How on Earth Did We Get Here?

A Police Chief who fails to put free surveillance cameras where the crime is and where the crime hotspots are.

A Traffic and Parking manager who fails to disclose key information, a staff that allegedly conspires to keep a duly elected representative out of a critical city attorney/client meeting and allegedly force City employees into signing legal documents related to the Pier vote. 

And all the Mayor can do is hurl accusations like: a Council person is a liar. 

If there was ever any doubt the Foster administration is out of control, there should be no question now.      

A City Council member on the steps of City Hall in near tears because he cannot do the job he was elected to do, represent his constituents and all of St.  Petersburg, because be believes the very government he serves has conspired against him. 

The Pier push group did not want Wengay Newton in the attorney/client meeting so he would not know the strategy the City will employ. Only it seems they failed to check the facts.

It appears Newton is not one of the listed complainants in the lawsuit ... OOPS 

The City has filed a motion to extend the mediation period and the Judge should deny it. They don't want to negotiate or even pursue the true issues. They want to win this one on tactics and delays. 

Good lawyering ... lousy government.

The strategy seems pretty simple, delay, delay, delay and use any tactic that might work regardless of how legal it may or may not be. 

What started out as St. Pete being a laughing stock for poor governing is turning the City into a poster child for corrupt and dysfunctional government. 

There is a document that describes this moment "When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they
should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. 

What is going on in St. Pete is not who we are. No structure or project is worth the cost of systematically dismantling the government that is trying to create it. Why, why would these people stoop to these depths to get a useless walkway built over the water that so many don't want, when a simple vote would resolve it all? 

I hear all of this talk about how these eight elected people and the Mayor LOVE their City. That political platitude is now passé. You don't love it, you don't give a crap about the real St. Pete, the people; you only want what you want, an iconic monument. 

A few more steps down this slippery road and it may be time to ask the State to come in and take a serious look at what is going on. Someone will have to clean up this mess.

e-mail Doc at: dr.webb@verizon.net, or send me a Facebook Friend request.