Tallahassee City Commission Appointment was a Paid City Vendor in 2016, 2017, & 2018

Tallahassee City Commission Appointment was a Paid City Vendor in 2016, 2017, & 2018

Payment records show that recently appointed City Commissioner Dr. Elaine Bryant was a paid City of Tallahassee vendor from at least 2015 through 2018.

The records of payments are shown below.

TR has requested records previous to 2015.

The records show that during this period, Dr. Bryant was paid $27,700 through 23 payments ranging in amounts from $600 to $3,600.

The payments were made to E.W. Bryant Associates, LLC.

Dr. Bryant was paid for work completed for four different city departments. These departments include the Office of Economic Vitality, Human Resources, WW Treatment Operations, and DMA Equity & Workforce.

The descriptions for work completed included Consulting Services, Maximizing Diversity, Essential Coaching Skills, Solve Problems & Make Decision and Leadership Skills for Supervisors.

During the meeting which lead to Dr. Bryant’s appointment, Mayor John Dailey pointed out that Dr. Bryant had been a city consultant but was not currently employed by the city.

However, there was no discussion about the work that was performed, the departments impacted or the time period. In addition, Dr. Bryant’s resume does not list the extent of the consulting engagements with the City of Tallahassee.

Dr. Bryant’s application provided to the city of Tallahassee lists her current employment as the “Chief Executive Officer EW Bryant Associates, LLC February 2000 – Present” and the “Director of Human Resources & Organizational Development Florida Dept. of Financial Services January 2012 – Present.”

TR has requested all employment agreements between E.W. Bryant Associates, LLC and the City of Tallahassee.

33 Responses to "Tallahassee City Commission Appointment was a Paid City Vendor in 2016, 2017, & 2018"

  1. For your investigative pleasure please ask Rocky Hanna about bringing back the consultant Mark Rolewski back into Leon Schools after the previous Superintendent severed all ties with him. He spent the day at our school, he was paid a daily rate and then he went to another school later that day and charged them. Double dipping consultant approved by Rocky Hanna! Well to the Crazyville Schools now in charge Czar Hanna and his loyal followers who will stab anyone and everyone in the back. He taught all the school administrators how to rate teachers, now we find out he has NO formal training by the Marzano group who developed the evaluation system to ever do so. Hanna to the rescue, please Rocky step down before somebody looks into the new inflated graduation rates.

    Crazy the new normal because everyone is afraid to speak out…thanks to the Hanna “hit list” and the silence of the school board.

  2. If you want to change anything, go convince people to stop voting for these people. The commissioners arent really at fault when they are enabled by the voters. Im still planning on moving when I have a chance, as I dont expect anything to change.

  3. Been living in this community of Tallahassee some 57 years and remember some far better times in the ”60”s & ”70”s than our current mess of “”diversity”” issues that are proving to be one sided viewpoints to serve the vociferous few with an agenda. The actions of city hall are slowly pitting one side of town against the other , and like many communities in California (and other suto-liberal cities), this only results in “move outs” of the area and an eventual degrading of what is left. A few more issues like forced affordable housing as a part of any planned development, and this tax paying voting citizen will also be history ………and for those remaining …GOOD LUCK !!!.

    1. I hear you, but some of the initiatives that appear to solely benefit southside residents actually benefit the city in its entirety. Simply put, if the southside residents have better opportunities they MAY avoid crime and poverty. It’s certainly worth it to all citizens to give it a shot. Simply spending the tax revenue on the side of town from which it generates led to the crime and poverty problem to begin with. Forced affordable housing is a necessity. Not just here, but all over the country we see affordable housing dwindling. It’s easy to say “get a job” or “go to school and learn new skills”, but that is lip service and yields no results. It’s hard to watch your earned money get spent on others, but for the collective good and for our own children’s futures, we have to figure out how to bring the less fortunate up to at least a basic human decency level. You hate the moocher adults, and so do I, but if we don’t get a hold of the youth in poverty, what do you think will happen to them in a few short years??

