JFlo Hair Salon and Spa owner claims discrimination

JFlo’s Hair Salon Spa and Boutique owner Florys Johnson believes the city is unfairly targeting her business because it can’t pin a tree trimming snafu on her or her salon employees.

In November, city staff and Johnson were surprised to discover that an oak tree that sits in front of her salon in the 1400 block of Main Street had been improperly cut over the weekend without city permission. The incident occurred just days after Johnson urged the city to trim the tree because it was overgrown and blocking her new sign. Johnson had just moved to the Main Street location from Palm Avenue.

At the end of 2011, Johnson said city staff and police officers were entering her salon every other day or so to question her on the matter.

“They were accusing us because we asked for the tree to be trimmed back,” Johnson said. “We didn’t hire anyone to do it. If we would have, we would have hired someone to do it more professionally.”

The fiasco prompted the city to pay for a proper trimming of the tree to prolong its life after the hack job. Weeks later, the city moved Public Works Department funds around to pay for the trimming of the rest of the Main Street trees because merchants were upset the trees hadn’t been cut in a while due to budget constraints.

Now, pictures and advertising in her second-story glass windowpanes prompted city staff to levy a $415 code enforcement fine against her. Johnson believes it’s payback for the improper tree trimming she says she was not responsible for. She also believes she’s been discriminated against because other Main Street stores operate with similar signage and decorations without being issued fines.

When Johnson decided to put a new sign on her store last month, she worked with city staff on the new location of the sign. The problem with the first location was that the signage would cover seven glass pane windows that no one knew were there because they had been covered up by paint years ago. A secondary sign location was agreed upon.

In the meantime, Johnson had the paint scraped off the windows that now sit below her sign and she had placed artwork, some advertising and some pictures of hairstyles in the windows.

A city code enforcement officer promptly cited her for erecting signage without a permit earlier this month. She also violated a city code that prohibits signs from covering more than 20% of any pane of glass.

Johnson appealed the $415 fine, but lost. Johnson, who has spent $40,000 renovating her hair salon space,vnow says she doesn’t feel welcome in downtown Sarasota.

“They’re picking on me,” Johnson said. “That’s the bottom line.”

The goal of the code, according to city staff, is to create a more uniform and open window look and to create an interaction between pedestrians and the inside of the shops.

Johnson, though, said other shop windows up and down Main Street violate the 20% windowpane rule. The code department cited some shops she randomly mentioned, Johnson said, but has left many other shops alone.

Johnson also says the rule shouldn’t apply in this case because the window panes are on a second-floor crawl space and window shoppers can’t peer inside there anyway without a ladder.

Neighborhood and Development Services Director Tim Litchet said the city is just following codes and ordinances and will investigate all code complaints, explaining the city doesn’t have the resources to walk downtown just to look for code violations.

Johnson and JFlo communications representative Tere Greenwald, thinks they are being unfairly targeted.

“It’s clearly discrimination,” Greenwald said.