FLCapitalTea

07/01/2025

“Despite overall spending reductions, the budget increases funding for teacher salaries by over $100 million to nearly $1.4 billion and provides record per-pupil spending for K-12 schools.

The governor emphasized that this money is specifically earmarked for teacher salaries and cannot be ‘eaten up by bureaucracy.’

‘The school districts can only use this 1.38 billion to increase teacher salaries. They can’t use it for anything else,’ DeSantis said.”

DeSantis signed Florida's $115 billion budget for the 2025-2026 fiscal year on Monday, emphasizing the state's fiscal discipline.

06/30/2025

🫖We are excited to update you!

☕️Commissioner Caban responded to our request about dates and times for the Lake Munson meeting. He told us he is working with various interested groups on specifics that work for everyone. We are excited to cover this community conversation 🫶

☕️While we are updating on conversations happening with the local governments we decided to update you on the email we sent June 11th to Alison Faris. The email was asking about the All America City Award and if they can quantify the benefits from the 2015 award and if they have a committee created to help direct things. Faris works as the director of communications for the City of Tallahassee. We have yet to hear a response from her.

☕️We sent an email to all the Commissioners that attended as well as Reese Goad. We asked what they were excited to learn from other cities, what did they learn from other cities, and what do they plan to implement. We also requested that Reese Goad join our community conversation in place of Mrs Faris, since she hasn’t responded yet.

🫶Keep the conversation going, we are better together

06/30/2025

✨YOU DID IT! We are better together!

✨A neighbor submitted to us a response received about the fire ledgers. We studied the ledgers and the 13 accounts. Something was off.

✨Since Fiscal Year 2023 until now only $28,720,532.55 has been deposited into the fire ledger accounts.

✨We compared that to the amount the county has collected and transferred into the fire service accounts for the same amount of time. $24,339,934.99

✨Assuming the city is filling public records requests in good faith, this means they aren’t depositing your fire fees into the fire accounts.

✨This is important because under the Fire Assessment Fees all your fees are dedicated to the fire department. To not deposit them and track them means they are mishandling your dedicated fire fees.

🫶Keep the conversation going! We are better and more knowledgeable together

06/29/2025

✨This is sentiment shared by many of our neighbors.

✨We care very deeply about our city and our neighbors that live here.

✨We deserve better and can have better

🫶we are better together

I am not critical of Tallahassee because I hate it, quite the contrary. I am critical of it because I see its unmet potential daily.

06/29/2025

✨After talking with a neighbor we decided to calculate the population density of the comparable cities.

✨We calculated this with population divided by Square miles to get the number of people per square mile

-Tallahasse: 2,040
-Clearwater: 2,972
-Hollywood: 5,100
-Pompano: 4,473
-Fort Lauderdale: 4,772

✨Increased cost of living is generally associated with higher populations this is due to increased competition for housing.

✨More dense areas can provide for more job opportunities as well as better public transportation and public services.

✨Tallahasse has a large square miles compared to the other cities in this list. We have 98 square miles. But our population per square miles is much lower.

✨With development sprawling out our city loses the benefits of a denser population while getting the downside of increased housing costs.

✨Keep the conversation going. We are better together 🫶

06/28/2025

Our neighbors to the south of us experience similar issues as we do. Now is the time to start planning ahead and give the power of government back to the people on all levels.

The Supervisor Of Elections map shows precinct boundaries, precinct polling locations, Commissioner districts, and Commissioners for each district which will allow the voters of Wakulla County to navigate to any location quickly.

06/28/2025

🔥According to a “2024 Report To Bondholders,” The city may have obligated us to $18,064,689 (66.9%) in debt service

🔥According to a “capital budget report” from the city, the estimated cost was $16,915,000 and the start date was October 2021

🔥At the time of this report they had $10,665,000 already appropriated and were only needing to borrow the other $6million +\-

🔥What happened to that $10,665,000+?

🔥The current debt service is more than the cost of the station had they started building on 2021

🫶see sources below, keep the conversation going. We are better together

06/27/2025

🫖 We wanted to know how many city managers and assistant city managers other cities have.

☕️So we asked other cities In a Public record requests.

☕️We used the compared cities that were chosen in the graphic from last year.

*includes total number of city managers and assistant city managers

-Hollywood: 3️⃣
-Pompano : 4️⃣
-Clearwater :3️⃣
-Fort Lauderdale : (A little different) 1️⃣ city manager 3️⃣ assistant managers and 3️⃣”acting assistant managers”

☕️ As a reminder, Tallahassee has 5 total including the city manager. However, just this year Cynthia Barber retired so last year there were 6 total.

🫶Keep the conversation going. We are better together

06/27/2025

🍎Our superintendent just filled assistant superintendent positions and reclassified an executive in order to give them a raise.

“I will be coming before the Board asking to fill two superintendent positions this summer… I just reach into a drawer and pull out a position” -Superintendent Hanna

“For as long as I possibly can, I'm going to try to hold our schools and classrooms harmless when it comes to any budget cuts so I'm cutting as much as I can on Pensacola Street,’ Hanna told the Tallahassee Democrat, hinting at possible cuts in the district's administrative offices.” —TD Leon Schools adds $6 million to staffing plan for salary, benefit increases; 5/8/2025

🍎Then yesterday he sent an email to the entire district explaining how funding is tight and how they will have to experience cuts in their schools and classrooms

-all district level cost centers will experience a 10% reduction to their general operating budget.
-district-wide travel freeze (the board also approve a board member’s travel expenses before the start of this summer)
-any positions vacant for greater than 6 months at district cost centers will not be filled.

🍎While we don’t know the superintendent’s intentions the impact is leaving our teachers, our support staff, and our parents feeling like they are not the superintendent’s priority. They express feeling like he knew he was going to do this and took care of his friends before sending the email.

🍎A good leader knows what he has to do, does it first, in order to prioritize those he is leading.

🍎Teacher negotions are approaching, stay engaged remain inform.

✨We are better together, Keep the conversation going 🫶

06/26/2025

✨As the City executives prepare for their summer vacation to Colorado, they have been too busy to join the conversation with us.

✨We asked the Director of Marketing and Communications, Alison Faris, if there is a quantifiable return from the last win and if there is a committee that has been established and would be able to guide some things.

✨She has refused to join the conversation despite her position in the city and one of the award categories is public engagement.

🫶Keep the conversation going. We are better together

06/26/2025

✨During our Public Records request of our neighboring cities, we also asked for the pay of the managers and assistant managers.

-one thing to note on this graph is that Fort Lauderdale has 3 ”acting assistant managers” which we also factored into their cost.

-Cynthia Barber also retired this year reducing our cost. If we hire another assistant city manager our cost on executives will be the highest of these cities.

✨Keep the conversation going. We are better together 🫶