    2. I have to agree with you on those points, rb – although I dislike the having to say it. I attended FSU back in the mid-70s and Tally was a nice small city then – had a few problems of course but was regarded by most all of my fellow students as a charming and unique city, and a good number of my friends chose to stay after graduation and make a life here. Moving back in 2006 was something I really looked forward to, but it’s been 12 years watching this city descend into a California or Detroit-like liberal corruption mess, with high crime and taxes and a rotten national reputation (Tally’s been featured on national news mostly for it’s infamous violent crime rate). I’d like to stay optimistic and hope the new COT commission can turn Tally around (or at some point, Gov. DeSantis makes it a priority to intervene and clean house). But if this commission and mayor resembles even a pale shade of the last ones, it’s time to take my tax money and go. Thus far I’m not encouraged by what I see, hope it changes and soon.

  4. Nineteen (19) checks in 989 days, totaling $21,400. A average check of $1,126+ every 52 days. I hope we do not see any others after December 31, 2018.

    1. Are you saying these were paid to Dr Bryant?

      If so, should there be a waiting time for a commissioner being able to take office from the time of their last payment from the city?

      I would think it needs to be at least 6 months. This process lacks due diligence in my opinion.

  5. Wow.
    Great work Hope.
    I’m sure all that was disclosed at the commissar’s hours-long meeting on New Year’s Eve, right?
    I should have given all four stooges $250 each and filed a résumé. #facepalm

  6. PAY TO PLAY

    2018 Political Contributions to the City Commission Candidates:

    4/27/2018 – William Messer to the John Dailey Campaign — $250.00

    4/27/2018 – Lila Jaber to the John Dailey Campaign — $250.00

  7. ___________________________PAY TO PLAY_________________________

    2018 Political Contributions to the City Commission Candidates:

    4/30/2018 – EW Bryant Associates to Dianne Williams-Cox Campaign

    1. Great due diligence! If we the tax payers can not TRUST elected COT Tammany Hall bosses and under bosses, who on Earth can we tax payers trust?

  8. ________________PAY TO PLAY_______________

    2018 Political Contributions to the City Commission Candidates:

    9/5/18 – Tabitha Frazier to — Jeremy Matlow Campaign — $250.00

    9/11/18 – Howard Kessler to – Jeremy Matlow Campaign — $250.00

    1. Anon, thank you. With all due respect, I will make sure to contact RB Holmes if I need anything from the city.

  9. The lack of representation is a big problem.

    It’s mostly a matter of communication. Logically it seems to me that what the special interests are paying for is access to decision making.

    What we saw with Trump was the emergence of information systems disrupting the traditional money driven electoral process.

    I’m not in favor of electronic voting ( I think you still need a physical record for general elections), but with the advent of the cyber currencies ( again not something I would advocate ) but we’re seeing the introduction of block chain technologies that provide privacy and secure anonymously verified authentication.

    Block chain seems to be the future of information systems since we’ve seen both the public need and the disaster brought about by the immature technologies, strategies, policies, and management of facebook, twitter, instagram, google, YouTube etc.

    I’m sure there’s others but one I heard mentionsd by a leading AI geek on the Joe Rogan podcast is Ethereum.

    They have some demo apps where in their words

    “You can build a virtual organization where members vote on issues and build a better delegative democracy.”

    Steve has built a powerful platform here and it’s amazing the impact he has had on the system simply by passing along information.

    I think he’s got their attention. I also don’t think at the local level that the commissioners are evil or even particularly want to be there. I think they are motivated by wanting to serve the people of Tallahassee and they just don’t have anything better to do.

    I don’t think Maddox was a particularly bad guy or even all that corrupt. I don’t have any objection to his actual voting record. In my opinion he was just born to lose and unfortunately had one of those faces that everybody wants to punch. The money he was taking was for access and advocacy. He was on the wrong side of the paradigm shift and that’s not how the game is played any more.

    There’s a lot of concern about this social credit score and having our every move surveiled. I’m not too concerned about it but politicians should be because they’re the ones under the microscope. To paraphrase a recent candidate, “We’ll YELP them up”.

    A wise man once told me.They can follow me around all they want to. All they will get is bored. Hopefully they’ll follow me to church and learn something.

    The way I look at it is the commissioners are sticking their necks out for our benefit. I don’t think they want to be the boss of us. Would you?

    To quote Robert Hunter, “Goddamn, have you seen the like? There wall is made of cannon balls. Their motto is don’t tread on me.”

