Rawls: City embarrassed by exposure of past mistakes

Historic City News, reporting on Monday night’s City Commission meeting, recorded audience applause when St Augustine commissioners and staff were cautioned about the consequences of their past failure to be “transparent, issue educated, and proactive” by St. Paul AME Pastor Ron Rawls, speaking for the local “300 Concerned Citizens” group.

In the Sunday issue of the local print newspaper, Opinion Editor Jim Sutton writes, “Shaver is hurting her own constituency”. And former vice-mayor Nancy Sikes Kline is quoted in the editorial describing the “coercive position” from which she says the mayor attempts to play, “is a weakness, not a strength.”

Commissioner Sikes-Kline is also quoted as saying that Shaver’s brand of “veiled disrespect, condescension and intimidation tactics” towards fellow commissioners “only works once”.

Pastor Rawls took exception to Sutton’s opinion that Mayor Shaver “is hurting her own constituency”, since the “300 Concerned Citizens” group was a significant constituency during the mayor’s election. The citizens worked overtime to build support with minorities in the community who said they felt like outsiders at city hall. Rawls describes Boles as “lacking the intestinal fortitude to ask the tough questions”.

“It appears that our elected officials and salaried leaders are concerned about being embarrassed by the exposure of past mistakes,” Rawls observed. “Madame Mayor, I stand here today to encourage you to keep doing what you were elected to do.”

In a “candid” conversation with the newspaper last week, that was apparently not “off-the-record”, Sikes-Kline concludes that “the mayor needs training” from the Florida League of Cities.  When she was presented a certificate for completion of one of the League’s weekend programs, Sikes-Kline made two or three wise-cracks, scolding the mayor, while prodding her to hurry up and take the classes.

“I’ve been hearing that the mayor needs to learn how things are done — and, that she’s guilty of stirring things up; which is another way of saying she’s disrupting the status quo,” Rawls told the mayor and two commissioners in attendance. Todd Neville and Roxanne Horvath did not attend Monday’s meeting.

“The reason we found ourselves in the fall of 2014 with 4% black employment; 0% black police officers, 0% black firefighters, 0% black representation in the top two paygrades of any department within the city, was because no one at this desk was willing to ask uncomfortable questions.”

From Rawls point-of-view, “We are now headed in the right direction and there is always resistance to change in transparency by those who benefited from the old system.”

Rawls asked for the commissioners, by their behavior between now and the 2016 election, to put the “300 Concerned Citizens” in a position to work for the re-election of officials that were “willing to ask uncomfortable questions”, and tough questions for the purpose of making St Augustine a better place for all of her residents.

Rawls warned the commissioners and staff “to pay attention”, saying that, “If you allow this city to fall back into a silent system that protects status quo, I can assure you that we will put forth our best effort to change it in 2016. We will unite with other groups that expect their leaders and elected officials to be transparent, issue educated, and proactive, as opposed to reactive.”

Watch the full video of Pastor Rawls statements to the commission