Former Pinellas County Commissioner Norm Roche is running for Tallahassee City Commission Seat 3, one of six candidates seeking the seat ahead of the August primary election.<\/p>\n
WFSU\u2019s Tristan Wood spoke with Roche on Candidate Convos, a digital series of one-on-one interviews with local candidates in Tallahassee and Leon County ahead of the August primaries.<\/p>\n
You can watch Roche\u2019s full appearance on Candidate Convos here:<\/p>\n
During the conversation, Roche said political divisions at City Hall are driven by partisanship<\/p>\n
\u201cPolitics, man. Partisanship. Ideologies, and that’s the problem,\u201d Roche said. \u201cWhen you walk through the doors at City Hall to take a seat on the dais, you leave all that at the door. You’re there to work for the citizens.\u201d<\/p>\n
Roche also discussed Tallahassee\u2019s future growth, saying development should be balanced with quality of life and better coordination between city and county planning.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we’re at sort of a stagnant position right now, we’re not growing,\u201d he said. \u201cSo, it’s about intelligent growth. A lot of people will use the term smart growth, and I think it’s deeper than that.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said Tallahassee should focus on building on its unique identity, including its arts, sports, and university communities.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to find those niche things,\u201d Roche said. \u201cI think it’s the arts, I think it’s sports, with two amazing universities and a college here, we should go forward with that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Seat 3 race also includes PJ Perez, Maxwell Herrle, Talethia Edwards, Tom Derzypolski, and Darryl “Dar” Alfred. The primary election is scheduled for August 18th.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Pinellas County Commissioner Norm Roche is running for Tallahassee City Commission Seat 3, one of six candidates…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":346000,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[232,234,233],"class_list":["post-345999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee-headlines","tag-tallahassee-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=345999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345999\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/346000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}