FLCapitalTea

01/08/2026

Stay engaged🫶

01/08/2026

✨On the city agenda is an item to sell 4.5 acres on capital circle. Last meeting the commission voted to allow staff to advertise the property.

✨ This 4.5 acre lot is selling for more than the 180 acres in downtown Tallahassee.

✨Also on this agenda is approval of a TMH MOU with FSU. While everyone supports a research hospital, our community is owed a more transparent process and to have our concerns discussed before anymore votes take place.

-Protections for FAMU
-Transparency and every effort to ensure the best valuation for our public land.
-A neighbor brought to our attention FSU’s stance on HB 6017 (removal of provisions that precluded certain people from recovering damages for medical negligence resulting in death also know as a way to end “free kill”). This bill had 93% bipartisan support from the legislatives. FSU opposed HB 6017 which concerns our neighbors advocating for families right to pursue damages when medical negligence results in their family member’s death.

✨Ultimately many community groups in our neighborhoods are being left out of the conversation and their concerns are being pushed aside.

✨Contact our city commissioner, ask them to pause this sale to allow for a more robust community conversation. Ask them to schedule town halls to address all of our community’s concerns.

🫶Keep the conversation going, we are better together.

01/08/2026

Keep the conversation going

01/07/2026

✨Recently the Tallahassee Democrat published the pay of some of the top executives in Leon County Schools.

✨However, many neighbors reported a pay wall or the link not working. So we compiled this list of the superintendent’s pay and included three years.

✨This is sourced from our public records requests.

🫶keep the conversation going. We are better together

01/06/2026

✨The agenda for the Greater Frenchtown/Southside Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) has an item to vote on to give SOMO walls $30,000.

✨The agenda item states this is for a blighted area, but SOMO walls has already received and redeveloped this area. Furthermore, the location of this art will be between the main parking lot and the overflow lot of this private business.

✨The item also states that this is to tell the history of the Southside. So, why isn’t this being told on main streets where they are more easily seen and not hidden behind a business?

✨The item also states “so that residents have a sense of ownership” but this is capitalizing on our neighbor’s hard fought history and they will not see a profit from this private business.

✨While this project is for art and we support the artist in our community, we take pause with more money being directed to a business that has already received of $776,000 from CRA and another $1.8 million from Blueprint.

✨Per an article written in 2023 (when blueprint approved the $1.8 million), plans already included “10-foot walls for artwork and large sidewalks to create a walkable space.”

🫶Keep the conversation going, we are better together.

01/06/2026

🍎Before Christmas we started having conversations with our neighbors about comparing our district to other districts.

🍎 We have selected 7 other districts to compare to Leon County. They range in student population from 27,500 up to 86,600. Leon county has about 31,600 students.

🍎We have submitted public records request for the selected districts requesting the salaries of the superintendents and the assistant superintendents as online sources sometimes do not accurately reflect the true salaries.

🍎Important information to note already is that Leon county has 1 superintendent and 6 assistant superintendents compared to other counties which generally have less but a higher student population.

-Bay County student population 27,500 with 1 superintendent and 4 Assistant superintendent
-Okaloosa student population 32,000 with 1 superintendent and 4 Assistant
-Escambia student population 36,700 with 1 superintendents and 5 assistants
-St John student population 52,300 with 1 superintendent and 5 assistant
-Osceola student population 75,300 (more than double our student population) with 1 superintendent and 5 assistants

🫶Keep the conversation going. We are better together

01/05/2026

✨Are you registered to vote? Do you need to update your registration?

✨Peep the comments below for a link to the supervisor of elections to get all the details on voting (even just checking your voter registration).

✨The steps are easy no matter what you need to do to register, update, or check your registration.

🫶We are better together and all our voices deserve a seat at the table in this year’s local elections.

01/04/2026

✨It is our Civic Responsibility to maintain an accountable and transparent local government.

