Guest opinion piece by City of Tampa Racial Reconciliation Committee Members
Time is a nonrenewable resource. Once it is spent, you cannot get it back.
In 2023, a group of community and organizational leaders were designated to serve as members of the City of Tampa’s Racial Reconciliation Committee.
The vision, agenda, and work for this committee seemed exciting and empowering and many selected for the committee as well as many other onlookers were eager to not only see the committee get to work, but to see the results of that work. Every member of the current City Council and many members of the city staff were excited to see this train moving forward. We don’t quite know what to make of the Mayor’s response and excitement.
While acknowledging the reality, we will not go into detail on the number of matters, discussions, motions, resolutions, committees, and promises channeled through the city regarding the advancement of issues that directly pertain to the city’s African American community. History has recorded those realities, and our current dynamic has revealed the fruit from those actions and sometimes inaction.
This editorial is to specifically speak to a lack of engagement, responsiveness, and commitment to the work of this committee by the city – both the Mayor, the Mayor’s Office and Staff, and the City Council. This committee is reaping the harvest from a divided city leadership. It is not a stretch for any observer of the activity of both the Executive and Legislative branches of our city government to notice quickly that while they are cordial with one another, they are not collaborative nor are they proactively innovative in moving certain issues progressively forward. Their activity is more like Teenage Siblings who are enmeshed in the blame game when something goes wrong. In no way are we suggesting that our committee are the parents attempting to check the Executive and Legislative Branches. We are however the visiting cousins sitting in the family room watching the two argue over what are we going to eat and who will eat first.
It is disheartening to dedicate energy, talent, expertise, and time to a project to not have what you need to be successful. To date, we have asked the Mayor’s StaH on numerous occasions for a collaborative spirit that would include data, gaps in the data, subject matter experts, departmental leads, a situational analysis, and a progress report of the Mayor’s agenda on the issues specifically related to this committee to help drive our discussions and ultimately our recommendations to the city on how to amicably move forward on certain issues. There has been static on the phone line. All of this would be a basic partnership that would allow this committee to be successful and to allow us to make recommendations that would be well-rounded, tested, and wise.
While we have centered this missive on the emphasis of not wasting time, it should also be noted that there’s a considerable budget that’s been dedicated to this Committee’s work and we want to also note that we should all want to be great stewards of the city’s economic and human resources.
Why are we sharing this publicly? And what do we hope to come from this Editorial?
Simply put, we are sharing this lack of response publicly because we believe that we must be accountable to the city, to the citizens that we represent, and to answer for the influence that we’ve been afforded. Secondly, it should be noted that there are concerned leaders who are willing to volunteer to partner with the city to provide solutions and to do so, the city has not been as responsive as needed. At the final editing of this Editorial, the Mayor’s Chief of Staff has initiated a conversation, and we will see where that lands the committee.
It should also be noted that we have current committee members who have served on previous committees with our community and county and have experienced what a collaborative, supportive city and county partnership looks like.
We hope that this Editorial will serve as both a nudge to our City Leaders, elected, appointed, and hired to work with us! We also hope that this Editorial will serve as a transparent record of this committee’s united heart and desire to see our city better and making progress. That betterment and progress cannot happen without collaboration and that collaboration involves the city leaders who appointed, supported, and endorsed this committee’s work. It’s time to get to work.
We also want to welcome any member of the community to our last two meetings and to be in the room as we finalize our formal recommendations that will be delivered to both the Mayor’s Administration and the City Council. These meetings will be held at Tampa City Center at Hanna (2555 E. Hannah Avenue, Tampa, Florida 33610) on Tuesday, May 13th (6:00 p.m.) and Tuesday, June 17th (6:00 p.m.).
Anything else is simply…a waste of time.
Signed,
Members of the City of Tampa Racial Reconciliation Committee
Committee Members:
Ms. Connie Burton, Chair (Community Advocate)
Pastor Christopher J Harris, Vice Chair (Executive Pastor, Crossover Church)
Mr. Jarvis El-Amin (Appointee, Hillsborough County NAACP)
Mr. Robert Blout (Executive Director, Abe Brown Ministries)
Mr. Fred Hearns (Tampa Bay History Center)
Mr. Daryl Hych (President, Hillsborough County Black Chamber of Commerce)
Pastor JeLrey Johnson (CDC of Tampa)
Ms. Robin Lockett (Florida Rising)
Cheryl Rodriguez, PhD (Professor, USF)
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