Madam Sunshine — RTF’s Notary of Inevitable Outcomes — doesn’t predict the future. She reads the pattern. And in Tallahassee’s city manager search, the pattern is already complete.[…]
Florida does not need another speech about housing affordability. It needs fewer obstacles to building housing.
That is what HB 803 addresses.[…]
If you want to understand Tallahassee’s economic development problem, start here…[…]
By Skip Foster, Red Tape Florida Florida’s political leadership has been clear: the state needs more housing, and it needs it faster. Over the past two years, lawmakers have passed a series of increasingly aggressive reforms aimed at making that happen. The Live Local Act opened the door to higher-density residential development in commercial and mixed-use areas.[…]
If you’ve been following along, you know the story. A perfectly poured, fully compliant, taxpayer-funded sidewalk in Midtown Tallahassee — that doesn’t connect to anything. Not a mistake. Not temporary. Required. So we did what any reasonable person would do. We wrote a song about it. Introducing The Red Tape Ramblers — a new (and[…]
The Tallahassee-Leon Office of Economic Vitality turned 10 years old at the end of February. […]
Just a couple of hundred yards north of Midtown Reader — where a recent Red Tape Florida series told the story of a sad plot of grass which serves as a burial ground to common sense — you’ll find a different monument to bureaucratic ineptitude. […]
Sally Bradshaw just wanted to add 700 square feet to her bookstore. And she was willing to pay $850,000 to buy the lot next door to make it happen. […]
This is a three-part story about a bookstore, a city, and a process that few people ever see until they are in it. It includes hundreds of emails, unwritten rules, unexpected requirements, and a $150,000 sidewalk that raises larger questions about how decisions get made.[…]
When we last saw Sally Bradshaw, she had survived months of deviations, secret menus of unwritten City rules and a mandatory bench in a pollinator garden. But the City still had one more move to make. The $150,000 Sidewalk of Doom was waiting. And so was a deal nobody could believe. […]