MAXAILLC

Max Epstein · MAXAI LLC · Tallahassee, Florida

What the public record actually says.

I read the City’s, the County’s and Blueprint’s own records — budgets, permits, minutes, contracts — and publish what they show. Every number is tied to a document, so you can pull the same records and check my work. Independent and unpaid.

58times on the record before the City, the County, the CRA and Blueprint since 2019 — and that’s a floor
5op-eds, all in the Tallahassee Democrat 14news stories that quote or name me, 2021–2026
Left, 908 Group’s site plan with the 1907 Wahnish Cigar Factory traced in red under its new clubhouse; right, a concept of the factory kept as the clubhouseNew analysis of DRC permitting · 27 Sep 2026Not the project that was noticed.The notices said 73 units and one deviation. New City records added last week say 74 units, a second deviation for a fifth story, and a “variance letter.”Read the story
Read the reports Hire me
Max Epstein, in a grey jacket and patterned shirt, in front of trees
Max EpsteinRecords, funding traces, maps and independent studies.

The record so far

Since 2019 — asking the City, the County and Blueprint for their documents.

Geography and computer science, then sculpture. A glassblower by trade. The records work grew out of years of public comment, not the other way round.

  1. 2014BS, Geography and Computer Science, Florida State University.
  2. 2016Opened Tallahassee Glassworks, a glassblowing studio and gallery.
  3. 2017BFA, Sculpture and Public Art, FSU. Wrote a glassworks studio and learning lab into the Ashmore’s heritage proposal in Frenchtown — what happened to it →
  4. 2019First time on the public record, 27 June: told the Blueprint board I opposed the right-of-way acquisitions on the FAMU Way extension. Eight more appearances that year — relocation payments, the 3D-B pond, the oaks. Started the Save Historic Structures, Heritage Trees group. WCTV covered it ↗
  5. 2020Researcher, DeVoe L. Moore Center, FSU. Led the eminent-domain project on the Capital Cascades Trail: who was displaced, on what terms, with whose money. The poster →
  6. 2022Ran for Leon County Commission, District 2, on Lake Munson and stormwater — WFSU ↗. Asked Blueprint to extend the Segment 4 study to the west side of Lake Munson; the board voted 11–0 to have it costed.
  7. 2023Friends of Lake Munson, Inc. incorporated (Sunbiz N23000008351), with me on the board. Presented on Lake Munson to the County Commission on 12 September.
  8. 2024On the team for a $2M EPA STAR proposal on polluted urban lakes in underserved communities — not funded. Objected to the Airport Gateway variance; the City produced the file.
  9. 2025Two years of Blueprint records requests go public as a story about rising project costs — WTXL, May 2025 ↗. The County holds a Lake Munson town hall on 26 August.
  10. 2026MAXAI LLC. Published the Independent Separation Study at leonfirefacts.org, from public records, then stories on Blueprint’s budget tables and the Wahnish Cigar Factory. The Wahnish records release is out: the ARB evidence brief and the story →

Reports

The reports.

Newest first: the Wahnish Cigar Factory story, the ARB evidence brief, then the Leon County fire study — two reports and the four-page brief, each readable here in full and on leonfirefacts.org.

The marks the words that carry the point quoted from the document a figure my read, not a finding

Wahnish Cigar Factory · 908 Cigar Factory (TSP260037)

The story ↗The originals ↗
NewPublished
Left, the builder’s site plan with the 1907 factory traced in red under a new clubhouse and garage; right, an AI-assisted concept of the factory restored as the clubhouse
Left: the builder’s Sheet 3.0 with the factory traced in red from its survey. Right: AI-assisted concept by MAXAI, from the 2018 National Register photo; not the builder’s design.

Not the project that was noticed: the Wahnish Cigar Factory at the DRC

New analysis of DRC permitting · Development Review Committee, 28 Sep 2026 · 16 cards, 35 originals

Both legal notices and the agenda describe 73 apartments and one deviation, for setbacks. Staff comments added to the City’s file on 25 September count 74, including units from a nearby project, and add a second deviation for a fifth story. The City also received a “variance letter” that is in no notice, agenda or public file. The story shows each record as found, and a plan that keeps the 1907 factory as the clubhouse with nearly every bed. It accuses no one.

