Hermine Exposes The Incompetence Of The City Of Tallahassee And Its Elected Officials

See the red shaded area in the map above? That's basically the entire city of Tallahassee. It's also the many parts of our city that were without power after Hermine's visit in the wee hours of Friday morning. Over 70,000 homes and businesses were left without power out of some 110,000 City of Tallahassee customers.

As I write this at 6:00 pm on Sunday evening, almost 72 hours have passed since the storm left most of us without power. Less than half of those who lost power have had power restored to their homes or businesses. We've been told it could be a week or longer before power is restored to everyone. Strange, but the City of Tampa restored power to 80,000 homes and businesses within 48 hours, more or less, as a result of Hermine. What's wrong with this picture?

For the benefit of my friends outside of Tallahassee, Hermine was the Tropical Storm that came over the top of Tallahassee late Thursday night and early Friday morning. It was barely elevated to hurricane status as it came ashore on the coast and by the time it arrived in Tallahassee it had quickly downgraded to a Tropical Storm with 45 mph sustained winds and much less rain than projected (4-5 inches).

Heaven help us if it had been a real hurricane, like a Category III or IV as we've frequently had in other parts of Florida.  If anything other than this little blip on the screen had hit us we wouldn't be seeing power for a month based on the utter lack of preparation by, and the overwhelming ineptness of, our city government.

Tallahassee's City Council (Left to Right)- Curtis Richardson, Scott
Maddox, Mayor Andrew Gillum, Nancy Miller, and Gil Ziffer

The City of Tallahassee's elected officials, as well as those in management positions, failed miserably  to do what they are being paid handsomely to do. But that's what we get for electing perpetual politicians who do nothing but suck on the public teat year after year instead of holding down regular jobs like the rest of us.

You know who I mean. I'm talking about the likes of City Commissioners who go from one elected office to another and sometimes have to settle for City Commission slots while they wait for the chance to run for statewide offices again. They have no apparent marketable skills to work in the private sector so they turn to a life in public office as their means of making a living. Any public office will do as long as it means not having to get a real job.

And as long as we're dumb enough to elect them.

Then there's the other breed of politician we have heading up the City of Tallahassee. He's the type of politician who began his political career at the local level as a City Commissioner. After patiently paying his dues and after a few years went by, he parlayed that office into a run for Mayor. In the meantime, serving in City government is nothing but a stepping stone to future statewide and/or national political office.

Meet Mayor Andrew Gillum.

Mayor Gillum delivers a speech at the DNC in Philadelphia

Instead of dedicating his time and undivided attention to addressing local issues, our Mayor recently made a grandstand play and criticized North Florida counties for refusing to wed gay couples. He invited gay couples to Tallahassee to get married in Leon County even thought it was against Florida law.

Please don't misunderstand. I could care less who marries who, where or when they do it. What I do care about is a small town Mayor thinking he has any standing to criticize counties for following state law and then inviting people to come to Leon County to break state law when, as Mayor of our City, he has no standing to marry anyone.

But Mayor Gillum could have cared less about Florida law or the fact that it was not for him to decide who could and couldn't get married in Leon County. He was looking to garner national political attention and he got it from the national Democratic Party.

Gallium is very good at seeking national attention on issues that have nothing to do with the well being of the people he has been elected to serve. For example, prior to the gay marriage matter, Gillum garnered national attention when he told cable news media that the City of Tallahassee would welcomer Syrian refugees.

Of course, Mayors have nothing to do with immigration, relocation of refugees, or their acceptance. Moreover, the statement came as quite a surprise to members of the City Commission who had not been consulted by Gillum prior to him making the pronouncement. Gillum quickly walked the statement back and admitted that this was only his personal view and not the official position of the City.  But, it was just another bit of political theatre calculated to curry favor with the the Democratic national party.

Mayor Gillum's Facebook post when Joe Biden
and Patrick Murphy came to Tallahassee recently

His antics have met with success. The Democratic National Party invited Gillum to speak at the Democratic National Convention in late July giving him his coveted springboard towards what he dreams will be bigger political opportunities down the road.

That's not, however, what we elected Gillum to do.

Instead of thinking about his political future, Mayor Gillum should have been thinking about Tallahassee. As he was drafting and practicing his speech for the DNC Convention in Philadelphia and while he was spending a week up there rubbing elbows with political hacks, the hurricane season was slated to begin. Gillum could have and should have been planning, organizing, and working through the logistics of what, how, when, where, and by whom problems would be solved in the event a storm came our way.

