Hopes dim for VA clinic relocation in St. Augustine

Cameron

"Are we frustrated? Extremely so. But with the realization the VA staff will use any excuse, the frustration diminishes to the level of shaking one's head and walking away."

Assistant County Administrator Jerry Cameron faced a room full of veterans Wednesday night to explain efforts to relocate the St. Augustine VA clinic in the new county health complex when Lowes takes over the US 1 county property March 31, 2015.

"We offered to make facilities available to them, built to their specifications in our new facility and have, to date received nothing but a run around," Cameron said.

Negotiations began in October 2011. The VA's given assurances "Under no circumstances will VA services be interrupted to Veterans in the St. Augustine area," but "the growing veteran population in the county is in the north with Nocatee and other developments. The south end of the county is not growing and therefore is not viable regarding (the VA) center of population."

Clinging to fading hope, Veterans Council Chairman Bill Dudley has invited VA Public Affairs Officer Cindy Snook to the next Veterans Council meeting June 26 at the Elks Lodge on Anastasia Blvd.

Information contributed by Disabled American Veterans Chapter 6 Commander Michael Isam.

Pastor Rawls addresses board

The Historical Architectural Review Board Thursday tabled a request to demolish Lincolnville's historic Echo House "to see if there are any other options," as HARB Chair Len Weeks put it.

Public comment favored demolition to allow owner St. Paul AME Church to create more parking space, but others sided with preservation of the long vacant building.

"We're fighting for our existence in Lincolnville," Pastor Ron Rawls pleaded with the board. When told he should have an engineer's report to assess the building's condition, Rawls questioned getting an engineer "to tell us what you told us already," when city code inspectors condemned the building.

Options discussed are other vacant buildings with less historic value and agreements with neighboring organizations like the Excelsior Museum a block from the church. 

Postscript: Those roof tiles the church sold to a local homeowner much to the chagrin of the city; the homeowner used what he needed and donated the rest - some 2-3 pallets - to the city.

When you examine our traffic and parking situation it becomes obvious very quickly that our problem downtown is not our visitors or our students, it's their cars. It's time we have a serious conversation about satellite parking and public transport to keep visitors' and students' cars out of center city and surrounding neighborhoods.

There are those from the private sector who are now considering satellite parking and transport as a potential moneymaking business. The Red Trains and Green Trolley companies would appear to be ideally suited to make money by getting deeper into the private parking and transport business.

King Street, San Marco Avenue and Anastasia Boulevard all need to be better developed to become part of the St. Augustine "destination" and not be just "entry corridors." Being anchored by parking terminals and having trolleys and trains traversing these avenues will certainly help the redevelopment and improvement of businesses along those thoroughfares.

We should also be exploring the possibility of being able to offer online a "park and ride pass" giving those who work downtown the opportunity to park in city garage and ride one of the trains or trolleys to their place of employment. The passes would not be for a period of time but for a number of uses.

If private sector businesses can make money by helping to solve the parking and traffic problems they helped create, let's have them solve problems, make money and pay taxes, by all means.

Contributed by John Valdes, a candidate for City Commission