Read the story 35 originals ↗ DRC · 28 Sep 2026

Tallahassee-Leon County Architectural Review Board

The evidence brief ↗
Published
The Wahnish Cigar Factory's red-brick front on St. Francis Street, with the words “Unlawful votes?”
The Wahnish Cigar Factory, 469 St. Francis Street · photo: Erin Vaughn, 2018, National Register nomination

Unlawful votes? The ARB evidence brief

The public records behind the Wahnish Cigar Factory and Marshall House demolition approvals · five public records requests

The Board that approved both demolitions has been missing two of its four property-owner seats since at least December 2025. On 1 April 2026 five members decided the Wahnish demolition; the bylaws set a quorum of six. The conflict forms were filed about five months after the vote. Both certificates are signed only by the Historic Preservation Officer, with no findings and no notice of appeal rights. Every point is shown as an image of the record itself, and the brief accuses no one: the fixes belong to the City and the County.

Read the brief PDF, 6 pages ↗ DRC · 28 Sep 2026

Independent Leon County Fire Services Separation & Disparity Report

leonfirefacts.org ↗The living map ↗
Published
Chart from Report 1, Figure 4: lawful interior entry takes 10 to 14 minutes today with three firefighters aboard, about 24 minutes after 1 October 2028, and about 7 minutes with four aboard
Report 1, Figure 4 · lawful interior entry · the first two bars are a measured first arrival plus a modelled wait for the second crew; the third is a measured arrival alone

The twelve questions

What the County asked a consultant, and what the public record already answers

In November 2025 the County put twelve questions about its fire service out to bid and awarded the work to Fitch & Associates for $109,995. This report answers all twelve from public records — City dispatch data, the ISO grading file, County budgets, the tax roll and the street network — and labels every number — measured, modelled, proxy, range or documentary. The first engine reaches a structure fire in a median of 6:24 in the rural station areas, measured. Of every costed option, exactly one buys minutes before the deadline: a fourth firefighter on every county-facing engine.

Read it here on leonfirefacts.org ↗ County workshop · 20 Oct 2026
Published
Map: homes just outside Tallahassee's city limit that lose their nearest fire station in 2028, blue for single-family homes and red for mobile homes, with the City's fire stations numbered
The 10,678 homes that lose their nearest station on 1 October 2028 · blue single-family, red mobile homes, numbered circles City fire stations · from the media brief, after the reports’ Figure 1

Two Leon Counties

The disparity study · a regressive fire tax, a fix inside County authority, and no way to stand the same service up by 2028

When the agreement ends on 1 October 2028, 10,678 homes in unincorporated Leon County fall outside five road miles of a responding station — 96.9% of them within a mile of the city limit. The flat fire fee takes $2.03 per $1,000 of market value in District 1 and 52¢ in District 4. The report prices what replacing the service would cost, and sets out a fix the County can adopt alone: change how the fee is charged, which collects the same total and lowers the bill in four of the five districts.

Read it here on leonfirefacts.org ↗
Published
The six headline numbers from page 1 of the media brief: 10,678 homes; nearly four times; 12% to 29%; 39 cents; 50%; 56% and 45%
Media brief, page 1 · the six numbers

Media brief & executive summary

Four pages · handed to the Board on 15 September 2026

The whole study on four pages: the six numbers, the bottom line, the money, the ambulance levy and the records nobody has seen. The County pays the City 39¢ of every dollar the same service would cost on its own. Where the two reports and the brief differ, the brief is the current statement.

Read it here PDF, 4 pages ↗

Projects

Four projects, and where each one stands.

The government each one looks at, the records it reads, and where it stands. Buc-ee’s #86 is in preparation.

The marks the words that carry the point quoted from the document a figure my read, not a finding

NewStory · records
The Wahnish Cigar Factory's red-brick north front on St. Francis Street, arched windows above and painted doors below
Left: the factory’s north front on St. Francis Street — Erin Vaughn, 2018, National Register nomination ↗, photo 1. Right: Anne M. Rokyta’s Form 8B — vote date from page 1, filing date from page 2.

Wahnish Cigar Factory: the public record

Tallahassee-Leon County Architectural Review Board · 908 Cigar Factory project (TSP260037) · reporting

Tallahassee’s last cigar factory, built in 1907 and on the National Register, is still standing. On 1 April 2026 the Architectural Review Board voted four to one to let it come down, with two of its four property-owner seats empty. The two members who stepped aside, Anne M. Rokyta and Ray Douglas Shuler, filed their conflict forms about five months after the vote. The law says “within 15 days after the vote occurs.” Shuler’s gives the reason as “the property owner is a close business associate.” Five weeks later the same Board approved a second demolition, the Marshall House, without the reports it had ordered and against its staff’s advice. The story reads it all from the Board’s own record and accuses no one: the fixes belong to the City and the County.

