas and a new start.
Faster than a speeding developer's dump truck, our Ancient City is losing its character. Are we losing our right to enjoy our City's peaceful, quiet beauty?
As several Commissioners said in the past, as candidates, our Commission is a "rubberstamp." Is our Nation's Oldest City's future decided in secret?
Is our City's future t-shirts and chain stores in our historic downtown? Can the future of St. Augustine be made nobler and more faithful to peoples' traditions and small town values (learning from the example of Colonial Williamsburg)?
St. Augustine stands at a crossroads. Please see below.
21 Ideas for Putting People First in St. Augustine, Florida in the 21st Century:
Will our government of our City of St. Augustine start to "put people first?" Will citizens be represented on our City Commission? Shall our City "put people first" by:
1. Listening: Listening to citizen concerns, learning from citizens' experience and concerns, and protecting citizens from possibility of City government waste, fraud, mismanagement, misfeasance, malfeasance, nonfeasance or abuse of power?
2. Halt Wasteful Spending: Instituting zero-based budgeting (ZBB), with an eye toward restraining wasteful City spending on White Elephants and Junkets (WEJ)(like parking garage, NYC and European trips) and Overpriced Objects and Commodities (OOC)(like buying gasoline on the spot market based on telephone price quotes, not long-term contracts)?
3. Information Transparency: Securing your "right to know" about City government, including an Online Reading Room for all documents given to Commissioners (as the County has)?
4. Truly Open Meetings and Transparency (TOMAP): Providing at least one annual Town Listening Meeting, while establishing a fully functioning City website that includes City documents and on-demand "streaming video" access to City meetings, 24/7?
5. Protecting our Environment: Stopping our City's long-secret illegal dumping, holding managers accountable and conserving our trees, quiet streets, waterways and precious cultural, historic and environmental heritage while increasing City recycling, energy conservation, use of alternative fuels, walkability, bicycling, disabled access and sports venues?
6. Worker Protection: Protecting workers' ability to live where they work?
7. Saving on Utilities, Energy and Other Variable Costs: Investigating possible ways of saving our City and residents tax dollars and extending the savings to residents as well.
8. Solving Health Care Crisis: Investigating the possibility of single payor health insurance for all residents of our city and county, as Cape Cod (Barnstable County, Massachusetts) is considering? www.capecare.info Our county's high infant mortality rate amidst great wealth and great poverty requires action.
9. Encourage Environmental Parks, Bicycling and Walkways: Consider adding more all-walking streets -- helping encourage higher paying jobs and, prosperity for small businesses, families, artists, musicians, historic re-enactors, entertainers and vendors?
10. Protecting the Middle Class and Working to Solve Poverty: Raising labor standards and helping workers afford to live where they work, while working to help homeowners keep and repair their homes by obtaining federal community development grants and working to assure affordable housing?
11. Preserving History: Preserving our Ancient City's Native American, Spanish, British, American and nautical history and culture: How do we stop creeping ugliness and destruction of historic and scenic values and burial sites and water pollution?
12. Hurricane Preparedness: Working to improve flood control while enhancing emergency preparedness for hurricanes and other disasters (especially including disabled, senior citizens, students and low-income people)?
13. Creating Greenbelts, Greenspace and an Emerald Necklack of Parks, Managing Growth and Halting Careening, Out-of-Control Ugliness: Can our City do a better job protecting the quality of life and our neighborhoods from speeding trucks, toxic hazards, noise, ugly condo buildings, McMansions, speculators and overdevelopers(a/k/a "flippers")?
14. Protecting Human Rights: Protecting civil and human rights in housing, education, employment, public accommodations, law enforcement and government services, assuring full disabled access to our City, ending de facto discrimination and the "glass ceiling" in City government hiring/ promotion/employment, and assuring balanced memberships on City boards and commissions and fair employment practices?
15. Reconciliation: Healing divisions and honoring our City's historic civil rights pioneers (and hate crime victims) by promoting reconciliation and brotherhood and equality, with discussion of appointment of a Reconciliation Commission and discussion with West Augustine residents of annexation and apologizing for historic wrongs by our City?
16. Employee Free Speech Rights Protection: Guaranteeing protection for all city employees' rights to do their jobs without fear or favor by protecting whistleblower and free speech rights?
