The crazy never stops on so many levels. Peter Byrne thinks his photo proves that downtown Clearwater is NOT a “wasteland.” The only people in this photo are 3 Sea Org members on the sidewalk and 4 cars on the road. Every one of those buildings on the left hand side of the street are completely empty.
He also thinks that downtown Clearwater is benefited by scientology: “If not for scientology, downtown Clearwater would be a wasteland.”
The correct statement is that BECAUSE of scientology, downtown Clearwater IS a wasteland. I guess Peter Byrne has not been to downtown Dunedin or downtown Safety Harbor (the towns immediately north and east of Clearwater) and seen the level of activity, the number of stores, restaurants and people congregated there?
Peter Byrne is an example of scientologists think a revitalized downtown Clearwater looks like — a Potemkin village of scientology storefronts with not a person in sight, outside OR IN!
This is why Clearwater MUST re-elect Mark Bunker to the city council. He is the only bulwark against this scientology vision of a “revitalized downtown” becoming a permanent reality.
I am republishing an article Mark wrote that appeared on Tony Ortega’s blog laying out reasons he should be re-elected beyond the scientology issue. For me, the fact that he is so knowledgeable about scientology and unafraid to confront them is enough, but there is a lot more:
I was reading your Whole Track flashback article from 7 years ago in which Rod Keller gives an alarming look at the future of downtown Clearwater in 2017 as the city launched its efforts to revitalize the area with Imagine Clearwater. Things sure looked bleak and we still have enormous challenges ahead as Miscavige plots and schemes while ducking process servers at every corner but we are fighting back and I thought it might be a good time to look at our progress.
Imagine Clearwater has been a huge success. Tens of thousands of people come to the park and to events at the amphitheater called The Sound and they love what we have created for the people of Clearwater and all who visit. When people are given a reason to come downtown, they do. Our problem remains the empty buildings which should be filled with shops and restaurants and would be if it were not for Miscavige’s criminal racketeering scheme of buying everything he could get his hands on and using it as leverage to bring the city to its knees. We’re not bowing yet. In fact, we’re fighting back.
We just finalized the contract to build 400 apartments on the old city hall property with retail, restaurants, a hotel and a beer garden going up to compliment the park and create new spaces for business that Miscavige can’t control. Our contract with the developer, Gotham, has safeguards built into it that will prevent Scientology from buying the project in a future downturn should one happen.
The county will be vacating all the properties they hold in downtown Clearwater in just a few years and the county is committed to keeping those properties out of Scientology’s hands and working with us to ensure that developers can create a thriving downtown despite Miscavige’s best efforts. Lex Luthor’s diabolical property schemes fail in every Superman film as will Slappy Miscavige’s plans. He will ultimately fail in this little game he is playing.
Four years ago, when I first ran for city council, a line of OT’s appeared in council chambers to warn that I was going to cost the city millions in lawsuits (hasn’t happened), that I would be leading riots in the street (hasn’t happened) and they demanded that I not be allowed to sit on the Downtown Development Board as that would be akin to having the head of the KKK or Hitler in their midst. Wild efforts were made to get rid of me once I was appointed to the board and for what? For merely suggesting that as respected high level members of Scientology they were in the best position to get answers as to why Miscavige and fellow members of Scientology were secretly buying property at up to 4-6 times market value and leaving them sit empty for years. Wow, what a shocking suggestion…but they couldn’t bang the gavel fast enough or loud enough to try to shut me up.
The DDB attorney concocted some nonsensical excuse to try to kick me out of the meetings. “Why do we need two ex-officio members on the board,” explained attorney Else Winters. “We’re just taking up some of Mr. Bunker’s valuable time.” I volunteered to be the member to stay on the board but that wasn’t her goal. To Mayor Hibbard’s credit and that of the rest of the city council, they weren’t going to let the DDB get away with their obvious ploy and they voted the keep me on the DDB to the mounting frustration of Ms. Winters.
Toward the end, she tried to use the 24 year old injunction against me in a meeting and that was one of her last moves. Unhappy with the terrible performance of the board under her guidance, the city council voted to dissolve the board and take over control of the DDB to properly lead the downtown in a new direction. Having a board primarily of Scientologists gave the appearance to many that Scientology runs the city which they don’t. If those Scientologists had just run the board effectively, they would still be in those positions. You’d think Hubbard management tech would have given them an advantage…and it might have if it hadn’t been pulled out of his ass like everything else Hubbard gave the world.
In 2017, when Miscavige didn’t like how the last council turned down his generous offer to control all of downtown and turn it into a sparkling wonderland if we just sold him the CMA property he coveted, he told the paper he would wait until he gets a new council. He then set in motion his scheme to own every available piece of property he could get his hands on. In a move of bad luck for Slappy, in 2020, the citizens put me on the next council and I have made it clear that in order for a land swap to move forward, Slappy has to move first. Come through with everything he promises and then we’ll sell him the CMA property. Short of that, the CMA property would best be used for a parking structure supporting the park and amphitheater.
