Today at the Editor’s glance:
The Palm Coast City Council meets at 9 a.m. at City Hall. The chamber is expected to be filled with representatives and supporters of the Green Lion, the restaurant at the city’s Palm Harbor Golf Club whose lease, now 5 years old, the council decided not to renew last week, accusing the city administration of having given the restaurant too generous terms in 2017. The administration had renegotiated the lease and set out terms that would have raised the restaurant’s rent over 300 percent in the next five years. The council was not interested, preferring to seek new bids for the location. See: “Palm Coast Turns Nasty Against Green Lion Café Lease After 5 Successful Years and Turnaround at Palm Harbor Golf.”
In Court: Circuit Judge Terence Perkins is scheduled to preside over the trial of Terry Antonio Carter on charges of false imprisonment, and battery, starting at 9 a.m. in Courtroom 401 at the Flagler County Courthouse.
The Flagler County School Board holds an information workshop at 1 p.m. in the third floor training room at the Government Services Building, 1769 East Moody Boulevard, Bunnell, and a 6 p.m. meeting in the first-floor chambers. At the 1 p.m. meeting, LaShakia Moore, who heads the curriculum department, is providing an update on library material procedures and book bans. The board is also expected to discuss the procedure the public may use to complain “against the superintendent or the school board attorney if there has been a violation of a federal or state law, or regulation.” The procedure was the result of a single complaint filed by a crank who’s also made life hell for the Palm Coast government administration through similar means. In this case, the crank filed a complaint against the board attorney, seeking her firing. A couple of board members joined him (two guesses about who they are). The move failed in a 3-2 vote late last year. It is the latest example of a school board enabling the occasional incendiary troll to undermine public trust in local government. See the procedure here. The board at the 6 p.m. meeting is expected to approve next school year’s instructional calendar. See the calendar here.
Flagler Beach Elections Candidate Forum: The Flagler Woman’s Club invites you to Candidates’ Night at 7pm at the clubhouse located at 1524 S Central Ave, Flagler Beach. Meet the Candidates for the Flagler Beach City Commission race: Incumbents Rick Belhumeur and Jane Mealy, and newcomer James Patrick Sherman. Two seats are up on the commission in the March 8 election, so the top two vote-getters will be elected. Each candidate will be given time for an initial presentation, followed by a question-and-answer period, and then closing statements. Afterwards will be an opportunity to talk one on one with the candidates. For more information call Joann Soman at 305-778-2885.
Notably: Susan Anthony, whose birth anniversary this would be (she was born in 1820), is not celebrating this year. Her soul, gliding over Florida, feels too much like the 1840s. She died in Rochester, New York, in 1906. Ditto Galileo, born on this day in 1564: he still feels like a heretic here.
Why Trump is once again claiming that he was spied upon in 2016: I imagine FlaglerLive’s comment section will light up with renewed howls about the “Durham Report” (it already is) and how it vindicates Trump’s claim that he was spied on by the Obama administration. Before falling for this latest of recalibrated bathtub hoaxes, read the Washington Post’s Philip Bump’s corrective. It’s long, intricate and factual, unlike the hype on shout shows and in that court filing, so it won’t make much noise. Bottom line: “There are legitimate questions about the effort to link Trump back to Russia using this data that was not only sketchy at the outset, but had also been debunked by the time the election was over. But there is no question that this is not proof that Trump Tower was “wiretapped.” It is not proof that Mark Levin’s claims in early 2017 were accurate, since they weren’t. (He’s tried to take credit for his foresight in recent days.) If it’s evidence of Trump being “spied on,” as the former president has also claimed in recent days, it’s a very broad sort of spying — collecting all of the domain-name lookups from a physical location or a network — being conducted not by the Obama administration or by Hillary Clinton, but by an anti-Trump lawyer.”
Rumors of War: From Statista’s Daily Infographics: “In the 26 countries surveyed, almost half (46 percent) of respondents believe it is likely that their country will be involved in a war with another in the next 12 months. Americans are among the most pessimistic (or realistic, perhaps) in this regard: three out of four believe that an international conflict involving the U.S. is imminent. Russians are hardly more optimistic for their country (64 percent), while about half of the French and British believe that such an outcome is likely in the coming months. Conversely, Germans, Belgians and Swedes are among the least worried about their country’s military implications.”
Now this:
The Live Calendar is a compendium of local and regional political, civic and cultural events. You can input your own calendar events directly onto the site as you wish them to appear (pending approval of course). To include your event in the Live Calendar, please fill out this form.
Acoustic Jam Circle At The Community Center In The Hammock
Rotary’s Fantasy Lights Festival in Palm Coast’s Town Center
Flagler Beach Farmers Market
Coffee With Flagler Beach Commission Chair Scott Spradley
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Gamble Jam at Gamble Rogers Memorial State Recreation Area
Rotary’s Fantasy Lights Festival in Palm Coast’s Town Center
For the full calendar, go here.
“There are times when nothing is more misleading than personal experience, and the man whose experience has embraced only success is likely to be a forlorn and alien figure when his whole world begins to fail.”
–From Richard Hofstadter’s “The American Political Tradition” (1948).
