1) Tell us a little about yourself, and the biggest issue impacting your neighborhood.
I was born in Birmingham Alabama, lived in the Tacoma/Seattle, Washington area, and I’m 1 of 14 children. My father was a coal miner and mother a domestic. I attended Clarke College in Atlanta, Georgia on a scholarship, and was a teacher 28 years. I taught at the FSU DRS (Florida High) for 19 years, and subsequently served 14 years as the Executive Director of the Capital Area Community Action Agency, advocating for and providing assistance to low-income residents in 8 counties. Services included rent and utility payment assistance, weatherization/energy programs, and upgrading low-income housing including mobile homes. I retired in 2012 and have written four books, one titled: Poverty, Politics, and Race in America. I’m concerned that low-income people are being incorrectly stereotyped as lazy and feeding off of the public trough.
I live in Betton Hills and key issues of impact include preserving the residential nature of the community while dealing with major traffic issues, and encroachment of uses inconsistent with the residential character of the neighborhood. Maintaining infrastructure and conveying stormwater and preventing flooding are other key concerns.
Dot Inman-Johnson website Facebook
2) Based on your experience, how well do you think public participation is working in city planning and development?
It’s not working. When the Comp Plan was first being developed it was done with citizen engagement. We had committees of citizens developing and making recommendations on all elements of Plan focusing on what the community felt should be included. The Commission listened to citizens and considered their input. This is mostly eroded now with the current majority on the city commission.
Is there anything you would like to see the city/county do differently?
I’d show the citizens I respect their input by returning to using committees to develop recommendations. The neighborhood plans for instance. The City acts like they are doing the neighborhoods a favor by using these funds for code enforcement, and infrastructure upgrades such as sidewalks and landscaping. These are services the City should already be providing as benefits from our tax dollars. We should be doing what needs to be done in underserved areas instead of letting grants control how and where the money is spent. The City should be more creative in finding funding to do projects the community wants done based on the relevant citizen committees’ recommendations.
3) What role should citizens and neighborhoods have in deciding on the use of public properties and how do you think that should work, for example at the city’s Northwood Mall site or the county fairgrounds?
Citizens’ concerns and input should be respected and listened to. It is clear that currently our citizens concerns are ignored. Decisions are made from the top with little public input. By way of example, the City ignored the Park Terrace neighborhood’s desire to preserve the trees at the Northwood law enforcement complex site. They provided an alternative with expert consultation to back-up the proposal to move the stormwater facility 15’ in order to save the trees. Wayne Tedder met with the neighborhood by Zoom and pretended to care. He was asked several times whether he would talk to City management about the proposal and respond back to the neighborhood. He would not respond to the requests and the trees were removed quickly without notifying the commission or the neighbors. They did not care about the neighbors’ concerns. Blueprint meetings no longer have citizens providing feedback because it’s a waste of time and they know they are not be listened to.
What would your vision for that property be?
Listen to neighborhoods and residents. The Law enforcement facility is wasting tax dollars by giving the developer large sums of money. Originally the project was going to $40M, then post Covid it became $60M. The Commission should have been properly briefed on the justification for the increase, and provided an opportunity to ask questions before this large change order benefiting the developer was approved. Then, the cost of the project escalated to $135M! Who is negotiating for the City? We need to change who is responsible for this. There were no questions asked of the city manager, no accountability for this top-down decision-making.
4) Do you think Tallahassee is growing in a way that sustains our neighborhoods as well as business?
No, the Comp Plan is being violated with the constant expansion of the urban services area (USA) annexing fingers far outside the current USA. The City is using taxpayer dollars to run infrastructure way out to places like Welaunee, before providing much needed maintenance and repairs to neighborhood in the existing USA. It has antiquated infrastructure including roads, stormwater conveyance, and sewer lines that need to be repaired before building roads that are not needed for Welaunee. They are using our money to do this for the benefit of large landowners and developers. Another example is the flooding in Jake Gaither Park. The City needs to deal with stormwater conveyance, and the Northwest Florida Water Management District indicated there are short-term fixes the city could implement, such as berms and retaining wall along the lakes, until capital is available for long-term solutions. Curtis Richardson, who lives nearby and takes great pride in constantly mentioning that he lives on the “southside” by choice, was missing in action when the flooding occurred.
From your perspective, what is the role of the Comp Plan in guiding development and protecting neighborhoods?
If the City followed its own policies based on the Comp Plan, many of the problems we are currently experiencing would not have happened. Neighborhood preservation is a key goal of the Plan and should have prevented developer interests from continuously having projects approved that encroach on the interests of adjoining neighborhoods. The Plan calls for the preservation of trees, and creating walkable, high-quality affordable housing for the benefit of our community. The Comp Plan dictates where resources should be spent, with a focus on economic development and creating jobs. According to the Shimberg Center at the University of Florida, affordable rentals should be the number one strategy and priority for addressing homelessness and poverty. Tallahassee has a 20% poverty rate. 1 in 5 residents are not getting their basic needs met and are living in desperate poverty. The City loves to boast that we have the best economy of similar size cities in Florida or even the Nation. We can’t make this claim when we don’t use our resources to address poverty in our community. We are not ensuring that all of our citizens fairly share in the benefits derived from our public investments in the city.
5) Do you think we have a housing shortage?
