As is our custom, we were checking the comments for a variety of reasons including checking for legitimate comments that our anti-spam plugin for the site has put in the spam folders. If you have ever run a site, participated in running a site or even seen sites where there is always a “I made $4 million dollars working from home….” you know that spam is an issue.
As we were checking the spam filter and cleaning it out, one of real spammed comments was from a person in Russia on our post concerning the actions of Palm Bay Councilman Calvin “Tres” Holton.
The comment was promoting a website in Russia called “CalvinTalks*******” (We are not giving them free publicity.)
We laughed.
It’s funny how search engines and SEO sniffers will grab onto anything like this and then people will send out spam in response.
It’s never boring in the City that is “Great to Grow In” and last Thursday’s City Council meeting was no exception.
Probably the “big item” for the meeting was agenda item #5 in the Public Hearings section which read:
Request by D.R. Horton, Inc. and Waterstone Farms, LLC for final development plan and preliminary plat approval for a proposed single-family residential development to be known as The Gardens of Waterstone at Palm Bay, which property is located south of and adjacent to the Melbourne-Tillman Water Control District Canal No. 38, in the vicinity west of Babcock Street (96.66 acres)(Case No. PUD-6-2018).
This was a “quasi-judicial hearing,” which means that the Council was sitting in place of a magistrate / judge to decide an issue over which they have intimate knowledge. It also means that a whole set of rules and laws kick in, several of which we will discuss in a moment. Essentially, the thing to remember is that this hearing is a trial with a little less formality.
The item was contentious as one might expect but that is not what we wish to focus upon.
After the initial presentations, questions and banter, Mayor Capote opened up the floor for comments by citizens. One of the people that spoke was Thomas Gaume, who is a candidate for the City Council Seat 4 and is running against incumbent Calvin “Tres” Holton, and Kenneth Brian Johnson II. Gaume stepped up to the microphone at 42:25 of the video below.
Prior to his actual comments, Gaume asked the Council to give their “disclosures.” “Disclosures” are statements by the Council which are required by both City and State law where Council members are required to state any meetings they had with the parties that are considered to be “ex parte” or where only one party is present at the meeting.
Palm Bay’s Ordinance Code covers ex parte communications:
(B) The following process is hereby established for ex parte communications with any Local Public Official:
(1) Disclosure.
(a) The Local Public Official shall disclose the occurrence of all ex parte communications involving said official that relate to the quasi-judicial matter pending before the quasi-judicial body on which the Local Public Official serves.
(b) The disclosure shall occur by no later than the commencement of the final public hearing, or if no formal public hearing is held, then at the commencement of any hearing at which the final decision regarding the quasi-judicial matter is made. The Local Public Official shall disclose the ex parte communication orally or in writing. Any such writing disclosing the occurrence of the ex parte communication shall be placed in the official file regarding the pending quasi-judicial matter which file shall be maintained by the City and shall be made a part of the record.
(c) At the time of disclosure, the Local Public Official shall identify the person, group, or entity with whom the ex parte communication took place, the general substance of the ex parte communication, and any matters discussed which are considered by said official to be material to said member’s decision in the pending quasi-judicial matter.
The Council, starting with Mayor Capote, gave their answers at 42:40 of the video.
If you are following along, right off the bat, there are issues between the disclosure statements and the City Code: (more…)
After our first responses with the folks on Facebook about “who we are,” we watched as the person who asked the question defend the actual question, but never respond to our answers. That brought this from us:
We let this sit and peculate and now want to address what you say in this particular post. You claim that you are a “real person.” We accept you at your word, but can you prove that claim? Can anyone on the internet prove that they are really who they say they are? (What are we going to do, demand that you post your driver’s license and social security card?)
(Existentially, can anyone prove that we are even here….but we digress….)
We hope you can see the problem as in the long run, does it really matter who we are? Either you agree with our posts and ideas or you don’t. We don’t care who you are and are more than happy to discuss ideas, actions and positions rather than the silly notion of “who are they” because that only leads to ad hominem attacks which never (and we mean NEVER) accomplish anything.
You say that the question is a valid one, and perhaps it is. We question the venue in which you chose to ask the question (here as opposed to dropping us a line or posting on the blog itself) and we question the method (a graphical meme rather than a simple post of text.) Make no mistake, there is a certain underlying tone to the questions you posed that is less than flattering as if you expect some horrible collusion rather than giving us what you want in your own life (and we have made the case for here) which is the benefit of the doubt.
So while you have spent time defending those who have thoughts about the questions you asked there is one thing that you have not done:
YOU HAVEN’T SAID WORD ONE IN A POST ABOUT OUR ANSWER TO YOU. (more…)
Author, physician, columnist and political commentator Charles Krauthammer has announced in an opinion piece / open letter that he is not long for this world:
I have been uncharacteristically silent these past ten months. I had thought that silence would soon be coming to an end, but I’m afraid I must tell you now that fate has decided on a different course for me.
