Between the memes and the statistics, one might think that St Johns County is such a mess, with such overwhelming development that the entire county is now asphalt. I get hyperbole – using more colorful words to make a situation seem far worse (or better) than it is.
I remember the first email I received on October 19, 2023 that said, “Our county is a mess.” The topic was a change.org petition to reinstate the former Fire Chief, but I felt compelled to respond that I disagreed that the County is a mess.
I still disagree, but the negativity keeps on coming. And it keeps on getting worse.
Let’s take a stroll back in time to January 2022, when Commissioner Henry Dean’s work to “forever preserve the 60,000-acre ‘crown jewel of nature in NE Florida,’” was posted on Facebook as a positive comment. Apparently the County wasn’t a total mess back then.
Then in April 2022, when Commissioner Dean was told “And I of course agree that commissioners don’t approve everything. That would be a very far-fetched statement.”
And again, in September 2022, when the county commissioners were credited publicly on Facebook with denying “the Adler Creek development that would have been nearly 1700 homes!”
Yet as the reelection of Commissioners Dean, Whitehurst and Alaimo came closer and new candidates were emerging, suddenly the message changed dramatically. All of a sudden the Commissioners were paving over St Johns County and approving every new development put in front of them.
Interestingly, the memes with Commissioner Dean’s and Commissioner Whitehurst’s heads on a bulldozer suggesting that they were bulldozing all the land in order to allow more development started in April and May of 2022 – about the same time that Dean was told “And I of course agree that commissioners don’t approve everything. That would be a very far-fetched statement.”
Hmmm. Same person making these two very different statements.
So here is my question. Are the candidates challenging the sitting commissioners so unqualified that the only way to get them elected is with dirty politics? With demeaning and trashing the reputations of those who have been duly elected and are working for the good of the entire County?
Seemingly, the turn to nasty happened shortly after Senator Travis Hutson introduced a bill eliminating the Soil and Water Conservation Commissioner role around February 2022. I can perhaps understand the frustration, but getting back at a Senator by trashing County Commissioners is going a bit too far.
But could that have been the impetus to begin the dirty politics? It is a shame that someone who politely and passionately advocated for conservation in St Johns County for many years has decided that this is the right way to go.
That candidates would sign on to a political platform that plays dirty politics tells me that they are not who we want running our County.
Is this really the way we want the County to work?
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