Candidates for Tallahassee’s City Commission Seat Three race participated in a forum at WFSU’s Studios Thursday.
The forum was hosted by the Capital Region News Collaborative and the League of Women Voters of Tallahassee.
The race for the open commission seat is packed. Six candidates have qualified: Daryl Alfred Jr, Tom Derzypolski, Talethia Edwards, Maxwell Herrle, PJ Perez, and Norme Roche.
The candidates gave their thoughts on a host of issues, including the direction of the Tallahassee Airport.
On that issue, Edwards says a lot of people travel to other cities to fly.
“People are going to Panama City, Tampa, Jacksonville to actually fly out, and so I think to precarious to actually come and be interested, we got to show the demand, but the demand may have to do with pricing,” she says.
Herrle says the city needs to attract more businesses to manufacture and ship out of the airport.
“If we get more planes that are taking off out of the Tallahassee airport, your costs will go down. How can we do that without having 10s of 1000s of more people out on the road every day? We get businesses to build on city-owned land,” he says.
Perez wants them to work to attract more low-cost carriers to increase competition.
“You need to obviously attract more low cap, low cost carriers, and make sure that we also have reliable and economic transportation to the airport itself,” he says.
The also talked about bringing more economic development in the region.
Derzypolski says he wants to bring more businesses to the city to increase employment.
“Bringing good paying wages and jobs and new careers to our community, so that people who live where they want to live, shop where they want to shop,” he says.
Alfred Jr. says he wants to break down silos around the community to encourage more collaboration.
“We need to bring people together, and that means community activities, building a house that is big enough to fit everyone with a door that we can invite everyone into,” he says.
Roche says he wants the region to be more attractive for young people looking to start their careers.
“So folks can look at this place, Tallahassee, and say this is where I can live, this is where I can grow my life, but that takes cooperation, that takes communication, and we're not seeing a lot of that,” he says.
You can watch the full candidate forum here:
