During the upcoming Leon County Commission meeting on July 12, elected officials will consider the acceptance of a Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) of $3.6 million to restore the Concord School in Miccosukee.
Additionally, the county will vote to accept $1 million in federal funding as a part of Congress’ Fiscal Year 2022 appropriations bill, which also requires a county match of $850,000.
After engaging with the Miccosukee community to hear citizen input and inform the public of the project’s design and intentions, the county approved the application for the grant in October 2021.
The CDBG requires funds to go toward actions that allow the county to “prepare, prevent, and respond to the health and economic impacts of COVID-19 and must benefit low to moderate-income residents of unincorporated Leon County.
The $5.4 million investment in restoring the 1940-era building located at the Miccosukee Community Park will be the only public meeting space in the rural community. The renovations will allow the public to gather, receive needed services, and connect with neighbors. Additionally, it will have an emergency generator to serve the community and provide comfort during severe weather events.
“This game-changing $5.4 million investment represents the county’s long-term work on the Miccosukee Sense of Place initiative to shape the community for generations to come,” said Leon County Administrator Vincent S. Long in a press release. “I am proud of all the work of our county teams since 2016, from the significant citizen engagement to the tireless legislative work.”
Restorations on the building will begin this calendar year and continue through the end of 2023.
Leon County Receives $3.6 Million Grant to Restore Concord School in Miccosukee added by Lynsey Kirk on
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Just one other thing for your readers… the photo in this article is a picture of the original Concord School. This is Not. the structure receiving 5million. The school in the photo was moved and has been on display at the Tallahassee Museum for decades. The 1940s Miccosoukee segregated school is receiving the 5 million NOT the Concord school shown above. The County put the name of the black school, Concord, on the original white segregated school. I’d love to know what the Black community thinks about it. Nothing in the minutes because no community members came to the meetings until the grant was already written.
Fear not. The county has NO INTENTION to fund the restoration of the 1870 Lake Hall School. Instead, they renamed the 1940s segregated white school with the 1890s Black School’s name: Concord. There… how’s that! And you can visit the original Concord School at the Tallahassee Museum. So don’t fret. The county put $850k they said they didn’t have for the Lake Hall into this Miccosoukee Elementary School.
And by the way…. why is Proctor so Gung Ho for this project? Is it in his district? I mean, he wondered why the county schould put money into the Lake Hall school to honor bunch of “dead” folks when the living in 32404 need so much. Hmm did he get 32304 5.8 million?
This is nothing but pandering to a specific population .demographic that is repeatedly getting screwed by their own elected representatives.
Most of you are looking at this all wrong.
By the time the city commissioners, planning commissioners, their aides, and “business partners” in the private sectors take their cuts there’s barely enough left to mow the lawn, much less buy enough paint to cover the exterior.
If this building’s to be restored properly someone will have to come up with some REAL money from somewhere….
@ Edward:
I’ve made some descrite off the record inquiries with our local power brokers and while the idea of your proposed savings to our taxpayers sounds great on paper, they have some grave concerns, over their pre-arrainged “contributions” from their pre-selected contractors just may not materialise to fill their war chest of reelection needs if they follow your “looks good on paper but just does not pass the smell test plan.”
The absloute worst case scenario for them, Edward, would be if you hire unvetted honest contractors. So they are indicating, off the record of course, that they will not be able to consider your proposal at this time for the…uhh…uhh saftey … uhh yeah … thats it … “for the safety of the communitty we will not be considering any and all un-vetted contractors at this time.”
Thank you Citizen Edward,
“After carefull consideration of the…uhh… what was it … oh yeah the safety of our communitty as related to your input to your Great Leaders who know whats best”;
“REQUEST DENIED”
Again, someone is getting a big payout and it isn’t the taxpayers..
I would sure like to see a cost breakdown of this project.
You could tear it down and put it back together for less than 500 k, and that is being generous.
I’ll make our county and federal government an offer… right here.
I’ll do it better, and for only $3.4 million… that’s a $2-million savings to the taxpayer and voters.
… my offer stands; it’s your call… take your time, I’ll wait.
Please publish the names of commissioners who vote “for” and “against” each agenda item. Do this for Both City and County commissions. We have a need to know.
Seriously, what the heck are they going to do that will take that much money? How ridiculous.
What an incredible waste of money.
Be on the lookout for our Nannies to begin trotting out some local connected (connected to our elected Nannies) Blacks to endorse these school house projects as the best thing ever. These campaigne advertisements will begin soon. Likely on local Nannie supporting WCTV/WTXL/TDO.COM coming to you very soon!!!
Well at least our elected Nannies will be able to cultivate campaigne contributions from the various pre-screened list of contracters doing the work on this old school house and the one on Lake Hall. As a plus our Nannies will know their guilty white supporters will feel like this “look at us we are so doing stuff for our Negros”. So based on our majority of liberal citizens its a win win.
ps: it matters not that Black citizens want these 2 projects or not. It’s more what I said in the above paragraph.
I once saw a quarter of a million dollar check go out from the county to pay for “IT” work for someone associated with one of the current Usual Suspects. I said something and they ignored me and had they looked into it many years ago it would have exposed one of the players who is still getting away with it to this day. When you say something they do bad things to people who question. And I am not kidding.
Something is off here on the numbers and someone’s going to get a payout.
I still like old school houses to be restored, but $5 million?
Who the HE77 is coming up with these Costs? That’s almost $10 Million to restore 2 small Schools. This is getting stupidly out of hand.
5.6 million to restore a shotgun shack? When you look up Boondoggle in the pictionary, you get a picture of that 5.6-million-dollar shack…in Miccosukee! These people are straight up criminals.
What does this have to do with Covid-19?
Why does it take $5.4 million to restore an old school house?
SMH – the fleecing of taxpayers
You can fix everything there for that much $
I have to ask…what is wrong with the existing Miccosukee Community Center? Isn’t it a public meeting space? It’s certainly rural and has been used in the past for the community to gather and connect with neighbors. I expect it could be structurally enhanced to provide for storm shelter and a generator could be added for emergency power and a sense of place could be made available for far fewer of our tax dollars. What is this fixation to spend a ton of money on old school buildings that are long past their prime?
I love history, especially school houses. My mom grew up in a house that had been a school.