17. City Commission Accountability: Providing for annual performance appraisals for City Manager and other municipal managers and supervisors and considering changes to City Charter?
18. Open City Manager Selection Process: Increasing oversight and limiting powers of City Managers and providing for open selection process and search committee for selection of next City Manager, City Attorney and other top positions?
19. Citizen Oversight: Appointing an independent Inspector General, Ombuds (citizen advocate) and Law Enforcement Review Board - all reporting directly to City Commissioners to help eliminate waste and lawsuits?
20. Community of Scholars and Artists (COSA): Increasing public display of artists' work in present and planned public buildings, remove barriers to artists performing, e.g., redressing the St. George Street artist, musician and entertainer ordinance and working to ease "Town vs. Gown" tensions with Florida School for the Deaf and Blind and Flagler College, while helping St. Augustine build upon its reputation as a community of scholars and artists?
21. WIFI Network: Investigating the possibility of a Wireless Internet (WIFI) network for our City, helping grow small business and tourists and encouraging students using the Internet, reducing costs of communicating for our City, our employees and our citizens, building on St. Augustine's growing reputation as a community of scholars and a place of learning? (New Smyrna Beach, Florida and many other cities have done it.)
As JFK said, "a rising tide lifts all boats." I would greatly appreciate hearing your thoughts on these 21 ideas for the 21st century in St. Augustine.
What do you think?
With kindest regards, I am,
Sincerely yours,
Ed Slavin
Box 3084
St. Augustine, Florida 32085-3084
904-471-7023
EASlavin@aol.com
1. Listening: Listening to citizen concerns, learning from citizens' experience and concerns, and protecting citizens from possibility of City government waste, fraud, mismanagement, misfeasance, malfeasance, nonfeasance or abuse of power?
2. Halt Wasteful Spending: Instituting zero-based budgeting (ZBB), with an eye toward restraining wasteful City spending on White Elephants and Junkets (WEJ)(like parking garage, NYC and European trips) and Overpriced Objects and Commodities (OOC)(like buying gasoline on the spot market based on telephone price quotes, not long-term contracts)?
3. Information Transparency: Securing your "right to know" about City government, including an Online Reading Room for all documents given to Commissioners (as the County has)?
4. Truly Open Meetings and Transparency (TOMAP): Providing at least one annual Town Listening Meeting, while establishing a fully functioning City website that includes City documents and on-demand "streaming video" access to City meetings, 24/7?
5. Protecting our Environment: Stopping our City's long-secret illegal dumping, holding managers accountable and conserving our trees, quiet streets, waterways and precious cultural, historic and environmental heritage while increasing City recycling, energy conservation, use of alternative fuels, walkability, bicycling, disabled access and sports venues?
6. Worker Protection: Protecting workers' ability to live where they work?
7. Saving on Utilities, Energy and Other Variable Costs: Investigating possible ways of saving our City and residents tax dollars and extending the savings to residents as well.
8. Solving Health Care Crisis: Investigating the possibility of single payor health insurance for all residents of our city and county, as Cape Cod (Barnstable County, Massachusetts) is considering? www.capecare.info Our county's high infant mortality rate amidst great wealth and great poverty requires action.
9. Encourage Environmental Parks, Bicycling and Walkways: Consider adding more all-walking streets -- helping encourage higher paying jobs and, prosperity for small businesses, families, artists, musicians, historic re-enactors, entertainers and vendors?
10. Protecting the Middle Class and Working to Solve Poverty: Raising labor standards and helping workers afford to live where they work, while working to help homeowners keep and repair their homes by obtaining federal community development grants and working to assure affordable housing?
11. Preserving History: Preserving our Ancient City's Native American, Spanish, British, American and nautical history and culture: How do we stop creeping ugliness and destruction of historic and scenic values and burial sites and water pollution?
12. Hurricane Preparedness: Working to improve flood control while enhancing emergency preparedness for hurricanes and other disasters (especially including disabled, senior citizens, students and low-income people)?
13. Creating Greenbelts, Greenspace and an Emerald Necklack of Parks, Managing Growth and Halting Careening, Out-of-Control Ugliness: Can our City do a better job protecting the quality of life and our neighborhoods from speeding trucks, toxic hazards, noise, ugly condo buildings, McMansions, speculators and overdevelopers(a/k/a "flippers")?
