Tallahassee incumbent gets unfavorable response from conservatives at forum
Tallahassee incumbent gets unfavorable response from conservatives at forum
Mayor Pro Tem Curtis Richardson received criticism for supporting property tax increases and executive city employee pay raises at the Capital Conservatives recent forum.
Three candidates for Tallahassee city commission shared their views on local issues in front of a room full of conservatives earlier this week.
“It was a vigorous exchange,” said Brent Pichard, a past president of the Capital Conservatives, the nonpartisan organization that hosted the forum. “The last few minutes were, to me, revealing in that two candidates seemed united in their efforts to remove one.”
That “one” is Mayor Pro Tem Curtis Richardson, Pichard said. Richardson, a Democrat who’s served on the city commission since 2014, is seeking a third four-year term.
Three other candidates for City Commission Seat 2 have entered the race, including: former Mayor Dot Inman-Johnson, a Democrat, Bernard Stevens Jr., an independent, and Donna Nyack, a Republican. The race is nonpartisan. Nyack, who’s a political unknown, didn’t attend the dinner.
Richardson and Inman-Johnson are the only two candidates in the race with experience serving on the city commission and they were the only two at the forum who’ve qualified to have their names on the ballot. The candidate-qualifying period ends on Friday at noon.
Election Day is on Tuesday, Aug. 20. If no candidate receives 50% of the ballots cast, plus one vote, then a runoff election will take place on Tuesday, Nov. 5.
Members of the audience asked about homelessness, a recent property tax increase and a proposed city charter amendment to double city commissioners’ salaries.
Richardson touted his experience and record of service in the city. But his message, at times, didn’t resonate with many people in the audience. He received very little applause compared to the other two candidates and one person jeered at him when he was defending how the city commission manages the budget.
“Curtis was being evaluated last night by a lot of conservatives based on his very long record of public service,” Pichard said. “Dot and Bernard Stevens were being evaluated on what they said they were going to be about.”
The Capital Conservatives will host a dinner and forum with the candidates for the Leon County School Board and school district superintendent on Monday, July 15 at 5:30 p.m. at the Tallahassee Elks Lodge located at 276 N. Magnolia Drive.
The first question asked was about how the candidates would work to curb homelessness and panhandling in the city.
Richardson explained that the city provides services to people who lack stable housing that they can’t find in other cities.
“We can’t stop them from coming to Tallahassee,” Richardson said. “There’s no way we can do that.”
Richardson also spoke about the Homeless Outreach Street Team, which is led by county and city police officers.
“They identify those homeless people who want to go home. Let's say, they're from Chicago. And they say, ‘I'm ready to go back to Chicago,’” Richardson said. “They will take them to the bus station, buy them a one-way ticket to Chicago, put them on the bus and make sure that they leave going back to Chicago, and tell them that they cannot come back to Tallahassee. That has been really effective.”
Inman-Johnson has served as executive director of the Capital Area Community Action Agency, giving her experience leading programs to help people who are homeless find long-term housing and reunite with their families outside of the city.
She says she and her husband, who’s a pastor at Loved By Jesus Family Church, have worked to help people in poverty as part of their ministry.
Richardson gets pushback for supporting property tax increase
The largest share of the city's general revenue — $66 million — comes from property taxes. Last year, the city commission voted 3-2 to increase the millage rate from 4.1 mills to 4.45 mills — an 8.5% increase. Richardson voted in favor of the tax increase.
“We raised the millage rate in order to pay for police services to address the crime rate in our city,” Richardson explained. “We’re looking at hiring an additional twenty police officers.”
A resident who owns a $350,000 home now pays about $122 more every year — or about $10 more per month — in property taxes under the new millage rate.
“We have the lowest millage rate of any comparable sized city in the state,” Richardson said, defending the increase.
Local business owner Kline Miller told Richardson that the relatively low millage rate is “fine and dandy.” He added, “But let’s do a millage-rate rollback.”
After the dinner, Miller told The Panhandle Press that he doesn’t know who he’ll vote for in the upcoming election, but it won’t be Richardson.
“I think we need a clean slate,” Miller said. “He needs to move on and let one of these new individuals come in and take his place.”
Miller says he’s also disappointed with Richardson’s support for recent executive pay raises in city government. “You could go work in corporate America, and that would be understandable because you're held accountable — you got to make a profit.”
Public records from last month show City Manager Reese Goad earns almost $273,000 annually. Four assistant city managers earn almost $231,000 per year, and the deputy city manager takes home an annual salary of nearly $248,000.
