Published by former Mayor George Gardner July 13 2016
The Report is an independent publication serving our community
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Zora Neale Hurston Memorial Park
Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It's beyond me.
Zora Neale Hurston
  It was 2-2 with Commissioner Leanna Freeman the deciding vote Monday as commissioners made the decision between the staff-recommended San Sebastian and a popular recommended Zora Neale Hurston names for the park at US 1 and King Street. It was the first test of a new public space-naming policy, its guidelines including geographic areas, historic sites and deceased notables.
Freeman finally broke the tie between Mayor Nancy Shaver and Commissioner Todd Neville favoring San Sebastian and Vice Mayor Roxanne Horvath and Commissioner Nancy Sikes-Kline favoring Hurston.
"There are so many things with the name San Sebastian," said Freeman, "so if I have to choose between that and an historic figure who's so well respected, I'll go with the historic figure."
Freeman added, "if we were going to make this a popularity contest then it should have been presented to the public that way, not just 'give us suggestions and we're going to have a committee decide.'"
Twentieth-century African-American writer Zora Neil Hurston lived and taught in St. Augustine for a time.
Public Affairs Director Paul Williamson, presenting the staff recommendation, noted that historically the San Sebastian River was an industrial area, with a thriving shrimping industry, boats along the river, cigar factories and the Florida East Coast Railroad yards.
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"A multicultural community response to recent violence" will be hosted at 7 pm this evening by Compassionate St. Augustine and the St. Augustine Interfaith Council.
It begins at Grace United Methodist Church with 30 minutes of song, reflection and prayer, and then a peace walk to the City Plaza for candlelight vigil.
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Pressure and caution
on city joining Reserve
We need to make sure that the issues that are key (to the city) are binding between us and the federal government.
City Manager John Regan
With a half dozen speakers in the public comment period urging that the city join the Guana Tolomato Matanzas National Estuarine Research Reserve, commissioners directed City Manager John Regan to finalize details with the state and federal governments to clear the path for joining without giving up the city's ownership rights on its waterways.
The city is the lone holdout in the 73,352 acres south of Jacksonville in St. Johns and Flagler counties protected in the reserve.
Speakers focused on anticipated water rise. As one speaker put it, "ten feet of water in the city of St. Augustine in the next 30 years will completely redefine who we are."
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 City is assessingPark/shuttle plan
"There are a number of things we can improve upon," Public Works Director Martha Graham told commissioners Monday in a wrap-up on the July Fourth weekend pilot park and shuttle program.
"The waits on the exiting were quite long," she said, "and we need to adjust for peak times. We did not have the ridership over the weekend, and the park and walk lot (on West King Street) was under-utilized - we may need a shuttle there."
Graham said the city spent about $28,000 on the weekend program involving three leased lots north of the city and shuttles east and west of the Bridge of Lions.
Included: buses $10,000, labor $8,800, materials $2,400, and lease agreements and insurances $5,500.
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Fire fee increase moves
to later public hearing
An ordinance which would increase annual fire fees from 6 to 7 cents a square foot for residential and 12.7 cents a square foot for non-residential properties will go to second reading, public hearing and final action at a later meeting, commissioners decided Monday.
Budget Management Director Meredith Breidenstein promised "various options we will bring to you to show different percentages" to reach a commission goal of 50 percent of fire service costs being paid by the fees.
The fee since 2009 has been 6 cents a square foot for all properties, bringing in some $976,000; the increase would bring in some $1.68 million.
Unlike ad valorem property taxes, non-taxable as well as taxable properties are subject to the fee, and 30% of properties in the city - such as schools and churches - are exempt from property taxes.
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Commission advances
7.5 millage proposal
A public hearing September 8 will finalize the city millage rate for 2016-17 after commissioners Monday approved a 7.5 millage recommendation by the Financial Service Department.
That hearing will be at 5:05 pm in the Alcazar Room at City Hall - the odd time in alignment with the county and other taxing agencies also holding hearings.
The millage roll-back rate is 7.1107 mills - that's the millage at which the city would get the same revenue amount as this year.
But city revenues will increase despite holding the current millage because property values have increased 8 percent, from $1,272,464,433 to $1,372,537,304, according to the county Property appraiser.
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Motorcycle noise 'part of my life'
In a choice between clamping down on loud motorcycles or remaining a biker friendly city, commissioners Monday opted for no changes in the current passive enforcement policy.
"We do issue citations. We've issued ten in the last 18 months," Police Chief Loran Lueders told commissioners. "If that needs to be a priority, then we need to say that.
"There are very few Harleys that have stock exhausts on them. That's something we have to live with or address it, and then we become unfriendly to bikers so, that's something you'll have to decide."
Commissioner Nancy Sikes-Kline commented, "I have a gentleman on my street who has a motorcycle, and rides it to work at 7 am every morning and I hear it and its part of my life, part of my neighborhood."
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Parking garage 3 million and counting
Last Friday the Visitor Center Parking Facility "marked its tenth anniversary (since opening) July 1, 2006. In those ten years, the facility has hosted more than 3 million vehicles, to be exact - 3,057,662," Public Affairs Director Paul Williamson says.
"During June, the facility provided parking for a little over 28,000 vehicles, and so far this year, 204,590, nearly 6,000 more than the same time last year."
The parking garage has a flat fee of $12 to park all day, with increases over the years helping fund its debt service and other expenses. ParkNow card holders pay an all-day fee of $3.
The city went from hourly parking rates to a flat $10 all-day fee system in 2011, then increased it to $12 to help fund the city's 450th anniversary activities.
The ParkNow card fee increase in 2013 from $1 to $3 was "an effort to establish a sinking fund for future repairs that will be needed over the life of the structure," Assistant City Manager Tim Burchfield said at the time.
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In the light of last week, I just want to thank our police department. I got a message on Facebook about one of the police officers giving water to a gentleman out on King Street with a sign, and that speaks a lot to me about our community.
Commissioner Roxanne Horvath
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History's Highlight
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He came out of upstate New York, an itinerant preacher's son, whose vision forged the Standard Oil empire and continued with the idea that the sub-tropical wilderness that was Florida could become a tourist mecca.
He found no appeal in the growing city of Jacksonville, so continued south to the edge of wilderness - the ragged town of St. Augustine. Here, he convinced  himself, an American Riviera could be fashioned. He needed to convince no one but himself - wealthy beyond belief after his successful oil venture with another visionary, John D. Rockefeller.
It would take a lot of that money to realize his vision. There was not only the cost of construction of a magnificent hotel, then another, but there were existing properties in the core area of his vision - churches, a jail, and the trickling Sanchez Creek running through the middle of the hotel site.
Undaunted, he built new churches and public buildings elsewhere, and filled in that stream, and converted dirt streets into brick and asphalt boulevards, and built a waterworks and rail station to serve the wealthy patrons he anticipated from the dead of winter up north.
Of the expense, he told a reporter while building the Ponce de Leon Hotel, "I think it more likely I am spending an unnecessary amount of money in the foundation walls, but I comfort myself in the reflection that a hundred years hence it will be all the same to me and the building the better because of my extravagance."
After discovering more dependable warm weather further south, he continued his rail line and mecca-building deeper along the coast, leaving behind a legacy combining the Spanish heritage of St. Augustine with the magnificence of the gilded age of the late 1800s.
Henry Morrison Flagler died May 20, 1913, at the age of 83, at his palatial Whitehall at Palm Beach. He lies today with his first wife, Mary, daughter Jennie, and infant granddaughter Margery, in a tomb at his Memorial Presbyterian Church.
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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
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