Over the past month, the St. Cloud City Council has been trying to get to the bottom of a scheduling snafu pertaining to the use of The Ranch by both the Black Empowerment Community Council and the Proud in the Cloud groups in June. At Thursday’s meeting, the Council voted unanimously to send a formal letter of apology to Tiffany Jeffers and the BECC.
“We’ve done an exhaustive investigation on this … we’ve gone through many documents, spoken with staff,” Mayor Chris Robertson said. “We owe the Black Empowerment Community Council a sincere apology. Some of our departments dropped the ball, and we are going to definitely do everything we can to ensure that never happens again. They had an event scheduled at The Ranch in St. Cloud and they were moved to another location. We do know at this point that it was our fault.”
Council Member Jennifer Paul noted “significant failures” occurred within several City departments.
“It resulted in the disruption of their meticulously planned event and causing considerable inconvenience and frustration.” Paul said. “The City Council takes full responsibility for these shortcomings. There is no excuse for the errors made, and the City Manager will be sending a letter of apology to the Black Empowerment Community Council.”
Also Thursday, The Council voted 4-1 to approve a mixed-use future land use designation for the 1,378-acre Edgewater West project, with Deputy Mayor Ken Gilbert casting the dissenting vote. Council then turned its attention to another land-use matter: annexing and assigning the mixed-use future land use and zoning for 24.66 acres north of Clay Whaley Road near the Turnpike, where developers plan to build a 400-unit apartment complex and neighborhood center.
“I would like to see these kind of projects staying north of Clay Whaley like this,” Robertson said. “Further south, we’re getting into the more single-family stuff. I’d love to see everything kind of stay close to the commercial corridors.”
In addition to land development decisions, the Council also took steps to address an outdated property description that still lingers on legal records in parts of St. Cloud. About 31 properties around Myrtle Avenue and Pine Avenue still have the legal description “colored quarter.”
“It was brought to me by some individuals asking when City of St. Cloud was going to update it,” said Paul, who led the city’s efforts to end “sundown town” references. “I would like to see it changed to ‘East St. Cloud Quarter.’ I’m not sure who’s using the term ‘colored’ in 2025, but it’s time to update it, correct it and move forward.”
Paul suggested that a community town hall meeting be held to share updates with the residents involved.
City Attorney Dan Mantzaris pointed out that since the properties were platted with the “colored quarter” designation, they will have to be re-platted.
“That’s going to be a process that we’re going to have to work through to do it,” Mantzaris said. “We’ll work through it with staff and figure out the best way to do it, but it’s going to take a little bit of time.”