✨Our local government has the biggest impact on our lives from salaries of many of our neighbors to our natural environment and a local economy that benefits all neighbors. Our local government shapes development and the future of our neighborhoods. They determine how successful our students are in the classroom and how much support our educators have.

✨This is why our civic responsibility to our local community is so vital.

✨The good news: We are a strong active community of interested people. We continue to bring our voices together to amplify each other’s issues to make our community stronger.

🫶So keep our conversations going. Let’s keep adding voices to our conversations because we truly are better together

01/04/2026

✨Happy Holidays to all our neighbors, we hope everyone had a safe and wonderful Holiday. We look forward to continuing our work with you in the upcoming new year.

✨A brief background:

-IDEA funding is intended for students with disabilities (ADHD, ASD, blindness, deafness, etc). This funding is provided by the federal government and is intended to supplement existing program. This means it’s to add to the programs we already have (not to replace or take the place of divert from: supplant).

-Leon County Schools recieves this funding and we requested they produce their records down to the spending at each school. Initially we were told they have it in hours (not dollars) at each school but wouldn’t produce the records of the hours allotted and the value of the hours).

-So November 7, 2025 we requested voluntary mediation from the Attorney General’s office. We simply stated that we were unsatisfied with the fulfillment of the request and are seeking voluntary mediation and require them to state if they are willing to participate. We also added the requests and attached the email exchanges between us and their office.

✨The update:

-After the initial email we had to follow up on November 18 to request they respond. Which they did that day but did not provide us an answer: Do you want to participate in voluntary mediation?

-November 19 we responded clarifying why we disagreed with not have the records but did not get a response. So, on Dec 1 we followed up again but did not receive a response.

-We were advised on December 10 to respond to the district and provide them a date to respond to voluntary mediation. We gave them until Dec 17.

-The district responded, but they still did not answer the question: Would you be willing to participate in voluntary mediation with the attorney general’s office?

-We explained that we were still dissatisfied and reiterated if they would like to participate— they did not respond.

-On Dec 18, we sent an email to the district documenting their unwillingness to cooperate in a good faith effort to resolve this request.

-We were advised next steps but later that same day, the district responded they would like to participate— if that is what the FlCapitalTea team would like to do. And the district stated they would not be able to participate until after the new year.

-The Attorney General’s Office informed them there would be no need for an in person meeting as this process is done through email.

-The attorney general started the process by asking the district if they have the information we are seeking.

The district has yet to respond

✨So after almost a month and a half of asking the district if they would like to participate in a free mediation program we finally recieved a response only after having to document uncooperativeness on their part.

✨This is not normal. This is not professional. We deserve a district that works for us and puts in a good faith effort to help us acquire transparency in our local governments.

🫶We are better together, keep the conversation going

01/03/2026

✨We are better together and that means we need more options for the local elections.

✨If you have considered running for city, county, or school board seat now is the time.

✨City seats available
-seat 5 (incumbent: Dianne Williams-Cox)
-seat 4 (Mayor’s seat)
-seat 3 (Matlow’s former seat)

✨County seats available
-At large (incumbent: Nick Maddox)
-District 1 (incumbent: Bill Proctor)
-District 3 (incumbent: Rick Minor)
-District 5 (incumbent: David O’Keefe)

✨School Board
-District 1 (incumbent: Alva Swafford Striplin)
-District 3 (incumbent: Darryl Jones)
-District 5 (incumbent: Marcus Nicolas)

✨Link below to the supervisor of elections for information on filing and qualifying.

🫶We are better together, we all can play a role in changing the trajectory of our local community. If you don’t want to run, find a candidate that you believe in and join their campaign.

✨We are sending out candidate questions in a couple weeks, if there is a question you have for all the candidates, drop it in the comments.

01/03/2026

✨Keep the conversation going, this is from our Wakulla neighbors who are experiencing some of the same problems we are with development, lack of affordable housing, and environmental concerns.

The undercover agents testified about getaways to Nashville, Dallas and Las Vegas to get info from their targets about City Hall pay-to-play.