How to Speak at a Tallahassee City Commission Meeting

Every regular meeting happens in the City Commission Chambers on the second floor of City Hall at 300 South Adams Street, unless a notice says otherwise. The city's citizen input page states the ground rule in one line: meetings are held in person at City Hall, where anyone is welcome to attend and speak for up to three minutes per item. Remaining 2026 dates are Wednesday, October 21 at 3 p.m., a reorganization meeting on Monday, November 16 at 5 p.m., and regular meetings on November 18 and December 9 at 3 p.m.

The 2027 calendar is thinner than residents who remember twice-monthly meetings might expect. It lists one regular Wednesday meeting most months, at 3 p.m., plus a January 13 retreat at 9 a.m., budget workshops on February 10, April 7 and June 9, and budget public hearings on September 8 and September 22, 2027. Commissioner Jeremy Matlow said in February 2026 that the commission had cut the number of its meetings in half the year before, WFSU reported.

Agendas go up in the city's BoardDocs system, typically the Friday before a scheduled City Commission meeting, according to the City Commission page on talgov.com. The same BoardDocs library carries agendas for Blueprint, the Community Redevelopment Agency, the Capital Region Transportation Planning Agency and the Independent Ethics Board, and its Futures List shows items scheduled for later Tallahassee meetings. Last verified: October 9, 2026, on the City of Tallahassee website.

The paper speaker form is still the way in. Speaker forms are available in the support column at the entryway to the City Commission Chambers, and speakers are heard in the order the City Treasurer-Clerk receives their forms during the meeting. The Treasurer-Clerk's office, led by Jim Cooke since his appointment by the City Commission in 2012 according to the Treasurer-Clerk's page, also administers Policy 108, Public Participation at Meetings, in the commission's policy manual. That manual reaches down to local detail, from Policy 154, the sound policy for the Capital City Amphitheater at Cascades Park, to Policy 801 on StarMetro charter service.

What a speaker can address depends on how the item is listed. Under the rules on the City Commission page, citizens are entitled to speak to any item scheduled for public hearing. The commission does not usually take public comment on other agenda items not scheduled for public hearing, although the mayor has discretion to recognize speakers on them. Speakers on topics that are not on the agenda at all are heard at the end of the meeting, again in the order their forms reached the Treasurer-Clerk.

Anyone who needs help participating, such as an accessibility accommodation, is asked to call the City Treasurer-Clerk's Office at 850-891-8130 during business hours. Residents who cannot make a 3 p.m. Wednesday meeting downtown can submit written comments in advance through the Email All Commissioners at Once form on the citizen input page, which reaches all five members of the Tallahassee City Commission together.

On February 18, 2026, the Tallahassee City Commission voted 3 to 2 to cap time for unagendaed speakers, people addressing items not on the agenda, at 30 minutes in total per meeting. Groups coming to speak on the same unagendaed issue now have to designate one speaker, and the limit allows just 10 speakers per meeting, WFSU reported. Before the change, that portion of a meeting could last for hours, with each person getting three minutes, according to WCTV.

Mayor John Dailey, Mayor Pro Tem Curtis Richardson and Commissioner Dianne Williams-Cox voted for the limit; Commissioners Jeremy Matlow and Jack Porter voted against it, WTXL reported, and the rule took effect immediately for that meeting and all future meetings. The vote came about a month after Dailey adjourned a City Commission meeting early as protesters held up signs during the unagendaed period. Dailey said the commission could vote to extend the 30 minutes if a discussion was productive, and noted the commission is not required to hold unagendaed comment at all.

The limit does not touch agenda items. Richardson and Williams-Cox stressed that speakers on items on the official agenda will still be heard, and Richardson said an unagendaed topic can be brought back by asking the City Manager to place it on the next agenda. Matlow called the change undemocratic, and Porter said restricting speakers was unlikely to improve decorum at City Hall.

Because the right to speak is strongest on items scheduled for public hearing, the hearing notice is the date to watch on any big Tallahassee decision. The sale of Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare's hospital assets to Florida State University is the clearest recent example: the final public hearing on the deal was set for 9 a.m. on March 11, 2026 at City Hall, ahead of a regular 3 p.m. meeting the same day, according to the Tallahassee Democrat. Before that hearing, the local NAACP branch asked the commission to require a four-of-five supermajority for the sale.

The opposite can happen too. In January 2020 the commission unanimously chose the Northwood Centre as the next home of the Tallahassee Police Department without a single public comment, the Democrat reported. That vote came nearly a year after commissioners abandoned a South Monroe Street shopping plaza site, and it was paired with a new fire station on the old Lake Bradford wastewater treatment plant near the FAMU Way project, which Commissioner Curtis Richardson described as a commitment to development on the Southside.

Decorum fights at City Hall predate the 2026 rule. In late 2013 the commission approved a so-called kill switch that let Mayor John Marks and City Treasurer-Clerk Jim Cooke silence public speakers who launched personal attacks at commissioners or staff, according to a June 2014 Tallahassee Democrat report. It had been used once by then, during a March 12, 2014 meeting, and it drew sharp criticism from First Amendment advocates.

The same 2014 article recorded the basic arithmetic that still governs the podium in Tallahassee: each speaker gets an allotted three minutes. Commissioners at the time debated whether the city's own television channel, WCOT, should delay or drop footage of personal attacks; free-speech lawyers quoted by the Democrat warned that speakers are protected even when their comments are offensive, and that courts recognize a government interest only in keeping order in a public meeting. No ejection policy was drafted then.

Meetings are carried live on WCOT, the City of Tallahassee's government access channel on Comcast channel 13, and streamed on talgov.com and the city's Facebook page. Within 24 hours the full video is posted on the city's YouTube channel for meetings and in BoardDocs, and meetings are replayed the following Saturday and Sunday at noon. The WCOT page adds that the channel also carries live coverage of CRA, CRTPA and Blueprint meetings, the joint boards where Tallahassee commissioners also vote.

Minutes and documents come through the same office that handles the speaker forms. The City Treasurer-Clerk, through the Records Division on the second floor of City Hall at 300 South Adams Street, is the custodian for public records of a general nature, and requests go through an online form or by phone at 850-891-8130, according to the city's custodian of records page. City offices are open Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., except holidays.