“Stand for Respect” at Monday night city commission meeting

Cash S. McVay, founder of City Sprout and the Lincolnville Community Garden, tells Historic City News that he has lived in St. Augustine since 1993 and in his home in Lincolnville since 1996.

McVay has been licensed to sell real estate since 1998. He says that he has been to 100’s of PZB and Commission meetings throughout my long career in Duval, Clay and St. Johns Counties. I’ve also been to many City of St. Augustine Commission meetings throughout the years for various projects and issues.

“I’ve never, please let me repeat NEVER, seen the level of disrespect for the office of the Mayor that I have witnessed with this current board,” McVay said last week. “The last commission meeting broke the camel’s back for me and for MANY residents that I’ve spoken with directly over the past week.”

McVay says the rancor is completely unprofessional and bottom line unacceptable, but he intends to make his feelings known.

In a statement distributed by McVay and forwarded by at least a dozen citizen and neighborhood communications, he invites supporters to come join a group of concerned citizens at the Lightner Museum Courtyard at 4:30 p.m. on Monday, January 25, to make a “stand for respect” at the scheduled City Commission meeting which starts at 5:00 p.m.

“We will all quietly take our seats towards the front of the room when the doors open. In order to show respect towards the City Commission, City Staff, and all the applicants with agenda items, we will be filling out only one speaker card with one designated person speaking on behalf of the full group in public comment,” the invitation reads.

The short statement will request that the rancor on the commission and disrespect towards the Office of the Mayor be ceased immediately, McVay says. McVay is hoping that a show of constructive solidarity behind one statement will make the impression necessary to get the attention of the four commissioners who have repeatedly marginalized Mayor Shaver since she was elected in 2014.

For his supporters, McVay says, once their three-minute public comment time ends, they plan to exit the building in an orderly fashion to go home to their families. “No claps, no signs, no jeers.”

Publicist Bonnie Hayflick informed Caren Goldman, Executive Director, Compassionate St. Augustine, that this issue should be known to the local organization’s friends, family and supporters, remarking that it “fits into our mission”.

Lincolnville businesswoman Judith Seraphin contacted her friends and neighbors to announce that she agrees with McVay’s statement and its presentation at the City Commission meeting Monday evening.

“The invitation is to all who believe that St Augustine’s City Commission should conduct the city’s business in an atmosphere of mutual respect,” Seraphin wrote.