14. Protecting Human Rights: Protecting civil and human rights in housing, education, employment, public accommodations, law enforcement and government services, assuring full disabled access to our City, ending de facto discrimination and the "glass ceiling" in City government hiring/ promotion/employment, and assuring balanced memberships on City boards and commissions and fair employment practices?
15. Reconciliation: Healing divisions and honoring our City's historic civil rights pioneers (and hate crime victims) by promoting reconciliation and brotherhood and equality, with discussion of appointment of a Reconciliation Commission and discussion with West Augustine residents of annexation and apologizing for historic wrongs by our City?
16. Employee Free Speech Rights Protection: Guaranteeing protection for all city employees' rights to do their jobs without fear or favor by protecting whistleblower and free speech rights?
17. City Commission Accountability: Providing for annual performance appraisals for City Manager and other municipal managers and supervisors and considering changes to City Charter?
18. Open City Manager Selection Process: Increasing oversight and limiting powers of City Managers and providing for open selection process and search committee for selection of next City Manager, City Attorney and other top positions?
19. Citizen Oversight: Appointing an independent Inspector General, Ombuds (citizen advocate) and Law Enforcement Review Board - all reporting directly to City Commissioners to help eliminate waste and lawsuits?
20. Community of Scholars and Artists (COSA): Increasing public display of artists' work in present and planned public buildings, remove barriers to artists performing, e.g., redressing the St. George Street artist, musician and entertainer ordinance and working to ease "Town vs. Gown" tensions with Florida School for the Deaf and Blind and Flagler College, while helping St. Augustine build upon its reputation as a community of scholars and artists?
21. WIFI Network: Investigating the possibility of a Wireless Internet (WIFI) network for our City, helping grow small business and tourists and encouraging students using the Internet, reducing costs of communicating for our City, our employees and our citizens, building on St. Augustine's growing reputation as a community of scholars and a place of learning? (New Smyrna Beach, Florida and many other cities have done it.)
As JFK said, "a rising tide lifts all boats." I would greatly appreciate hearing your thoughts on these 21 ideas for the 21st century in St. Augustine.
What do you think?
With kindest regards, I am,
Sincerely yours,
Ed Slavin
Box 3084
St. Augustine, Florida 32085-3084
904-471-7023
EASlavin@aol.com
Column in St. Augustine Record, June 25, 2006
St. Augustine: We can make it much better
By Ed Slavin
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 06/25/06
In Oak Ridge, Tenn., in 1983 and in St. Augustine, Fla., in 2006, the stories were similar. In Oak Ridge, nuclear installations perpetrated the largest mercury pollution event in world history -- 4.2 million pounds, declassified on May 17, 1983.
In 2006, our city of St. Augustine polluted our Old City Reservoir, where people bass-fished and swam for decades. Violating St. Johns River Water Management District (SJRWMD) orders -- dumping even after criminal investigators arrived Feb. 27.
Former EPA Regional Administrator John Hankinson calls the city's coquina lake "an open sore straight down to the aquifer/groundwater."
Current City Commissioners ran as reformers, promising not to "rubber-stamp" City Manager William Harriss. Now they're on his team, junketing to NYC, Spain and Germany.
Amid a criminal investigation, commissioners in March presented Harriss an award, expressing "confidence", later terming dumping a "mistake."
Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) photos show bedsprings, tanks, old refrigerators, pipes, electrical cable, toilets, metal, plastic, asphalt -- 20,000-cubic-yards of unpermitted contaminants from our city's old illegal dump on Riberia Street -- dumped in water.
That's enough to fill in six Olympic size swimming pools six-feet-deep (or cover a football field 11.2 feet).
On Feb. 24, Mayor George Gardner told me that he was told that the dumping was "clean fill." Even if that were true, it would have been illegal, violating SJRWMD's orders. Furthermore, "there are no bedsprings in clean fill," as retired EPA regulator John Marler says.
Our city's secrecy and 20,000-cubic-yards of unpermitted water pollution symbolizes a crisis of spirit.
Just how secretive?
