You have to understand the background to get a clear picture, so here goes.
I moved South about 20 years ago. It was the winter of 88/89, and I lived on my boat on the Jersey Shore, and I moved because in the middle of winter, in the fifth day of a seven day gap in insurance because I wanted to save money with a cheaper policy I, along with six other boats, suffered a vandalism/theft. I had a standing job offer on Jekyll Island, Georgia, so I dropped some stuff off at my mom's and made my way there. Their fiscal year turns over in March, so I went there and was going to be a #5 man on a restoration crew, and had a supervisor level asbestos abatement certification and was to be hired to do abatement on Frank Lloyd Wright's house. Someone had seen my work in Colonial Williamsburg, which is why I was recruited. Well, Jekyll is a state park, and they had a budget cut, so I was one of the first things cut, so I moved to Jax.
I saw Jacksonville as having loads of potential. I lived downtown right off Hemming Plaza, moved to the beaches, and met my wife at the Crab Pot, and had a choice of moving to St. Augustine doing restorations for a realtor or staying for her. I stayed.
I had been burglarized twice and lost a lot, but still wrote it off. I had never seen pawn shops and hookers walking the street in suburbia except for around Hampton Roads, and to this day never lived in a city or area so full of crime and violence and such a lack of educated and enlightened people. But I was somewhat insulated from it all.
I have never in my life seen a society where, especially in business, people seem to get off on ripping people off or cheating them. My first real bad example of this is when I worked for Mandarin Marine. There is a pay schedule that is called "book". Like when you go to a mechanic, if it says 1.3 hours to change an alternator, they charge you 1.3 hours labor, and the mechanic gets paid for 1.3 hours no matter how long it takes him to do the job. Problem was with them that I was doing jobs, like fiberglass repair or refinishing teak and wood, that there was no book for, so I kept getting cheated.
I started working for myself. I found that contractors would do substandard work, and new construction was a joke. Even today in my profession of painting they'll use $10/gallon paint on quarter million dollar homes. Everything is so cutthroat, and there seems to be a lack of basic consideration for one's fellow man here. Part of the problem, to me, is that this is a right to work state and unions aren't strong, and I've never seen so many labor pools in my life. I tell my clients that anyone can sling paint, but are they going to do a good job that will last. There's a inside joke about bad painters, it's call "blow and go".
So I did a few other things, even did asbestos abatement down here, getting paid less than a laborer up north for being a supervisor running crews of illegals, Central Americans and Mexicans. I saw graft and dirty even in that, corruption sometimes seems to be everywhere.
There's other little events that made me come up with a joke.....
"When I moved to the South I came into a tropical depression"
This isn't to say that bad things aren't everywhere. I see Jacksonville as not much different than much of North Jersey, or anywhere else that suffers from blight. They say you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone, and that seems so true because I took for granted how nice it was where I'm from. People just have more of a general concern and respect some places than others, and Jacksonville hasn't seem to get much better in twenty years here. If I lived in Ortega or Avondale I'd be more insulated and maybe wouldn't see what I see now, but I don't.
There are other little events in my life, like falling into a void left in the ground by JEA contractors and wiping out my back, and having a bad back because of shoddy city work and having an attorney botch up efforts to get compensated for it, and JEA and the city not taking responsibility for it. Anyone is welcome to call me and I'll give a more complete run down of everything.
But let's get on to why I ran for city council and why I was fighting to better society and change things.
and
http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/090607/opl_197180101.shtml
If you keyword my name on Jacksonville.com or the web you'll find everything I've been doing...
the school garden is at: http://agreengardengrows.blogspot.com/
So I was a squeaky wheel. On the bus a/c issue I even went after the state attorney because I feel letting kids on a hot bus is child abuse, and made complaints to the attorney general.
On the way home from a school board meeting I brought my son to Fire Station Five near downtown, and found out about the dirty deal made by Peyton, and so that became a war, and I thought "in for a penny, in for a pound" and decided it was time to start making a life out of doing what I had been doing piecemeal all my life. I also wish to note that I started working with ministries to feed the hungry, and when you are vocal you get noticed, and when you are smart enough to maybe get something done and can't be bought, you make some people with questionable values nervous.
I joined ShAdCo, the Sheriff's Advisory Council, and worked to and got rid of several crack houses in my area, and also kept steady pressure on the cops to get rid of the whores around Lane and I-10. Now on to another issue, with some more background so you can see what I have to say and draw your own conclusions from it.
