Editorial: Who is the 450th Commemoration for?

Local residents have paid millions of dollars over the past five years to finance a loosely defined, artificial construct referred to as the “450th Commemoration” — and, in no small part, the money has gone to pay for salaries, consultants, and private contractors.

With such an investment of public funds, you would expect to find substantial public buy-in and support for the activity, but that has failed to be the case in St Augustine, and even less within St Johns County.

To the contrary, there have been prolonged citizen objections ignored by a five-member commission, occasionally in a split vote, led by an obsessed mayor who was out of touch with the consequences his actions were taking against 13,000 ordinary, everyday people, strapped to pay the bill.

The necessary functions of our local government that support the health, safety and welfare of the residents, and our visitors, were put on hold. Whole departments were diverted to promoting a celebration of something only those wearing rose colored glasses could see. The emperor had no clothes and even the city manager was inveigled to play along.

Even though he is a lawyer, the mayor seemed determined to defeat Florida’s Sunshine Law at every turn. He went so far as to create a handpicked “steering committee” to usurp public oversight during publically announced meetings and to control participation in the 450th Commemoration decision-making process. When it became clear that the committee would face the same public scrutiny as the commission itself, Mayor Boles arranged for another lawyer, Donald Wallis, to illegally receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in advance payments of public funds, through a no-bid contract that was part of a scheme involving a now defunct “non-profit corporation”. The faces of the “honorary board of directors” of that corporation looked amazingly like the faces of the “steering committee”. Their clandestine method of operation that even excluded sitting elected officials from attending its meetings, was clearly an attempt to accomplish the same illegal end.

The community suffered and many well-reasoned, level-headed citizens simply threw up their hands at the absurdity; like so many ostriches with their heads planted firmly in the sand. Paraphrasing from a speech delivered by Edmund Burke to the House of Commons on April 23, 1770, the surest way for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.

The silent majority finally had enough in 2014; and, in a grass-roots Revolution at the ballot box that unified politically diverse voters from faith-based groups like “300 Concerned Citizens” and their “Souls to the Polls” movement, with fiscally conservative Tea Party members, the people took back the mayor’s seat in November; ousting Boles and electing his more moderate opponent, Nancy Shaver.

And even though ex-commissioner Don Crichlow, and ex-mayor Joe Boles, supported a 3-2 split vote to approve nearly a million more dollars in this year’s budget for the 450th Commemoration, as Mayor Shaver has said, just because it was budgeted doesn’t mean we have to spend it.

Historic City News completely supports Mayor Shaver’s more conservative approach and her focus on “residents and local businesses first” as it relates to the 450th Commemoration and future activities that impact our community.