Our city refuses to web-post commission agenda-packet documents on its Web site, unpersuasively claiming it's "too expensive." What dupery and flummery. St. Johns County Commissioners and SJRWMD web-post such documents. Congress and legislature web-post bills/reports.
Our city is too secretive. We need government watchdogs.
That's why SJRWMD, Miami-Dade County, state and federal agencies all have independent inspectors general. Our city and county need them, too. We need open national searches for the next city manager (with annual performance evaluations).
What other reforms should we consider?
Let's protect employees against retaliation, protecting the flow of information. Let's investigate our city's $45 million budget. Let's remedy its lack of planning. Let's reform purchasing. We need more competitive bidding and energy conservation. Can we start buying gasoline intelligently; by long-term contract (not spot market phone quotes)?
Can we use hybrid vehicles and recycled cooking oil fuels instead of diesel (like SJC)? Can we use GPS monitoring for vehicles?
Time-Warner cable TV's city franchise expired in 2004. Can we seek better deals, including wireless internet (WiFi) to attract sophisticated visitors and small businesses? City Commissioners voted a questionable new 10-year lease, ignoring public hearing witnesses -- every single one of whom testified against Time Warner.
Traffic snarls our city. Time to discuss trolley cars, as in 1920s? Our city gets only about $50,000 in federal grants annually; it missed the deadline for a $1 million state grant to fix City Hall/Lightner's roof. Can we do better to preserve history and promote heritage tourism?
Commissioners voted for stripmall/condos north of SAHS, preserving only part of a 3,000- to 4,000-year-old archaeological site. The developer-consultant's archeology report wasn't first provided to government archeologists.
Let's preserve 10,000 years of history with an emerald necklace of parks.
JFK said, "a rising tide lifts all boats." Let's help create good jobs; raising living standards. Let's consider a Living Wage ordinance, like other Florida jurisdictions.
Let's respect/protect diversity and human rights/lives with equality/ fairness in hiring/services and disaster planning -- including evacuation help and pet-friendly shelters.
America was founded to put people first. "We the people" are sovereign. We deserve "government of the people, by the people and for the people," in Lincoln's words.
Ask questions. Demand answers. Expect democracy. See www.cleanupcityofstaugustine.blogspot.com
Think globally, act locally.
Help change history right here in our Nation's Oldest City. Let's elect reformers (and watchdog them).
St. Augustinians get to overthrow our government every two years.
(Slavin is a former practicing attorney and a frequent and outspoken critic of city policies and politics).
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/062506/opinions_3656546.shtml
By Ed Slavin
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 06/25/06
In Oak Ridge, Tenn., in 1983 and in St. Augustine, Fla., in 2006, the stories were similar. In Oak Ridge, nuclear installations perpetrated the largest mercury pollution event in world history -- 4.2 million pounds, declassified on May 17, 1983.
In 2006, our city of St. Augustine polluted our Old City Reservoir, where people bass-fished and swam for decades. Violating St. Johns River Water Management District (SJRWMD) orders -- dumping even after criminal investigators arrived Feb. 27.
Former EPA Regional Administrator John Hankinson calls the city's coquina lake "an open sore straight down to the aquifer/groundwater."
Current City Commissioners ran as reformers, promising not to "rubber-stamp" City Manager William Harriss. Now they're on his team, junketing to NYC, Spain and Germany.
Amid a criminal investigation, commissioners in March presented Harriss an award, expressing "confidence", later terming dumping a "mistake."
Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) photos show bedsprings, tanks, old refrigerators, pipes, electrical cable, toilets, metal, plastic, asphalt -- 20,000-cubic-yards of unpermitted contaminants from our city's old illegal dump on Riberia Street -- dumped in water.
That's enough to fill in six Olympic size swimming pools six-feet-deep (or cover a football field 11.2 feet).
On Feb. 24, Mayor George Gardner told me that he was told that the dumping was "clean fill." Even if that were true, it would have been illegal, violating SJRWMD's orders. Furthermore, "there are no bedsprings in clean fill," as retired EPA regulator John Marler says.
Our city's secrecy and 20,000-cubic-yards of unpermitted water pollution symbolizes a crisis of spirit.
Just how secretive?
Our city refuses to web-post commission agenda-packet documents on its Web site, unpersuasively claiming it's "too expensive." What dupery and flummery. St. Johns County Commissioners and SJRWMD web-post such documents. Congress and legislature web-post bills/reports.