They turned the Normandy WalMart into a Supercenter a few years back, so it went to 24 hours. The lights blaze into our backyards, and the parking lot sweepers are very noisy. So I made complaints. 630-CITY can be a waste of time.
The law says that using a backpack blower (leaf blower) between 10 pm and 7 am is a misdemeanor, and it is also illegal to go above 55dB in those hours (environmental rules 4.214 & 4.215). At 2 and 3 and 4 am I'd be awakened by it, and as president of our community association back then I'd get calls from some people. New windows keep out some of the sound, and many people it might not bother as much, but the even side of Cherbourg Avenue South, on which I live, boarders Normandy Blvd. So the sound wakes people, especially me because I'm a light sleeper, up. If I go to sleep at 11:30 and someone wakes me up at 2 am, that's it, I'm up for the night, and the next day I'm so beat I'm worthless.
So I made official complaints, and letters went out to WalMart and EconoSweep, their contracted parking lot cleaner, telling them they were in violation and to stop. This is years they've been ignoring the law. Back then Mark Richardson was the Chief of Zone 4 Westside JSO (police). I fought and was patient and made complaints and then WalMart got a new manager named Dan Houston, who shielded the lights along Normandy (the new ones were much higher and brighter, so our backyards were very bright and we needed thick curtains on all our South facing windows). We also made an agreement that, since traffic covered much of the sound, that the parking lot cleaners could run their loud truck and use their blower, even though that was illegal, starting at 5:30 am. That was respected and kept until the city lost their sound enforcement officer and Dan Houston left. So two years ago, three am, there they were again. Now I made many, many, many police and city complaints to keep pressure on until they stopped breaking the law. Many of the police would blow off my complaints, even with a letter from the Chief of Patrol DIRECTING them to enforce the law. I was told to "stop wasting their time", so I made complaints on cops that were lazy, and many of them out here in District 10 were lazy or overworked.
That's a side complaint and observation of mine. If you live in Mandarin or Ortega or Avondale, you get better police protection and service than you do in working class areas of town.
So two years ago they get back to 3 am start times, waking me up, and them breaking the law. One night I went over and the supervisor I made the agreement with was using the blower. I said "What the hell, I thought we had an agreement?" and was cursed at, so I called him and asshole, and we had some words, and he threw down his backpack blower and wanted to fight and kicked my van, but I resisted that and went over to their truck to get their tag and reg numbers to make another complaint. I found the back side on an envelope and was looking for a pen when I found my son's Boy Scout pocket knife, and I looked down at his tire, and I couldn't resist. I took out his tire and went home, and the police came and asked me if I cut his tire and I said yes and why, and was arrested and was out the next afternoon with no fees or fines.
I see this ass nine months later at a HESS station and he laughed that I got arrested, and when I told him that I got no fines and he was out a tire and might be losing his contract with WalMart, in part due to my complaints, he got pissed off.
Now three months later I announced I was running for city council because Mia Jones was going to run for a state seat. Out of the blue I get contacted by the police, them saying that this jerk said I was the one who threw paint on his truck. Now let me describe my van. It was a 1991 Mazda MPV, gray, with loads of Boy Scout, Democrat and American Flag bumper stickers all over it, plus my phone number and the word "painting" in BRIGHT yellow, 5 ft by 18" on the back window, plus a 27' ladder on top, and the sign in blue smaller on the side windows.
When he called the police and also when he made the police report he described a gold Toyota, no ladder or stickers, and a guy wearing painter's whites as the one who threw the paint on his car or truck. I own no painter's whites, and can produce about 30 people who can testify that they have never seen me in whites. Darren at Westside paint tried to sell me some for years, and I just told him "not my style".
So, like I said, I was arrested, lied to by police, and they ruined a planned event where I was going to feed cookies and coco and coffee and soup to people waiting in line for the Jacksonville Children's Christmas Party at the Prime Osborn. It fell apart, and I had arranged people from DCF, a law office, Councilman Clay Yarborough, and Boy Scout Troop 360 to help, and even had a catering truck donate their services. On a side note, having all that coco and food I tracked down Safe House, who was doing a toy giveaway a week later at the Teamsters Hall on Lane Ave, and the leftover toys went to the Salvation Army free toy store, and when they closed I got them to Safe House, basically saving their toy giveaway, and also helped the Ms. Pat Foundation in Callahan. Out of bad good came.