There is no housing shortage. Most of our building projects are directed toward new student housing. Student housing developments have virtually taken over Frenchtown, which was once a bustling and thriving black community. Now Economy Drugs is the last business standing. The City devoted little to re-invigorate and revitalize the area, and instead they supported student housing encroachment into Frenchtown. We need workforce housing, but the City follows the money. Why don’t we use our funding and grants for affordable rental housing instead – we could provide incentives for developers to build quality affordable rental units. We are told that most of the trust fund money must be spent on owner-occupied housing- if so, then staff needs to think outside of the box find funding sources that can used where it is really needed.
If so, who does it affect and how do you think the Commission should address it?
The City should work with groups such as the French Town Improvement Authority to provide needed affordable rental housing and needed services and assistance.
6) Do you believe we have an issue with protecting our local environment, our trees and water quality?
Yes, an example is the regular sewer spills the City has, and the state Department of Environmental Regulation’s sanctioning of the City over the issue. The City is not maintaining the infrastructure within the existing urban service area. In addition, we allow the clearcutting of trees, and don’t require developers to preserve as much of the natural environment as possible in new developments. In the past developers could not get away with this destructive type of development inconsistent with the desires of our community as exemplified in the Comp Plan.
If so, what should the commission be doing to address these issues?
Go back to the landscape and environmental protection elements in our Comp Plan and give them priority as intended. The various development review committees and planning and growth management staff should be doing what they are supposed to, based on the goals of the Comp Plan instead of letting developers get approval for everything they want.
7) Why do you think we have so much gun violence in Tallahassee and what should we do to address it?
Most of our gun violence occurs in the lowest income areas of the City: the 32301, 32304, and 32310 zip codes. These are the areas where people are living in desperate poverty, and feel there is no way out except to engage in activities they think provide them with the best way to make money: the drug trade and other activities that start with low-level crime leading to high-level crime. The City constantly reminds people to lock their cars to avoid guns being stolen and use to commit crimes. Stealing from cars is not only way to get guns, in Florida we have lax laws no permits. The drug trade plays a big part with drugs and guns being traded. When someone is convicted of a crime and the returned to the community there should be properly funded re-entry programs designed to prevent recidivism. We are not working with and educating younger family members who look to their older brothers engaged in the drug trade and other criminal activities because they are the only role models they have. We need to invest in prevention and not just intervention. We need to prevent young people from falling into the crime pipeline.
8) Why do we have so much homelessness, and what should we do to address it?
Homelessness is not just an issue of people migrating into our community, it’s also people who are made homeless because they can’t afford to pay the rent, and we are not providing the affordable rental housing that would prevent them from becoming homeless. Homelessness is impacting more people, including the 30-50% of medium income groups. Mental health is another contributor, and needs to be addressed in our community. This is a national problem that goes back to the Reagan administration’s defunding of programs. Local tax dollars can’t solve the problem, we also need state and federal funding. The City needs to seek out and apply for funding sources to address the problem.
Another issue is that released prisoners become homeless and come to Tallahassee. We need programs to reunify them with their families by helping to make the connections and providing the resource to get them home where they have a support system. To help deal with homelessness we need to provide resources including assistance finding jobs and housing, and with getting their GEDs. Another issue is that many places won’t rent to people with a criminal record. We need to change polices and develop programs to assist with re-entry and provide them with a chance for success. We need to give the poor a hand up to move from desperation to thriving. All efforts to address homelessness is done in a piece-meal way, and we need a comprehensive approach.
9) What do you see as the appropriate role of staff and the commission in decision making?
The city’s organization chart dictates that the citizens are at the top, followed by the elected commission, then the appointed executive management team, followed by the line City staff. Currently the decision-making is backwards with the city manager making the decisions and dictating to the commission, with three commissioners falling in line. The previous city attorney, the first black women in this position, was run out of city hall because of the hostile work environment created by the city manager and his executive team. Text messages how them intimidating and degrading her to developers over the Welaunee development. Three members of the commission only listen to the city manager. As an example, they voted not to defer making a decision on the police station contract in order to provide time for the city attorney and city treasurer/clerk to provide their expert opinions on the matter, instead voting for the huge increase in cost relying solely on the city managers recommendation. The city manager acts with impunity and shows no respect for Jack and Jeremy, knowing the other three commissioner have his back. Another example of this treatment is the city manager only briefing the three commissioners regarding the city losing $1M in a scam while Jack and Jeremy learned about from the newspaper. How is it possible for the city manager to ignore two commissioners and answer to only three? Its clear that the public is now at the bottom of the city’s organizational chart.
10) Is there anything you haven’t had a chance to tell us yet that you would like our neighborhoods to know?
The deplorable treatment of the fire fighters by the city. There are two public safety departments: the police and fire departments. They risk their lives daily to protect us, our property, and the city. For purely political reasons the two departments are treated differently with firefighters receiving a starting salary of $44K and police officers $60K. There is no justification for the difference and it creates a division for no reason. The firefighters having been without a contract for more than a year and have already missed out on two pay increases as a result. The City approved the police contract and benefits package last summer, why not include firefighters in decision? I am very concerned that this is a political situation and places the police in the middle. Both contracts could have been agreed to without a need to raise taxes. A final example, there are three commissioners who voted for a ballot initiative to amend the City Charter to double commissioners pay. The City’s Charter Review Committee recommended the City not put the issue on the ballot, and hire a consultant to the study the issue and make recommendations. The three commissioners overrode the recommendation and voted for the ballot initiative. Another example of three commissioners showing no regard for community input.