Our city is too secretive. We need government watchdogs.
That's why SJRWMD, Miami-Dade County, state and federal agencies all have independent inspectors general. Our city and county need them, too. We need open national searches for the next city manager (with annual performance evaluations).
What other reforms should we consider?
Let's protect employees against retaliation, protecting the flow of information. Let's investigate our city's $45 million budget. Let's remedy its lack of planning. Let's reform purchasing. We need more competitive bidding and energy conservation. Can we start buying gasoline intelligently; by long-term contract (not spot market phone quotes)?
Can we use hybrid vehicles and recycled cooking oil fuels instead of diesel (like SJC)? Can we use GPS monitoring for vehicles?
Time-Warner cable TV's city franchise expired in 2004. Can we seek better deals, including wireless internet (WiFi) to attract sophisticated visitors and small businesses? City Commissioners voted a questionable new 10-year lease, ignoring public hearing witnesses -- every single one of whom testified against Time Warner.
Traffic snarls our city. Time to discuss trolley cars, as in 1920s? Our city gets only about $50,000 in federal grants annually; it missed the deadline for a $1 million state grant to fix City Hall/Lightner's roof. Can we do better to preserve history and promote heritage tourism?
Commissioners voted for stripmall/condos north of SAHS, preserving only part of a 3,000- to 4,000-year-old archaeological site. The developer-consultant's archeology report wasn't first provided to government archeologists.
Let's preserve 10,000 years of history with an emerald necklace of parks.
JFK said, "a rising tide lifts all boats." Let's help create good jobs; raising living standards. Let's consider a Living Wage ordinance, like other Florida jurisdictions.
Let's respect/protect diversity and human rights/lives with equality/ fairness in hiring/services and disaster planning -- including evacuation help and pet-friendly shelters.
America was founded to put people first. "We the people" are sovereign. We deserve "government of the people, by the people and for the people," in Lincoln's words.
Ask questions. Demand answers. Expect democracy. See www.cleanupcityofstaugustine.blogspot.com
Think globally, act locally.
Help change history right here in our Nation's Oldest City. Let's elect reformers (and watchdog them).
St. Augustinians get to overthrow our government every two years.
(Slavin is a former practicing attorney and a frequent and outspoken critic of city policies and politics).
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/062506/opinions_3656546.shtml
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
New Smyrna city manager put on leave
June 27, 2006
New Smyrna city manager put on leave
By MELANIE STAWICKI AZAM
Staff Writer
NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- In an abrupt leadership change, City Manager Frank Roberts will relinquish his duties today, while Assistant City Manager John Hagood picks up the reins for the next six months.
At a special meeting Monday afternoon, City Commissioners unanimously voted to put Roberts on administrative paid leave immediately until Sept. 30, followed by six months of severance pay, which is in his contract. Roberts earns $107,494 annually.
Hagood, 55, was appointed as interim city manager for the next six months at Roberts' current pay rate. The commission also agreed to pursue a search, limited to the Central Florida area for new city manager candidates.
The commission decision differed from what Roberts had originally proposed. He said at a June 8 meeting that he wished to retire at the end of December, due to ongoing health problems. But the commission seemed to believe an earlier transition was needed, saying it would cause the least trauma to staff and get Roberts, who has been with the city 20 years, resting at home.
"Mr. Roberts needs to go home," said Vice Mayor Lynne Plaskett. "He needs to be home with his family, he's in pain."
After announcing his impending retirement in May, Roberts, 54, was on leave for about a month, following emergency gall bladder surgery May 12. His main health problems -- which prompted his decision to retire -- involved nerve damage and constant, severe pain resulting from a case of shingles, a viral infection similar to chicken pox, he suffered from several years ago.
Further, Plaskett said in a letter the city manager sent to commissioners, he mentioned his plans to leave would "enable an orderly process with minimal trauma to an agency that is under significant trauma already." The reference to trauma at the city troubled her, she said, and she wanted to minimize the uncertainty at the city.
Commissioner Jack Grasty said the reference to "trauma" at the city also bothered him.
Roberts simply said "the turmoil that's out there is predicated on a number of reasons."