Mayor Gillum's Facebook post when Tim Kaine
decided to pay Tallahassee a visit recently

That was not in the cards for Tallahassee residents. Mayor Gillum was too busy for such trivial, local things. Why, Vice President Biden was coming to town in August, along with U.S. Senate candidate Patrick Murphy. The Mayor had to make time to show them around and ride in the Vice President's motorcade.

And Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton's running mate, was coming to town at the end of August. Our Mayor had to devote his undivided attention to hanging with Kaine for two days rather than worry about how the City would deal with things like hurricanes.

Meanwhile the tropics were heating up and storms began to form.

Hurricanes are a constant, yearly threat to our state and our cities. That gives local officials the luxury of ample time within which they can settle on plans to deal with storms and worst case scenarios.

In addition, storms don't arrive on our shores out of the blue. Storms are tracked for thousands of miles from the time they form until experts can determine whether they pose a threat to the U.S. While they're still a week to ten days away we pretty much know if there's a good chance a given storm will make landfall somewhere in Florida, how strong it will be, and the path it will likely take. That gives local officials ample time to fine tune preparations.

Hermine's projected path two days before the storm made landfall

In the case of Hermine, everyone in the State of Florida knew for several days before the storm arrived that it would almost certainly pass through the Florida straits, curve northward, and then come ashore somewhere between Cedar Key and Panama City. Tallahassee was dead in the middle of the cone of probability.

So, for many, many days, our lame excuse for public servants could have been, and should have been, planning on how to take care of what was certain to be major electricity outages in our city. They could have and should have been lining up hundreds of crews from all over the Southeast, ready, willing and able to come to Tallahassee on a moment's notice to come and restore power to us. They should have also mapped out a viable plan on how to disseminate power crews, make sure equipment was readily available, and otherwise plan for a worst case scenario like we had.

Photo op for the Mayor a day before the storm came ashore

Weather Channel interview with the Mayor

But no. On top of failing to have a viable, long standing plan of action in place, what were the likes of Mayor Gillum doing as the storm approached? Posting on Twitter and Facebook. Telling us to prepare for the storm. Taking the time for every possible photo op that could be manufactured, like shoveling some sand into a few sandbags.

And of course being available for a little national pub with the occasional interviews with the Weather Channel reporters.

Politicians call this the "optics". They want to use every possible opportunity to be seen by constituents pretending to be doing something substantive. Butcher's a difference between pretending to  do something of substance and actually doing something of substance.

What Gillum and the rest of the City didn't do is inexcusable. He and City officials knew that because of the heavily wooded neighborhoods that are common in Tallahassee trees would come crashing down even under the mildest of storm conditions. And that's exactly what happened. And the response was chaos made a thousand times worse by inept leadership.

So here we now are with half of those who lost power sitting in mid-90's temperatures and 95% humidity, without power. And they're telling us it could take a week to two weeks for power to be restored to everyone.

What the heck are we paying you to do, Mayor? Why did we ever elect incompetents like you into office?

Photo op with line crews for the Mayor

It certainly wasn't so you could go to the Democratic National Convention in July and give a speech. It wasn't so you could pad your political resume by making a run for Chairman of the Florida Democratic Party. It wasn't so you could fund raise for Barrack Obama or Hillary Clinton. It wasn't so you could to play host to Tim Kayne, Patrick Murphy, or Joe Biden.

One of the most important things you were supposed to be doing was planning and organizing for the eventuality that finally came to bear on our City - a hurricane.

You failed. Totally. Completely.

And then you made things worse. In between your many new photo ops, people began reporting that they were seeing power crews headed out of Tallahassee when they were obviously needed here. You took personal offense that anyone would dare criticize your ineptness in handling the situation and you testily turned to social media. In a late night rant, you chastised anyone who dared question why you were letting crews leave town when they were obviously needed to restore our power as quickly as possible.

Your answer? You basically told us that were dumb as dirt for not understanding the complexities of power restoration. You sternly told us that these crews were not needed. That they were just in the way. That only so many crews could work on the problem without interfering with each other. You reminded us that you had accepted the help from several other public utility companies and that you would never turn away assistance that would expedite the restoration of power.

A lot of talk by the Mayor but very little constructive action

What we subsequently learned was that those power crews being told to leave town were from private utility companies, not public utilities. And now we read that Florida Power & Light (a private utility company) has had a team of 575 power crew members fully equipped and raring to go on a standby offer to send them to Tallahassee from their Lake City staging area (a mere 90 miles away) and you turned them down. Duke Energy offered to send crews as well. But you turned them all down.