There have been many discussions on how best to deal with Scientology’s interference with downtown. Eminent domain is one of the strongest possibilities. Here’s what you should know. If we were to seize a property, there has to be a valid reason for doing so and parking is crucially important, especially for the Sound. The city would have to pay market rate for the property which Scientology has vastly inflated with their under-handed secret purchases. On top of that, Scientology would undoubtedly sue the city. As I said, parking is a valid defensible use so it is not out of the question. Can it be used for every building they are leaving empty? No. The city couldn’t afford to pay the hundreds of millions needed to buy them, but also, anything bought through eminent domain has to be put to public use. A parking garage qualifies but you can’t seize a property and give it to a developer to put up retail stores. We continue to explore options.
Scientology remains the reason much of downtown is a nuclear wasteland but we are making progress. There is an election on March 19th and I hope I will get re-elected to continue standing guard as I believe former Mayor Gabe Cazares and police Lt. Ray Emmons would wish me to do. I sure wish I had their guidance but I did have their example of standing strong, unafraid of the dangerous organization in our midst.
I have something else this election. In my first race, I had the support of Leah Remini, the readers of the Bunker and the citizens of Clearwater. In this race, my opponents are not just Scientology but also the good-old-boy establishment who want to get rid of me every bit as much as Slappy does. But I am overwhelmed to see that in this race, I have earned the support of people who never would have backed someone taking on Scientology four years ago. The Clearwater firefighters and the Clearwater police FOP have endorsed me in this race and I have people and groups throughout the community that have seen that I am fighting for them in every way I can and not just on Scientology and they are giving me much more widespread support. Plus, people all around the country have been donating generously to the campaign allowing me to reach many more people in Clearwater than I ever could four years ago.
A former council member a couple of years back set in motion a change to the way we run elections to make sure that someone like me could never win a race again. A question on the ballot will ask if we should start doing run-off elections. If a candidate wins less than 50% of the votes, as I did last time in the five person race, we would have to immediately mount another expensive campaign. Run-offs favor the wealthy and the powerful, the good-old-boys who have always ruled. Minorities and those without funds are at a huge disadvantage in a run off. I limped to the finish line last time, exhausting what little funding we had by election day. If I had to campaign for another six months in a run-off I would have been buried. That’s the whole point.
Those rules wouldn’t apply in my race on March 19th, but I’m hoping that the rules aren’t changed for future candidates because I have seen first-hand how the establishment operates. Mayor Hibbard is a man I respected and liked. He lost two votes, one on bringing safety to a dangerous stretch of Drew Street which he and the business community didn’t want touched because it would add an extra three minutes for the drive from the highway to downtown. The other was when we voted four to one to finally proceed with a new city hall which had $30 million dollars set aside since we closed the old city hall in 2017 for the project. He quit mid meeting and went on a nationwide tour to burn us to the ground, telling Fox News we were building a $90 million dollar Taj Mahal for ourselves. That lie spread quickly and it continues to be used to try to defeat candidates in this race.
We’re spending $31 million wisely for needed infrastructure that will allow several key departments, now scattered, to be working under one roof, easily accessible to the public with a council chamber that hopefully will be as iconic as the one where Clearwater held a week’s worth of hearings on Scientology back in 1982. I was always in awe when I spoke to the council in those chambers back in 2000-2001. Mayor Hibbard wanted us to take over the library on the bluff next to the amphitheater for city hall, but we just spent $84 million dollars to activate that area for the public. The council doesn’t need offices with beautiful waterfront views. We have tiny windowless offices now and that is perfectly fine. The library needs to remain there for the public and we have something really amazing in store for the ground floor that will activate the building in a way that will be exciting for people who live in Clearwater and for those visiting. Another great way we can activate the bluff and enhance it as a destination.
Politics, like Scientology, can be dirty but I refuse to play that way and I am unwilling to shut my mouth. Mayor Hibbard once threatened to “take me outside” during a meeting when I pointed out that he was the only one on the council who knew Scientology had been interfering with an affordable housing project we had approved for downtown. That interference drove the project and the developer out of town. Mayor Hibbard was also the only one who voted against that project.
I will continue to stand up and speak out when I see injustice. I am proud when citizens in Clearwater thank me for that and I’m hoping to have another four years of fighting for them from within City Hall.
If Clearwater becomes the first “Scientology City,” it won’t be on my watch.