As for his retirement notification, Roberts said he gave the city plenty of advance notice, "because I felt it was the professional thing to do."
He wanted to leave at the end of year to resolve personal family matters that needed some extra time to wrap up. If he had known the commission would have reacted this way, he'd have done things differently, he said.
"I would think after 20 years, I would at least get that consideration," Roberts said. "But if not, I think I at least did what I thought was right."
City Commissioner Jim Hathaway asked if Roberts would be willing to stay on until year's end as a consultant if the city needed him. Roberts said the city is his home and he would help however he could. The commission also agreed to let him keep a city computer at his home.
Then, Grasty made the motion to put Roberts on leave, Plaskett seconded it and the vote was unanimous. Roberts left at the end of the meeting, choosing not to stay for the subsequent special commission meeting.
melanie.stawicki@news-jrnl.com
New Smyrna city manager put on leave
By MELANIE STAWICKI AZAM
Staff Writer
NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- In an abrupt leadership change, City Manager Frank Roberts will relinquish his duties today, while Assistant City Manager John Hagood picks up the reins for the next six months.
At a special meeting Monday afternoon, City Commissioners unanimously voted to put Roberts on administrative paid leave immediately until Sept. 30, followed by six months of severance pay, which is in his contract. Roberts earns $107,494 annually.
Hagood, 55, was appointed as interim city manager for the next six months at Roberts' current pay rate. The commission also agreed to pursue a search, limited to the Central Florida area for new city manager candidates.
The commission decision differed from what Roberts had originally proposed. He said at a June 8 meeting that he wished to retire at the end of December, due to ongoing health problems. But the commission seemed to believe an earlier transition was needed, saying it would cause the least trauma to staff and get Roberts, who has been with the city 20 years, resting at home.
"Mr. Roberts needs to go home," said Vice Mayor Lynne Plaskett. "He needs to be home with his family, he's in pain."
After announcing his impending retirement in May, Roberts, 54, was on leave for about a month, following emergency gall bladder surgery May 12. His main health problems -- which prompted his decision to retire -- involved nerve damage and constant, severe pain resulting from a case of shingles, a viral infection similar to chicken pox, he suffered from several years ago.
Further, Plaskett said in a letter the city manager sent to commissioners, he mentioned his plans to leave would "enable an orderly process with minimal trauma to an agency that is under significant trauma already." The reference to trauma at the city troubled her, she said, and she wanted to minimize the uncertainty at the city.
Commissioner Jack Grasty said the reference to "trauma" at the city also bothered him.
Roberts simply said "the turmoil that's out there is predicated on a number of reasons."
As for his retirement notification, Roberts said he gave the city plenty of advance notice, "because I felt it was the professional thing to do."
He wanted to leave at the end of year to resolve personal family matters that needed some extra time to wrap up. If he had known the commission would have reacted this way, he'd have done things differently, he said.
"I would think after 20 years, I would at least get that consideration," Roberts said. "But if not, I think I at least did what I thought was right."
City Commissioner Jim Hathaway asked if Roberts would be willing to stay on until year's end as a consultant if the city needed him. Roberts said the city is his home and he would help however he could. The commission also agreed to let him keep a city computer at his home.
Then, Grasty made the motion to put Roberts on leave, Plaskett seconded it and the vote was unanimous. Roberts left at the end of the meeting, choosing not to stay for the subsequent special commission meeting.
melanie.stawicki@news-jrnl.com
Monday, June 05, 2006
Consequences
Sir Winston Spencer Churchill said in the 1930s about another political Establishment, "They go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent. The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to a close. In its place, we are entering a period of consequences."
A City whose economy is based on history must no longer destroy its history.
A City whose economy is based on the beach, surfing, sailing and environmental tourism must no longer destroy its environment.
Sunday, June 04, 2006
City Managers Gone Wild -- Dumping Illegally in Old City Reservoir Even After Criminal Investigators Arrive!
To see what secrecy causes, please see 38 FDEP photos of our City's illegal dumping in the Old City Reservoir: http://forums.staugustine.com/cgi-bin/bb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=205126
Saturday, June 03, 2006
Reagan Wanted Inspectors General "Meaner Than a Junkyard Dog" -- St. Augustine Has Only Lapdogs, While Wasting Public Money
One Commissioner publicly asked if I was willing to pay for an Inspector General. We're all paying already for not having one. One Commissioner privately said it was unfriendly to have an IG in a small town.