I don't know if you didn't want to pay them, although it's been reported that their offers were unconditional and without any strings. I don't care if they were union or non union and you had a problem with one or the other. All I know is that I saw several crews leaving town right after the storm hit and several friends reported that they saw the same thing. One friend even confirmed that in talking to one of the crews they were told that they were not needed and to leave.

Your refusal to take FPL and Duke up on their offer appeared mystifying to say the least. So we questioned your strategy. And you had the nerve to chastise us.

Then, we get this email from the City today:

Additional power crews from Gulf Power, one of the public utility entities who was already working to help us out, are heading our way to help out. More than 150 crew members are coming. Say what???? Didn't you tell us (in a very angry, condescending manner) that we had too many crews in town and any more personnel would just be getting in each other's way? Haven't you been telling us for the past few days that we had all the help we needed? Now, all of a sudden, Gulf Power has more crews available and you stumble all over yourself to tout them coming to help us?

Mayor, you and your staff are worse than incompetent. You are deceitful and incompetent.

Thankfully, the Governor has stepped in and ordered additional teams to help restore power whether you like it or not. It's finally and thankfully out of your hands now.

I've seen people on social media come to your defense and deride anyone who dares be critical of the your actions, or lack thereof. They tell us we should be grateful that our families are safe, that our home are intact, and that this will all pass soon.

I beg to differ.

Hermione comes ashore

My family is safe because I did my job in protecting them. My home is safe because I did my job in battening down the hatches and taking steps to protect it. I did my job in preparing by filling the gas tanks in our cars, filling 5-gallon gas cans for emergency use, having batteries on hand for flashlights, having a stock of candles, having bottled water, filling the bathtubs with water in case we needed it, and on and on.

You didn't do your job. So pardon me if I don't cut you any slack

I'm also not prepared to cut any slack to all those City officials who recently received handsome, jaw-dropping raises. Our new City Manager just negotiated himself a nice $228,000 salary and a handsome retirement package to go along with a car and other perks.

Here's a breakdown of the outrageous raises secured by other City officials, not including other perks. Bear in mind that these are the most recent raises, on the heels of previous raises between 2008 through 2015 that caused their salaries to grow three times as fast as overall wages in Leon County. The increases also outpaced growth in average salaries for teachers and state workers.

CURRENT EMPLOYEE	JOB TITLE	PREVIOUS SALARY	CURRENT SALARY	PERCENT CHANGE
Reese Goad	Deputy City Manager	$135,916	$185,000	36.1
Cynthia Barber	Assistant City Manager - ComEng/PS	$127,586	$175,000	37.2
Raoul Lavin	Assistant City Manager - Admin/Prof	$131,486	$175,000	33.1
Wayne Tedder	Assistant City Manager - Dev/EC Vita	$145,327	$175,000	20.4
Robert McGarrah	General Manager - Electric Utility	$156,892	$175,000	11.5
Medhat Tadros	General Manager - UU & PublicInfrast	$135,986	$175,000	28.7
James Barnes	Chief Customer Officer	$120,230	$130,000	8.1
Ellen Blair	Director Human Resources & Wdev	$117,098	$130,000	11.0
Jonathan Kilpatrick	Mgr-Technology & Innovations	$112,119	$130,000	15.9
Reginald Ofuani	General Manager - ComBeaut & WasteServ	$111,585	$130,000	16.5
Karen Jumonville	Director - Growth Management	$118,910	$130,000	9.3
John Powell	Director - EnvServ&Facilities	$107,533	$120,000	11.6
Robert Wigen	Director - Financial Management	$98,421	$120,000	21.9
Sandra Allen Manning	Director - Community Relations	$91,772	$110,000	19.9
Alison Faris	Director - Communications	$84,202	$100,000	18.8
Patricia McCray	Assistant to the City Manager	$74,950	$80,000	6.7

These people, along with the elected officials mentioned previously, have all let us down.

All we can do is remember. Remember this storm. Remember the misery that was endured because the people we relied upon didn't do their jobs. Remember how we were lied to and then chastised for daring to tell the emperor that he had no clothes. Remember how our Mayor was off building his political resume instead of doing what he was elected to do. Remember how he was too busy for photo ops rather than putting available crews out into the field to restore our power.

We will remember. And then when any of your names come up for election, we will hopefully give all of you the boot. Once that is done, we can then look at who we're paying to run our City and what we're paying them. And then replace all the ones who don't deserve to be where they are. Because they don't deserve to be where they are.