Our county commissioners are capable of focusing great intelligence on issues, recently spending nearly an hour to confront efforts to cram a gas station into a residential neighborhood. The real ''dinosaurs'' just voted to put an unneeded, unwanted development in the wrong place at the wrong time, wasting massive quantities of water and land, on demand of the Davis family. Despite public outcry about violations of fundamental free speech rights, a 4-1 majority of the St. Augustine City Commission votes to take away peoples' rights to draw, paint, sing, dance or otherwise have fun on St. George Street. St. Augustine has spent vast sums on these misbegotten authoritarian efforts, giving our town government a black eye. Most residents see no need for a ''Final Solution'' to hound the artists from St. Augustine's streets.
Rigid regimentation is the unAmerican agenda here.
This deserves a ''60 Minutes'' story. While spoiled-rotten businessmen get censorship and development orders on demand, others get the shaft from blunt instruments of local government. We appreciate county commissioners John Reardon and Nicholas Meiszer for opposing Nocatee. We appreciate St. Augustine commissioners Susan Burk for opposing the insane persecution and arrest of St. George Street artists and entertainers. Let's register voters and try to give these commissioners some help in the form of working majorities, so that citizens' views will be heeded and no longer ignored.