Starting next year, the City will be celebrating Emancipation Day on May 20, which will be a paid holiday. The City Commissioners approved the change at their Nov. 10 meeting.
The holiday has already been adopted by the Leon County Board of County Commissioners.
Adopting the holiday is expected to result in an estimated additional cost of $67,000, and the cost related to overtime will be monitored through Fiscal Year 2021.
The holiday will be observed consistently with all other City holidays. If the holiday falls on a Saturday, it will be observed the preceding Friday. If it falls on a Sunday, then the following Monday is when it will be observed.
May 20, 1865 was the day the Emancipation Proclamation was read by General Ed McCook at the Knott House in Tallahassee, which formally freed enslaved people in all of Florida, two years after the initial proclamation was first issued and 11 days after the Civil War had ended.
Good news for the City Employees. Bad news for the Tax Payers. I'm confused, I thought liberals hated history?
Hopefully it doesn't become yet another virtue signaling day and people actually use it to teach kids something about history.
Slavery ended on December 6,1865. That is the date the 13th amendment was ratified after which "neither slavery or involuntary servitude will be permitted in the United States". May 20th was merely the date that Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, issued on January 1, 1863 and a precursor of the 13th amendment, was read here in Tallahassee.. If you are going to celebrate the end of slavery at least celebrate it on the right day otherwise history could be further distorted with the COT ending up celebrating Juneteenth which even isn't a date.
It's great to know our City Commissioners had the good sense to enact this Holiday to honor their minority employees that had the intelligence and common sense to vote for Trump.
Thank you beloved City employees!!!
Is that $67,000 cost before fringe or included? How many paid Holidays do City and County Employees enjoy at our expense? Again, considering they increased property taxes via inflated housing values.
Just do it like they did when they first started the MLK Day. It wasn't a paid Holiday BUT, you could take it off if you wanted to.