“The city should be a cost center,” he said. “They make the revenue, they pay for necessary services, they don't pay for stuff we don't need, like the new police department that went from this, this and this — why?”
Inman-Johnson criticizes city commission’s management of funds
Former Mayor Dot Inman-Johnson, who served on the city commission in the late 1980s and early 1990s, criticized the way the commission has managed the city’s finances in recent years.
“We've never heard what they plan to do about this out-of-control spending that the city manager is allowed to do,” Inman-Johnson told the audience. “They are not listening to anybody except the city manager who is doing a lot of things that should be questioned.”
Inman-Johnson added, “Let’s not even talk about the one million dollars that magically disappeared.” Inman-Johnson was referring to money that was allegedly stolen from the city from an outside source. In March, the Tallahassee Police Department launched a fraud investigation with the secret service. “We never heard about the investigation. What was done to get on top of this?”
“One of the first things I would do if elected in August will be to call for a forensic audit of city finances,” Inman-Johnson said, triggering an applause from the audience. “That is conservative,” one member in the audience yelled.
Inman-Johnson also criticized the city’s looming roughly $4 million budget deficit.
In response, City Commissioner Curtis Richardson explained that there won’t be a budget deficit. “By state statute, we are required to have a balanced budget at the end of the fiscal year.”
That’s when Norm Mears, an audience member, interrupted Richardson, and argued that the city achieved a balanced budget last year by increasing taxes and fees.
After the dinner, Mears told The Panhandle Press, “We need more of this — getting people out there and exposing them to citizens to ask them, ‘What are you doing with my money?’”
Mears says he plans to vote for Inman-Johnson. “Two of the candidates realize that there’s a problem, and the other one doesn’t believe there’s a problem,” he said. “I don’t think Curtis Richardson believes there’s a problem.”
One member of the audience also asked City Commissioner Curtis Richardson about a recent vote to put a charter amendment on the ballot to double city commissioners’ annual salaries to $90,000. “We were looking ahead to see what we might need to do to attract good quality candidates to be able to run and serve,” Richardson said. “We didn't move to give ourselves a raise. That is totally false. What we did was put a proposed charter amendment on the ballot.”
The proposed amendment to increase city commissioners’ salaries will appear on the ballot in November for voters to decide whether a pay increase will take effect.
Inman-Johnson and Stevens criticize Richardson’s leadership in closing
During closing remarks, Inman-Johnson explained that she’s running for city commission because she believes “there’s a lot going wrong.”
“I bring the experience and knowledge of the city institution to begin to put things back in place.”
Inman-Johnson also brought up failed contract negotiations between the city and the local firefighters’ union, which has ben working for more than a year to get a pay raise. “I am absolutely appalled at the way this city commission treats its firefighters,” she said, which received applause from the audience. “We should be supporting them in their bravery.”
Bernard Stevens Jr., who’s never held public office, said he’s running to bring change to the city. “We need everybody in our city leadership to change,” he said. “If you continue with the same people in the same positions, you are asking for the same outcome.”
Stevens also praised Inman-Johnson’s decision to run for office and work to unseat Richardson. “She realized that there was a problem within our city government for her to come out of retirement to go and run to be a city commissioner,” he said. “At the end of the day, we both see that there's an issue.”
“It’s either me or Ms. Johnson, just don’t vote for Mr. Richardson,” Stevens told conservatives in the room, many of whom laughed and clapped.
After the event, forum moderator Wayne DeWitt, who’s the founding president of Capital Conservatives, explained that reactions from audience members don’t reflect the organization, which is nonpartisan and doesn’t endorse candidates or contribute to campaigns. “Those were individual opinions,” he said.
The organization invites all candidates in a particular race to come and speak at its forums, regardless of party affiliation. “We go to great lengths to be objective when we bring these people in and treat them with respect whether we agree with them or not.”
Nyack is the only candidate who wasn’t at the dinner
The only candidate in the race who didn’t show up to the forum was Donna Nyack, who doesn’t have a campaign website or a social media page and hasn’t raised any money for her candidacy.
DeWitt says he tried calling Nyack five times on Tuesday morning, several hours before the event, and didn’t get a response. “I left her a voice message, and she didn’t return my call.”
He reached out to the other three candidates two weeks before the dinner, but Nyack’s candidacy hadn’t yet appeared on the election supervisor’s website at that time, DeWitt said.
“When I found out that she was a candidate, I tried to get in touch with her and could not,” said DeWitt, who learned of her candidacy the night before the dinner. “We invite all candidates, no exceptions.”