The Record Behind the Letter

A letter to the Mayor and City Commission, the Leon County Commission, the City Manager, County Administrator, City and County Attorneys, and Growth Management placed a series of findings on the record concerning the Architectural Review Board and the Wahnish Cigar Factory demolition approval. This page shows the documents behind each point — as images of the records themselves. The complete documents accompany this page as a package; the public records requests that produced them are identified at the foot of this page.

Online, with a guide to the original records: maxairesearch.com/arb-prr-evidence-summary

Every image below is an unaltered excerpt of a public record produced by the City of Tallahassee or the Tallahassee Trust for Historic Preservation, or published by Leon County. The light highlights were added for this page: yellow marks the words each point rests on, on the records and in the text; blue, a count; rose, the author’s opinion on the record — his view, not the record’s. The records themselves are included unaltered in the evidence package. The two January 29 emails in section 3, which the City produced only inside its mail file, are reproduced as text. This page states what documents show; it alleges no wrongdoing by any individual.

1The Board is not constituted as the Code requires

The Architectural Review Board is a joint board of the City of Tallahassee and Leon County. Its members are “named jointly by the city commission and the county board of county commissioners” (Sec. 2-181). The Code fixes ten seats: two members from the Tallahassee Trust, the chair of the Planning Commission or a designee, the director of the Planning Department or a designee, two architects, and four owners of property zoned for historic preservation. The County lists the four owner seats as two appointed by the City and two by the County. Vacancies are to be filled within 60 days (Sec. 2-182).

Every set of minutes produced for December 3, 2025 through June 3, 2026 lists the same eight members. On the County’s roster the two empty seats are Seat 1, a County owner seat, and Seat 10, the City’s second owner seat (the City’s other three appointees hold its architect, Trust and first owner seats). That is two of the four property-owner seats, empty for at least six months and still empty today, against the 60 days the Code allows. The City’s first owner seat, Seat 9, shows a term that ended June 30, 2026. The same shortfall existed at every vote the Board took in 2026, including the April 1 Wahnish Cigar Factory approval and the May 6 Marshall House approval.

2The April 1 vote, and disclosures filed only after the public asked

The minutes name no recused member and incorporate no disclosure. The only written disclosures the City produced were filed after the public asked for them. Public records requests of August 14 and 17 asked who had recused and for any Form 8B or other conflict disclosure filed by any member; the City produced two Forms 8B, dated filed August 26 and September 1, 2026 — 147 and 153 days after the vote. The Vice Chair’s form states a conflict of the kind § 112.3143 addresses, for which the statute requires the form within 15 days, filed with the person who records the minutes and incorporated in them. The Planning representative’s form cites the bylaws’ fairness provision (Art. IV.C.2).

3The defects are structural

The Board’s own paperwork describes the design: the reviewing department votes on the board that reviews its sites; the private contractor that administers the Board holds two seats on it and executes its records.

The conflict was flagged in writing two months before the vote. On January 29, 2026, 62 days before the April 1 vote, the Trust’s executive director wrote to the Planning Department’s Board member under the subject line “ARB conflict” that “it would probably be helpful to have a consistent stand-in.” Five minutes later the member forwarded the message to an Assistant City Attorney, asking to discuss it. The Code already allows the Planning Director to name a designee (Sec. 2-181). No other Planning designee appears in any set of minutes produced, and five members decided the demolition.

From[personal address, redacted on this page]

To"Rokyta, Anne" <[email protected]>

DateThursday, January 29, 2026, 2:54 PM

SubjectARB conflict

Hi Anne,

We're reviewing the Wahnish Cigar Factory for a pre-application consultation next week at the ARB meeting. Do we need to find a proxy for you if we're not voting on anything? We'll meet about this project several times, so it would probably be helpful to have a consistent stand-in.

