Visioning steering committee disbanded

At the conclusion of the special workshop meeting of the St Augustine City Commission on Monday evening, the Visioning 2014 and Beyond steering committee was finally disbanded — but we have not heard the last from them.

Officially, the elite, hand-picked zombie squad of fifteen have submitted their opinion of where the city should be directed for the future. They received a “well done” from Mayor Nancy Shaver, commissioners and city manager John Regan.

Unofficially, that “congratulations” may be somewhat premature. At least one commissioner, Todd Neville, voiced fundamental objections to the quality of the actual report; citing basic spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors.

A follow up presentation has been scheduled for the June 22nd meeting of the St Augustine City Commission. So, where will the interim work of this taxpayer-financed cadre of oracles be conducted? Apparently it is time for them to return to the secret Star Chamber; clearly, they still have some more work to do.

Created under the Boles administration, the visioning endeavor has been the pet project of Vice-Mayor Roxanne Horvath.

In the Boles’ signature style, he initially had no plans for open meetings, open records, or compliance with the requirements of Florida’s Sunshine Law. Under threat of complaints to the state Ethics Commission, then city attorney Ron Brown was able to convince Boles that he needed to re-think his approach.

The current city attorney, Isabelle Lopez, believes that by disbanding the committee, the former members could exchange ideas without a formal meeting required by the Sunshine Law.

Herbert A. Marlowe, Jr., Ph.D., and his company, Analytica, who originally quoted $15,000 for his work as “facilitator” for the committee, is the man who tried to force a “boilerplate” template, used on a previous visioning plan for another city, on the visioning committee for St Augustine.

Marlowe was fully funded to the tune of $74,500.