City of Tallahassee Departments

Almost every city department in Tallahassee answers, through a chain of command, to one appointed official: the City Manager. The City Commission sets policy and tax rates, and according to the City of Tallahassee description of the commission, four officers appointed by the City Commission handle the administration of the city: the city manager, the city treasurer-clerk, the city attorney and the inspector general. The city manager oversees most City departments and administers the daily operation of the city, which is why a question about potholes, bus routes or a power bill in Tallahassee ends up on the manager's side of the organization chart rather than with a commissioner.

On October 1, 2026, Karen Jumonville took over as City Manager after more than 27 years with the city, a career that began as a Senior Planner and ran through the Deputy City Manager job. The manager page on talgov.com says she leads a workforce of nearly 4,000 employees and an annual budget of approximately $1 billion, covering operating and capital spending for police, fire, transit, utilities, parks and more. As of October 9, 2026, the City Leadership page lists Amy M. Toman as City Attorney, James Cooke IV as City Treasurer-Clerk and Dennis R. Sutton as Inspector General. Last verified: October 9, 2026, on the City of Tallahassee website.

The other three officers keep separate lanes. The Treasurer-Clerk handles records, taxation and the city treasury and receives speaker forms at commission meetings in the second-floor chambers of City Hall at 300 South Adams Street. The City Attorney drafts contracts and represents Tallahassee in legal matters. The Inspector General reviews the policies, procedures and accounting of city operations.

The City of Tallahassee owns its electric, natural gas, water, sewer and stormwater systems, so utilities make up the largest block of departments. The customer side, City of Tallahassee Utilities, works out of 435 North Macomb Street. Power comes from two city plants. The Arvah B. Hopkins Power Generating Station, built in 1971 and more than doubled in 1977, burns natural gas on 230 acres 7 miles west of Tallahassee on Geddie Road and can produce up to 504 megawatts. The older Sam O. Purdom Generating Station, built in 1952, sits on 63 acres beside the St. Marks River in Wakulla County, where its combined-cycle Unit 8 recycles treated effluent from the City of St. Marks.

Water, sewer, stormwater and streets belong to Underground Utilities and Public Infrastructure, known inside City Hall as UUPI. The FY26 budget profile counts 495 full-time employees across 24 divisions or cost centers, paid from the water, sewer and stormwater enterprise funds and the General Fund. The water system serves over 87,000 connections from 27 water wells and eight elevated storage tanks. The city has been in the water business a long time: an earlier budget profile records that the city purchased the original private water system in 1908 for $75,000.

Sewage flows to the Thomas P. Smith Water Reclamation Facility, which the wastewater page rates at 26.5 million gallons a day. From there, treated water is pumped to the Southeast Spray Field to irrigate fodder crops. Tallahassee sewer customers outside the city limits in unincorporated Leon County pay a 50 percent surcharge on the same rates.

The public infrastructure half of UUPI is the part residents drive on. According to the FY26 profile, Public Infrastructure maintains 703 miles of City streets, 465 miles of City sidewalks, 360 traffic signals and 340 other traffic control devices, and since 2020 crews have resurfaced over 275 lane miles and repaired more than 55,000 potential trip hazards. Traffic Signal System Operations and Traffic Engineering, which handles sign design and pavement markings, sit in the same department. The FY25 profile notes that road projects on Betton Road and FAMU Way also replaced or added water and sewer lines underneath.

Drainage is its own utility. The Stormwater Fund was established in 1987, and the Stormwater Management page lists a residential stormwater charge of $11.00 per month on Tallahassee utility bills. The city's Surface Water Master Plan, known as TMaPS, is organized by drainage basin, with volumes for the Lake Munson, Lake Jackson and Lake Lafayette basins and a separate volume for Wakulla Springs and Lake Talquin. The same Stormwater Management office monitors lakes and groundwater and runs the Think About Personal Pollution program, which Tallahassee ties to water quality at Wakulla Springs.

Building permits, plan review, accessory dwelling units and zoning maps go through the Growth Management department at 435 North Macomb Street, in the same Renaissance Building that houses the utility customer office. Long-range planning is shared with the county. The PLACE department (Planning, Land Management and Community Enhancement) was created jointly by the City of Tallahassee and Leon County to oversee three programs under one roof: the Tallahassee-Leon County Planning Department, the Office of Economic Vitality and Blueprint infrastructure projects funded by the local sales tax.

Parks, Recreation and Neighborhood Affairs runs city parks, athletics and community centers from its office at 1201 Myers Park Drive, according to the PRNA page. Neighborhood registration, neighborhood service coordinators and the Southside Farmers' Market fall under Neighborhood Services, part of Housing and Community Resilience on North Macomb Street. The Sustainability and Resilience Division handles climate and conservation programs such as City Farm TLH, the Adopt-A-Tree planting program and Tallahassee Solar, which lets electric customers buy solar power without rooftop panels.

StarMetro is a city department, not a separate transit authority. The StarMetro history traces it to 1973, when the City of Tallahassee bought the local Cities Transit franchise and launched TalTran with 21 buses on December 3, 1973. The Appleyard Drive operations base followed in 1977. In 1985 the city built the C.K. Steele Bus Plaza at Tennessee and Adams Streets, named for the Rev. Charles Kenzie Steele, a leader of the 1956 Tallahassee Bus Boycott. The name changed to StarMetro in 2005, and the Southside Transit Center now under construction is the first new transit center since Steele Plaza.

The Aviation Department runs Tallahassee International Airport (TLH) on Capital Circle SW. The airport site names David Pollard, a former interim director with more than 27 years in aviation, as director. The airport is building a multi-year, $28 million International Processing Facility, which the city lists in its Five-Year Strategic Plan as a step toward a $1 billion annual economic impact for TLH.

Several departments work largely out of public view. Real Estate Management is the real estate arm of the City of Tallahassee: it buys right-of-way for roads, power lines and sewer lines, sells surplus parcels by bid, manages easements and runs city cemetery operations. It also manages the two main city parking garages, Kleman Plaza on South Duval Street and the Eastside Parking Garage on South Calhoun Street.

The Tallahassee Fire Department, the Tallahassee Police Department, Animal Services, Fleet Services and WCOT, the city television channel that carries City Commission meetings live, round out the departments listed on talgov.com. The pattern across all of them is the one the 2026 manager page describes: Tallahassee is the largest single provider of municipal services in the region, and the City Manager, not the City Commission, directs the departments day to day. In 2025 the National Civic League named Tallahassee an All-America City, its third win after 1999 and 2015, according to the City Leadership page.