    The commissioners have seen the consequences. The blockchain organizations are coming. I would hope before 2020. It would make sense for the city to initiate it because you could very easily use a taxpayer account number or voter ID to create a singular verifiable authentication key. We can do it as well. It’s not mutually exclusive.

    Representative communication channels can very easily be thrown together and then they know what we want, and we know that they know, and then if they don’t do what we want they know the consequences.

    I’m pretty hopeful for 2019. I think we’ll bridge the divide ,embrace our common heritage, come together as a United nation and move forward into a prosperous future bountiful with opportunity.

    There may be those who want to stand in the way of that and that’s OK too. We’ll see how it works out for them.

  10. Difficult to feel sorry for residents north of I10

    From what I see there has been more development up there than any 3 other areas of the city ..

      1. Tells me there are only two solutions. Either throw tea in the Cascades Park “holding pond” or secede.

        I prefer the latter.

    1. Jake, private developers are developing north of I-10. Millions and millions of public dollars being spent on south side, ie, Cascades Park, FAMU way, Orange Avenue, etc. The streets in northern neighborhoods are full of pot holes and need to be repaved. Crime is abundant. No representation for north side, yet most of COT tax revenue comes from north side. You can bet there will be $80 million of CRA funds directed to south side and RB Holmes. It would be nice if this community would wake up. It might be time to consider De-annexation from COT? Seriously, north side has NO voice.

  11. Seems as if the corruption in Tallahassee has just be institutionalized with Ms.Bryant. We need outside forces to come in and clean shop and drawn the swamp and all the puddles from our governing process.

  12. The north of I-10 citizens now have no voice moving forward in city government. These residents and businesses will get smoked in future years by a lack of city representation. Residents north of I-10 will have to deal with unfair and higher tax revenue that will overwhelmingly go to south side projects. The above article is an example of wasteful spending, and government cronyism. Just remember this when they raise our property taxes, again and again or when you pay that high utility bill. Remember when they propose a property tax increase that Dr. Bryant billed the city nearly $30,000 to teach coaching skills to city employees as well as things like “maximizing diversity”. Yet our entire city commission is now made up of five liberal voices, three of which probably live within a 3 mile radius of each other on the south side. It certainly doesn’t shout diversity to me. Again, no representation for residents north of I-10. Shameful.This is another example of a city in decline. Very sad!

    1. Time for term limits and single member districts. Maybe theses seats don’t need to be non-partisan any longer either. The “non-partisan” seats have led to partisan voting for years. Tallahassee needs to start working on getting these things changed now!

    2. All true, Concerned. I’d like to point to my post about Secession in the “Dr. Erwin Jackson” article – at some point in 2005, most folks in the north and surrounding suburbs of Atlanta got fed up with being robbed to support a massive Atlanta Corruption Machine. The suburbs seceded from Atlanta and formed their own cities – taking all their money with them to be spent in their own newly-formed cities. We can do the same – it’s simply a matter of how fed up and robbed we “North of I-10” folks will stand before it happens.

  13. It looks like Elaine Bryant had a special project on 7/21/17 that she billed the City for – which was one day after the largest employee lay-off in City History. Is Elaine Bryant an AKA sorority sister also? Yep. As was Anita Favors Thompson and numerous others. Curious.

    1. This is certainly interesting and hopefully there will be more info regarding the actual product that was delivered in lieu of these payments or if this was just another contract to someone for political support?

    2. It seems that that was the day the check was written. Doesn’t exactly mean that services were rendered on that day. I have no idea what services she provided for this, but she was getting checks for HR consulting for several months prior to this as well.

      1. So if 7/21/2017 is the payment date to Dr. Bryant – which is 1 day after the City’s largest Lay-off; then could the payment for Elaine Bryant’s services – which was before that date – include assisting, mapping, orchestrating the City’s actions (via Human Resources) for these lay-offs? It certainly took extensive long-term planning by the City to pull off that firing plan ALL in one day?

    3. Come on now children dont pretend to be so shocked our new crop of “usual suspects” selected a paid off insider. You all knew this was going to happen.
      More importantly: can we please get some of her AKA Sisters to take ‘Ole Girl down to Graces and get her a nice wig and give her a makeover?
      We all gotta look at her to 2020 and can we please try to work up a less manly look?

Leave a Reply to Anon Cancel Reply

Your email address will not be published.