Read the storyThe ARB brief ↗DRC · 28 Sep 2026
Published
Map: homes just outside Tallahassee's city limit that lose their nearest fire station in 2028, blue for single-family homes and red for mobile homes, with the City's fire stations numbered
The 10,678 homes that lose their nearest station on 1 October 2028 · from the media brief, after the reports’ Figure 1

Leon County fire services

Independent Leon County Fire Services Separation & Disparity Report · leonfirefacts.org

The fire agreement between the City and the County ends on 1 October 2028. From public records, GIS, budgets and filings: the twelve questions the County awarded a consultant $109,995 to study, answered; the 10,678 homes that lose their nearest station; and a fix the County can adopt alone. Two reports and a four-page brief, all readable here.

The reports leonfirefacts.org ↗ County workshop · 20 Oct 2026
Story · Beta
Blueprint's FY2027 cost summary table: Welaunee Boulevard at 202,325,000 and Bannerman Road at 164,700,000, both boxed
Blueprint Intergovernmental Agency · FY2027 budget workshop item, 11 Jun 2026 · Attachment 3, Line Item Cost Estimate Summary

Bannerman, and what the budget tables show

Blueprint Intergovernmental Agency · 2018–2026 · scrolling story

Read straight from Blueprint’s own budget tables. Bannerman Road went from $40M to $165M. Six projects grew $284M between the FY2024 and FY2027 budgets, and the Southside projects came last. A records request for two project budgets was pointed to the whole capital programme; five weeks later the board had per-phase cost estimates. It ends with two ordinary fixes. Covered by WTXL, May 2025 ↗ and June 2026 ↗.

Read the storyBeta — still being checked
Coming soon
Lake Munson Munson Slough ↓ 500 m N
Lake Munson and Munson Slough from the USGS National Hydrography Dataset ↗, drawn flowing the way the dataset runs. North is up; the bar is 500 metres. The contour lines behind are the site’s drawing, not terrain.

Lake Munson and Munson Slough: the record

Leon County · public-records repository

The public record on Lake Munson and Munson Slough, published as obtained, with provenance, so it can be read whole.

DueDate to comeRepository in preparation

Press

In my own words, and in the papers.

Op-eds are mine. Everything else is a reporter’s story that quotes or names me, sorted by issue.

    Compiled September 2026 from WTXL, WCTV, WFSU, the Tallahassee Democrat, Tallahassee Reports, The Famuan and Florida Politics.

    About

    Geographer, programmer, glassblower. Now an analyst.

    Max Epstein, in a grey jacket and patterned shirt, in front of trees

    Two degrees from Florida State: a BS in Geography and Computer Science in 2014, and a BFA in Sculpture and Public Art in 2017. Tallahassee Glassworks, the glassblowing studio and gallery, opened in 2016 and is still open.

    Research at FSU’s DeVoe L. Moore Center and its Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, including leading a team on how local government uses eminent domain. On the team for a $2M EPA STAR proposal on polluted urban lakes, which wasn’t funded. On the board of Friends of Lake Munson, running the Save Historic Structures, Heritage Trees group, and at the podium on preservation, stormwater and land use in front of the City, the County and Blueprint since 2019.

    MAXAI LLC is where that work gets published. One person, public records, and every claim tied to a document you can pull yourself.

    • BasedTallahassee, Florida
    • EducationBS Geography & Computer Science (FSU, 2014) · BFA Sculpture & Public Art (FSU, 2017)
    • ResearchDeVoe L. Moore Center & EOAS, Florida State University
    • CivicBoard, Friends of Lake Munson · Save Historic Structures, Heritage Trees · Wakulla Basin Advocacy Group
    • StudioTallahassee Glassworks LLC, owner-artist, since 2016

    Ashmore’s, 507 W Brevard St, Frenchtown

    A glassworks studio proposed in Frenchtown, and what the City built there instead.

    Every step below is sourced to a public document or a news report. My conclusion is mine, and it’s marked that way.

