about my county st johns county florida

The candidates challenging the incumbents for County commissioner are finding themselves the targets of the same vitriol to which the incumbent Commissioners have been subjected for almost a year.  They are using every public platform available to them to protest what is being said about them.

They can do that.  They can lie, they can obfuscate, they can deflect.  And they have. They have no official role in the government, which places no ethics or boundaries on what they can say as are expected of elected officials.  And the sitting Commissioner who endorses them doesn’t seem to care about ethics or boundaries, so she propels the lies, obfuscation and deflection on social media.

The four incumbent Commissioners have withstood a barrage of insults, nasty memes and lies about their work as commissioners. Some of their supporters have tried to provide fact to the lies, but that is always met with more lies.

I am concerned about the future of St Johns County.  It seems that Commissioner Joseph, Nicole Crosby and “the Anns” are playing pied piper to those who are following blindly.  With so much at stake, the issue just isn’t as simple as “slow development,” but that seems to be what residents want to believe.

Let’s look at their actions.

Cleaning House of staff

In January, Nicole Crosby, the self-appointed architect of Commissioner Joseph’s successful election, wrote to a senior member of county staff, berating their work and promising that her candidates would “thoroughly clean house” including “propagandists” for the other four commissioners.

Ousting the County Administrator

At the  March 20, 2024 BoCC meeting, Commissioner Joseph took off on a tangent to question why the Board of Commissioners couldn’t oust a County Administrator with a majority vote during the process of approving the newly appointed County Administrator.    You can watch the video of her question here.  You can read my thoughts about her question here.

In a March 22, 2024 blog post, I questioned whether Commissioner Joseph had a hidden agenda of putting someone of her choosing in the County Administrator position, to make achieving her personal and narrow agenda easier, without the checks and balances that all decisions need.  Somehow, Commissioner Joseph and Nicole must have caught wind of the rumors that Nicole would be the next County Administrator and started refuting the rumors saying that Nicole is not qualified to serve in that position. I’m not sure they would let that stop them.

Even today, July 30, 2024, Commissioner Joseph is jumping into social media to reiterate that Nicole is not qualified.

Methinks thou doth protest too much.

The “Anns”

The Ann’s made a mistake at the Chamber Candidate Meet and Greet.  They handed out a letter they had written to the County Firefighters that claimed that the firefighters had been coerced into coming out to vote for the incumbent commissioners in an election straw poll.  The letter went on to lie that the vote to endorse the incumbents was by leadership only, and not the firefighters.

In an eloquent response, the President of the Firefighters Union stated that the vote was unanimous by the firefighters, not leadership.  He stated: “I explained very clearly how our endorsements took place, so you are very aware it was not a board vote.”  You can read both letters here.

When called out on their misinformation, they doubled down and reiterated their claims that the training facility has not been completed, the contract has not been finalized and they would step in to provide mental health benefits.  [The latter statement is amusing – the Ann’s typically attend all Commissioner meetings and surely would have seen the award that the firefighters gave to Commissioner Sarah Arnold for all of her help with obtaining mental health benefits.]

Methinks thou doth protest too much.

The defamation lawsuit

Nicole Crosby, who has been “fronting” the challengers for 10 months or so, has been sued for defamation.  Instead of taking a step back and considering the impact of her behavior, she has doubled down on attacking, continued to lie, and been just plain nasty to every individual who disagrees with her.

If you want to look up the defamation suit, you can do so here by clicking on the link and typing in case number CA24-0665.

Is that the kind of behavior that we need?

So, we have Commissioner Joseph, the “Anns” and Nicole Crosby all playing pied piper to residents, feeding them what they want to hear…. lies, misrepresentations and unsubstantiated innuendo…to sway the vote in their favor. 

Instead of demonstrating integrity, responsibility and accountability, these folks double down on their lies. Methinks thou doth protest too much.

I hope that our residents are smarter than that.