It's "unfriendly" to have a City budget grow 35% in five years while our small town's population only grows 3%, expecting taxpayers to believe that because there has been no increase in our "millage rate," City Commissioners are somehow doing us all a favor.
What principled reasons exist for this rapidly rising and bloated budget?
Why is there not more competitive bidding?
Why is there not Zero Based Budgeting?
Why is there not openness and transparency, starting with publishing all City agenda packet documents on the City's website (as our Countyand Water Management Districts do)?
Does our City have something to hide?
Is it ashamed of the shallow reports provided to City Commissioners?
Is it unable to articulate defenses and answer questions formed after reading its agenda packet?
Our City government is gold plated, lacking in openness and accountability, and lacking in compassion.
There is no whistleblower protection.
There are no watchdogs, only lapdogs.
That's why we need an independent Inspector General, to audit and investigate.
No more white elephants.
No more junkets.
The St. Johns River Water Management District has an Inspector General (IG).
The State of Florida's agencies have IGs.
Federal agencies have IGs.
President Ronald Reagan said he wanted IGs "meaner than a junkyard dog."
He recognized that governments grow fat and lazy without auditors and investigators.
We have no "junkyard dog" in our City government.
Our five City Comissioners are lapdogs.
Only lapdogs would vote unanimously to give a heck-of-a-job award to the City Manager in the midst of a pending criminal investigation.
Only lapdogs would refuse to provide annual performance evaluations for the City Manager.
Only lapdogs would attack and censor people asking questions about the City Manager's 20,000 cubic yards of illegal dumping in the Old City Reservoir, without answering questgions.
Every single City Commissioner ran as a reformer.How many of them deserve that title now? None? What do you reckon?
It's "unfriendly" to have a City budget grow 35% in five years while our small town's population only grows 3%, expecting taxpayers to believe that because there has been no increase in our "millage rate," City Commissioners are somehow doing us all a favor.
What principled reasons exist for this rapidly rising and bloated budget?
Why is there not more competitive bidding?
Why is there not Zero Based Budgeting?
Why is there not openness and transparency, starting with publishing all City agenda packet documents on the City's website (as our Countyand Water Management Districts do)?
Does our City have something to hide?
Is it ashamed of the shallow reports provided to City Commissioners?
Is it unable to articulate defenses and answer questions formed after reading its agenda packet?
Our City government is gold plated, lacking in openness and accountability, and lacking in compassion.
There is no whistleblower protection.
There are no watchdogs, only lapdogs.
That's why we need an independent Inspector General, to audit and investigate.
No more white elephants.
No more junkets.
The St. Johns River Water Management District has an Inspector General (IG).
The State of Florida's agencies have IGs.
Federal agencies have IGs.
President Ronald Reagan said he wanted IGs "meaner than a junkyard dog."
He recognized that governments grow fat and lazy without auditors and investigators.
We have no "junkyard dog" in our City government.
Our five City Comissioners are lapdogs.
Only lapdogs would vote unanimously to give a heck-of-a-job award to the City Manager in the midst of a pending criminal investigation.
Only lapdogs would refuse to provide annual performance evaluations for the City Manager.
Only lapdogs would attack and censor people asking questions about the City Manager's 20,000 cubic yards of illegal dumping in the Old City Reservoir, without answering questgions.
Every single City Commissioner ran as a reformer.How many of them deserve that title now? None? What do you reckon?
Thursday, June 01, 2006
St. Augustine Whistleblower Protection Ordinance
In the wake of Ceballos v. Garcetti, we need a City whistleblower ordinance to protect the right of City employees to protect us against waste, fraud, abuse, misfeasance, malfeasance, nonfeasance, pollution, civil rights violations and mismanagement. Our City has a $45 million annual budget. Our City government put 20,000 cubic yards of contaminants in the Old City Reservoir. In the midst of a pending criminal investigation, our City Commissioners voted 5-0 back in March to express their undying confidence in City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS. What message does that send to City employees who are interviewed by FDEP investigators? Lets see our City Commissioners vote up or down on a whistleblower protection ordinance.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)