Thanks!
Shannon Kuch, Executive Director

From"Rokyta, Anne" <[email protected]>

To"Green, Breanna" <[email protected]>

Cc[personal address, redacted on this page]

DateThursday, January 29, 2026, 2:59 PM

SubjectRE: ARB conflict

Breanna [?] would you please give me a call when you have a moment to discuss? I[?]ll be out this afternoon starting at 3:30, but will be available most all day tomorrow.

Thanks!
Anne Rokyta

[The 2:54 PM message follows, quoted in full.]

In Max Epstein’s view, Ms. Kuch is doing everything she can to do her job. It is not her responsibility to hold together a board the City and County have left short of the membership the law requires.

The City pays the Trust $80,000 a year for historic preservation services that include staffing the Board.

4The Board has recorded City departments not requesting its certificates

The Board’s own December 3, 2025 minutes record that it “discussed issues with Code Enforcement and Permitting not requesting COAs, and how the ARB can address future problems.” By the Board’s own account, City departments that act on historic properties have not consistently asked for the certificates the Code requires.

5The certificates: one staff signature, no findings, no notice — by the City’s own production

Asked under Chapter 119 for the written decisions authorizing these demolitions, the City produced two one-page certificate cards, each executed by one person: the executive director of the Tallahassee Trust, the private contractor that administers the Board, in her role as Historic Preservation Officer.

• No member of the Board signed either document; neither card has a line for the Chair.
• Neither records findings on the Code’s demolition factors (LDC § 10-320(b)(4)) or gives notice of appeal rights.
• On the Wahnish card, the documentation, salvage and commemoration the applicant itself proposed in mandatory terms (“shall”) appear only as a “Recommendation.”
• Each is issued “on the condition that the work is in compliance with the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation” — for a demolition.
• Both went out the same way: emailed by the Trust’s executive director to the applicant’s representative, on April 2 and May 12. The Wahnish card later reached a Growth Management file as part of the applicant’s own submittal. The production shows no filing with the City Clerk and no notice of either decision, or of any right to appeal it, to the public.

The defect is in the form, not in the person who signs it. When, how and to whom the City contends each decision was rendered is a question for the City Attorney to answer in writing.

6The Marshall House: approved without the reports the Board had asked for

The May 6, 2026 vote on 317 E. Call Street was taken with the same two owner seats empty. The sequence:

• Feb. 4 — the Board unanimously requested structural and environmental evaluations “before further review for demolition.”
• Apr. 1 — it decided it did not have enough information to vote without a structural engineering report, and tabled the application until May 6 or until the reports were provided.
• Apr. 29 — staff, which had recommended approval on March 27, recommended denial because the reports had not arrived.
• May 6 — with six members present, the bare quorum, and the Chair absent, the Board approved the demolition anyway, the reports “to be sent … when completed.” The minutes say the Board “reviewed each of the demolition criterion individually,” but record no finding on any of them, and add that the reports “are required for demolition permitting from the city.”

The reports the Board asked for appear in no records production to date. For 469 St. Francis, the only structural analysis produced — an engineer’s letter inside the application file — answers the question the Board asked on February 4, when the Trust’s executive director recommended keeping the two historic facades: whether that was feasible. It says the building was “observed to evaluate the general structural integrity of the building,” but its findings address what separating and stabilizing the facades would require; it lists the foundation as “currently unknown” and reaches no conclusion on the building’s condition standing alone. Both certificates issued on the same form, five weeks apart.

A staff timeline for the property records that the City’s code-violation fines were “on hold until a COA for demolition is issued from the ARB” — the City’s own code case waited on this certificate.

7What the letter asks

A lawful process, not an outcome:

• Hold. No demolition permit for 469 St. Francis Street or 317 E. Call Street until the City and County fill the vacant seats and a Planning designee is named, and the reconstituted Board has re-heard both applications at a noticed public hearing and decided each in a written decision with findings that the Board signs.
• Deny on September 28. The Development Review Committee should deny any approval that depends on either demolition, including site plan TSP260037 (908 Cigar Factory), because it rests on certificates a lawfully constituted Board has not issued.
• Reform. The City and County should reform the Board and replace its 1994 bylaws together, in a public process.