Ken Bryan wants to be mayor of St Augustine

Yesterday afternoon, Joseph Ken Bryan decided to announce what many had been speculating for weeks; that he is a candidate for mayor of the City of St Augustine. He filed the appropriate disclosures with the elections office, declaring himself as his own campaign treasurer.

Historic City News spoke with of Vicky Oakes, St Johns County Supervisor of Elections, confirming that the former one-term county commissioner, was declaring his property located at 126 Oyster Catcher Circle as his place of residence.

John Valdes, who is also a candidate for the city commission at this time, built the house on Bryan’s vacant lot in Pelican Reef in 2004; however, after losing his re-election bid on the county commission in 2012, Bryan had the property listed for sale through REGAL St Augustine Properties, according to the real estate listing with agent CeCe Reigle.

Bryan has taken some adversarial positions against the city that he says he wants to represent as mayor — he told the City of St Augustine that contracts were made to be broken and refused to honor the county’s obligation to maintain the community swimming pool at the Willie Galimore Center in Lincolnville.

Bryan also implied management of the city was racist when the city hesitated to extend the city’s sewer system to homes and building lots located outside of the city limits. The city contended that the properties in question were adequately serviced by local septic tanks and that if the property owners themselves were asking things might be different. Instead of owning the problem that was limited to a few county residents, Bryan tried to shame the city into building an expansion of the current sewer system, for non-city residents, on borrowed money, for people over which they have no jurisdiction and did not want to pay the required tap fees.