— Mark Bunker
Mark Bunker for Clearwater City Council 2024
www.markbunker2024.com
contrast CW with Cape Coral FL just down the coast which has some of the largest commercial RE dev firms in the nation setting up shop with huge projects starting. https://www.capecoralbreeze.com/news/local-news/2024/01/04/cape-coral-sees-economic-development-boom/
Such interesting and valuable information. Thank you, Mike. Mark Bunker must indeed stay right where he is. I’m sending my contribution to his reelection campaign. A politician with sound principles AND a spine – what do you know! Thank you, Mark!
Hope he wins, Clearwater is a shadow of what it could be thanks to the cult. I would be asking the government to have them declared a criminal organization for deliberately ruining the downtown area.
Scientology sure likes empty spaces and spends a fortune of other people’s money to create a vacuum.
Mark is truly the best, if not the only chance Clearwater has of any future with people & prosperity for all in it.
Glenn: Re your comment. Peter Bryne was the ED of Vancouver org for many years; and his wife is still on staff going on 40 some years. Both are OT, and so yes, it definitely is sad to to see him so blind and stupid because of the cult. What a waste of their lives.
If I could vote for Mark then I would without hesitation, but being an Australian makes that impossible. Bummer.
Mr. Bunker, if you’re going to compare David Miscavige and Clearwater to Lex Luthor and Metropolis, you have to understand that DC Comics is just as corrupt as the Church of Scientology, and they have just as many victims. I’m still trying to get justice involving my situation, which includes dealing with misappropriation by DC as part of a stalking and harassment campaign identical to Scientology’s “Fair Game” policy. The truth is that this is our country’s culture. Institutional oppression, driven by greed and the protection of predators, orchestrated and carried out by severely damaged narcissists and all of their enablers. Faustian bargains and the perpetual damage accompanied with the ongoing armament of evil. We the people are literally screaming in the streets at the failure of our leadership, and the saddest part is that it’s always been this way. Nothing has changed, and nothing ever will, unless people of integrity are as driven to service as the corrupt are for control. To lead is to serve; these are the real life superheroes. Best of luck with your reelection. Please contact me if you’re willing to help and would like to use #withinthatinch for publicity. Mike Rinder has my email address.
That also falsely attributes Coachman Park’s redevelopment – which the CofS got in the way of, if anything. Believing that US cities are war zones seems to be a rather popular point of view among those who go for the scientological “merchants of chaos” way of looking at things as a “downward spiral” – this person is obviously clueless about how how vibrant Tampa Bay area coastal small towns really are, particularly compared to Clearwater which suffered an invasion in “Operation Normandy” (the cult’s own name for setting up its operating base there, covertly buying up property and trying to take over, the latest iteration of which is to buy up hundreds of buildings and leave many empty).
Peacemaker, would you, or possibly someone else here very kindly please explain to me what benefit Scientology derives from buying up all this property in Clearwater and keeping the buildings empty and the land vacant?
This is not a rhetorical question, btw. I know how calculating and spiteful Miscavige is.
Except that he has always seemed to be all about MONEY..
On the other hand, perhaps I’m overthinking this.
Could it be that what APPEARS to be the benefit IS the benefit, i.e, that Miscavige has no “long term” strategy at all and is simply paranoid and in permanent bunker mode, “protecting” his little fiefdom from hostile forces and invaders?
Metaphorically speaking could he be gobbling up all thisproperty and keeping it vacant to use for Flag’s “protection” , much as lords in the Middle Ages built stone walls and moats around their castles to keep out enemies and invaders, etc.?
Surely he can’t be so himself deluded as to beiieve that Scientologists will one day somehow occupy these buildings, or build Scientology facilities on these vacant lots.d
Could his “reasoning” spring purely from utter paranoia and pure spite?
The simple answer Aqua is that Miscavige wants a “moat” around his “Mecca.” Did the same thing at Gilman Hot Springs. Bought every single property adjacent — many of them homes that were demolished.
It’s why it was such a big deal to get the Aquarium lot — it is next to the Oak Cove and directly across the street from the Ft. Harrison.
Finally, it is leverage when dealing with the city. He learned well from Terl in Battlefield Earth.
Got it, Mike. My hunch confirmed! So he did the same thing at Gilman, huh? Wow, we are talking major paranoia here! And I say this in total awareness of the fact that Vatican City is walled off, heavily guarded with security aside from guided tours virtually impenetrable by the common folk without extraordinary measures.
Yet Pope Francis goes OUT a lot. He SPEAKS to people. He MINGLES – lesses people, takes photos with all and sundry, , not just visiting dignitaries. While Miscavige hides.
And THIS is the man in charge of the religion that’s going to save Mankind from another Dark Age…I don’t think so. With his unclean hands, he can’t even confront and handle answering a subpoena… I’m just musing out loud here. Thanks, Mike 🙂
I think Peter Byrne wrote all that as a part of an “ethics handling” he had to go through. How else could someone be so blind and stupid? Oh wait! He’s in a cult that makes members just that. Blind and stupid. So sad indeed.