I went to five or six court dates after bailing out, which hurt our Christmas and my business, and after postponement after postponement a court date was set charging me with criminal mischief. My lawyer told me the court date was the third Monday in April, and it was the second, so when I missed that date I was rearrested and KEPT IN JAIL WITH NO BAIL FOR A MONTH...ON A CRIMINAL MISCHIEF, and at that time I was a filed candidate for city council and a property owner. tell me that doesn't violate the 8th Amendment!
This killed my business and finances.
Now there's another story in here as well. Some young punk kids were living three doors down from me. A witness saw three kids, drunk, pulling up a STOP sign out of the ground about 1 am. They went to WalMart in the middle of the night and saw them shaking it on the way there, and her son saw them carrying it near my house on the way back. At 1 am I heard a loud crash, and went outside and didn't see anything. In the morning a neighbor called me and told me there was a sign in the back window of my van. I called the cops and an officer I had made complaints against took the report, reluctantly. Later the neighbor who saw them with the sign, who knew who they were, told us they saw them, so I called the cops back. The cops came back out and asked "well, what do you want us to do?" and were going to give me a state's attorney card, and anyone who has ever got one knows those are worthless.
The woman who saw them lives with her mother, who works at a auto recycler, and offered to help get a window, so I went down and asked the kids to simply pay for the window. Words got heated and I told them I was running for council and knew cops and people I could complain to, because I knew they were having drug/alcohol parties (there had been complaints against them for that) and were giving pot to the 12 and 13 year old boys who live next door to them, and I would make their life hell because of that. They walked the streets loudly at night, and calls to police almost always went unanswered or police would respond like an hour or more later.
I was jumped, sucker punched by one and hit from behind by another. I squared off and fended off more advances, and as soon as I was able left and called the cops. They came back out, and when a supervisor I had mad complaints against showed up I got arrested for that, and I was the one assaulted. That charge was eventually dropped because it was illegal to charge me in the first place and they knew it.
So after a month in jail for something they had proof I didn't do I bailed out again. At this point my business was hurt, because scheduled jobs found other people and my family was now broke. I got petitions to get on the ballot, and ran into a cop who I made complaints against in the past, and showed him the petitions and told him if I got in I would make some changes, because I was sick of how unresponsive many cops are in our area, how lazy they can get.
Less than two days before petitions were due I heard a car door slam, and it sounded like our new wagon, so went outside, where I saw a cop in street clothes closing the back door of his cruiser and get into his Malibu and leave. I didn't think anything of it until the morning, when the passenger door of our wagon was open a crack (it had been locked) and the zip up folder with almost 300 petitions was gone. I did a mad scramble but came up less than 20 petitions short to qualify for a spot on the ballot. I was out of the race.
Now I'm still fighting this bogus charge and am living check to check. I want to sell our house and move to the North Carolina Shore near Kitty Hawk. I'm sick of Jacksonville. My son was bullied when he went to Stillwell Middle School, and those in power do nothing. I now have him in a private school on a McKay Scholarship. The murder rate is high, here are still whores walking the street, and shopping carts filled with cans get pushed all around town. The real drop-out rate is about 40%, and the deal on Fire Station Five is an exercise in corruption that Mayor John Peyton and Fidelity and Paul Harden stink from.
http://www.folioweekly.com/folioblog/?cat=59
http://savestationfive.blogspot.com/
It all has left a bad taste in my mouth. I'm not alone. I know too many people who have been wronged and the local and state governments do nothing to help, and the police and prosecutor are normally worthless. Now there are some good, even great people, even police, here. I have met officers, firemen, city workers, and just plain folk who are wonderful. But there are so many others who just aren't, and I'm tired and sick of it all.
The levels of stupidity and greed and just plain meanness astound me, and this is the basic story as to why I ran and what ran me out of the race and now has me fighting just to keep my head above water. My number is 619-8324, and anyone who wants some more details can call me....
Here's a prime example. John Winkler was running for clerk of courts here, and just click this link and read.... It is just a dirty, dirty town with dirty politics and ... I better stop here before it turns into profanity...
http://www.johnwinklerforclerk.com/press_releases
I was raised to believe that if you are good and decent that you should get a fair shake, and I just don't see it here, and rather than make a load of crap smell like roses I'd just rather go to where roses still bloom. There are some things I still may fight, like DCPS now talking about closing West Jacksonville Elementary, another "A" school, in clear violation of the law... but those in power don't give a damn about what is right or wrong, or if they do they don't show it....
My email is Skotstar@yahoo.com
have a nice day......
