Published by former Mayor George Gardner April 27 2016
The Report is an independent publication serving our community
|
Access realignment, added
parking for public library
Two US 1 accesses in conceptual design
 A closing of the West San Carlos access to the public library would be coupled with two accesses off US 1 and an exit onto San Marco Avenue from additional parking between the library and National Guard Armory.
Assistant City Manager Tim Burchfield gained consensus of city commissioners Monday on the concept, noting, "This needs to be done before they begin work on West San Carlos."
That work by the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) will create a third travel lane to increase traffic access to US 1.
Birchfield said the widening and redesign will eliminate 31 spaces in the library/Davenport Park area "but we would be adding 60, a net gain of 29 more spaces than we have now."
FDOT held a public session yesterday on its overall design to move traffic more efficiently through the currently congested San Marco/May Street intersection.
|
|
|
Gamble Rogers
Music Festival
The 21st Anniversary edition of the popular Gamble Rogers Music Festival brings the best in American folk music to St. Augustine Friday - Sunday, April 29 - May 1 at the Colonial Quarter.
It's a celebration of the music and storytelling of Gamble Rogers, an artist the Atlanta Constitution called "an American treasure worthy of inclusion in the Smithsonian."
Friday night there will be several music performances on multiple stages. Saturday and Sunday the music continues along with workshops, family activities and more.
Check the website for the lineup and ticket packages.
|
|
|
 Police Chief Loran Lueders admitted to commissioners Monday that "It was a very bad month of April for violent crime," but assured them "There are no commonalities" to four homicides, an accidental shooting and a shooting at a bar. "It's no particular area of town, and there's no reason for us to believe that it will continue to happen." Lueders did suggest of the current 2 am bar closing time, "For me it would make life a lot better in St. Augustine if you moved that back. "Downtown has become night life. After closing - your entire police force is running patrons out of downtown because they don't want to go home," he said. "There'd be a place to go if they wanted to continue to drink - outside the city." City Manager John Regan recommended, "as we pick up our working effort on noise in May that we include the discussion of drinking time." He said noise and public safety and nightlife will be discussed at the May 23 commission meeting.
|
Test ground for
peak traffic periods
For me, one day a year is a not the problem. We can all stay home on the Fourth of July.
City Commissioners Leanna Freeman
It is not about the Fourth of July, it is a path to a much larger vision.
City Manager John Regan
Public Works Director Martha Graham Monday outlined for city commissioners plans for remote parking and shuttles for the upcoming July 4th weekend, including areas at San Marco Avenue and Court Edna, the Florida East Coast property at US 1 and San Marco, and the parking area at the county offices on San Sebastian View.
Her target of July 4 brought that comment by Commissioner Freeman and response from City Manager Regan.
"This is our test ground for operating during peak periods like Nights of Lights and Spring Break," said Regan.
Graham said the three lots would add 600 spaces to parking inventory. They would be lit and have restrooms and security.
Mayor Nancy Shaver, whose Mobility commentary in the Report seeks ideas from the community, said she's received "close to 120 emails with multiple suggestions. "The categories, some intense, include pedestrian safety, fewer bridge openings, provision for employee parking, evaluating one-way streets, and resident only parking at the neighborhood level."
Graham said a 3-day workshop is planned, along with appointment of a mobility advisory task force, as work continues on the city's top challenge - mobility.
The city has hired Littlejohn Engineering Associates for $100,000 as a mobility consultant.
|
Woman's Exchange to be
recognized for Pena-Peck
The Woman's Exchange will be honored with an Adelaide Sanchez Award for its years of preservation of the city-owned Pena-Peck House on St. George Street.
The Pena-Peck House, dating back to 1750, was willed to the city in 1931 by Anna Gardener Burt, the last survivor of the Peck family, to be open to the public as a museum. It was during The Great Depression, and the city was about to decline the gift when The Woman's Exchange of which Miss Anna was a founding member came forward.
The Woman's Exchange obligated itself to maintain and operate the museum. It opened to the public in 1932 with a gift shop and tours through the house, filled with Peck furnishings including priceless 18th century American antiques.
|
In the case of Francis Field, not the Francis but the Ketterlinus family.
On the verge of placing a marker on the city's special events field recognizing Fred Francis, City Attorney Isabelle Lopez told commissioners Monday, "The Fred Francis family never owned the field.
"It was owned by the Ketterlinus family, and purchased by the city in 1928," she said after researching the property. "The baseball field and equipment were created by Mr. Francis but only as a loan which the city paid back with interest - it was $5,000" she said, but added, "Mr. and Mrs. Francis were philanthropists in town."