In August of last year, I underwent surgery to remove a cancerous tumor in my abdomen. That operation was thought to have been a success, but it caused a cascade of secondary complications — which I have been fighting in hospital ever since. It was a long and hard fight with many setbacks, but I was steadily, if slowly, overcoming each obstacle along the way and gradually making my way back to health.
However, recent tests have revealed that the cancer has returned. There was no sign of it as recently as a month ago, which means it is aggressive and spreading rapidly. My doctors tell me their best estimate is that I have only a few weeks left to live. This is the final verdict. My fight is over.
I wish to thank my doctors and caregivers, whose efforts have been magnificent. My dear friends, who have given me a lifetime of memories and whose support has sustained me through these difficult months. And all of my partners at The Washington Post, Fox News, and Crown Publishing.
Lastly, I thank my colleagues, my readers, and my viewers, who have made my career possible and given consequence to my life’s work. I believe that the pursuit of truth and right ideas through honest debate and rigorous argument is a noble undertaking. I am grateful to have played a small role in the conversations that have helped guide this extraordinary nation’s destiny.
I leave this life with no regrets. It was a wonderful life — full and complete with the great loves and great endeavors that make it worth living. I am sad to leave, but I leave with the knowledge that I lived the life that I intended.
Yesterday we had a post dealing with Palm Bay, Councilman Holton and a water bill and its implications. As we stated in the article, we had received much of the information from many sources, but the complete set of documentation was supplied by Thomas Gaume, who is running for the Council seat held by the subject of our post. Calvin “Tres” Holton.
We recognize that there could be a perceived bias in our post. We recognize that there could be seen some sort of collusion or “cahootin'” with the Gaume campaign.
If that were the case, you’d think we’d be smarter than that. If we were colluding with the Gaume campaign, we could have simply hidden the fact of what we received from Gaume. No one would have been the wiser except for two important groups of people: Gaume and us. We felt it was important to disclose the link on the documentation. We told Gaume that we wanted to make how we got the final pieces known to the world and he not only agreed, he insisted on it. We generally have a policy of not posting stories that may lead back to the source without the sources approval. In this case, not only did we get (one of) the source’s approval, he wanted the connection to be known for reasons he states in a comment below in the post.
Still, we believed there would be blow back and there was.
Our response to that is long but we wanted to post it here so all could see it. (We are eliminated the name of the original poster as we don’t think it is relevant:) (more…)
EDITOR’S NOTE: We want to be upfront about this post. The original information and background that forms the central issue here was not something that we went out looking for. We had other people and groups send us some of the things you will see here, but the bulk of the information and certainly the complete set of documentation was supplied to us by the campaign of Thomas Gaume, who is running against Calvin “Tres” Holton for Seat 4 on the Palm Bay City Council. When we get things like this from campaigns (and we get a lot of them,) we have to look at the documentation that is supplied, the sources within the documentation itself, outside sources, etc. We don’t like doing “rumor” stories here and avoid them at all costs. We aren’t the National Enquirer claiming some politician had an alien baby out of wedlock. We try to get things right but because the source here has what some will say is a bias, we want people to look at it with that understanding and make up their own mind.
On September 17, 2013, the City of Palm Bay filed a lien for lack of payment for water and sewage service against the owner of the property “legally described” as
BRIDGEWATER AT ·BAYSIDE
LAKES, PH 2, LOT 218
293613-75-00000.0-0218.00
1729 LA MADERIA DR SW
Account# · 123175-166448
In their filing, the City states that the property is owned by:
CALVIN L HOLTON Ill
ASHLEY L HOLTON
1729 LA MADERIA DR SW
PALM BAY, FL 32908 (more…)
Term limits date back to the American Revolution, and prior to that to the democracies and republics of antiquity. The council of 500in ancient Athens rotated its entire membership annually, as did the ephorate in ancient Sparta. The ancient Roman Republic featured a system of elected magistrates—tribunes of the plebs, aediles, quaestors, praetors, and consuls —who served a single term of one year, with re-election to the same magistracy forbidden for ten years (see cursus honorum). According to historian Garrett Fagan, office holding in the Roman Republic was based on “limited tenure of office” which ensured that “authority circulated frequently”, helping to prevent corruption. An additional benefit of the cursus honorum or Run of Offices was to bring the “most experienced” politicians to the upper echelons of power-holding in the ancient republic. Many of the founders of the United States were educated in the classics, and quite familiar with rotation in office during antiquity. The debates of that day reveal a desire to study and profit from the object lessons offered by ancient democracy.
It should be noted that when the thirteen American colonies formed the United States under the Articles of Confederation, Article 5 included term limits to Congress saying:
No State shall be represented in Congress by less than two, nor more than seven members; and no person shall be capable of being a delegate for more than three years in any term of six years; (emphasis ours)
However, when the Articles of Confederation was replaced with the current Constitution which formed “a more perfect union” than that of the Articles of Confederation, term limits were not included in the Constitution. (more…)
