Commissioners Wednesday will consider resolutions with public hearings to establish a special 

Spanish Street at Hypolita design

assessment district and describe its use: an assessment on adjoining property owners for improving streetscapes along Spanish, Hypolita and Treasury streets.

   While the plan has been endorsed by 80 percent of the property owners along those streets, the assessment will apply to all "even without the agreement of the property owners," City Attorney Ron Brown says. "The only property in the proposed assessment area not legally required to pay is a state owned parcel."

   The assessment will cover $750,000 of the $2.7 million project for underground utilities, brick street paving and coquina concrete sidewalks with flush curbs, and landscaping. Utility Fund reserves will cover $1.2 million in underground utility work and the General Fund $750,000 of the remaining $1.5 million.

   The project has been fast-tracked since initial discussions in July and commission approval in September, with a timeline for bidding this fall, construction start in January and completion before the city's 450th anniversary in 2015.

   On the Consent Agenda for Wednesday's City Commission meeting, usually approved without discussion:

   "It occurs to me that while the City of St. Augustine has much to offer in the visioning process, the effort might be better served if it were a community driven effort supported by the City. ... managed by leaders in residents, businesses and institutions in the community with assistance by the City."

   Vice Mayor Nancy Sikes-Kline memo to City Manager John Regan following City Commission workshops on a visioning process. 

  Public Broadcast System November 26 will televise a FRONTLINE/New York Times investigation into the death of Michelle O'Connell on the night she broke up with her boyfriend, St. Johns Sheriff's Deputy Jeremy Banks, September 2, 2010.

   "On the night she broke up with her police officer boyfriend, Michelle O'Connell was found dead from a gunshot in the mouth," says the report promo. "Next to her was her boyfriend's semi-automatic service pistol. The sheriff's office ruled it suicide - but was it?" 

1 year, 9 months, 24 days  to St. Augustine's 450th anniversary

     

   June 7, 1586, in the pre-dawn hours, a lookout spies a fire along the shore.  Sir Francis Drake, returning to England after raiding Spanish ports in the Caribbean, orders his fleet of 23 warships and nineteen smaller ships toward the light.  

   Historian Michael Gannon says that first public works project in today's America - a lighted watchtower to guide Spanish supply ships into St. Augustine - was a dismal failure.

   But the beacon for America's oldest port city would continue to guide ships along St. Augustine's shore through more than four centuries to the present day, its tower transforming over the years from wood, to coquina, to brick, granite, cast iron, and bronze; its beacon from torch, to whale oil, to lard oil, to electric light projected through a Fresnel lens; its height from 35, to 85, to 165 feet.

   St. Augustine founder Pedro Menendez ordered the first, a 35-foot wooden structure to guide Spanish ships from established ports in the Caribbean. In 1994, a determined volunteer organization, the Junior Service League, completed restoration of its last transformation, making it one of America's most historically correct, active maritime aids.

   During the British occupation of 1763-1784, a 50-foot wooden lookout was added. That tower would survive until 1880 before crumbling into the waters of Salt Run, where its remains can still be seen today.

   In 1823, the watchtower's location became part of a network of lighthouses to protect the nation's commerce.

   In 1871, with tides and storms eating into the land beneath the tower, Congress appropriated $60,000 for the construction of a new lighthouse. October 15, 1874, a new, 165-foot lighthouse was completed, and the light atop the old Spanish watchtower was permanently extinguished.

   Lighthouses are identified by mariners through two visual means unique to each lighthouse - one for day and one for night. St. Augustine's daymark is its black and white spiral with a red lantern atop. The tower's nightmark is in its light. From 1874 to 1936, St. Augustine's nightmark was one bright flash every three minutes. When electricity was installed in 1936, the speed of rotation increased to one fixed flash every thirty seconds.   

 

  Excerpts from The Lighthouse in St. Augustine Bedtime Stories. Click for further information on this fascinating historic series.