    1. 2017I wrote a glassworks studio and learning lab into the Big Bend CDC’s Ashmore’s heritage proposal — “a community-driven arts, culture, heritage educational catalyst … including a glassworks studio and learning lab.”
    2. 2018The Tallahassee CRA runs an arts, culture and heritage grant round with roughly $3M of tourist-development money. Tallahassee Glassworks attends the review as part of the proposal. County TDC packet, 19 Jul 2018 ↗ The review committee ranks it second and recommends $840,885. The awards go elsewhere. County agenda item, Feb 2021 ↗
    3. 2020The Ashmore property is conveyed to the City of Tallahassee.
    4. 2021The CRA rescinds TLH Arts’ $1.8M and redirects $1M to a City-run renovation of the same building. WCTV ↗
    5. 2022The City accepts a $717,128 Florida Department of State African-American Cultural and Historical Grant to renovate Ashmore’s as community space, with a $224,403 local match — application 23.s.aa.900.116, scored 91.857, ranked 40th statewide. Tallahassee Reports ↗ · State funded-applications list ↗

    My read — not a finding

    They appropriated the proposal. The idea of Ashmore’s as a working arts and heritage building came out of a proposal I helped write in 2017 and put in front of the CRA in 2018. It was ranked second, recommended for funding, and not funded. The building then went to the City, and four years later the City won a state grant to do a version of the same thing in the same building — without a word of attribution to the people whose proposal it was, and without us in it.

    That is my reading of the sequence above, and it’s mine. No City or state document says the 2022 application drew on the 2018 proposal, and this site does not claim one does. The documents are linked so you can read the sequence and reach your own conclusion.

    Deployed analysis

    Put an analyst inside the problem.

    For teams that need someone inside a legal, spatial or records problem, shipping answers with AI in the loop. Here’s what that looks like on the record.

    Same question, a fraction of the budgetLeon County fire services · 2026

    The County hired a consultant for $109,995 to study fire-services options — Fitch & Associates, RFP BC-2026-003, awarded 7–0 on 9 December 2025 as Item 18. The fire study answered the same question from public records, GIS, budgets and filings, with every figure traced to a document and every correction published with its source named. I started it the afternoon of the 14 July 2026 vote and handed it to the Board on 15 September 2026, five weeks before the workshop called to answer the same questions.

    Two conflict forms the minutes never mentionWahnish Cigar Factory · 2026

    The review board’s minutes for 1 April 2026 record a four-to-one vote “with two recusals” and nothing more. A records request for the whole file brought back the two conflict forms behind those recusals, each dated about five months after the vote. The law allows 15 days. Records question, records method. On the projects page →

    Land taken vs. land drawnEminent domain · Capital Cascades Trail

    Compensation agreements, court files, communication logs and historic parcel GIS, compared along one corridor to test whether displacements were treated alike — and whether federal relocation rules applied. Legal question, spatial method. The poster →

    House rules

    1. No impropriety is alleged and no motive is imputed to anyone. The record is described.
    2. Measured and modelled numbers are never mixed; each is labelled as what it is.
    3. Corrections are published with the source named — never quietly patched.
    4. The studies take no position on the political question they inform.
    5. Nothing is deleted; superseded material is retired and kept.

    Hire me

    For the people asking the questions.

    I work the adversarial side of environmental and land-use records — for plaintiffs’ counsel, NGOs and journalists, not for the agencies being asked.

    The fire study answered a question the County had contracted out to Fitch & Associates for $109,995 — from public records.

    That’s the offer. I read the whole record, fast, and I know how Florida’s land-use, permitting and public-records systems work from the inside. Engagements are scoped to one question and priced to it.

    Email Max [email protected]
    • Records strategy and requestsChapter 119 requests that name the record series — and the follow-through when a request is denied, ignored or quoted an absurd fee.
    • Bulk document harvestFull agency document indexes captured and verified — FDEP, water management districts, county clerks, boards — with integrity hashes.
    • Evidence-grade transcriptionPublic meetings transcribed from official video and checked against the minutes.
    • Funding and permit tracesFederal, state and local money followed through a project; the permit chain and receiving waters laid out.
    • Spatial analysisParcel reconstruction, coverage and distance modelling, plan-sheet comparison from public geodata.
    • Independent studiesA full written study, like the fire study, on a public question in your jurisdiction.

    Or buy me a records request.

    Every study on this site began with a request and a fee. Agencies charge for staff time and for copies, and on a large record set they send an estimate before they send the documents — that’s the part of independent work nobody funds. The reports stay free to read. This is how the next one gets made.

    • $25A records requestGoes toward putting the next Chapter 119 request in, and the copy fee behind it.
    • $100A big askGoes toward a record set large enough that the agency quotes a fee first.
    • $500A studyGoes toward a week of reading, mapping and writing, published free.
    Contribute One-off. Nothing here goes behind a paywall.

    MAXAI LLC is a for-profit Florida company, not a charity. A contribution is support for independent work: it is not tax-deductible, it is not a charitable solicitation, and it buys no say in what gets published or how it reads. Anyone who contributes is disclosed on the report if they are a party to what it examines.