Commissioner Nancy Sikes-Kline will prepare a resolution which will include the complete story of the field's history.
|
|
|
|
Whetstone case ends with city win
"Plaintiffs in the Whetstone case have not filed for an appeal to the Florida Supreme Court," City Attorney Isabelle Lopez told city commissioners Monday, "so the Fifth District Court of Appeal stands, which held for the city's right to the submerged lands and denial of a dock there."
The Whetstones appealed city denial of a dock across what the city maintained was its land south of the Bridge of Lions.
Lopez said a new issue is regulation of seaplanes, telling commissioners, "There have been a number of landings between the 312 bridge and Bridge of Lions."
She said airport zoning dating from the 1930s gives the city limited ability to regulate seaplanes.
Commissioners authorized a draft ordinance updating the current code.
More detail asked on taxi services
Commissioners directed Assistant City Attorney Denise May to gather more detail on the city's taxi industry after her report that age and mileage limits proposed for taxis "would impact 13 of the 18 registered companies or 72% (and) five companies or 28% would lose their entire fleet."
Add Abingdon, England, as possible sister city The Sister Cities organization is interested in Abingdon, England, the oldest continuously occupied English city, becoming a sister city "or twinning which is a much less involved process," Commissioner Leanna Freeman, the Sisters City liaison, told fellow commissioner Monday. Abingdon has been occupied from the early to middle Iron Age. Abingdon Abbey was founded in Saxon times, possibly around AD 676, but its early history is confused by numerous legends, invented to raise its status and explain the place name.
Mayor Nancy Shaver recently suggested to commissioners a Greek sister city. Information on both cities is being compiled by volunteers.
|
Last Saturday of the month
Uptown Saturday Night & Changing of the Guard
From 5 to 9 pm enjoy live music, refreshments, new exhibits, book signings and more at the galleries, antique stores and unique shops on St. Augustine's San Marco Avenue.
At 6 pm, history marches down St. George Street as 18th century Spanish soldiers proceed to Government House where they perform authentic military drills before firing a volley of musketry.
|
|
History's Highlight
|
Menendez' enslavement plan
By John Worth, Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of West Florida
St. Augustine founder Pedro Menendez' colony was settled in the territory of the agricultural Timucuan people of northern Florida. Within a year of its founding, Menendez sought control of South Florida's more aggressive chiefdoms with establishment of three garrisons stretching to Miami.
 By January 1568, the Tocobaga and Tequesta forts had been overrun and abandoned, and by June 1569, the last garrison had been withdrawn from Calusa territory. In January 1573, Menendez proposed a radical change in strategy, reflecting his complete loss of hope for controlling South Florida's native peoples.
"Although all the Indians from the Mosquito River [Mosquito Inlet] at the beginning of the Bahama Channel down to the Martyrs [Florida Keys], and returning up to Tocobaga Bay [Tampa Bay], have been approached in great friendship," he wrote, "and have been given many gifts and brought many times to Havana and returned to their lands, and have rendered obedience to His Majesty, they have many times ruptured the peace, killing many Christians, and they have been pardoned, and despite everything they have not taken advantage of this ...
"From now on," he continued, "in order to protect the service of God our lord, and of His Majesty, it is suitable ... that war be waged on them with all rigor, in blood and fire, and that those who are taken alive can be sold as slaves, removing them from the land and carrying them to the neighboring islands of Cuba, Santo Domingo, and Puerto Rico, because in this manner... it will remain clean and depopulated ... and it will be a great example and fear for the friendly Indians who maintain and fulfill our friendship."
The Spanish crown denied Menendez's request and instead proposed that Spanish soldiers "go into the interior and apprehend all those guilty for the murders and sacrifices that have been committed against Christians under pretense of peace and friendship" but that the rest "should be brought to the islands of Cuba, Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico and turned over to the justices of those islands so that they are distributed among the people that seem most suitable to instruct them in government, and to become Christians, or to give them places to make their villages with the government of people who will occupy them in labor, and to have regulation and catechesis."
In all cases, however, the Spanish crown commanded, "that neither one nor the other should be slaves." Although this plan was never implemented, it demonstrates staunch legal support for the prohibition of any Indian slavery in Spanish colonies after the early sixteenth century.
It is a curious coincidence that after nearly a century and a half of near-total isolation, between 1704 and 1760, several hundred South Florida Indian refugees from English-sponsored enslavement were voluntarily transported to Cuba and resettled at a location on Havana Bay, where they established a community and were sent missionaries, just as proposed in the official response to Menendez's 1573 proposal.
|
|
The St. Augustine Report is published weekly, with additional Reports previewing City Commission meetings as well as Special Reports. The Report is written and distributed by George Gardner, St. Augustine Mayor (2002-2006) and a former newspaper reporter and editor. Contact the Report at gardner@aug.com or gardnerstaug@yahoo.com
|
|
|
|
|
